Posted in: Recent Updates | Tagged:

That Fake Michael Turner Scammer Named And Shamed

Published Wed, 16 Jun 2010 03:32:46 -0500

After a couple of enquiries, Kris Holmes of Michigan, seller of some of the more egregious Michael Turner fake sketches on eBay wrote to me to say;

Anyone can see by our wonderful buyer feedback that we are honest sellers and have been for years. It is sad to think that there really are people out there looking to falsely profit in today's marketplace, but anyone can see that we are not like these people. When people try to scam others and falsely accuse and make slanderous remarks against an honest person, especially when there is no fact to back up the claim, it does nothing but make the accuser look foolish and it discredits their own standing in the present and future. Thanks.

However, hours later on the Aspen board he would write;

Excuse me, but the real seller here and I would like to set the record straight. What happened was, an employee who was supposed to be shipping out the items picture in our listings to their respective buyer was in fact making copies of the work and sending those out instead of the originals that were the actual ones up for auction. We finally received a picture of one of these fakes from a buyer and was able to determine that they were indeed not the ones we uploaded to the eBay listing. We are working with eBay to fix this and have been apologizing up-and-down to these buyers in the hopes that they will not hold one person's inexcusable actions against us as a whole. If they do though, it is kind of to be expected and we will have to live with that. Hopefully though when they receive the items that they were supposed to, we found them as the employee was trying to get them out and to their home, that they will go and correct their earlier claims and help to clear our name of this heinous wrongdoing that we were unaware of until a couple days ago. We have also discovered at an employee (former now of course) was impersonating us from our computers, not only is replying and sending out items to our buyers, but also upon a couple different other message board websites. Again, this is being dealt and the situation is being rectified. We would appreciate the discontinuation of these negative comments as the problem is being taken care of and the person responsible has been outed and dealt with by us and the buyers are having the proper items sent to them as they should have been in the first place. Thanks.

Except of course that the same sketch was sold repeatedly on eBay, as were clear gold and silver line copies of the sketch. And as another poster on the board writes;

If you agree that Viridis' sketch (pictired) is a fake sent by your bad employee… how do you explain mine, that is very very similar to Viridis' one ? That you, Kris, made me chose between 4 sketches that you all presented to me as drawn by Michael Turner ? (I still have these emails and pictures). Maybe someone used your email to send me pictures of fake sketches ? Maybe it's not to you that I sent my money for this sketch, maybe it's not you who is still refusing to send my money back via Paypal claiming that it was my decision to buy a fake Michael Turner sketch ? I can't believe what's happening here, I was totally dazzled by my wish to get a Michael Turner piece of art…

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