An 82-year-old Colorado man was charged Wednesday with selling and trading fake Michael Jordan basketball cards in a scheme that prosecutors said resulted in him making more than $800,000 US over four years.
Mayo Gilbert McNeil was arrested in Denver, where he lives, after a complaint was unsealed in federal court in Brooklyn charging him with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, according to the Brooklyn U.S. Attorney’s office.
McNeil was accused of making numerous fraudulent deals beginning in 2015, including the 2019 sale of a counterfeit card to a victim in Manhasset, N.Y., for $4,500, and a 2017 deal in which he traded two counterfeit cards for two authentic Tom Brady football cards.
“Mr. McNeil defrauded sports memorabilia collectors of more than $800,000 by intentionally misrepresenting the authenticity of the trading cards he was peddling when, in fact, they were counterfeit,” Michael Driscoll, assistant director-in-charge of the FBI’s New York field office, said in a news release.
McNeil was scheduled to make an initial appearance in U.S. District Court in Colorado Wednesday and to appear in a New York courtroom at a later date, prosecutors said. It was unclear from federal court filings whether McNeil is represented by an attorney. No one answered a call to his Denver home.
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