New Bill To Go After Sellers Of Fake Numismatic Items

Ebay and others had better take notice! I wonder what will done with ALIBABA as well.

Bobby has an inside source within the bay...
I wonder if he'll ask his source what this will do to policy?

This Law should encourage the professional fake manufacturers and scammers to lift their game to higher levels of skill and deception.
I feel that it certainly won't stop the Chinese with modern minting equipment. Their fakes of rare silver and gold coins will now be more commonly made from .900 silver or gold.

Nevertheless the new Law should be most welcome, and should have some effect to discourage most of the less skillful fake manufacturers and scammers. However, it would be much too hopeful to think that it will stop the less professional of them completely.

Even from the start of coinage in ancient times, there has always been the presence of fake coins of various types, and I see no reason why that condition of human nature should change.

This makes ebay and equivalent unable to weasel out from under complicity due to their status as a communications medium, not a party to the transaction. They've been able to do that until now. All we have to do is provide them timely and accurate information; if they don't then act, they're complicit in a felony.

ebay, obviously, isn't going to allow that kind of exposure. That's equally good for us.

Depending on how it plays out in the real world, it may be necessary to cause some lesser outlet to be prosecuted to set a precedent. Hopefully somebody's already looking at that.

Totally agree ebay will have No choice but to start paying very close attention !

Let us hope this was not just some Legislative act, but they give teeth to it. Recently law ENFORCEMENT has not been carried out on powerful laws on the books on some very major issues.

Remember when the FBI raided the Liberty Dollar (NORFED) producer, they also said to ebay that ebay could no more legally allow NORFED auctions. From that time on, I made an ebay search to daily send new NORFED listings to my email. Granted the auctions cut way down, and likely because the FBI put a scare into people saying NORFED products might be confiscated from everyone, and they were illegal to own, but the auctions never stopped.

As always, it's never THAT simple. All that H.R. 2754 actually does is this:

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query...13:H.R.2754:



So where is used to be illegal to distribute, it's now illegal to distribute or sell!


The devil is in the enforcement, which comes down to whether the FTC and the Assistant US Attorneys will choose to use scarce resources to chase retail counterfeiters selling on ebay. Not going to happen.


However, there is a path... anyone have a law license and want to use it? Or better retired and willing to file pro se and have no money so you qualify for In forma pauperis?

15UCS48 § 2102. Private enforcement already allows for individuals to file on behalf of the US.



The rules differ by court, based on the wording in S2102 it's safest to file where you live. For example NYC: http://www.nysd.uscourts.gov/courtr...p?prose=fees

More bluster and posturing for a foolish amendment to a bad law. The HPA has never been enforced and never will be enforced against the Chinese, Russians, Romanians, Spanish or any of the many other overseas countries that harbor forgers selling with impunity on ebay.

The Chinese and some of the others make these Numismatic Forgeries (not counterfeits because they are not intended for circulation) legally in each of their countries. The violation of the HPA law is the importation into the US so if a buyer complains - he is the party that imported the item. Once in the US - the law makes the item illegal to sell - even a sale to a collector of forgeries who studies them to educate others. That is stupid.

Typical politics - punish the convenient while protecting the criminals who make this crap.

To correct the problem each country would have to take action first by making this kind of activity illegal at the source. Then they would have to be willing to prosecute and punish offenders. To the chances of this happening I give the following as an appropriate salute: I could not find a Bronx Cheer.

This law complicates and confuses the issue by giving collectors a belief that "something" is actually being done to combat the problem of forgery.

To rely on a venue like ebay to do the job of policing this problem is just plain STUPID - I was involved with that effort and as an insider I can say that it can not be done until the laws overseas have teeth.

It would be far more productive to enforce US laws against FRAUD before we enforce HPA.

All HPA violations are FRAUD but not all fraud violates HPA.

We need to rid ebay of Fraud of all types.

And by the way, push ebay too hard and they will shut down the coin section as not being profitable. That discussion is happening and has been happening for years.

Personally I love ebay because it allows all items to be sold and I collect legal counterfeits. This stupid law makes no distinction between a counterfeit made 200 years ago and a piece of crap made last week.