Mansfield, Ohio Coin/Pawn Shop Raided

I hope SGS will be gone for good as a result of this!

jbuck you summed this up perfectly,

the lawnmower tale added to the mix also blew me away !

I can understand the FBI being interested in wire fraud, but the Secret Service? Counterfeits, yes, but wire fraud?

Good riddance.

No more MS70 on every single coin!

They were served with seizure paperwork , so pretty soon you can guess who all their assets will belong to ....oh golly, if they get convicted they wont even have a dime in their name

I am a former employee of Abon, I worked there for quite a while actually, and had a few passing friends who were still employed there up until the raid.

Abon is currently closed. Doors are locked. Most of their inventory, gone. (surprisingly, at last word I heard, they left the coins).

The Secret Service was involved solely based on the "wire fraud" / online sales. At this point, the coin grading is not even a blip on the radar, and probably wont be. Because, while it is an issue, it's not against the law to give an "opinion", no matter how awful that opinion truly is.

I left Abon, because of Ethical issues I had with the business model. They weren't in the "resale" business when I was there. They bought coins, jewelry, and various collectibles (cards, comics, etc...) through the door, but paperwork was kept at that point. I'm not sure what happened after that.

Most of my ethical issues, were surrounding the issue with SGS. I've moved on, and am a much happier person, operating an online business that doesn't leave me wanting to scrub the scum off of me on a daily basis.

Thanks :)

I have, for a long time wanted to post something in response to all of the SGS talk online. If only because there has, in the past, been some very unflattering things said on various forums that ended up with my name drug into the mud as a result of my employment there. Several people who should have had a career writing for Law and Order, or CSI, trying to make sense of it, but instead of 2+2=4, they came up with 2+2=Orange Marmalade. Really, It wasn't as complex as people think. But, because I worked there, and some of the crazy things said online (some true, some... wildly inaccurate), it was pretty hard to find a way to move on in my career, because Google knows all. Google Abon Cards and Coins, and the Aboncom ebay username, and.... Well, who wants to hire someone who worked there? ESPECIALLY someone who is looking to do e-Commerce.

Now, due to what's all going on with it, and out of respect for those I know who are family to the owners (and generally all around nice people), I wont go into what I know.... too much.

I wasn't a coin guy when I started there. I worked selling various bits of nerdvana. (Sports Cards, CCG's, Comics, Signed Art, Sports Memorabilia, etc...) It was a good gig. I learned about coins while working there, and ended up doing a bit of auction work for the coins. I like coins, but I'll never be more than a novice at it. It's too rich of a hobby to compete with my other hobbies.

When I worked there, some things that walked in the door were... sketchy, Sure. It's Mansfield. If you haven't been there, you don't understand. The town is sketchy in spots (heck, there is a book about how corrupt the town is: Rotten to the Core). Industry leaving / closing, economic hardship for a long time before the national "crisis", put the town in a rough spot. Whole areas of the city were / are... sketchy, run down, abandoned. But, for the most part the people coming in were junkers, salvagers, and the like buying up or hauling things out of the run down parts of town, and sorting through hoping to strike it rich. But, we only bought Gold, Silver, Coins, Sports Cards and Comics off the street back then.

The second hand "resale" type business didn't start until later on, after I had tired of the ethical dilemma I faced with the rest of the job finally became too much. And in recent years, it was no secret that his place was THE place to sell things like that. Which... is a shame really. Larry is/was a decent guy, as long as you weren't doing business with him, and it pains me to see that his wife is probably in on everything that has gone on. She's a great woman, who seemed to be Larry's "balance". If you would have told me that she was party to something like this before the news? I would have made you write her a letter of apology.

Part of me is glad that the Gov't had them NARU'd on ebay, and from what I can tell pulled from Amazon, and Overstock as well. SGS could finally come to an end. What started out with... noble ideas, and mutated into a farce, could finally be over with and put to bed.