Fake: Fraud, Lies, and eBay

Yesterday evening I was browsing on Google Books in search of a new novel to begin.  I was looking for something light but interesting, that wouldn’t take too much time to get through.  What I came across was Fake: Fraud, Lies, and eBay by Kenneth Walton.  I started reading some of the pages Google posts online and couldn’t seem to stop reading.  It was only around the time that I got to “page 7-8 have been removed from the internet for copyright purposes” (or something along those lines) that I realized that I NEEDED to go out and get a copy of this book.  Until I was able to go obtain a copy I spent a little bit of time researching the store (which is a true story).  It’s about a man who got addicted to selling fine art on eBay during the big dot com boom in the mid-90’s.  Literally, it got to a point where he quit his career as a lawyer (to pursue his eBay career full heartedly), started copying artists signatures onto works that could be by them, and knowingly deceived people into buying works that were not what he portrayed them to be for thousands and thousands of dollars.  It wasn’t until a work went for over $100,000 that the newspapers (and later the FBI) got involved.  AND this story is 100% true! 

So, first thing this morning I hunted down a copy of the book and can’t seem to put it down.  In fact, I’m back to reading.  Another post will come later when I finish reading.