The Never-Ending Steven Tormollan Scandal

The various hobby sleuths and scam exposers have been tracking Steve Tormollan for a very long time—since 2014, to be precise. Yet he continues to sell cards on various platforms, completely unabashed and seemingly undisturbed by the exposes.

Sadly, people also continue to buy from him. After a few years of the community losing track of him, he reappeared with an account under his name on COMC and an eBay account. The COMC account is still open, so this problem has not disappeared.

What happens now and what can be done about this alleged trimmer and fraudster who keeps returning?

Find out in our full coverage of the never-ending Steven Tormollan scandal.

Who Is Steven Tormollan?

Steve lives in Arbutus, Maryland, and originally hails from Baltimore. He refers to himself as “Christian. Family guy. Life lover. Seller of baseball cards and sports memorabilia. Tech geek. Animal lover and advocate. Staunch recycler, conservationist, and environmentalist. Artist. And much more.”

He has two children and seems to have a nice life if social media can be believed.

He also has a long history of alleged shady dealings in the hobby. Tormollan has been credibly accused of various practices, including card trimming, creating and selling fake patches, and making his own fake cards. The volume of fake and altered sports cards he had for sale in the past is staggering.

Due to his significant involvement in card trimming and other shady business, several threads on his practices exist on Blowout Forums.

In addition, he is prominently featured on the Sports Card Radio “Most Wanted” list.

One big mistake Tormollan made was buying some of the cards he trimmed on Blowout Forums. In one instance, he bought an Andrew Benintendi Bowman Chrome 1st auto with serious damage.

Then, the same card showed up on PWCC for sale. The folks on that forum do not miss much, and they soon had Steven within their sights.

The PWCC angle to the never-ending Steven Tormollan scandal

PWCC has been involved in several scandals. They have a penchant for selling trimmed and altered cards.

However, the most relevant one regards their penchant for consigning and selling trimmed cards provided by known trimmers. Indeed, their CEO Brent Huigens has defended the practice of altering cards and has referred to tampered and altered cards as “conserved.”

You can see this interview on his ‘controversial’ definition of conservation. Huigens insists that as long as “there is no evidence of anything having been done to the card,” the card has been conserved.

They were best known for their long-time collaboration with Long Island card fraudster Gary Moser, who was investigated for his extensive card-altering activities, though never prosecuted.

The questionable posts of Steven Tormollan

Steven has also defended PWCC on Blowout Forums for selling trimmed cards.

He wrote: “From what i’ve seen PWCC is beyond professional. So its not that they are getting “Favors” from psa or any of that bs. Whoever consigned these cards to PWCC may have known they are questionable or maybe not, maybe they bought them already graded/slabbed and are now selling.So really take a step back before you jump to conclusions. If PSA/BGS are slabbing these, they may as well be real at this point. They’re in PSA/BGS holders and are now very easy to sell at shows/ on ebay/ anywhere. So its kind of a PSA/BGS problem.

He also defended PSA for grading trimmed cards, writing: “PSA has graded over **20 MILLION** sports cards over decades, one card seems trimmed or manipulated and the ENTIRE FORUM pulls out their pitchforks for PSA. Mistakes happen folks! LOL!”

He seemed very invested in defending PWCC and PSA for allowing trimmed cards to get through the system. While that is a legitimate opinion on the surface, it raises a lot of questions when you consider his history.

eBay sales

The eBay account that Tormollan used to sell fake cards was clearblueconsignment. It has now been removed from the website after many complaints from the e-commerce giant.

However, he will likely pop up there (and elsewhere) again. Therefore, watch for new information on Tormollan and his card sales.  

How Tormollan was first discovered

Users on Blowout Forums noticed that this individual was trying to buy cards with low grades and was wary of too thick ones. That raised many alarms because those are the kinds of cards people who trim them look for, so they can pay a low price, alter the card, and sell it for a higher one.

The account used for this was etheljean2014, an assumed identity that Tormollan used for his benefit.

As is often the case, Blowout Forums was the first to publish this story. The account was trying to sell many fake cards, some of which were badly made.

They were also involved in several attempts to get a return on cards they bought that were in good condition.

In one case, Tormollan, acting as Ethel Jean wrote an insulting message to one of the people thus scammed, “instead of doing what you’re doing and wasting your time, efforts, and resources, just accept the return! Thats what i do as a seller every single time. I don’t make my buyers go through all this headache. You’re fighting a losing battle. 100% to 0%. There is no “appeal” you can win. There is no “on their radar”. If they’re telling you that, its a lie to satiate you. You’re just a crybaby seller and they’re telling you what you want to hear to get you off the phone, they’re not actually doing anything. If you decide to go sell somewhere else, fine. 1 million other sellers want to sell on ebay and will take your place. They always have and always will need the buyers more than anything else.”

Tormollan goes away for a while

It also emerged that the name Tormollan had used belonged to his deceased great-aunt. That unpleasant bit of information understandably rubbed people the wrong way.

It emerged that Tormollan had worked with other sports card trimmers, such as Kevin Burge and Keith Koenig, in the past. They all have been linked to PWCC where they often consigned trimmed cards that had gone through PSA and received good grades.

As always, the forum sleuths did a great job exposing this individual. His goose seemed to be cooked, though no legal action was taken. In 2019, a Blowout Forums user said, “It’s over, Steven.” But that proved to be a somewhat optimistic assessment. Tormollan would be back.

Tormollan returns

We have not heard anything about this individual for a few years after that 2019 mess. But in 2014, vigilant users once again saw his name come up.

It was made easier because he was using his actual name. There was an account called StevenTormollan on COMC selling cards that looked very suspicious. Yes, Steven was back.

A great and underfollowed account on X publicized that fact,
@35auburn. If you don’t follow them, you really should. They are an absolute go-to for deep-dive investigation stuff for the hobby.

He was also selling on eBay, though under a different account name. Check out how he was discovered. One Blowout Forums user wrote, “I recently purchased an autograph on eBay from ClearBlueConsignment on eBay. At first, I thought I had gotten an excellent deal on a sick card, but then I started seeing some things that gave me pause. In the seller’s past auctions were multiple autographs of similar hand-numbered cards in tiny editions. When the card arrived, it was in an envelope addressed to Steve Tormollan, the same MD address as Clear Blue Consignment. Googling his name brought me here.”

Why nothing was done?

Our first instinct when something like this happens is to hope the individual gets arrested. After all, we have law enforcement agencies to deal with crooks and scam artists. But nothing was done in this case. Why wasn’t law enforcement involved?

The truth is, very few cases in the hobby end up with the authorities involved. When this case blew up in 2019, many wondered why no actions were taken.

One Blowout Forums member explained, “As a Police Officer I can say that if it was reported to the local PD they would not have any clue about what to do. Also, the alleged crime more than likely took place in numerous states, which would make it a case the feds would have to take up. Now whether they take the case, who knows. This insanity has got to end.”

Indeed, authorities have gotten involved in cases when massive amounts of money were involved, enough to get the federal government involved.

What is happening now with the Steven Tormollan story

We learned that Steven was back in business through his COMC account. To our surprise, even after all these revelations, that account is still up there. You can see it here. However, it has been wiped clean of all the problematic cards.

These are all simple and legitimate-looking cards, replacing the many fake-looking items there were before.

We are surprised that COMC has this person up despite their history of selling fake cards and listing cards that appear fake yet again. That stands in sharp contrast to eBay, which removed the offending account quickly and effectively.

Meanwhile, Blowout Forums banned Steven in 2019 after his shenanigans came to light.

Hopefully, the increased exposure that this matter has received will change that fact. Until it does, be careful using COMC. It does not appear willing to take the crucial precautions necessary to prevent fraud and the selling of fake and altered cards on their platform.

What this means

Many people in our community do valuable research into hobby scammers. Taking their work seriously and researching before buying is an excellent idea. If people had done so before purchasing cards from Steven Tormollan, they could have avoided being scammed. But that is not a magic bullet.

One of the reasons we are aware of the return of this individual to selling cards is that they used their real name on some of their accounts. Just like we initially discovered one of his eBay accounts, thanks to his including cards with an envelope adorned with his name and address.

The very obvious nature of some fake cards he made is another reason he was identified. In other words, we are not dealing with a criminal mastermind here.

Final word on the never-ending Steven Tormollan scandal

Many people who rip off consumers are far better at this and cover their tracks, making it difficult to know. eBay is a particularly anonymous platform, making it easy to obscure who you are buying from.

That is why Steven Tormollan and others like him can continue selling their wares even after being exposed.

That means that carefully examining the cards you are buying is a must. As a rule, the more expensive they are, the more work you should put into them. The best way to handle this is to compare the card to other listings and see if there are apparent differences. In the case of most of the cards forged by Steven Tormollan, that would have made a significant difference.

Let’s get real here. Anyone who still has full trust in this hobby at this point is kidding themselves. Sure, most of the people doing business are on the level. But the sheer number of scammers and problematic actors is far too big to ignore.

When you buy off someone, especially if you have their real name, it is worthwhile to Google and see what is out there. In most cases, that will not yield anything, but if it does, stay away.

Do not buy from anyone who you have not done business with if you cannot find people you trust who vouch for them and have successfully bought from them in the past.

There are simply too many bad actors to buy off people randomly from the internet.