The Mister Mancave Forgery Scandal Shakes Industry To The Core

The sports collecting world is in shock. The biggest scandal to hit it since Operation Bullpen—the massive baseball card forgery bust over a decade ago—has erupted again, and it could be even bigger as the dominoes keep falling.

There isn’t just fraud involved here. There is also a suicide. Namely, that of Brett Lemieux, a longtime dealer operating a business named Mister Mancave. Before tragically taking his own life, Lemieux admitted to a tremendous amount of wrongdoing.

Most notably, forging athlete autographs for at least 20 years. According to his admission, the number of counterfeit items he sold could be as high as four million. The sum of the profits he made from these sales reportedly exceeds $350 million.

We don’t know yet how accurate this is, but if the sum is correct, it is mind-boggling. I’m looking at my signed 1969 Mets World Series team ball. Is it real? We won’t know until we unpack all the implications of the Mister Mancave Forgery Scandal.

What is Mister Mancave?

Mister Mancave was the business name under which Brett Lemieux operated out of Westfield, Indiana, a suburb of Indianapolis. It’s a veteran outfit, established for over two decades.

While the exact number of employees isn’t public, Lemieux’s confession suggests that many staff members were completely unaware of the forgery—a sizable operation that seamlessly mixed real and fake items, fooling even insiders.

To all observers, it appeared as a legitimate collectibles company, selling autographed cards, jerseys, helmets, and all the usual memorabilia. That’s what makes this scandal so chilling. Behind the scenes, Mister Mancave was allegedly the epicenter of a massive forgery operation.

There is an even scarier part. Mister Mancave had deep ties to some of the biggest names in the industry—Fanatics, Panini, and JSA—through counterfeit holograms and stickers it produced. This allowed the operation to flood the market with forged autographs.

What happened with Mister Mancave?

The Westfield Police Department in Indiana raided two locations tied to Lemieux earlier this week. One was located in the 300 block of Hoover Street, a property owned by Club Wag Investments LLC, with Lemieux as the registered agent.

The other location is on the 16800 block of South Park Drive. Its ownership details and exact nature haven’t been publicly disclosed.

The raids were massive — authorities arrived with semi trucks and seized mountains of memorabilia and equipment. It was a bizarre scene that quickly drew national attention. But even more dramatically, the police confirmed they found a dead body at one of the locations.

It was ruled a suicide, and the Hamilton County Coroner’s Office later identified the deceased as Brett Lemieux. The coroner listed the cause and manner of death as pending, but Westfield police confirmed it was a self-inflicted gunshot wound, sending shockwaves through the hobby.

Adding to the fallout, the Mister Mancave Facebook page has vanished. Attempts to visit it now return a message stating that the content isn’t available, suggesting that the company quietly deleted or restricted its online presence amid the scandal.

The confession

If that’s not enough drama, there’s more. Not long after the raid, Lemieux posted a lengthy, unfiltered confession on the Facebook group Autographs 101. He admitted to the massive forgery operation, naming names—though their involvement hasn’t been independently confirmed, and investigations are ongoing.

His message mixed pride, defiance, and an almost boastful tone about the ability to outsmart the industry. There was a clear sense of addiction and obsession, with Lemieux describing sleepless nights perfecting fake signatures and the rush of beating authentication efforts.

He openly called it an addiction, writing, “How many items can I sell and give the front of a huge company. I did it for years. Purchased millions of dollars of legit items. Mixed it until [name withheld] found the hologram connection.

Then I had the bankroll to buy even more. Do more signings. Every item from a signing turned into 10,000. And it was certified.”

He even threatened dealers who tried to enforce exclusives, saying, “I told multiple dealers I will ruin you and your exclusive. They knew better.” Lemieux’s tone was aggressive and defiant, as if daring the industry to confront him.

He wrote, “Mistermancave has sold over 4 million items. Yes, a million. Surpassed 350 million in sales. Sold and produced holograms, Fanatics, Mays, Bonds—you name it, we made it. We sold over 5 million Fanatics holograms alone, outside of what we produced, to the biggest vendors in the industry.”

Specific and shocking confessions in the Mister Mancave forgery Scandal

He added, “JSA, we made and produced over 3 million counterfeit stickers and holograms. We created holographic yellow cards and then produced numbered sets in the millions. Panini. Oh yeah, almost forgot. We produced holograms and cards for their entire database.”

When Kobe Bryant died in January 2020, Lemieux says they flooded the market with 80,000 fake items, including over 500,000 counterfeit Panini pieces.

He claimed 95% of Patrick Mahomes and Aaron Judge autographs on the market were sold by Mister Mancave.

Lemieux also expressed a desire to write a book about the saga, saying, “I want to expose it all and how big of an operation you all knew was going on, but grasp how big it was.” But that will never happen now.

Lemieux described working on an autograph pen machine eight hours a day, perfecting signatures that would pass any certificate of authenticity.

“It was a thrill having every athlete in every sport from every authentication company at your fingertips to produce the signature flawless, authenticate it with flawless bootleg holograms, and then sell it for half of what a company does by the 1,000s,” he wrote. “That’s all I spent my time and my life on. What was the next item to do? Next name. Next flawless signature.”

He warned, “You will see a boom in bad autographs with good stickers hitting the market like a firestorm. I sold over 2 million in just holograms to every avenue I could.”

A broader context of forgery in sports collecting

This scandal echoes the seismic Operation Bullpen bust from the late 1990s and early 2000s, where a forged baseball card ring was dismantled after flooding the market with fake memorabilia.

While that case shook the hobby, Mister Mancave’s scale appears even more vast, touching a wider range of items and involving counterfeit holograms that made fakes nearly indistinguishable from the real thing.

Other related cases have surfaced recently, including a fake autograph ring in McKinney, Texas, and charges related to forged memorabilia tied to NFL player Jason Kelce.

The industry has struggled for years to keep up with increasingly sophisticated forgery methods, especially with autopen technology making it harder to differentiate real signatures from fake.

Industry reaction to The Mister Mancave Forgery scandal

Steve Grad, a longtime autograph authentication expert and principal authenticator at Beckett Authentication, confirmed the raid and described the scope of the forgery as “staggering.”

He said, “It’s gonna blow away Operation Bullpen. It will make that look like small beans.” Grad added that catching criminals is harder as autopen forgery techniques get more sophisticated, and while this might shake the industry in the short term, “people have short memories, it will bounce back.”

Fanatics confirmed that two years ago, they revamped their holograms after learning the former versions had been copied. The new hologram has not been replicated since, and the company is collaborating with two other partners to further enhance the counterfeit-proofing of their stickers.

Fanatics also employs former FBI agents and has worked closely with law enforcement on cases like Lemieux’s and a similar fake autograph ring uncovered in McKinney, Texas.

Industry insiders expressed surprise at Lemieux’s post, which laid out details of the alleged scheme. One autograph dealer said, “He’s trying to burn the industry on the way out the door. It’s clear he feels spurned and is trying to impress people.”

That source also considered the numbers Lemieux boasted about completely unrealistic, saying, “If he made and sold that much, the autograph industry would have been crushed.”

Another autograph entrepreneur with millions in annual sales called the $350 million figure “impossible,” suggesting even 10% of that would be staggering.

Who knew about this?

It wasn’t a secret what Lemieux was doing, another industry insider commented. “He had tons of autographs from guys that didn’t do a signing in years,” one dealer said.

Lemieux named names in his manifesto, accusing Indiana autograph dealer Dominique Ball of Authentic Sports Collectibles of flooding the market with 100,000 Tom Brady items, which were allegedly funneled by Nickolas Litscher.

Ball did not respond to calls. Litscher, a Wisconsin chef with a side autograph business mainly offering prizes on Facebook, told Clict he was shocked by the mention, saying, “I said five sentences to Brett my whole life. He makes me look like I was part of the whole thing. I never talked to him on the phone and don’t even know what he looks like.” Litscher is hiring a lawyer.

Lemieux and his associates reportedly operated under various aliases on multiple selling platforms, including Ultimate Sports, Athletes One, Signature Dog, and All-American Authentics.

What this means for the hobby

This scandal isn’t just another bad headline for sports collecting. It cuts deep into the foundation of trust that the hobby depends on.

When a dealer operating for over 20 years can flood the market with millions of fake autographs so convincing they fool collectors and even employees, it shakes confidence at every level—from casual buyers to serious investors.

Collectors who have spent thousands, sometimes tens of thousands, on autographed memorabilia are now left questioning whether their prized possessions are expertly crafted fakes.

The ripple effect could depress market values across the board, particularly for autographed cards and items associated with stars such as Patrick Mahomes, Aaron Judge, Tom Brady, and Kobe Bryant.

Authentication companies face an uphill battle as well. If counterfeit holograms and certificates of authenticity can be produced in such staggering volumes, it raises questions about current verification processes and security measures. This scandal could prompt the industry to reassess how it protects collectors and authenticates memorabilia.

For dealers and breakers, the fallout may mean increased scrutiny, tighter regulations, and a loss of consumer trust that took years to build. The hobby risks becoming a minefield for newcomers, who may be deterred by the fear of being duped.

Beyond money and market impact, there’s a cultural blow here. The joy of collecting is rooted in connection—to athletes, to history, to memories. When that connection is based on lies, it damages the spirit of the hobby itself.

Final word on the Mister Mancave Forgery scandal

The Mister Mancave scandal lays bare the fragile trust underpinning the sports collecting world. It’s a story of deception on an unprecedented scale, where millions of fake autographs flooded the market, trusted companies’ names were misused, and collectors everywhere are left questioning what’s real.

The tragedy of Brett Lemieux’s death amid the chaos only deepens the wounds. This isn’t just a cautionary tale—it’s a wake-up call. It demands that everyone involved—from collectors to companies—double down on transparency, accountability, and vigilance. Otherwise, the hobby we love could pay a steep price for years to come.

There will be many other shoes that drop. Lemieux named several accomplices. He worked with all the big companies. Many who worked with him knew exactly what was going on, as many of these pieces featured people who stopped signing.

Only by facing this reckoning head-on can the community rebuild the faith that makes collecting more than just a transaction, but a connection to the game, its history, and its heroes. The road ahead will be tough, but this moment can be the turning point that saves the hobby for the next generation.

Keep up on breaking Sports Card News, our latest articles, product specials and exclusive content with expert analysis of hobby trends.