Here's something I wrote recently explaining the scams Pablo has been connected to to some guys in another hobby.
PLEASE NOTE: The links did not carrry over so some of it may seem out of place without clicking a link to lead to the evidence.
The scams... where to begin?
Ok, PPLs (Plastico Pedro Lucas)
These started turning up about 5 years ago or so from Argentina. The seller, one Mariana Stern, was an unknown. A well-known member of the bootleg community, Pablo Artesi, vouched for the pieces and said he remembered them from childhood.The first to turn up was this carded Vader. Soon after a loose Luke Skywalker head on a spaceman's body turned up. After that carded ones turned up and new characters like Han Solo, then Bossk. I started to have my doubts soon. At this point not only was Mariana finding them but Pablo was selling them. He had "become friends" with Mariana, a person he'd never previously known, while buying these PPLs. Too much of something too fast starts to scream of fraud.
Next, we had characters in Lunar Rovers starting to turn up. At this point I was still updating the article with new images but seriosuly starting to have doubts. I started asking lots of people questions and decided it was time for me to see one first hand. I purchased a Darth Vader. To give you a bit of an idea these were selling for $200-300 a pop so money was REALLY starting to add up. Once I had the Vader in hand I began my exam.
Top Toys was the licensee for SW in Argentina during the vintage days (pre-1985). These figures are notoriously bad quality. I had a loose Stormtrooper and Vader in my collection and I compared. The Vader has the torso and head of Vader and the limbs of a Stormtrooper. I found that the head had the same type of design flaw on the PPL as the TT (Top Toys) Vader has. It tends to twist and pull upwards and to the right. There's a hole in the center of the neck pin that makes it weaker and prone to this twisting. I also found that the arms and legs were the same size, had the same mold parting lines, and even a matching ejector pin mark on the knee. (An ejector pin is a part of the mold that pushes in on the piece being shot and helps *eject* it from the mold) The TT Vader and Stormtrooper are the only ones with these issues. All other Vaders and Troopers from other licensees to not have these issues. I also thought the limbs looked glued on. (weird) A big break came when somebody's Vader shot through the bubble during shipping. He confirmed his were glued on too. The thought is that the plastic used on the torsos was so cheap that it wasn't lining up right so the pins were cut off the limbs and just glued on. Since everybody was afraid to open an expensive carded one nobody would ever know. Good thing we did.
If one takes the time to look through some of the prototypes on TT page I linked to they'll see that one Pablo Artesi found most of them. That was one of the things that put him in such good standing. However, at one point he came in touch with an employee that had access to the molds used for some pieces, including Vaders head and torso. It's not a stretch to think that he could have had those used to create all of the incorrectly colored torsos. Add to that the fact that he turned up one legit set of carded samples and one set that did not make sense. These were non-production colored figures on production cardbacks. This made no sense because a legit set of production colored figures turned up on paste ups (a print out of a proof glued to a backer for testing). Why would they go back to non-production color, usually an earlier stage, once the cardbacks were ready? It made no sense production-wise. Also, worth noting is that a Vader was in that batch and it had black Vader limbs (the limb mold never turned up to make non-production colored ones for the sample or the PPLs). It looked IDENTICAL to a PPL torso and was the same source. Our thought is that he got greedy after the intial prototype find and wanted more money so more "prototyes" and then "bootlegs" "turned up".
The spacemen:
This is what one looks like. He sold a handful as figures that were part of the line but NOT SW. A friend took one of the SW ones apart and unlike the Spaceman pictured earlier the head felt like a different kind of hard, brittle plastic. It was the type of material used for cheap castings. He pulled the head off and it turns out that it was also glued on and the head pin (most early SW heads had an inverted T as the neck - this helped hold the head inside of the 2 toso halves when it was sonic welded together) had been wittled down to just a straight pin that could slide and be glued into the head hole.
The real boiling point hit when out of nowhere a Ben Kenboi showed up (previously unknown) followed by a spacesuit with a C-3PO head (also unknown). You'll notice they aren't even in the article because by that point I had enough and began to dig pretty hard.
The cardbacks:
Though the backers are real they have been tampered with. When I got my Vader I noticed that the top staples had been reinsterted into the card. If anybody has opened a staple and tried to reinsert in they know that the holes get bigger and fuzzier around the edge and the staple is looser. This seemed to me like something that would be done if one were to take and old figure off and add a new one. Also, take note of the stickers on the back. One covers the top staple and another covers the bottom. Convenient if trying to hide removed staples. You can clearly see the staining from the bottle glue used. Though not noticeable, there was also glue remnant on the front in the lower corner. This is where the Soldado Robot sticker would normally be. It's almost as if it were taken off and glued to the back.
Billikens:
Also found and sold by Pablo, and only Pablo. Here is the set and the story was that they were given away by the magazine. Funny thing is both the Vader and the Stormtrooper match the TT figures in size, part lines, and ejector pin marks. Another toy obviously cast from legit TT pieces. As for the other figures, none were released by TT so these were bootleged from Kenner which makes less sense. It's convenient also that Jawa and R2 were never bootlegged so these were HOT pieces for bootleg collectors. Any big name bootleg collector, like Pablo, would know this.
A later nail in the coffin was that about a year or so ago somebody won an auction from an ebayer that turned out to be Mariana with a new ID and the PayPal info was to one Pablo Artesi. Kind of odd for them to go from not knowing each other to sharing a PayPal account. I'm friends with a LOT of collectors but I would not let any of them share an account linked to my bank. That's just crazy.
This finally broke in public a while back. All of this investigating had been done behind the scenes so as not to destroy Pablo's rep were this all just a HUGE coincidence. Once it broke he disappeared and later sources say he died. I'm NOT kidding. Like any scammer he died his way out. People found a facebook page for him and on the friend list was a Mariana Artesi. (Now she even has his last name)
Another recent plus was back at NYCC last year. Another bootleg collector and I met Gary Schaeffer. At his table he had a PPL for sale. It was some wierd space alien on the same cardback. I sent him a link to the article and he said he never heard of any SW characters in that line. In fact, it was an extremely rare line and it seemed that somebody destroyed dozens of pieces for a scam. He probably could have made the same money just selling them as rare figures (though the reality is that they were probably rare because he was buying thme all to destroy).
My article still stands, sadly, because all though all of this is damning it's not 100% proof. I have spread the word to many but a LOT of people read our site and I want to be 100% sure if I say these are fake. It's all really just circumstantial connecting of dots and people have tons of money into these. I'd like to be able to prove, without a doubt, that these are what they seem, FAKE.
John
