{"id":44811,"date":"1998-12-15T00:00:00","date_gmt":"1998-12-15T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/93ecb32c-1dfb-11e4-aedf-250bc8c9958e"},"modified":"1998-12-15T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"1998-12-15T00:00:00","slug":"93ecb33f-1dfb-11e4-aedf-250bc8c9958e","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/93ecb33f-1dfb-11e4-aedf-250bc8c9958e\/","title":{"rendered":"Two charges in McGwire card fraud"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>LYNDHURST, N.J.\u2014 Two men were charged with trademark counterfeiting after selling bogus Mark McGwire rookie cards to an undercover police officer, authorities said.<\/p>\n<p>Jeffrey L. Bernstein, 30, of Miami Beach, Fla., and Joseph Yavetz, 28, of Woodland Hills, Calif., were targeted after a memorabilia collector who had been offered the cards contacted card-maker Topps Inc., according to Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor James Donohue.<\/p>\n<p>The unnamed collector sent one of the cards to Topps Inc. to be analyzed. Once it was determined to be fake, Topps notified the Bergen County Sheriff&#8217;s Department, which set up the sting operation Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>The two met the undercover officer at a hotel and sold 720 counterfeit cards for $65,000, or about $90 per card, authorities said.<\/p>\n<p>Bernstein and Yavetz were each charged with trademark counterfeiting and conspiracy to commit trademark counterfeiting.<\/p>\n<p>Genuine cards from McGwire&#8217;s 1985 rookie season were worth about $35 prior to last season, when McGwire hit 70 home runs to break Roger Maris&#8217; single-season record of 61. Now the cards fetch hundreds of dollars, collectors say.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Even the bad ones are going for $200,&#8221; said Sal Giammona, owner of Ben&#8217;s Baseball Card Shop in Hasbrouck Heights.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>LYNDHURST, N.J.\u2014 Two men were charged with trademark counterfeiting after selling bogus Mark McGwire rookie cards to an undercover police officer, authorities said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44811\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}