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Graded sports cards next to armored truck
If Hollywood rejected Anthony Curcio’s life story for being too ridiculous, it would be understandable. The guy who once robbed an armored truck, escaped with $400,000 using an inner tube, and earned the nickname “D.B. Tuber” is now awaiting sentencing after being convicted in a completely different scheme involving Michael Jordan cards, Pokémon, and fake PSA grades.
A federal jury convicted Curcio in January of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and wire fraud after prosecutors accused him of passing lower-value cards off as highly graded collectibles. A wild new investigation into the case adds doctored slabs, forgery equipment, undercover identities and Curcio’s insistence that he was actually trying to expose problems inside PSA.
Anthony Curcio Somehow Found A Second Crime Story Crazier Than His First
Curcio was already famous in true-crime circles before anybody started arguing about centering and card corners.
In 2008, he placed a fake Craigslist employment ad instructing applicants to arrive near a Bank of America in Monroe, Washington, wearing clothing similar to his own disguise. While the decoys stood around, Curcio pepper-sprayed an armored-car guard, grabbed roughly $400,000, and escaped through nearby Woods Creek using an inner tube.
That sentence would normally be enough material for one lifetime.
Instead, Curcio eventually returned to sports cards, a hobby he had been involved with long before the robbery. Prosecutors said that between at least 2022 and May 2024, Curcio and Iosif Bondarchuk sold or attempted to sell more than $2 million worth of cards whose grades had been fraudulently inflated. The names involved included Michael Jordan, Tom Brady, Nolan Ryan, Larry Bird, Julius Erving and Magic Johnson, along with valuable Pokémon cards.
The basic alleged trick was devastatingly simple.
PSA seals graded cards inside plastic “slabs” with labels showing their grades and certification numbers. Prosecutors said Curcio manipulated cards and labels so lower-grade collectibles appeared to have received significantly higher PSA grades, making them worth dramatically more money.
A Michael Jordan Card Helped Blow The Whole Thing Open
One Michael Jordan rookie card became a centerpiece of the case.
Curcio listed a Jordan card for around $170,000 while repeatedly obscuring its PSA certification number, according to the deep dive from Business Insider. Investigators eventually assembled sales records, buyer complaints, altered labels and equipment found in Curcio’s workshop, while a cooperating witness testified that he had watched Curcio open legitimate PSA holders, swap cards, modify labels and reseal them more than 20 times.
Curcio has offered a much different explanation.
He maintains that videos and tools prosecutors highlighted were part of an effort to demonstrate weaknesses in PSA’s security and expose what he believed were larger problems with the grading company. His defense attempted to focus attention on PSA, but the judge ruled PSA’s conduct was not what the jury was being asked to decide. After roughly four hours of deliberation, jurors found Curcio guilty on all counts.
PSA, meanwhile, said its brand-protection team had worked with the FBI for two years on the investigation and that it continually updates its holders and security measures to combat counterfeiting. Curcio later sued PSA’s parent company, Collectors, and continues to dispute the company’s conduct. That lawsuit remains pending.
Curcio is scheduled to be sentenced in October and faces the possibility of another lengthy prison term.
So, to recap: Craigslist decoys, an armored truck, an inner-tube getaway, six-figure Michael Jordan cards, fake grading labels, the FBI, and an alleged PSA exposé.
Somewhere, a Netflix producer just sat straight up.