Anthony Curcio holds a 1988 Fleer Michael Jordan card graded a Gem Mint 10, PSA's highest rating.Meron Menghistab for BISeventeen years after becoming the most legendary bank robber of the internet age, Anthony Curcio was again inside a federal courtroom facing prison. It was January 17, 2026. Dressed in a casual blue suit and loose tie, the 45-year-old still possessed the handsome bad-boy charm that long had Hollywood producers after him.Once the high school football hero of tiny Monroe, Washington, a college injury left him with a Vicodin addiction he couldn't shake. Then, when the housing crash hit, the desperate father of two made an outlandish play: an armored-truck heist of $400,000 in cash and a getaway down the Skykomish River on an inner tube. In 2013, after serving five years in federal prison, Curcio began his redemption arc: TED talks, TV appearances, and a line of best-selling children's books.Now, prosecutors alleged, he had been running an elaborate new scheme: defrauding buyers in the booming $15 billion trading card industry. After a two-year FBI investigation called Operation Heist and Holder, Curcio was charged with wire fraud and conspiracy, charges that carry a maximum sentence of 40 years in prison. The evidence, prosecutors said, would include texts and recordings of Curcio lying to card buyers, faking his identity, and doctoring labels of rare cards, as well as forgery tools found in his home workshop.Curcio's defense told a different story: The case wasn't about fraud; it was retribution. The real villain, his attorneys argued, was Professional Sports Authenticator, the card industry's dominant grading company. PSA is the Moody's of the sports card world. A PSA label can mean the difference between a card worth $50 and one worth $500,000. PSA's parent company, Collectors Holdings — which is backed, in large part, by billionaire hedge fund manager and New York Mets owner Steve Cohen — controls roughly 80% of the card grading market."I don't have nothing to hide," Curcio says. "Those motherfuckers got a lot to hide."Meron Menghistab for BIBy the time of Curcio's trial this winter, a New York congressman had demanded a Federal Trade Commission antitrust investigation, writing that Collectors had "effectively dismantled market competition." PSA soon faced a boycott by aggrieved customers over fee hikes and allegations of grade manipulation.Over several months of exclusive interviews, Curcio shared his version of events for the first time. "I don't have nothing to hide," he says. "Those motherfuckers got a lot to hide."Collectors Holdings and PSA "basically have a horizontally and vertically integrated monopoly," says Remington Ewald, a veteran card dealer who had a fateful encounter with Curcio at an expo in Chicago. "It just sucks that the guy who's bringing it to everybody's attention is a criminal himself."Long before he was a famous outlaw, Anthony Curcio was just another one of America's 94 million card collectors. Growing up in the tiny logging town of Monroe, he'd bike over to the Red Barn gas station and spend his allowance on the latest packs of Topps cards. As the town's star high school athlete, he was determined to one day have his face featured on his own card.PSA offered a simple premise: that a card examined by an expert and graded a number was worth more than a card pulled from a shoebox.A nimble wide receiver, Curcio went to the University of Idaho on a full scholarship. Then he tore his ACL, and became addicted to painkillers. To support his habit, he faked prescriptions and ran a side hustle buying and selling trading cards online. He quickly learned there was one company at the heart of the trade.Founded in 1991 by card dealer David Hall, PSA offered a simple premise: that a card examined by an expert and graded a number was worth more than a card pulled from a shoebox. Collectors would mail their cards to the company, and trained graders would evaluate each one across four criteria — centering, edges, corners, and surface — and assign it a numerical grade from 1 (Poor) to 10 (Gem Mint). The card was then sealed in a clear, tamper-evident plastic case called a slab, with a label bearing the grade and a unique certification number tied to PSA's database. The company charged per submission, and the model was self-reinforcing. "Once the buyers insisted on it," Hall said in 2019, "the dealers had no choice."In a statement to Business Insider, a PSA spokesperson wrote, "For more than thirty years, PSA has served collectors by authenticating, grading, and protecting items so that collectors can trade with confidence. In our view, that trusted role is precisely why people try to counterfeit our labels and holders." The spokesperson added that "last year alone, our systems intercepted roughly $200 million in potential counterfeit value before it reached the market."Curcio fled with $400,000, and then spent weeks blowing cash on cars and gambling.In the trading card community
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