Dan Budiac
Cabel Sasserđ Last week, an intriguing auction hit eBay â the badge of Apple Employee No. 10. There was just one small problem â it was a total forgery.
Enjoy: https://cabel.com/2024/05/16/the-forged-apple-employee-badge/
Adam Bell 
@cabel wow this was an amazing read. Thanks for writing it up
Ricky Mondello@cabel A delight to read.
@rmondello Thank you!! Oh, and the sellerâs other auction? đ
(They didnât even remotely match the Ticketmaster font, which you can see in the second photo.)
Bill Childers@cabel Wow, great read (as always, love the detail and thought put into your posts!) - and great thinking on getting Chris involved. Awesome detective work.
David Wheeler@cabel You find the wildest things!
Nit: In one spot it's spelled "Red Croosâ.
europlus 
@cabel I still think the apple logo is wrong â the âbutt cheeksâ are symmetrical, while the one Apple was using early on had a fatter right but cheek. Iâll try and send an example later.
@europlus Actually yeah, looking at Chrisâ badge, I think youâre right! The Appleâs right edge was far more bulbous
@cabel here are three examples I have, it was, as far as I can see, universally this shape in the first few years. I think maybe symmetrical around the time they moved to Apple Garamond, perhaps a little earlier?
@cabel I really do hope that this goes down in the annals of Apple history as the âfat right butt cheekâ version of the Apple logo đ
@cabel OK, this guy blows all credibility by calling it a "fat chinâ (đ¤Ł), but on a cursory search, heâs the only person that details the shape progression of the Apple logo, and dates the symmetrical version to about 1983 which ties in with my estimation around Apple Garamond use.
Mieszko Ĺlusarczyk@cabel And to be fair âengage the internetâ requires you to have some good and nice follower base. And being acquaintance with people like Chris. But either way itâs good to be careful about this kind of stuff :)
mx@cabel So that's what this was about... wild!
Thanks for sharing the whole story!
Thanks for sharing the whole story!
Jeff Lange@cabel I was so curious, thanks for the follow up! And I hope youâre having a great week, too.
Colin Cogle 
@cabel Thanks for taking us on this little adventure. It was a great read!
davd@cabel thatâs wild
Timjan@cabel
I wonder... If a fraudster wanted to pad their reputation by getting additional 5-star reviews from "customers", what would stop them from using sockpuppets to buy a couple of their own items, and then do the review of themselves?
If they were starting to feel the heat, perhaps getting the "sale" done quickly would reduce eBay's propensity to look too closely, as the item no longer were for sale?
I don't often use eBay, so I don't know what protections they have against such maneuvers.
Charles Ying@cabel that was a marvelous delightful read, so good! thank you!
Philipp@cabel This person should make props for movies instead of defrauding people on Ebay. But I guess thatâs not as lucrative.
bazcurtis
FossilizedCarlos@cabel đľđ˝ââď¸ great work
Riley S. Faelan@cabel The folder is not upside down, though. In this type of folders, the holes for the binding loops to push through are typically on the front cover. Also, it's a fairly common East European practice to label book spines so that if they're on the shelf, you read them by tilting your head to the left, not to the right. The first example on my bookshelf is Putin's War Against Ukraine by Taras Kuzio; while it's printed in English (but in Poland), it's probably designed in Ukraine, following Ukrainian customs.
Not arguing that the badge is not forged, I'm just nitpicking about that one tiny cultural detail about books that people sometimes don't realise.
Anne Deschaine
Josh Renaud
Wolfgang Lutz@cabel you made it into one of the biggest German tech feeds with the story: https://www.golem.de/news/mitarbeiter-nummer-10-betrueger-verkauft-gefaelschten-apple-ausweis-fuer-946-dollar-2405-185215.html
Evan K. Stone@cabel Fascinating story, and amazing sleuthing. Such a great read. Thank you for sharing it! đ
Adam Yanalunas@cabel If only someone could share this in eBayâs Slack and see the reactions. đ¤
Craig Grannell@cabel Thing is, I bet if youâd flagged this with eBay, it would have just sent you an AI-created reply saying everything was just fine.
Maybe a news source will pick this up to embarrass eBay into stopping the auction or refunding the buyer.
Jonathan L.@cabel I love reading these!
Richard@cabel It was a "hallucination", not a "forgery".
Bernd Kilga@cabel Here's one more I didn't spot in the comments yet:
The red stamp says "INTERNATIONAL RED CROSS". Company stamps contain key facts (legal name, address, etc. ) about the legal entity itself and are signed on top by hand. If the stamp does not match the company name, it's highly dubious, especially if signed!
But the âthanks for your business" line pretty much solved the case already. That one sticks out so badly haha
Matthew Haughey@cabel THANK YOU CABEL!!!!
Bob O'Shaughnessy@cabel Waiting for someone to create a âVintage Apple Employee ID Generatorâ website based on this template.
Peter van Broekhoven@cabel On top of all of that the ID issue date for Employee No. 10 is before that of Employee No. 8?