HACKENSACK, N.J. (CN) - Four days before Super Bowl XLVIII, a sports memorabilia seller sued the New York Giants and Eli Manning, accusing them of forging "game-worn" jerseys and helmets, including a Manning Super Bowl helmet that sits in the Football Hall of Fame.
In a scathing 65-page, 16-count lawsuit in Bergen County Superior Court, Eric Inselberg accuses the Giants of a "complete breakdown of integrity and institutional control" and sued the team and its owner John Mara. Also named as defendants are quarterback Manning, two executives, thee equipment managers and Barry Barone, who owns Park Cleaners in Rutherford, the Giants' official team cleaners.
Inselberg claims that because of the defendants' actions, which included lying about and covering up the scheme, he was indicted on four charges of mail fraud for reselling the forged memorabilia, charges he says the government later dismissed.
Inselberg, who describes himself in the lawsuit as a lifelong Giants fan who attended Giants Stadium's 1976 inaugural game, says he started collecting memorabilia at a young age and that by the mid-2000s he "began to arise as one of the foremost sports memorabilia collectors and resellers in the nation."
To secure memorabilia, he says, he built relationships with people in the Giants' organization, including equipment manager Ed Wagner and assistant equipment managers Joe and Ed Skiba, all defendants.
He claims that Joe Skiba in particular was "personally involved in providing approximately 500 to 600 Giants jerseys to Inselberg each year for several years."
But in 2008, Inselberg says, "the government learned that Inselberg may have sold game-issued or authentic jerseys to other memorabilia traders that were ultimately sold - fraudulently - as game-worn."
Inselberg claims that he "never intentionally misrepresented any items of memorabilia he sold," but that "several Giants employees, including the franchise quarterback, repeatedly engaged in the distribution of fraudulent Giants memorabilia."
To support his claims, Inselberg says that in 2001, "[Equipment Manager Ed] Wagner directed defendant Barone to intentionally damage multiple Giants jerseys to make them appear to have been game-worn when they had not been."
He adds: "Inselberg discovered this when he walked into the Park Cleaners store and caught Barone in the act of doctoring jerseys."
Inselberg says the fraud went all the way up to Eli Manning, who he claims "has on several occasions directed [Assistant Equipment Manager] Skiba to take non-game-worn helmets and make them appear to have been worn so that Manning could pass them off as the actual helmets worn by him during games."
Inselberg claims that in 2005, "Manning instructed Joe Skiba to provide him with a helmet that appeared to have been worn in a game" and then "falsely claimed that it was a helmet used during his 2004 rookie season."
Inselberg claims that in 2008, he "obtained Eli Manning's one and only game-worn Super Bowl XLII helmet from Ed Skiba," and that later that year, "Joe Skiba took a different helmet and made it appear as if it had been worn by Manning during Super Bowl XLII," an item the team's brass labeled - internally - as a 'replica show helmet.'
Inselberg says he "learned about the forgery ... when a press release claimed that Manning's Super Bowl XLII helmet - the helmet Inselberg had in his possession - would be on display at the Sports Museum of America in New York City."