Melville House Books

Forrest Smith III had an idea: he collected the signatures of Truman Capote, Kurt Vonnegut, Tom Clancy, Michael Crichton, Norman Mailer, Anne Rice, John Grisham, John Irving, Tom Wolfe, and others, and took them to a stamp-making shop and had them made into stamps. Then he bought first editions of books by those writers. Then he stamped them with the signature stamps.

Then he sold over a thousand of these books on eBay and made more than $300,000.

Then he went to jail.

According to a Philadelphia Daily News report by Stephanie Farr, Smith, who was on disability for the last fifteen years, was caught by an eagle-eyed person “in the book-selling industry,” says the US Attorney’s office. Smith, who is from Reading, PA — oh, the irony! — faces up to 80 years in prison and a $1 million fine after pleading guilty to three counts of wire fraud and one count of mail fraud.

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.