Yawn.

I was, in late 1998, a somewhat unproductive and very unhappy junior attorney, working for the third-largest law firm in Sacramento. Eager for any distraction, I began selling art on eBay, an avocation I learned from an old army buddy, Ken Fetterman, who seemed to be doing really well with it.

It started out innocently, and was an enjoyable hobby that helped bring in a few extra dollars that I used to chip away at my massive student debt. But gradually, things went awry, and I began making ethical compromises. I realized that Fetterman was using me to pass off works of art with altered or added signatures, and saw that art speculators on eBay were mistaking these for valuable works of art, even though I wasn't making any claims about them. People saw the signatures, assumed I didn't know what I was selling, and bought the art for obscene sums. I let this happen because of the money I was making, even though I knew it was wrong to let people speculate on art that wasn't what it seemed.

In May 2000, stepped over the line for good. I forged the signature of Richard Diebenkorn onto a painting that resembled his work, and then auctioned it on eBay for $135,858. The New York Times put me on its front page, the FBI started investigating me, and I got in a lot of trouble.

With my legal career over, I started developing software, and soon started HammerTap, which (ironically) made tools for eBay users. The company was successful, but when eBay discovered I was the one running it, it threatened to sue me unless I sold it. And so I did.

This gave me time to start work on my book FAKE: Forgery, Lies, & eBay, which was released in North America on April 25, 2006. A paperback version was released in the UK in August, 2006, and a Japanese version is scheduled for release later in the year. You can check out media coverage of the book in the media archive.

I currently live in Sacramento, California, and spend about a third of my time in San Francisco. FAKE is my first book. I enjoyed writing it, and if you like it I may write more.

Visit my author page at SimonSaysTheSPOT, Simon & Shuster's website.