Attention fans! Official statement from TMJP regarding picture on "Michael Jackson Insider" website!
Dear fans,
although I hate writing statements like this, I feel I have no other option.
Some of you may remember that “special picture”, “hand signed” by Michael.
For those who do not remember, here is the entire story.
It may be long but it is worth reading ’till the end, so please if you’ve got a couple of minutes of free time…
Back in 2009, a month or 2 after Michael died, I was browsing Ebay.
One particular auction caught my eye, when someone claimed to possess the last hand signed picture of Michael.
I then contacted the vendor, asking if we could receive a high quality file of that picture via e-mail, to share with our members.
Sadly, the owner refused but offered our members a small amount of reprints.
It made me happy, because in the end, we could still offer our members something special in those dark, emotional times.
But when something seems to good to be true, it usually is!
When we asked the owner to show proof (of the authenticity of the signature) before continuing with the reprints, we only received a very tiny copy of the COA, which was almost impossible to read.
Although the seller made yet another promise: “I will send you a larger (readable) copy later on”, we already had some serious doubts and decided to pay for a virtual authentication ourselves.
And so we did. We chose the **ON-LINE ** AUTOGRAPH EXAMINATION SERVICE by PAAS.
24 hours later, we already received a reply, stating this:
Michael Jackson signed photo:
Not likely to be genuine: Our authenticators believe that the item, if physically submitted to P.A.A.S. for examination, would likely not receive our certificate of authenticity.
Thank you for trust in P.A.A.S.
We have found several inconsistences with the signature as well as the inscription.
This signature does not match any known authentic exemplars of Michael Jackson’s autograph.
That says it all, doesn’t it?
The autograph turned out to be entirely fake and The MJ Place informed its members by sharing the email from PAAS.
We also contacted the Ebay vendor and forwarded her the reply by PAAS as well.
The Ebay vendor never contacted us again, but did withdraw the fake autographed picture from Ebay.
In the end, the only thing we learned is that you need to be careful of scammers… always!
But that’s not all. Please read on, it becomes interesting now.
This week, we got contacted by an MJ fan who found our website through MJinsider.com. She was interested in the autographed picture and asked whether we were affiliated with MichaelJacksoninsider.com, ending her message with: I’m happy that you are a believer too!
Hmmm MJinsider.com? Pearl Junior? TMJP a believer??
The first two things rang a bell. Pearl Junior was a member on The MJ Place for quite a while.
But what was the girl talking about when she started asking about an “autographed picture from The MJ Place”, the proof that Michael is still alive? HU?
At first, I had no clue, so I checked on MJinsider.com and noticed how Pearl Jr added the fake, autographed picture on her website (on her homepage!). This one:
Did I think it was sad? Yes, definitely. Why would you use a fake picture to “prove” that Michael is still alive?
I have NOTHING against Pearl Jr, MJinsider or believers. Everybody is entitled to their own opinions and I respect that.
BUT NOT WHEN YOU ARE TRYING TO INVOLVE THE MJ PLACE. We have worked too hard and too long for our website and for the fans.
The MJ Place has contacted Pearl Jr. We’ve send several e-mails, we even contacted her on her Youtube profile.
Sadly, Pearl Jr decided to just completely ignore our message. Yes, she added a disclaimer stating that she is not affiliated with The Mj Place, but that’s just not enough. Not when you can read “The MJ Place” all over the entire picture.
Well, we can’t ignore this. We know the autograph is fake, our members know it is fake and everybody needs to know that we informed our members a long time ago.
The autograph was removed from our website as soon as we received the PAAS autograph examination (yes, that’s almost 2 years ago!).
Apperently, Pearl Jr saved the image on her PC and now uses the image for… well, you know for what she is using it. To claim that Michael may still be alive.
Pearl, I respect your opinion, I really do, but this is wrong. I asked you politely.
I can’t keep waiting until you are going to inform your followers and to be honest, I don’t think you would have ever done so.
Perhaps you do not believe that the autograph is fake, and that’s your good right, but I think PAAS knows better.
They’re in the field for so many years and are true experts when it comes to autograph examinations.
For those who still don’t know what to believe: go and take an online examination. It’ll only cost you about $5. You’ll receive the same result as we did 1.5 years ago!
Some of you may not understand why I have released this statement, but it’s actually very simple. If the picture would not say “The MJ Place” all over it, I would not have interfered, but it does, so The MJ Place already got involved while we didn’t want to.
Thank you for your time.
The MJ Place staff.
