John Rogers's fake Heisman Trophy and a $23.5 million restitution order
John Rogers, a North Little Rock, Arkansas sports memorabilia dealer who owned Sports Card Plus and Rogers Photo Archive LLC, pledged a fake Heisman Trophy as collateral for a $100,000 loan and sold other forged items, including phony Mickey Mantle baseball cards, a fake Mantle silverware set, and phony Scottie Pippen trophies. He pleaded guilty to wire fraud in March 2017 and, after continuing to sell fakes while free on bond, was sentenced in December 2017 in federal court in Chicago to 12 years in prison and ordered to pay $23,552,370 in restitution to at least 26 victims.
- Year
- 2017
- Where
- United States
- Outcome
- Sentenced
- Reported loss
- $23.6 million
- Victims
- 26
- Schemes
- Sports memorabilia fraud
- Last reviewed
- 2026-11-01
The facts, as recorded
- Rogers bought an honorary 1960 Heisman Trophy, originally given to broadcaster Al Helfer, for $50,363, then had a trophy shop make a fake nameplate bearing the name of Billy Sims, one of the few Heisman winners known to have sold his own trophy, and pledged the altered trophy as collateral for a $100,000 loan.
- He was charged with wire fraud on September 9, 2016, and reached a plea agreement on March 6, 2017.
- After his guilty plea, while free on a $100,000 unsecured bond, prosecutors say he continued selling fraudulent items, including a phony Super Bowl I football, using a co-scheming proxy so buyers would not know he was involved.
- His bond was revoked on November 20, 2017, after a five-hour hearing; he had tested positive for cocaine that October.
- US District Judge Thomas Durkin sentenced him on December 20, 2017, to 12 years, below the 240-month sentencing guideline range but above the roughly 8-year recommendation in his original plea deal; prosecutors had sought 161 months (about 13.4 years).
- Restitution was set at $23,552,370, owed to at least 26 identified victims.
- A related case in the same federal investigation: Doug Allen, former president of Mastro Auctions, was sentenced to 57 months in 2016 after Rogers secretly recorded him as part of a broader, yearslong FBI investigation into sports memorabilia auction houses.
Why this case matters
This is the largest documented loss figure on this page, and it shows the two halves of the scheme at their most extreme: a single fake “grail” item used to extract a cash loan, and years of ordinary sales of smaller forgeries sustaining the operation underneath it.
A trophy that was never Billy Sims’s
Rogers did not build a fake Heisman from scratch. He bought a real, if lesser, honorary Heisman that had belonged to a broadcaster, then paid a trophy shop to swap in a new nameplate bearing the name of Billy Sims, one of the few Heisman winners publicly known to have sold his own trophy, which made the forged item’s backstory plausible to a lender who had no reason to call Sims to check.
Fraud that continued after the guilty plea
Most fraud prosecutions describe conduct that ended before charges were filed. This one did not: after pleading guilty in March 2017, Rogers kept selling fakes, including a phony Super Bowl I football, through a proxy specifically so buyers would not connect the sale back to him while his case was pending. That continuation is what led the judge to sentence him above his own plea deal’s recommendation.
The caveat
Rogers pleaded guilty and was sentenced; the facts above reflect the plea, the sentencing record, and contemporaneous news reporting of the hearing, not merely an allegation. The $23,552,370 restitution figure is the amount ordered by the court, not necessarily the amount actually recovered by victims, which federal restitution orders of this size often collect only slowly and partially over many years.
Sources
- Con Man Gets 12 Years For $23 Million Sports Memorabilia Fraud. CBS News Chicago. Accessed 2026-11-01. Supports: The sentence, the $23 million in losses to at least 26 victims, the fake Heisman Trophy used as loan collateral, the phony Super Bowl I ball, Judge Durkin's quotes, and the Doug Allen connection.
- Former Arkansas sport archivist gets 12 years for selling fake collectibles. Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Accessed 2026-11-01. Supports: The exact restitution figure, the charging and plea dates, the $50,363 purchase price and nameplate swap, the bond revocation, prosecutors' requested sentence, the fake Mantle and Pippen items, and the names of the judge and prosecutors.
- Memorabilia collector gets 12 years in prison for fraud. KATV. Accessed 2026-11-01. Supports: Confirmation of the 12-year sentence and the Chicago federal court venue.