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Gotta Scam 'em all: father and son caught red-handed scamming Pokémon fans [1]

['Lux Sparks-Pescovitz']

Date: 2025-09-09

Right now, if you were to walk into your local Target, Walmart, or Costco, you likely wouldn't be able to find any Pokémon TCG (trading card game) products. Scalpers buy as much inventory as they can, then sell it for more than the manufacturer's suggested retail price. To get their Pokémon fix, people often have to go through scalpers or online platforms.

In comes whatnot: a live collectibles auction app where eBay meets Twitch. Sellers go live, show off their product, you swipe to bid, and then it's shipped to your door. At any given time, thousands of viewers are watching dozens (sometimes hundreds) of Pokémon selling streams. There are different varieties of streams, one known as "Rip and Ship" is where the buyer will buy a pack of cards, have the seller open the pack live, then ship the cards. However, Pokémon packs can easily be tampered with, and can be opened, searched for any "Hits" (valuable cards), then sealed back up.

Seller "pokerez609" was doing a rip and ship stream with his son, when people in the chat began to accuse him of resealing the packs because of the way they were being opened. However, one of the packs they opened was ordered improperly, as it did not resemble a regular factory pack, with another Poké Ball card behind an energy card. This causes the seller to freak out, as it confirms they were resealed packs, but the seller accidentally forgets to turn the stream off, audibly telling his son they "Got Caught" and "Can do it again when different people are watching". Eventually, the seller realizes, and the stream ends.. The account is now gone.

The clip was posted to the whatnot subreddit, and is as unbelievable as it sounds.

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[1] Url: https://boingboing.net/2025/09/09/gotta-scam-em-all-father-and-son-caught-red-handed-scamming-pokemon-fans.html

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