One of our Members who, for obvious reasons, does not want his name or Member number used here, had this experience.

“I hate doing this because it makes the internet less trustworthy for everyone, but here’s a collector’s alert.

I paid $400 for what was purported to be a Kriegsmarine frock coat for a Kapitän zur See and I realize that the low price should have been a tip off to begin with, but I didn’t care if it was a worm eaten example, I needed the pattern for the repro. Frock coats I am having made.

The “dealer” is Paul Waterworth in Leigh, Lancaster England.

EDITOR’s NOTE

Our Member gave several paragraphs about all the things wrong with the jacket so for brevity, let’s just say that the jacket was absolutely not what was advertised and it was not an authentic Kriegsmarine coat. He asked for his money back but Paul Waterworth refused. We sent an e-mail to Waterworth on behalf of our Member. It was a polite e-mail, and we asked him to reconsider and refund the money. Here is his reply:

“Thanks for your e-mail but as you are not directly concerned with this deal it has nothing to do with you, however I trust if you decide to print anything derogatory concerning my business dealings you will make a copy available to our Solicitors.”

EDITOR’s NOTE - He means to his lawyers, and it was a thinly disguised threat to sue us. We have been threatened with lawsuits so many times, but so far - no one has ever actually sues us. Could be that we stick to the truth and so such lawsuits would be pointless? Since we have so many Members all over the world, I contacted one in the UK & asked him about Waterworth and his reputation. I probably should not repeat what this Member called Waterworth, but it was not flattering. He did however, say that Waterworth has a reputation in the UK and elsewhere for dealing in fake items. He wrote:

I was at the major militaria fair in Beltring, Kent (UK) in July 1998 with a group of collectors and committee members from the IMCC. Waterworth had a stall at the fair and we went over near to there to get a look at him. I simply wanted know what he looked like, having heard so many bad things about him. I had a look at his stall and noticed a fake U-boat badge without a price tag. A few minutes later, while the three of us were standing in the next stall, we heard him telling a customer about a U-boat badge (the Frank and Reif fake type) and how he’d acquired it personally from the veteran. We listened to a long and involved story about the badge, the vet and U-boat operations in the North Atlantic - until the guy decided to buy and handed over the money, 350 pounds sterling. (About $525 in American money, or 1150 in German Marks). The customer walked away and Waterworth immediately produced another badge and put it into his display case in the same place.

“Needless to say this seemed to confirm everything we’d heard about him and we stayed around for a few minutes to see what would happen. Then another of the club members (IMCC) and we told him what had happened. He wandered over and asked about the U-boat badge, whereupon Waterworth went into the exact same story regarding how he’s bought it from the vet. Etc. The price of this badge - 350 sterling! I have no problem with you printing the details here as I witnessed this myself, as did my two other colleagues. I was standing about 5 feet away when this happened.

The Frank and Reif badges are good quality, but well known as fakes - almost anyone who is interested in the subject would know this, and that Frank and Reif did not make U-boat badges but specialized in Luftwaffe badges.

I am sorry to hear about what happened with (our other Member) but he never told me who he was buying it from otherwise I could have warned him away from dealing with that (description deleted for obvious reasons).”

Thanks to our American Member for letting us know that he was not treated fairly by Paul Waterworth, and thanks to our Member in the UK for giving us this eye-witness account.

Other Frauds

We at SHARKHUNTERS absolutely hate these frauds and fakes, and we look to you, our Members, to let us know when they are found so we can alert our other Members. There are always con men, but the list of major frauds is growing. Here are some:

Tom Shutt owned and operated Kings Crown Gallery in a suburb of Kansas City. Then he had to depart in a hurry and moved to Costa Mesa where he again, opened up this gallery. After some time and some questionable business, he had to bail out of Costa Mesa and spent his time going through cities and towns in the west selling hand-signed photos of just about every German veteran that ever put on a uniform. He was caught and arrested for selling these fakes, which he himself had hand-signed with the veteran’s name.

Hans Göbeler a veteran of the U-Bootwaffe himself, he sold ‘his own personal’ Hitler Youth dagger to countless collectors who believed him. He actually gave one to me, and it was an obvious fake. He also sold fake U-boat badges, claiming they were his own from his time on U-505. I saw these fakes in his home around 1991 or 1992. He had hundreds in a big box that he was taking to a show. Just before his death, he had a bunch of cap badges made up of the battle-ax emblem of U-505, and the name of a different crew member of U-505 was scratched on the back as if it were that man’s own cap badge. They were all fakes.

Dennis Schulz at one time, a Member of SHARKHUNTERS, he came to our convention in Chicago about ten years ago. He had his photo taken with Jürgen Oesten, Hans-Georg Hess and many other U-boat Skippers who were with us. Then he began selling photos of these men, with their autographs, from his booth at the big Hillside show and using these photos, he was telling buyers that these veterans are all friends of his and that they stay at his home every time they visit Chicago. They are not his friends; they don’t know who he is; they don’t stay at his home and they don’t come to Chicago. I called him once, without giving my name, and asked him if he had autographs of several U-Boat Skippers I mentioned. Of course he did, he told me. I asked how he was able to obtain all these hand-signed photos and he told me the same story. From our Members in the Chicago area, we are told that he is still selling these fake photos at the Hillside show.

And now we add the name of Paul Waterworth to this less than desirable list. If he and his Solicitors wish to come here and sue us, we will recommend a good hotel where they can stay.

Update on Collector ALERT

In fairness, whenever we are going to publish anything that is in any way unpleasant about someone, we always send an advance copy of that page to them and we ask them to correct anything on our page that is incorrect. We did the same for this Paul Waterworth in the UK regarding page 20 of this issue and asked him to let us know if there was anything incorrect there. We just received an e-mail from him stating that he does not intend to respond and that he has better things to do with his time. Small wonder - making repro badges look real must be quite a chore.