Hello All,
I have a request to make of people posting to this List, IMCA List or
elsewhere. Since there are multiple members with the same first name, (ie.
Carl, Dave, Eric, Mike, Bob, Greg, among others), can posters please include
the last initial or complete last name of the particular person they are
referring to. I think this will help people reading these posts now months
or years later not get confused as to who the post is about.
Thank You!
GregH
====================
Greg Hupe
The Hupe Collection
gmh...@centurylink.net
www.LunarRock.com
IMCA 3163
====================
-----Original Message-----
From: Stuart McDaniel
Sent: Sunday, May 08, 2011 12:47 PM
To: Shawn Alan ; jasonu...@gmail.com ; Linton Rohr
Cc: meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Mifflin, Amiss
Sounds like someone owes me a Mifflin replacement since I have a piece of
this rock from Carl myself!!!
Stuart McDaniel
Lawndale, NC
Secr.,
Cleve. Co. Astronomical Society
IMCA #9052
Member - KCA, KBCA, CDUSA
-----Original Message-----
From: Greg Catterton
Sent: Sunday, May 08, 2011 4:07 AM
To: Shawn Alan ; jasonu...@gmail.com ; Linton Rohr
Cc: meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Mifflin, Amiss
Ok. I cant keep this quite anymore... Screw the lies and secrets. I think
the truth should be out there.
About Joes "awesome" stone...
He told me personally and we also talked over email about it... he found it
on the same persons property that someone else had already stolen a stone
from.
Yes, I know this because he told me directly. No second hand BS.
He lied to everyone and even had a totally BS story published about his
finding it under a bridge.
So please, before anyone else goes to say how Joe fed his family, took a
trip to disney world and what not, he lied about finding it and thats the
true story behind the "Kerchner Stone"
Yes, his family ate, but what about the person whos land it fell on? Ask her
how her family trip to disney went...
Joe, sorry man, but it had to come out at some time.
I took public one person who stole material from Mifflin, anyone else care
to out the other? I dont know the whole story, so I will let others tell
that tale. I know many on this list know of Joes lie and also the other
person... but I honestly doubt ANYONE will come forward on this.
Greg Catterton
www.wanderingstarmeteorites.com
IMCA member 4682
On Ebay: http://stores.shop.ebay.com/wanderingstarmeteorites
On Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/WanderingStarMeteorites
--- On Sun, 5/8/11, Linton Rohr <linton...@earthlink.net> wrote:
From: Linton Rohr <linton...@earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Mifflin, Amiss
To: "Shawn Alan" <photoph...@yahoo.com>, jasonu...@gmail.com
Cc: meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com
Date: Sunday, May 8, 2011, 3:29 AM
Ahoy there, Jason, Shawn and list.
Intriguing situation, Jason. Thanks for sharing.
And like you Shawn, I'm glad I got my beautiful little
slice from Joe. I didn't see all that much "drama" in it,
though. He put in a lot of work, and found enough to be able
to both keep some and sell enough to feed his family. That's
just plain cool, in my book. Thanks Joe!
Linton
----- Original Message ----- From: "Shawn Alan" <photoph...@yahoo.com>
To: <jasonu...@gmail.com>
Cc: <meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Saturday, May 07, 2011 8:38 PM
Subject: [meteorite-list] Mifflin, Amiss
Jason and Listers,
This is a very interesting post in the since I have to say
something doesn't add up. One an anonymous finder contacts
Carl and has him send cash to a PO box..... Red flag. Two
the phone number is disconnected..... Three the transaction
was done in cash. I have to say with those three elements
this would have to be a scam, someone got had. If this was a
legit sale wouldn't it have been done in the correct ways
via pay pal not some undercover 007 style, sending cash in
the mail to a PO BOX?
As for testing goes, cant Carl Agee do a terrestrial age
analysis and also have a cre done which can prove or
disprove this theory that someone is suggesting that Mifflin
has two litholgies, which I have to say isnt the case and
that these stones are not related to Mifflin in anyway from
the evidence presented by Jason.
Now the question is who was the scammer. I have to assume
that one this scammer knew what they were doing and somehow
was or is connected to the meteorite collecting world or
they are really smart and picked up how to scam meteorite
hunter 101. First of all they knew of Carl, two they knew of
the fall, three, they knew of what a freshly fallen
meteorite looks like and four the meteorite in question is a
real meteorite but not from the same fall.
I think the scammer is one of us or is connected to one of
us just because of the circumstances of the event and that
the meteorite is a real meteorite and has fusion crust. If
it was a non meteoritest, I think it would have been a
stone, but this was not the case it was a real meteorite in
the mists of being a fake Mifflin. This is to good to be
done by some non meteorite collector but again people are
getting smarter these days to make some cash. But this means
that this scammer would have to buy a real meteorite to turn
around to sell as a fake recent meteorite fall.
All I can say is if I came into this situation I would have
thought the sale would have been a scam right from the start
with me sending money to a PO box. Also I am glad I didn't
buy this stuff I was able to buy some from Joe Kerchner
which that had some drama in its self as well.
My 2 cents
Shawn Alan
IMCA 1633
eBaystore
http://shop.ebay.com/photophlow/m.html
[meteorite-list] Mifflin, Amiss
jason utas jasonutas at gmail.com
Sat May 7 21:12:16 EDT 2011
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Hello All,
My story begins in the summer of last year. I saw some
strange pieces
of 'Mifflin' on ebay that I thought looked funny. People
were talking
about the meteorite having two lithologies, but...the
slices and
individuals that I saw looked 'off.' A select few looked
like
H-chondrites, and they had the telltale signs of wear that
freshly-imported Moroccan falls bear: worn edges, exposed
metal flakes
on protruding corners (where the fusion crust had been worn
off due to
improper packing), etc.
At the time, I did nothing but send a private email to Anne
Black
notifying her of my suspicions. I spoke with some other
prominent
list-members addressing it, and they all agreed that the
material
looked funny, but that nothing could be done about it given
the
required burden of proof.
So, I sat on my hands for several months.
Just over a month ago, I saw a piece of the funny-looking
'Mifflin' on
ebay. It looked similar to some pieces that I remembered
seeing on
ebay months before, and, being an end-cut, I was able to
see both the
stone's funny-looking inside -- and the apparent metal
grains on the
stone's exterior.
I used the 'buy-it-now' option to purchase the end-cut, and
it
arrived while Peter and I were in Morocco. When we
returned, I
promptly shipped the end-cut off to Tony Irving of the
University of
Washington; he agreed to analyze the stone posthaste.
The results came back, but Tony wanted to wait until the
probe was
recallibrated so that he could run it again to be sure.
Lo and behold, he did confirm that my end-cut was an
equilibrated
H-chondrite, with an olivine Fa of 18.6. For comparison,
Chergach and
Bassikounou both have Fa contents of 18.4 and 18.6,
respectively.
University of Madison, Wisconsin performed most of the work
on the
Mifflin fall. Between them and the Field Museum, over
twenty separate
stones were analyzed. They were all L5. Mifflin is
classified as an
L5, with an Fa of ~24.9 +/- 0.2.
I then sent Tony the link to the ebay auction so he could
confirm that
the piece that he had analyzed was indeed the piece that I
had sent
him. He did.
I purchased my end-cut from Bryan Scarborough (IMCA), who
purchased it
from Michael Cottingham, who purchased it from Greg
Catterton (IMCA),
who purchased the stone with Carl Esparza from the finder.
Carl told me the following story over the phone:
He was contacted "out of the blue" by someone hunting in
the Mifflin
strewn-field. According to Carl, the finder stated that he
thought
there was a "conspiracy against him," because no one would
offer him
more than $5/g. and he believed his finds were worth more
than that.
So, according to Carl, he then offered the finder $10/g,
and a deal was
struck.
But...the finder asked that he not be paid via paypal or
wire
transfer; he wanted cash mailed to a P.O. Box.
So, Carl mailed the money to the P.O. Box and the first of
two 'Mifflin'
stones was over-nighted to him the next day. It should be
noted that
Carl included Greg Catterton as his partner in this deal,
and Greg
sent over several hundred dollars to help pay for the
stones.
Unfortunately, as Carl said over the phone, his old
computer recently
died, so he lacks the name and email address of the finder,
as well as
the number/address of the P.O. Box to which he sent the
money. Carl
is also unwilling to share the bank receipt from the
transaction which
would prove that he did make a large cash withdrawal for
the stones.
I asked Carl for the finder's phone number, but he told me
that he had
recently tried to call the finder, himself, only to find
that the
number had been disconnected.
He was unwilling to share the number with me, regardless.
On the phone, Carl suggested that his source had likely
ripped him
off, and he said that he believed that it was the reason
why he had
been asked to send the money untraceably, as he did; Carl
described
the situation as a "typical scam."
He also suggested that the stones *might* be from an
unrelated fall -- or could be the result of Mifflin being an
'Almahata Sitta sort of
fall.'
I can't disprove either of those ideas, but they are
unlikely for the
following reasons:
1) Almahata Sitta is a unique event in the history of
meteoritics.
Different lithologies have been observed in many
meteorites, but to
have individual stones of completely different and
unrelated meteorite
types falling separately is unique. Out of the 1,238
accepted
observed falls in the meteoritical bulletin, only one has
exhibited
individuals that have consisted of different meteorite
types (for
example, H + L, Ureilite + EH, etc).
And it's not that we haven't been looking for similar
events; with
each and every fall, multiple stones are analyzed, and the
simple fact
of the matter is that they are always similar...with *one*
exception.
So, Almahata Sitta is an exception. How much of an
exception? 0.08%
of meteorite falls are like it. Less than a tenth of a
percent.
Possible...but extremely unlikely. We also have to wonder
about why
or how this hunter managed to find the only two H's from
the fall that
were recognized. Over twenty other stones were studied and
this
finder supposedly turned up two or three that were all H's.
It's 'funny.'
The other possibility that Carl advocated is that the
stones may actually
have been found in Wisconsin -- and they may be part of a
new fall that
somehow slipped under the radar. He initially suggested
that they were
from the fireball widely seen across the Midwest on May
10th, but, at the
time, I had paypal records from Greg that stated that he
had sent Carl the
money for the stones as early as April 24th.
So we ruled out that possibility..
But, I agree; the stones could theoretically have come from
a
different fall. The end-cut that I bought showed no visible
signs of
weathering. No oxide, no anything. Given the weather in and
around
Mifflin at the time of the fall, we can assume that the
stones were
picked up within a week or so of having fallen. No AMS
reports of
anything in the region for the given timeframe doesn't
disprove
anything since meteorites often fall without much ado,
but...two falls
in the same place *at the same time?*
Granted, it's possible. Not very likely, though.
And you've still got to wonder about why no one else found
any
H-chondrites while looking for Mifflin. It's not like
meteorites were
laying thickly on the ground. Everyone who found stones out
there put
considerable time into hunting -- and they all found only
L5's. So if
Carl's source were telling the truth, and he did find the
stones, it
seems best to assume that he wasn't hunting in the Mifflin
strewn-field, because, if he were, he would 1) probably
have found
L5's, and 2) other people would probably have found H's as
well.
The conclusion I draw from this is that the truth has
become
well-hidden. What is certain is that I have been refunded
by
Bryan, and I know for a fact that Bryan has been refunded
by
Michael Cottingham, who has in turn been refunded by Greg
Catterton.
What I have heard, however, is that Carl has been defending
the
legitimacy of his stones, and is refusing to refund Greg
Catterton.
Regardless of whether the material is Mifflin or another
meteorite
(from Wisconsin or from NWA -- it doesn't matter), the
simple fact
of the matter is that the material sold by Carl has been
shown to be
different from how it was advertised, and as such, he
should be
willing to accept its return for a refund. If he wishes to
get it
analyzed and sell it to others as a new meteorite, that is
his
concern.
I am fairly certain that Bryan, Michael, and Greg
unknowingly sold the
material as Mifflin, believing that it was indeed what they
sold it
as.
That is my 2 cents.
Regards,
Jason Utas
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