A prominent sports memorabilia businessman was found dead after police carried out a search warrant into his allegedly fraudulent operation on Tuesday.

Brett Lemieux, 45 of Westfield, Ind., was the founder of noted sports memorabilia site MisterManCave, which he claimed sold more than four million counterfeit items and surpassed $350 million in sales in a 1,200-word Facebook post on the “Autographs 101” group Wednesday morning.

Hours after Lemieux published the post, Westfield police confirmed that he committed suicide by way of a “self-inflicted gunshot wound.”

The Facebook post is no longer live, since Lemieux’s account has been taken down.

Lemieux was able to pull off the alleged large-scale counterfeit scheme by faking holograms, authentication stickers for sports collectibles, of some of the most prominent companies in sports memorabilia: Panini, Fanatics, Tri-Star, James Spence Authentics, Mill Creek Sports, and GT Marketing, among others. 

Lemieux would use the fake holograms to sell counterfeit memorabilia at a far lower price than the market, and he profited handsomely from that tactic. 

In the Facebook post, Lemieux said he released 80,000 pieces of memorabilia into the market when Kobe Bryant died in 2020.

He noted that he considered stopping with his operation, but that the money was “too good.”

Leighton Sheldon, who owns justcollect.com and Just Collect, Inc. in Summit, N.J., said his first reaction to the news was to say, “OMG.”

“I certainly was very shocked,” Sheldon said, adding that he’s heard “a lot of different things in the last 48 hours” from friends in the industry about how much Lemieux truly made off his scam.

“It’s certainly greater than zero and I have to guess that it’s less than a billion dollars. Obviously that’s a very wide range, but I think that in some cases, it may not even matter how much money it was at this point,” Sheldon said. “I think the damage is very serious in that it’s alarmed not only the industry, but a lot of mainstream media, as it should.”

Sheldon said his key takeaway from the situation is for collectors to avoid questionable sellers at all costs, and that the way to feel completely comfortable is to have the athlete sign the autograph in person. 

Robert Lifton, who founded the Robert Edward Auctions sports collectible auction house and has worked as an expert consultant with the FBI, Justice Department and Secret Service, said it can be almost impossible to authenticate signatures, with forgeries rampant.

“Fake new autographs is not something that is a new problem. It’s been going on for a long time,” Lifton said. “People just don’t understand the extent of it, because how could they? Stories like this give them insight.”