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PHOTO FRAUD ALERT
Hello,
Earlier today on this board a photo was posted showing a Bf109E with a 6./StG77 bull insignia on the fuselage. I posted that I was wondering if someone was playing a Photoshop joke with the photo.
Now one of our stalwart EoE members sent me a photo that they had just acquired (presumably on eBay) from someone selling a modern print of a wartime photo. It had an entirely authentic insignia on the fuselage, but it didn't match the aircraft code. I did a search and found that I had many photos of this same a/c in the EoE Photo DB, including two that well matched the same area visible in the photo, both taken after a crash-landing that wrote the a/c off, and both without question the same aircraft. Every bullet hole, flak tear and broken window matched. However, the insignia in question was missing from both of the original photos. Someone had perpetrated a fraud by Photoshopping an insignia onto this photo then selling it.
I don't want to say anything about the seller yet, as I'm still gathering information, but someone is using Photoshop software to alter photos and is selling them as reproductions of authentic WW II photos. Buyer beware.
I don't know for sure that the two incidents are related or involve the same seller, but I wanted to alert everyone right away before someone else falls victim of that fraud. In both cases, one suspected and one proven, the photoshop work was done with a very high degree of technical skill. It was very professional and didn't leave a lot of the obvious tell-tale artifacts in the image that sometimes gives away a Photoshop job.
The bad news is that not only insignias, but every other kind of marking can be digitally recreated if someone is motivated to do so. Apparently that someone is now at work.
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