Hollywood Sign Scam:

The content you are about to digest is the true story of what happened to the original Hollywood sign, which was replaced by a new sign in 1979. I wrote about this on my old Scams.net forums. I believe this is an important story and the facts I bring to light about what really happened were extensively researched. This story is written over several weeks and months and is quite long. I strongly encourage you to bookmark this page and come back if you need time to digest...

This is a true story. I cannot account for all parties involved this transaction, but I can speak intelligently and truthfully for my father, who was the original buyer of the old Hollywood sign, which was sold in 1979. Read on if you are interested. The email below is being sent to Steve Harvey of the Los Angeles Times and Norma Meyer of the San Diego Tribune. Steve Harvey wrote the article dated August 30th of 1979, in which my father was identified as the person who purchased the old sign (I can scan and supply a copy to anyone who wants to the see this article). He in fact was the purchaser and made a deal with the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce that would send 15% of all proceeds to the chamber for the upkeep of the new sign. Norma Meyer posted an article March 6th of 2005, which identifies another person as the buyer of the sign and the information offered to Norma Meyer for this story actually describes my fathers experience (her article is linked in the authentichollywood website linked below). Here is the email...

Update (January 6, 2006): My father believes it was actually 1978, not 1979 as noted throughout this thread. I will verify once we the original article is scanned - I don’t have it in my possession at the moment.

Dear Mr. Harvey,

I am writing to you with concerns regarding a phone call I had from my father today. My father, Tony Wood, purchased the old Hollywood sign in 1979. On August 30th of that year, you wrote an article which ran in the L.A. Times discussing the sale of the sign to my father and what was going to become of it.

At that time, my father and his business associate, Bob Jones, had grand plans to make jewelry out of the sign and had a marketing agreement with the, then, May Company, to retail the pendants for .99 a piece. The pendants came with a certificate of authenticity from the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce with whom my father had also negotiated to give 15% of the proceeds back to the Chamber to help with the upkeep of the new sign. My father's business eventually failed and he went into bankruptcy.

The sign and the poles and anchors to which the letters were attached were left in the back of his business in a storage area. The storage area was outside, behind chain link and padlocked. At that time the courts were inundated with bankruptcies and to the best of my father's knowledge the sign was still in the storage area 6 months later.

My father received a call from a friend of his asking why he was selling the Hollywood Sign. This friend went on to tell him that the sign had just been auctioned on E-Bay for over 0,000. My dad checked it out and it turns out that the seller, Dan Bliss, states that he purchased the sign from the "original buyer", a man by the name of Hank Berger. Well, as would be expected, my father was a bit put out.

This Hank Berger related to Dan Bliss an almost verbatim account of what my father did when he purchased the sign. Mr. Berger even knew the amount my father had paid for the sign. Additionally, Mr. Berger stated that he had the sign in storage for 20 some years and had "forgotten" that he even owned it. My father states that he spoke with Dan Bliss and asked Mr. Bliss what he had done with the poles that had originally held up the sign. Mr. Bliss claimed he had gotten rid of them. Well, according to my father, the poles themselves were the size of telephone poles and theses along with the anchors and the pieces of the sign took up nearly all of two flat bed semi trucks...How exactly does one get rid of that much wood? And why would one get rid of that much wood when it seems to me it has some historical significance? So this all begs the question, where has the sign been all of these years?

I don't doubt the legitimacy of Mr. Bliss' claim to have the original Hollywood Sign, but I do question where he got it and by what means, Mr. Hank Berger, the man who was the alleged "original purchaser" of the sign, got the sign.

My father legitimately attained the rights to market the sign from the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, how is it that Mr. Bliss was able to secure those same rights, when in all honesty, in my mind there is some question as to the original ownership of the sign. Maybe just enough time has gone by that no one will notice. Maybe Mr. Berger had some inside track to procuring the sign, which would have had to have been through the courts in Los Angeles. Or maybe Mr. Berger got a hold of the sign illegally and has sold it to Mr. Bliss under false pretenses.

Additionally, Mr. Bliss claims on his website, www.authentichollywood.com that he has signed and notarized affidavit from Mr. Hank Berger stating that he purchased the sign from the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. I assure you that the original purchaser of the Old Hollywood Sign was my father, Anthony Wood and that Mr. Berger's statement that he was the original purchaser is a patent lie. This claim can be verified through the archives at your own Los Angeles Times.

I would sincerely appreciate any help you can provide in clearing up this unusual matter. My father has very little that he can call his own now and is living his quiet life in Montana. This is has been a devastation to him as this was one achievement that he has held in very high regard all of these years.

My brother and I were recent recipients of a couple of the few remaining articles that were made from the original sign when my father owned it. Anything you could do to shed some light on this would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for your time and attention,

Sincerely,
XXXXXX

My sister wrote the note. Since the drafting of this email I have spoken with my father to verify his story once again. He has not read this email yet, so some details may change slightly.

Personally, it is my opinion that Bob Jones or Hank Berger somehow got the sign out of storage under the nose of the bankruptcy courts. In those days bankruptcies of companies were a dime a dozen all over the country and one could easily steal high value items without the courts ever knowing.

Really though, why would one lie about the true original owner of the sign if they did not obtain it illegally? If you obtained it legally, one would tell the truth.

It is the responsibility of the Feds to seize all proceeds of the sale of the sign, to include the sign, and prosecute those parties who fraudulently obtained and sold the sign - although I bet the statute of limitations has run out. At the very least their names should be shared with the rest of the world.

Update: My sister has sent off the email to Steve Harvey (L.A. Times) and Norma Meyer (S.D. Tribune). To date we have not heard a response from either columnist.

I would like to share some excerpts from Norma Meyer's article which was written in March of 2005. This outlines the story which was given to her by Mr. Bliss (who I don’t personally hold responsible for this fraud - need to make that abundantly clear). Mr. Bliss was duped and it is no fault of his...

"The saga of the storied, neglected and oft-vandalized entertainment emblem (in 1976, pranksters changed it to read HOLLYWEED when pot was decriminalized) is a colorful yarn worthy of the silver screen.
Bliss purchased the sign's nine 30-foot-wide letters from Hank Berger, who in 1978 was a 28-year-old fast-talking nightclub promoter dubbed the "Disco Doctor" when he saw a TV report about the decaying HOLLYWOOD sign being razed."

It goes on further, apparent quote from Mr. Berger himself...

""I thought, 'Hell with the new one ? the old one's the real one,' " recalls Berger, 54, from his home near Cleveland. Just like today, the sign was the property of the city of Los Angeles but the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce owned its trademark. Berger contacted the chamber, plunked down ,000 for licensing rights and hauled off a heap of scrap metal no one seemed to care about.
"We had to bend it ? it was a football field long. When I got it, they were pulling it off the hill with helicopters and chains," Berger says."

And here is where the BS starts really rolling, the guy claims he forgot about it. How do you forget you have the Hollywood Sign? Didn’t anyone bother to research this guy? For goodness sake, Mr. Berger should write a memoir!

"In a 1980 ceremony, with TV cameras rolling near where the billboard once loomed, Berger had actor Donald O'Connor cut an inaugural 1?-inch square from a piece of the sign's metal. With much fanfare, it was glued onto a souvenir plaque and handed to the director of the prestigious American Film Institute. In the following months, through stores nationwide including the May Co., Berger sold about 14,000 of the .95 framed art deco plaques with the tiny keepsakes sawed from the sign.


But business waned. And when Berger relocated back East, he moved the sign out of self-storage in the San Fernando Valley to the outskirts of Los Angeles. It sat in the corner of a tool-and-die company owned by a guy that the son-in-law of Berger's now ailing 84-year-old partner knew. There, it remained in obscurity for more than 22 years. "I forgot I even had the damn thing," says Berger, who became a successful restaurant and nightclub broker in Ohio. "Out of sight, out of mind.""

I am in awe of this scammer, well done, but you are caught now.

More to follow. If we don’t here back from the columnist in the near future we plan on forwarding to an organization who will act quickly and do the appropriate research to uncover this fraud.

A follow-up email was sent to Steve Harvey yesterday. It would be nice if those parties who are responsible for stealing the sign would come in here and explain themselves.

Dear Mr. Harvey,

I am sorry to have not heard anything back from you or another staff member regarding my e-mail of several weeks ago. I was hoping to hear from you to see if you might provide us with some suggestions as to whom we might contact regarding the potential fraud that is taking place with the old Hollywood Sign. Please advise one way or another whether you or a staff member have had the opportunity to look into this. We are considering some type of legal action at this point as this person in Ohio is claiming my father's story as his own. Additionally, according to the attorney who assisted my father with the original transaction to purchase the old sign, the sign should have been returned to my father if a suitable buyer was not found to help settle the bankruptcy. The sign was obviously NOT returned to my father, nor was it, to the best of our knowledge, sold. I appreciate any assistance you can provide and look forward to hearing from you in the very near future.

Sincerely,

XXXXXXX

I'm still finding some remnants of this in different newspapers/articles. Most of them post the same story, started when Mr. Bliss posted the sign for sale on eBay. However, this one from the OC Register caught my attention today, please read:

""This is the granddaddy of all collectibles," said Dan Bliss, a West Los Angeles producer who recently acquired the sign with the intent of selling it. "This epitomizes the entertainment industry. It's an icon; it's beyond words."

He bought the scarred relic from a friend, Hank Berger, who had purchased it 26 years earlier. Berger tried to sell pieces on Hollywood Boulevard early on, but had little success, so the 50-foot-tall letters sat unused for years in a warehouse on Victory Boulevard.

With Berger getting on in years and reluctant to bequeath the dinged-up piece of Hollywood lore to his family, he sold it to Bliss for "a lot" of money."

This story was posted on November 14, 2004.
I highlighted the best part in blue, this is despicable.

And I also found more information at the site: www.georgejay.com
Here, Mr.Weinbarg explains he was also involved with Mr. Berger (in his "About Me" page). Here is the snippet I have cut and pasted from his site...

""In Hollywood, Hank and I achieved world fame again when we cut up the original Hollywood Sign. By placing little pieces of it on Art Deco plaques that Hank had designed then selling them we garnered attention in practically every media outlet in the world. In New York six years later I created a line of clothing called Hollywood Clothing with the Korean designer Viola Park. We again hit the press and achieved the same media reach as selling the sign did including articles in Time, People, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and so on. The line was sold in stores world wide."

He also posts this on his resume:
"Featured in Time, People, Us and virtually all press world-wide for cutting up, selling and trademarking the original HOLLYWOOD Sign."

I plan on emailing Mr. Weinberg, perhaps he can shed some light on the story.

An email has been sent to Mr. Weinberg. I will await a response and post back with any information he may be able to supply concerning this story. Here is the email as I sent...

Mr. Weinberg,

You are perhaps unaware of this story, however, based upon some comments you made at your website I felt compelled to ask you what information you have regarding the suspected fraudulent acquisition of the original Hollywood sign?

At this time I am not accusing you of being directly tied to the suspected fraud, only statements on your site indicate you were a partner to Hank Berger, I quote:

""In Hollywood, Hank and I achieved world fame again when we cut up the original Hollywood Sign. By placing little pieces of it on Art Deco plaques that Hank had designed then selling them we garnered attention in practically every media outlet in the world. In New York six years later I created a line of clothing called Hollywood Clothing with the Korean designer Viola Park. We again hit the press and achieved the same media reach as selling the sign did including articles in Time, People, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and so on. The line was sold in stores world wide."

and your resume communicates:

"Featured in Time, People, Us and virtually all press world-wide for cutting up, selling and trademarking the original HOLLYWOOD Sign."

Would you be able to send me a copy of these features? I ask because you may have held onto them as keepsakes. Please let me know so if need be I can contact these agencies archives and have them send me a copy.

Any other information you can provide would be very helpful. Thank you.

It was brought to my attention today that perhaps these guys used my fathers story because it is more glamorous. In other words, did they acquire the letters from the bankruptcy courts? Considering an acquisition of this sort, maybe Mr. Berger didn’t want to admit that’s how he acquired it. Point taken. However, a lie is a lie.

So, either it was stolen or the people involved are lying.

Come forward and let the world know which it is, then offer proof of your story.

I am attaching the article written by Steve Harvey in 1979. It verifies my father as the original buyer, and if you read it through the last part of the article is very interesting.

My father made a claim he received phone calls from some guys trying to blackmail him - apparently he wasn’t sure he had the whole sign (6,000 of 10,000 reported square feet).

The plot thickens! Well, not really. I’m not giving up yet though!

At the recommendation of Mr. Harvey (contact the chamber), I sent an email to the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce this morning. I was elated when I received a reply from the president of the chamber this afternoon. The content of which I will share below.

But first I must say the response and manner in which he offered it was kind although deflating. I want to thank the president for taking the time out his day to do a little research for me! Thanks again.

"Dear Mr. Wood:
I am responding to your email below. Unfortunately, I am unable to help you. The Chamber does not have an records going back to the sale of the sign. I believe at some point in the past, old records must have been disposed of. As a result, I have no information related to what happened in regards to the sale of the original sign. I have spoken with our volunteers who were involved at that time, and none of them can recall the details of what happened to the original sign. Should we at some point come into possession of any documents, I'll be happy to share them with you.

Good luck in your research."

and here is the gist of what I sent the chamber this morning requesting the information...

"To whom it may concern,
I am contacting the chamber to request a copy of the original contract between the chamber and the buyer of the old Hollywood sign (circa 1979).

I am sure the chamber is aware the old sign sold on eBay recently. Although I don’t question the authenticity of the sign, I am convinced the sign was obtained fraudulently.

I am linking a post about the suspected fraud below. It is a link from my site and the fraud involved my father - who I claim is the original buyer and had the original contract with the chamber."

Mr. Berger, I know you have been peaking around in here. Come forward and let the truth flow.

To the buyer of the sign through eBay, from Mr. Bliss, the certificate of authenticity is a fraud. Since Mr. Berger was not the original buyer and was not responsible for the original contract with the Hollywood Chamber, he is not in a position to make the claim. That said, I believe strongly you have the authentic sign. However, the sign was obtained fraudulently and you and Mr. Bliss were duped by a fraudster who is relying on time and lack of real documents to slide by (apathy is playing a role too, in this case). Regardless of any potential legal implications, you may want to rethink making a claim of authenticity when the documents you have regarding the sign are clearly fakes. Consider this fact, to date noone has disputed my claims in this thread. Noone has offered to verify Mr. Bergers story. And I know he has read this (Remember I am the webmaster of this site too = web logs.).

Even Mr. Weinberg has responded to my email and claimed he was not involved in the signs acquisition. He only claims to have cut it up, trademarked, and sold the sign. Which means, he was either told the sign was real and it wasn’t, or it was the real sign - a portion which may have been stolen and held for ransom (refer to L.A. Times article above) or stolen outright from storage while my father was in bankruptcy.

You see, there is no disputing my fathers story because it is true. I have provided more than enough evidence of the fact in this thread.

It would be nice if you could scan those in and post them here. Or, you can always send me a copy of the documents via fax or email. I would be more than happy to do the rest - to include helping you to obtain a "real" certificate of authenticity.


Well, I decided to sit back for a bit and see if any news agencies wanted to bite on this story. This implies I contacted a few, which I did. I wont name them all off, but most of the large agencies which either published the story or decided to run the story relying on the fine investigative work the priors had conducted were contacted in some way, shape, or form.

So better than a month has passed since my last post. I have made contact with various persons who were involved or mentioned by the prior owners of the sign (Those who purchased the sign from Hank Berger). In all cases I was supplied with information which could not verify the original buyer of the sign. In fact every dead end was just that because physical proof could not be provided.

In essence, Mr. Berger was telling the story to Mr. Bliss based upon his intimate knowledge of the purchase. However, he was not in fact the purchaser. He was a scammer who tried to get in on the sale with my father and when he was rejected, decided to find alternate more nefarious ways to obtain the sign. My fathers bankruptcy was a perfect cover at the time. Regardless of whether or not Mr. Berger stole it outright from the property or obtained it through the bankruptcy courts, he is lying.

He lied about the story being his own. He lied to Mr. Bliss. He lied to anyone who was involved and did not have first hand knowledge of the scheme. There is no documentation other than the news article I provide in this thread which helps bolster my case against Mr. Berger. He used time and lack of documentation to support his fraud and he has gotten away with it.

Hopefully someday, a small fish-wrap in Podunk USA with a reporter who is willing to do good investigative research will reveal the truth better than I attempted. (S)he will do it because (s)he believes in my fathers story and really wants to share the truth and doesn't want to see scammers/fraudsters get away with it.

Time to post an update.

Sitting on this for a month illuminated the fact I was trying to contact the wrong new agencies. How much effort is an agency going to put into unraveling all the superior research they conducted to post the original story - sale of the Hollywood sign.

Anyhow I decided it was best to contact news agencies in the Cleveland area - consider the fraudster lives in Cleveland (Hank Berger). Of the four agencies I contacted, the Cleveland Free Times decided to do some research and to the best of my knowledge will be posting a story about this scam in their weekly, tomorrow (June 7th, 2006). With any luck the truth will be told.

Thank you to JR, and all those at the Free Times who helped pull this together. I sincerely appreciate your trust in my fathers story and me. I know you were the right people to take this story, especially after learning about Dan Bliss being a club owner in the Cleveland area. It started to really come together for me when you let me know. Thanks again.

So, keep your eyes posted for the story at the Cleveland Freetimes.

Here is a link to their website:
www.freetimes.com

Update: I am starting a fresh thread to summarize this exposed fraud.

Ok, so I have copied and will be pasting the article by the Freetimes below. Afterward I will take prior statements offered by Hank Berger and contrast those comments to the story he is telling now.


Although I do not think all the facts which were offered to the Freetimes were revealed/shared or offered as I gave them to the writer, I can understand the agencies position of objective provider of news.

Read the story below and then I will post the contrast of Berger's story from recently past articles in other papers. Guess what Berger, your busted! And you did it by speaking up. I’m sure your attorneys have told you not to make statements because they can be used against you. Apparently your pompous attitude got the best of you.

Hollyweird
The Strange Tale of Cleveland Connections To the Original ? and Allegedly Stolen ? Hollywood Sign

By James Renner

HOLLYWOOD HANK Claims to own a piece of history.
A woman from Hicksville, Ohio gave Hollywood its name. After her rich hubby bought some land near Los Angeles in 1886, Daeida Wilcox christened the area Hollywood, after a town in Illinois that was once described to her as a kind of paradise. There was nothing but apricot and fig trees until her husband divided the property into lots.

The sign itself was built in 1923. Tin letters 30 feet high and 50 feet wide were constructed atop Mount Lee to read Hollywoodland, the name of a local real estate company. It was a clever ad, meant to last only a year or so. But soon, it became a symbol of a growing community of filmmakers. So iconic was the sign that in 1932 a struggling actress named Peg Entwistle committed suicide by jumping off the "H." In a bizarre twist, an offer for Entwistle to play the lead role in a new play arrived by mail two days later; her character committed suicide in the final act.

The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce dropped the "land" in 1949. And in 1978, the original sign was retired and a steel replica was built for Hollywood's 75th anniversary. And that's where the saga of one of the most recognizable landmarks in the world gets really twisted.

Tony Wood was a left-coast entrepreneur. Heading to his telecommunications business one morning in 1978, he noticed the Hollywood sign being dismantled atop Mount Lee. This was the time of pet rocks, and kitsch nostalgia was gold. He figured there would be a lot of Hollywood wannabes who would pay good money for a piece of that sign. He brokered a deal with the Chamber of Commerce, purchasing the sign for ,000 and 10 percent of any future profits.

The massive letters were moved to storage behind Wood's business in La Mirada. Slowly, they were broken into tiny bits to be sold as authentic keepsakes. "We went to work on designs," says Wood, who now runs a B&B in rural Montana. "One was in the shape of Mount Lee. The other one was a razor-blade necklace. It was the '70s. Cocaine was a big thing. There was this whole subculture of cocaine motifs." The necklaces were to be packaged in velvet bags with booklets that told the sordid tale of Entwistle's leap.

Wood had a deal with May Company for 15,000 pieces, but most of the letters remained untouched; the trinkets were small and the sign was so damn big. When his business went bankrupt in 1979, all the letters were still recognizable. The feds padlocked the gate to the open-air storage lot and that was the last he saw of the sign.

Until last year.

His son, Stuart, found it first, listed for sale on eBay. The seller was some dude from Cleveland named Dan Bliss. And he had the history all wrong. Bliss credited a guy named Hank Berger as the first owner of the sign.

Wood claims that Berger approached him in 1978 about partnering on the deal to purchase the sign from the Chamber of Commerce. Wood told him to pound salt. So how is it that Berger ended up with it in his possession?

"Somehow, the sign was removed without being purchased at all and finished up in the hands of Hank Berger, who claims he bought it from the Chamber of Commerce, which is a patent lie," Wood says. "The most likely scenario is that it was stolen from storage."

"Hollywood" Hank Berger recently had back surgery, and grimaces with each step he takes around his Bay Village mansion. He's gained some weight too, due to medication, but still exudes machismo. He manages to be quite charming with uninvited guests. After all, this is "Hollywood Hank," also known as Cleveland's "disco doctor."

During the '80s and '90s, Berger ran a number of successful nightclubs in Cleveland ? the Deja? Vu, a West Side jazz club (which printed menus inside old issues of Detective Comics), Hank's Caf? and Trilogy. Lately, he has become a broker for bars and restaurants. He also has a knack for design; he took fourth place in the state-wide competition to come up with artwork for the Ohio quarter.

But he's always had a passion for Hollywood. Once upon a time, he says, he was a bodyguard for Frank Sinatra. He drove Schwarzenegger to meet-and-greets. He was an assistant to the producer on a Vietnam-themed horror film called The Exterminator. He's played the "bad guy" in a few other movies.

Yes, he was aware of Tony Wood's novelty business, he says. But after Wood's company folded, he claims he bought the sign legit from the Chamber of Commerce. (The Chamber confirms the sale to Wood, but has no other records from that time.) Like Wood, he broke the sign up into keepsakes. Each piece measured an inch and three-eighths. They were mounted and framed, then sold by a national novelty business for .95 a piece.

If he had it to do over again, he might have let the sign deteriorate under the California sun. "I've paid close to ,000 in storage fees over the years," he says.

While the return on his investment didn't pay off, it did at least win some notoriety. Berger flips through his gargantuan scrapbook. There are articles from People Magazine and Us Weekly that show a younger Hank Berger mugging for the camera under the Hollywood sign. He points to pictures of various people who have been given a piece of it: Sinatra, Don O'Connor, Gene Autry. A "thank you," written by then-President Ronald Reagan for his souvenir, rests in a small frame. Press clippings going back 26 years back up Berger's claims to the sign. He says he lost the receipt for the transaction with the Chamber of Commerce, but so what? As he puts it, "ownership is two-thirds of the law."

Berger says he met Dan Bliss while Bliss was still managing Peabody's and promoting Cleveland bands. When Bliss discovered Berger had the sign in storage in California, they made a deal: Bliss would try to sell the pieces online. Berger (and his business partner Bert Manning) would be given a percentage of any profit.

In December 2005, an Associated Press article quoted Bliss as saying that he'd sold the sign on eBay for 0,000. Berger, however, says that's untrue. The eBay auction yielded one bid for that amount but was pulled without a sale; Berger says he doesn't know why. Perhaps it was a clever marketing trick; it did garner some free publicity for Bliss' Web site. Or perhaps this Wood guy scared Bliss into taking it down.

"I just think this guy [Wood] saw it on eBay and thought he was entitled to a piece of it," says Berger. "But he can kiss my ass. I am Hollywood Hank."

Berger says he and Bliss still own the sign, which is in storage in California. You can still purchase pieces of it on Bliss' Web site, AuthenticHollywood.com.

Bliss is also in California, Berger says, making a documentary about Elvis sightings. Attempts to reach him through current and former associates, including Berger, were unsuccessful.

Update: Hank Berger Dead at age 55. (article found December 20, 2006)
Mr. Berger passed away on October 31st, 2006. Read more in thread response...

Well, it appears my research has paid off. Let me summarize...

Hank Berger of Cleveland, Ohio has been exposed as a fraudster who bilked thousands of dollars from the Federal government and committed numerous felonies; to include using another persons story for the purposes of financial gain. Here are the facts...

My father, Tony Wood, purchased the Original Hollywood Sign from the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce in 1978. Shortly thereafter his company went bankrupt and the sign was stored until the Feds had the opportunity to sell my fathers assets to cover the bankruptcy. Only this did not happen...

Fast forward to 25+ years later: Last December my father alerted me to the sale of the original sign on eBay (the one my father owned) which was brought to his attention by a friend who knew him back in those days. It wasn't so much the sale which bothered him, it was the fact the current owner was selling the sign under the pretense it was acquired from the original buyer. Only the original buyer was listed as Hank Berger.

Upon reading the story it became evident very quickly that Hank Berger was using my fathers story. The problem is at closer look the holes in the story were easy to see. You see, Berger could have gotten away with it if he had fibbed and said he acquired it through the Federal bankruptcy courts. My father probably would not have noticed the crime. Unfortunately for Berger he didn't, he used the story which matched the true original owner of the sign, Tony Wood. He claimed he cut the deal with the Chamber, he claimed he sold items from the sign, and ultimately claimed he stored it for 25+ years and forgot about it along the way; here is the exact line offered by Berger in an article written about the sale:

"I forgot I even had the damn thing," says Berger, who became a successful restaurant and nightclub broker in Ohio. "Out of sight, out of mind."

So this begs the question, why would Berger use my fathers story?

I have your answer, only Berger wont appreciate the truth. There are two scenarios and I challenge anyone to come up with a third - I actually encourage it!

1) Berger acquired the sign legitimately through the Feds.
2) Berger acquired the sign illegally through other means.

This has been my argument all along, the two scenarios above. I have sufficient evidence to bolster scenario two. The interesting part is my argument is further solidified through the words of Hank Berger himself. He has perjured him self in the public eye and without offering the evidence I have already collected I will allow Hank Berger to prove me right...

The Cleveland Freetimes ran an article today about the possibility of the sign being stolen by Mr. Berger. They were able to find him and this is what he had to say about it...

"If he had it to do over again, he might have let the sign deteriorate under the California sun. "I've paid close to ,000 in storage fees over the years," he says."

Ok, so wait a minute... He has paid close to 80 grand in storage fees, but in the original story offered by Berger he claimed he forgot about it, "out of sight, out of mind." I don't know about you, but if I paid 80K in storage fees regardless of the time span I wouldn't forget about it, would you?

Here is another quote which I must retort...

"I just think this guy [Wood] saw it on eBay and thought he was entitled to a piece of it," says Berger. "But he can kiss my ass. I am Hollywood Hank."

First of all, how pompous is this son of a bitch? Also, my father was alerted to the sale in December and wasn't questioning his rights to the sign at the time. He wanted an answer as to why this Berger guy was claiming his story. Wouldn't this ring alarm bells in your head? This is why I got personally involved, to claim back the story which is rightfully my fathers.

Furthermore, under federal bankruptcy laws at the time coupled with the facts, my father is also entitled to all proceeds of the sign and the sign itself (or whatever is left). You see, Mr. Berger doesn't realize the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce could not have legally sold him the sign. Once my fathers company went bankrupt, the sign belonged to the feds, and if they could not find a suitable buyer then the sign should have been returned to my father.

And to top it off, the ultimate scammer sealed his fate when being interviewed by the Freetimes...

"Yes, he was aware of Tony Wood's novelty business, he says. But after Wood's company folded, he claims he bought the sign legit from the Chamber of Commerce. (The Chamber confirms the sale to Wood, but has no other records from that time.) Like Wood, he broke the sign up into keepsakes."

Mr. Berger, you claimed you were the original buyer of the sign, are you not? The claim of purchasing the sign legit from the Chamber puts them at risk for illegally selling property they did not own. Please tell me you can come up with an excuse better than this?

You should be ashamed, Hank Berger. Cleveland is a beautiful city with wonderful people and you are the pariah which will keep honest, hard-working people like my father from visiting any time soon...

Please use the link I offer below to see the other evidence I have gathered against the fraudster, Hank Berger. Thanks for reading..

http://www.scams.net/showthread.php?t=323

P.S. I encourage the Freetimes or any other news agencies to direct people to this site. If anyone wishes for an interview or authentic documentation of the evidence I have collected. I will offer the truth without cost, the facts are free.