Dealer saves the day in NFL jersey scam

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - It had all the markings of an authentic NFL jersey and the price was certainly high enough.

Still, an Albuquerque woman says she was duped out of nearly $200 on a present for her son-in-law fighting in Afghanistan.

But then a local business stepped in to help.

"This is as good of fake as I've seen," co-owner Andy Hageman of Krystal's NFL Shoppe said.

It's the hottest jersey on the market, so it's no wonder why Reina Brown was ready to spend $184 on what was advertised as an authentic Denver Broncos Tim Tebow jersey for her son-in-law serving in Afghanistan.

Her daughter found an online company, and Brown reached for her credit card.

"She said, 'Mom, I found one. It's called the Denver Bronco Authentics,'" Brown said.

But the product didn't stand up to its name, and it didn't take Brown long to realize, "I've been taken."

She said the first clue was the packaging: the jersey was shipped in from China.

When she brought it in to Krystal's, the evidence piled up.

"The first thing that we spotted was the fact that the stitching of the jersey where the name Tebow is a very weak single stitch," Hageman said. It should be triple-stitched, he added.

The emblem compared to one on an authentic jersey is almost a match, but the darker, messy stitching is a giveaway.

While the tag is almost identical, the hologram is all wrong.

"First of all, the logo, the hologram is the wrong shape," Hageman said. "The NFL officially licensed hologram is a square hologram."

But getting a refund is almost impossible.

"We went to the website, and it said it didn't exist," Brown said.

The soldier's wife had to tell him it wasn't coming.

"He's wanted a jersey since then, and he was finally going to get that," Danielle Lovato said. "I didn't send him anything at all."

That's when Hageman stepped in saying the soldier would get his gift, an authentic jersey this time, and he would send it out

"That pretty much brought me to tears when he said that," Brown said.

Hageman said authentic Tebow jerseys have been sold out since December because Reebok gave up the contract to Nike and stopped making them.

Nike's version will come out in April, that's when the soldier's jersey will be sent to him.

In the meantime Brown is fighting to get the charge off her credit card.