Comment by serviceberry

I don't think it's an overt scam, but let's put it this way: as with auction houses, there is a disconnect between the service the company is providing and what the buyers think they're getting. And the companies have no special interest in correcting that.

For grading companies and for auction houses, the goal is to move the highest possible volume of goods at the highest possible valuation. They're not going out of their way to root out non-obvious fraud. They operate with the assumption that 99% of the traffic they're handling is legitimate, and of the 1% that's forged, only a small fraction of the buyers will ever find out. On the rare occasion it blows up, they can apologize and settle for an amount much less than what it would take to investigate every specimen with great zeal.