Not-Guilty Plea in Forged-Memorabilia Case : Baseball: San Juan man is accused of selling $8,000 in fake collectibles. Scam may have involved 14 O.C. victims.

A San Juan Capistrano man accused of selling up to $8,000 worth of phony baseball memorabilia pleaded not guilty here Wednesday to three felony counts. Authorities say the alleged forgery scam involved 14 victims in Orange County alone.

Sheriff’s deputies on Monday arrested Harold Berg (Hal) Gardner, 36, whose reputed activities extended to Los Angeles, Long Beach, Hollywood and San Diego.

Gardner, who works as a roofer, pleaded not guilty during his arraignment in South County Municipal Court. He was booked on suspicion of forgery, grand theft and possession of methamphetamine and is being held in Orange County Jail.

A spokesman for the district attorney’s office said Wednesday that Gardner will remain in jail without bail because he violated the terms of his probation stemming from previous convictions.

A public defender was assigned to represent Gardner, whose pretrial hearing was set for April 28 and his preliminary hearing for May 3.

An investigator posing as a collector met Gardner in Lake Forest on Monday and bought three documents that allegedly carried signatures of such Hall of Fame greats as Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Jackie Robinson, Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris.

Experts quickly verified the signatures as fakes, exposing a pattern of crimes throughout Southern California, said Sheriff’s Lt. Dan Martini. Last week, Gardner had been arrested in Costa Mesa on similar charges, but had been bailed out of jail.

Gardner is also suspected of having circulated phony Beatles memorabilia.

Orange County authorities first arrested Gardner last summer, when investigators say a sting operation exposed an attempt to sell a Mission Viejo collector a rare document reportedly autographed by Mantle and Maris.

Gardner had approached Orange County collectors with an affidavit that he claimed was signed by Mantle and Maris in 1965, investigators said.

The affidavit indicated that Mantle, Maris and other baseball greats would not be able to appear at a charity auction for Children’s Hospital in New York, but would send along other items as a donation.

Gardner allegedly circulated three such affidavits, all drawn on what appeared to be new paper and signed with a felt-tip pen, which investigators said did not come into widespread use until the 1970s. Licensed collectors later verified the affidavits as counterfeits, said sheriff’s fraud investigator Don Lambert.

Angelo Gonzalez, the owner of The Winning Play, a sports collectibles shop in Mission Viejo, tipped off sheriff’s deputies after Gardner approached him with the affidavits, others of which had been sold to dealers in Laguna Niguel and El Toro, investigators said.

“I knew immediately that it was bogus,” said Gonzalez, who, along with authorities, set up the sting operation at his shop in Mission Viejo.

“I told this guy (Gardner) that I had a buyer willing to purchase the affidavit for $1,000,” Gonzalez said. “The deputies hid nearby, and when he stated that it was a one-of-a-kind item, they arrested him on the spot. You should have seen the look on his face. It was one of utter disbelief.”

With the popularity of sports collectibles, Orange County has become one of the nation’s hot spots for trading and selling.

Such sudden popularity also has brought a sharp rise in fraud-related cases and a preponderance of sellers of counterfeit items, investigators said. The price of legitimate items has also soared in recent years.