Philately lacks drama. Maybe that's why stamp collectors love a good scandal in our hobby. Though philatelists tend to differ in opinion on what constitutes a good stamp scandal, most will agree that a good scandal must be international in scope, affect thousands of collectors, and defraud collectors of large amounts of money. By these standards most of today's issues qualify as irritants or distractions. All will agree though that there have been three major philatelic frauds in the history of our hobby.
The first major stamp scandal became well known just after the turn of the twentieth century. Stamp collecting was becoming the popular hobby it is today, and prices for earlier material that had never been saved in much quantity was going up. To satisfy demand, the Swiss printer Francois Fournier began "reprinting" earlier stamps and selling them to collectors. Calling these stamps "reprints" was a lie, they were out and out forgeries. But, to Fournier's credit, he did sell them at reprint prices (The distinction that "re-printers" use to justify their ethical precedence over forgers is this