DENVER — Blue signs scattered through Denver's Central Park neighborhood offer a rare opportunity to bid on items from a divorce settlement at an auction taking place Sunday in Greenwood Village, but is it real?
The "must be sold" luxury items include a Ferrari, Rolexes and even Picasso paintings. Flyers sent through the mail offer the same promise.
If you're experiencing déjà vu, it's because signs like these have popped up before in Denver and around the country. They were spotted in the metro as recently as November 2021, according to a Reddit post.
And just last year, a TV station in Maryland found a sign with nearly the same verbiage as the ones found in Central Park. The ones here appear to link back to a company called Heritage Estate Solutions.
Its website has no information about its headquarters or its ownership. Who.is shows it was registered in 2019 in Virginia. However, the website does have multiple videos showing off some auction items.
Denver7 reached out to the company using the only contact information on its website, an email address, and has yet to receive a response. Denver7 also called the number on the sign. The woman on the other line with the "auction department" says it's not a scam and that the company does have a hotel space booked.
An employee at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel at 7801 E. Orchard Rd., where the company says the auction is scheduled to take place Sunday at 2 p.m., told Denver7 there is an auction event happening on Sunday. But what items will really be sold there is a mystery.
"If you can't figure out who the seller is, who’s doing the auction, that should raise some questions for you," Edith Parrish-Kohler said Friday.
The owner and president of Colorado Premier Realty and Auction Services says most auctioneers won't advertise using yard signs like the ones seen in Central Park, and however they do advertise, they make sure consumers know exactly who they are and what they're selling.
"We are all about identification, brand identification and having our name visible and readily accessible," Parrish-Kohler said.
Having a membership with a state auctioneers association and a physical location accessible by the public isn't essential but a good sign an auction company is trustworthy, Parrish-Kohler says.
Heritage Estate Solutions is not a member of the Colorado Auctioneers Association, according to its online roster.
"The onus is on you, as a consumer, to do some background work and make sure that [what you're dealing with] is a legitimate company," she said.
A spokesperson with the Colorado Secretary of State says Heritage Estate Solutions is not registered to do business in the state. A spokesperson for Greenwood Village says it, too, doesn't have a record of the business, which means the business can't collect any sales tax from its auction sales.
