The cases of Joan Corbacho from Spain, and Klaus Hönninger and Carlos A. Vildoso from Peru, considered by some as prestig-ious paleontologists in their countries, are discussed here. The first one is a fossil collector and trader that, without a minimal scientific knowledge, published ca. 20 papers with proposals for a dozen new trilobite taxa coming from different Paleozoic for-mations in the Moroccan Anti-Atlas. Descriptions of new taxa seem formally valid but are rather inadequate, often based on poorly preserved material of dubious geological provenance, and mostly published as papers without peer review in a local jour-nal, managed by a private museum connected to the Seminary of Barcelona. Besides this, part of the published and figured tri-lobite specimens were later offered for sale in the internet, sometimes accompanied with a ‘certificate of authenticity’ signed by the Mus...