Jamie Wilson – Brigham City, Utah – BAD GUY

In autumn of 2007 I purchased an adult male 100% het Butterscotch Ghost from someone online with the intention of breeding ghosts at the time. The following year in early July I think I decided I wasn’t really interested in breeding that morph so I put the snake up for sale locally, asking what I had paid for it which was $275 or something around that. It came with papers and a guarantee, the person that had sold it to me had a good rep on Fauna also.

September 21st 2008 Jamie Wilson of Brigham City, Utah contacted me and offered me a trade of veiled chameleons for it. I said I wasn’t interested in such a trade. He then replied saying he had a cinnamon ball python due to breed soon. Arrangements were them made for a hatchling from the cinnamon due to hatch that spring, my het male was a payment towards it and I would pay the remainder of the money for the cinny when it hatched. He offered for a straight across trade and I said that would be fine. Looking back, hindsight is always 20/20 and I was pretty naïve. I did have the sense to quickly type up a written contract that he signed stating what our exchange would be, it wasn’t notarized or anything official, just something fast in writing and signed.

I told him I did not have a car and could not drive out to his place because of that, so in early October he came and picked up the snake from my place. He brought the cinnamon with to show her to me and left.

I did not hear a single thing from him until January 14th 2009; he e-mailed me saying he had decided not to breed ball pythons anymore. He said I could come pick up my snake and offered me the unproven cinny for $300. I said I couldn’t afford her but I thanked him for the offer. He replied again on the same day, January 14th saying he needed my address again so he could drop off my snake (since he had come to get it in the first place). Replied same day with my address.

January 18th I sent him an e-mail reminding him to please bring back the paperwork with my snake also, since it’s a het the paperwork is very important.

January 24th he e-mails me back saying he’s basically waiting for good weather so he “didn’t get stuck in SLC” when he drives out to drop off my snake.

…Nothing. He dropped off the face of the planet after that. No e-mail I sent was responded to, no call I made was returned.

I got ahold of him I think in late June or early to mid July of 2009 about, I’m not really sure I don’t have a record of it but I know I made contact with him because Jamie apologized for not giving me my snake back or returning my e-mails or calls. He said he’d had a serious back surgery and had been in the hospital. I said I understood. It took a bit of back and forth work but I was finally set a date to pick up the snake. I got their street address, I got a ride from a relative, and I went out to it. However, it wasn’t a house, so I called her back and left a message. She called me back several hours later, saying it wasn’t in Salt Lake City (which is the county in which I live, but not the city) but in Brigham City (different county, different address system) which had NOT been mentioned when I had gotten the address. If they had said something previous (and they very well may have) about where they lived (like all the way back in 2008) I definitely did not remember it due to the passage of so much time. Brigham City was over an hour away and my ride had already driven a half hour up to Salt Lake City from where we lived and spent 30 minutes looking for this house that wasn’t there, so my ride was pretty irritated and put out and I was forced to respect their decision when they said they would not drive me out to Brigham City that day. I called them back and gave them the news, but that I would be in touch with them soon to schedule another date to pick up the snake.

And that was it. I e-mailed them, I called them, I left a whole pile of messages (with my name and number ever time so they could get ahold of me) and nothing was ever returned to me. I somewhat suspected they were avoiding my calls for some reason.

FINALLY on 10/31/2009 I called from a different number and Jamie’s wife picks up! I told her who I was and I asked when I could come get my snake. There was a long pause and she asked, “Didn’t you get the message?”
“What message?” was my immediate response.
“Oh. He died.” I admit I was just stunned. My snake was dead? I told her no I’d never gotten any message, and that I had been calling her for months. She said she had called and left a message that my snake had died but I’ve never had any messages from her on any of my answering machines, and said that their phones had been shut off for a time despite the fact I’d never got any out of service messages when I had called. She told me two weeks after I had called to come pick it up all those months ago all the snakes in their collection had come down with a mystery disease and died. She then said she had to go and hung up quickly.

I call back the following day on 11/1/2007 and said I hadn’t got their her message and so I was unsure what she wanted to do as far as compensation went. Immediately she was angry and defensive. Her story changed somewhat, saying that my snake had actually been alive for months after I called and if I had “just showed up” to pick it up it would still be alive. I said it was over an hour drive and I had to ask and pay others to drive me out there and I couldn’t “just show up” when it was likely no one would be home.

She said there was all that time she kept my snake and fed it and housed it and said I should have come and picked it up. Well I reminded her that I did call and try to rearrange, left lots of messages, and I e-mailed her, but she never returned any calls or e-mails. She claims they do not have internet access and repeats her story about the shut off phones.

She kept saying over and over again, “I didn’t do it on purpose.” I kept my tone calm and tried to sound understanding. I never swore, screamed, raised my voice, or even pointed out that it was their fault their snakes had died. She claimed it was a mystery disease, but they had never taken the snakes to the vet, when their last snake got ill they just gave it away. They obviously did not practice proper QT procedures either. Instead I said I knew she hadn’t done it on purpose but it wasn’t my fault my snake got sick and died in her care and the snake had not been given to them for free. They had not paid anything for my snake. She got defensive and angry again and said, “Well I housed and fed your snake for all that time, should I have you pay for that?” I replied, “Sure, you can add it in to the cost of the snake and pay me the remainder.” She was silent; I suppose she thought I would say something else. But I didn’t mention they had initiated the transaction, and they had canceled it, not me. I was trying to be nice and get her to pay up for some of the snake they had killed; I wasn’t trying to make her even more upset or emotional. I explained to her as it was I was eating the entire cost of the snake that had died in her care, but she didn’t care, she just kept saying she hadn’t done it on purpose and all her snakes were dead too. Which I reminded her wasn’t due to any fault of mine, I hadn’t made her snakes ill.

However, it was very clear she didn’t feel she needed to pay anything for a snake she had not paid for, that belonged to someone else, and that they killed. I left her my number and said if she wanted to make it right to give me a call.

I know that call will never come.

So, in conclusion, this is a warning to everyone – Never do any type of business with Jamie Wilson of Brigham City, Utah or his wife, whatever her name may be.

-Faye Parker

I would lay down $50.00 that your snake is alive and quite well. It's classic scam line the whole way. Surgery, phones not working, animal died........