Anthony McCain is a guy to avoid

In the past on this forum I have posted some positive things about Anthony McCain. I liked Anthony and enjoyed talking to him and doing business with him. I had gotten some ball pythons from him a year ago and am in the middle of a tranaction with him now. At this point I need to retract the positive statements that I made and caution people not to do business with Anthony.

I was introduced to Anthony by a mutual friend and reptile breeder. A few months ago that friend had a deal with Anthony that he felt he was cheated on and cautioned me to not do any further deals with Anthony. I thought better of him and went ahead anyway. Here are the details of my two transactions.

Last year in October I received a male spider and a male yellow belly/het ivory from Anthony in a trade. They looked great. I got them home and set them up. The spider has done fine. The male yellow belly has never eaten well. After a couple weeks I called Anthony and told him the yellow belly was not eating. His response was that all the ones he kept ate great. Not what you want to hear? So I kept working on the snake with not much luck and kept telling Anthony at every point we talked over the next few months how dissapointed I was with the snake. He never offered to replace it, take it back, credit me for it, nothing. So now 3 weeks short of a year later (so the snake is about (13-14 months old) the yellow belly is 300 grams and will not make it to breeding size. All of my other 2005 raisers are 600-1000 grams. very dissapointing. But it happens.

I liked Anthony and thought I wanted to try to do business with him again to see if that was just a fluke. We talked on a regular basis for awhile and he offered me mojaves. I have one and did not want more males. He then offered me a male super pastel. I had been trying to produce one myself but had not had much luck so I caved in and agreed to buy a male super pastel from Anthony at $3500. I then asked him to send me photos of the animal. I told him I would send him a good deposit and then that at the latest I would have him paid in full before the Tinley Park show in October of this year. He agreed to that but asked me to if I could get him paid sooner so that he could ship to me as he needed rack space. I told him I would do my best to get him paid in 30 days, at the time of that conversation it was just under 2 months to Tinley.

Anthony last week decided that he wanted an animal I was selling for $1800. He asked me to send him the snake for $1500 and I told him I would enclose a check for him that I would then call him and tell him when to cash. He agreed with those terms and told me he would ship after he received my package. So I spent another $50, ate $300 on the snake he wanted and shipped him the package, going one further, enclosing 2 post dated checks that would be good this week and the week prior to Tinley.

Anthony received the package and said nothing, as I verified with FedEx. I called him eventually and asked him if the animal arrived safely and how he liked it. He was very pleased with both it's appearance and size and told me how much he appreciate the checks. I then waited for him to ship.

After a couple days went by and he did not ship or tell me when he would ship I called and asked him on his voicemail what was going on with shipping. He responded with voicemail and email telling me he was not going to ship because he was worried about something happening to the snake in transit and that he could not replace it. He was very upbeat and there did not seem to be any problem. I emailed and called back, getting voicemail, telling him that I wanted to stick with what we agreed to. I had been offered male supers from 2 other friends of mine and wanted to see if they were bigger and/or nicer than the one coming from him so I would know what to keep and what to trade or resell. Still no pictures from Anthony and no shipment.

I then get a horribly rude email from Anthony telling me that he had lied about his reasons for not shipping and was not shipping because my checks had not cleared and he would not ever give anyone a snake that was not paid for. Needless to say, I had been very polite and easy to deal with up until this point, he became very very rude and that started the problem for me.

So I emailed Anthony back and told him that my problem was simple, he did not do what he said that he would and since I have now given him $2500 and the checks to hold for the balance, I have still never seen the animal and now I have 2 other pending deals I can not move forward with due to him. Still no pictures from Anthony, but several voicemails and emails filled with threats, insults and strangly a list of slanders and accusations towards others in the business that have nothing to do with anything except in his opinion prove his point of why he is not shipping to me.

At this point we have a serious problem. He has now threatened me, slandered me and slandered and threatened both friens of mine and people I do not even talk to or deal with. This is a really bizarre and unstable thing to do. And knowing that he invites me to "forward it" "you know you want to". Now I am at an unfamiliar point in a deal where I am calm and very confused. This guy has just really shown himself to be a very disturbed person.

To add to that, I politely said in a calm voice in the last voicemail I left him, and in an email I sent him that since he did not want to send me a picture of the snake and would not let me have the animal until Tinley Park that the animal needed to be healthy, as described, a male as agreed and that if I was not happy with it I expected him to refund my money in full or give me the snake back I sent him and the balance if the animal does not meet expectations. I felt that was a very reasonable thing to say and I felt at this point I needed to protect myself from a major financial loss on the deal.

With that said, I told him there was nothing more to be said and that I expected to see him friday at show setup to get our transaction over and done. I thought that would be the end of that. I then get 2 voicemails and 3 emails, full of swearing and crazy insults and accusations. Apparently Marc Bailey, Bob Clark, Dan and Collete Sutherland and Ian G., are in Anthony's humble opinion all thieves and scum. I have his emails and voicemails saved in case they are needed. I would be happy to post the emails in this thread if somebody could tell me how to go about that and if a moderator could advise me on whether I would be able to post emails with obscenities in them so people can read what was wriiten or if I would have to censor them.

I want everyone to understand that I am very unhappy with this turn events and really wanted things to go well and to have future business with Anthony, but as I have now been told by many people, he is very unstable and makes threats and backs off his promises and I am far from the first that this has happened to. I would welcome Anthony to post a response to this but if he should he needs to keep in mind that I have emails, voicemails and witness statements to his behavior in this transaction and wil not tolerate him lying his way out of this thread. If anything I feel I am absolutely owed an apology. I still have not responded to his correspondence or retaliated in any way and do not intend to. I will however make the phone call and emails statements he made to me, concerning others in the business available to them and they can do what they like with that information.

Since, then I have talked to anthony and he offered to ship the snake to me on Monday via FedEx with no live arrival guarentee. I declined. I told him that to me $3500 is a lot of money. He told me that he felt $3500 was nothing. At this point I have told him that I would just like to get the animal at the show and be done with this and him for good. Since I posted this thread earlier today I have had a bunch of phone calls and people keep saying the same thing. They had an identical experience with anthony and never want anything to do with him again.

You see you are f*cking with the wrong person here Evan.. I have been patient with you and now you are becoming a f*cking pain in the ass... I don't care , say what you want to I HAVE the gene to make the f*cking Super Stripes so I KNOW what the f*ck they look like and the animal you sent is "similiar" but not exact in overall color, head markings and belly marks.. If I thought you may be interested in buying one of these animals like the one I already sold for 11k then I would show it to you and prove to you my point , but since you obviously are not going to do that then there is no point is there??? I have forgotten more about these snakes than people like yourself will ever know so it makes NO difference to me, do you think it is a just luck that I have produced ALL the sh*t that I have (100+ Albinos , 20+ Pieds , Ivories, Supers , SUPER STRIPES, Mystics, Spiders, soon to be Genetic Stripes... etc.. etc)....??? I can gladly bring this animal you sent me to Tinley and if you think the Super isn't what I said it would be then I guess I will get out my checkbook and write you a $2000 check and give this UNPROVEN one back ... I won't tolerate BS from ANYONE including you, so do what you like makes NO difference to me at this point ... As for future business , looking back at it if it would take this long to get $3500 from you then how long would it take down the road if we had a $10,000 deal in the works a f*cking year to get paid?, whatever man.... This animal is fine he eats fine , he looks fine , he is healthly so I will be able to sell it for CASH ON THE SPOT at the show either way , without waiting ALL summer for it............... CAN YOU GO TO WAL MART AND WRITE A CHECK POST DATED FOR 2 WEEKS DOWN THE ROAD AND WALK OUT WITH THE PRODUCT YOU WANT TO BUY, I DIDN'T THINK SO.. CAN YOU ASK YOUR BOSS TO GIVE YOU A CHECK 2 WEEKS IN ADVANCE , GENERALLY ABOSOLUTELY NOT ..... By the time these chacks clear Tinley will be here and your Super Pastel will be there waiting for you at the show.............. I have had problems with people over money (names like Bob Clark over Albinos, or even Ian Gniazdowski who decided to bounce a f*cking 7k check on me once and took 10 f*cking days to make it right, myself as well as my bank were PISSED to say the least)..If I remember correctly I have heard you mention the same run around with others happening to you so you of all people should understand my point here , I am not about to EVER put myself in that spot again, I don't care who the f*ck you are or think you are, I don't do business that way.. Call Bailey maybe he does business that way he's used to f*cked up deals anyway , that's how he gets ahead as far as I'm concerned ........... Anthony McCain-McCain's Reptiles..


That is an email from Anthony word for word except for my *'s edits for offensive content. Evan

I for one would love to see BOTH sides of all the e-mails. I have known Anthony for years and feel he is a good guy and would not hesitate in doing any business with him. Hell, Evan there is no way I would not send you an animal and have you write post dated checks for it......that's a little over the edge in expecting to receive the good without being paid for.

It would be helpful if one of the Mods could tack the posts from the first thread onto this one before it gets too long.

I agree with Rob, all emails should be posted to make your case Evan. I have not done business with Anthony, but have heard nothing but good things about him.

I agree also......though I don't think anything excuses the vulgar emails Anthony sent, but I think there may be misunderstandings on both sides. It's hard to say without seeing the full conversations.

I think the "name dropping" was a little much as well, on both ends.

1) I do not need to defend my actions. Anthony and I had a deal. I covered everything that I had agreed to do. anthony then failed to do so.

2) Please feel free to ask Dan and Collette Sutherland, Ian, Bob Clark, marc Bailey or any of the others that Anthony slandered for their opinion of him. I have dropped no names. re-read the post. Anthony is the one who out of the blue for absolutly no reason attacked all of those people.

3) Anthony is bi-polar and acts out like this. I have heard from half a dozen people today that I have never met or talked to before who just wanted to let me know that my experience was not unique.

Rob, I am very very tired of you jumping into anything I post on this site and taking shots at me. I have posted my detailed account of the facts. I have shown you the kinds of emails he sent me. If you believe so much in anthony go and get him to respond him and say that I am lying or misrepresenting anything because he can't do that.

No one is jumping down your throat.
If you'll read through any of the bad-guy posts down the way, you'll see everyone has been asked to present BOTH sides, this meaning emails being sent and received.
Attitude like you're having is just going to make people suspicious.

Evan,
I just want to say that for me I really don't need to hear both sides of the stories I have read scores of posts from you and I find you to be a real stand up guy. You have answered many of my questions on here and have a crystal clear record of business. I hope that this ends up resolving, and it does sound like he has some kind of mental issues he needs to deal with. I do not think that he will be able to explain his profanity and if he treats ANYONE in this manner then he should be avoided for business anyway. JMHO!

Posting the emails with that little bit of censoring is fine Evan.