Neil Gale- anyone heard of him? Seems fishy

I was debating whether to post on this, but I'm really curious as to whether or not this guy was legitimate. Due to too many red flags, and his rather pushy and snippy nature, I decided not to do business and have found my spiders elsewhere.

I inquired as to an add he had on Kingsnake for adult female Poecilotheria metallica. He responded within a few hours that he had one left and could ship it the next day for Friday delivery. The weather was in the 20'sF in my area and I would be at work Friday, so I asked if he did Saturday delivery and if the cold would be ok. He said he could do that and assured me she'd be fine. I said I needed to double-check with the fiance that it was ok. Neil emailed me a few hours later asking if I'd checked and if I had an answer. I told him I was waiting. I asked about live arrival guarantee and his Paypal address- this is when he told me he didn't have Paypal and asked me to go to CVS to get an Xpress Packet. I told him I really wasn't comfortable paying that way because there was no security for me.
He kept pushing, saying I could buy a $50 one, then he'd send the spider and I could pay the rest. But it seemed odd to me that the spider was quoted at $175 shipped, but he wanted me to buy $150 worth of these packets....and then split them up into several payments. It just didn't sit right with me. I looked at the pictures again, and the two pictures showed two very different enclosures. I asked Neil if, to ease my concerns, he could take a picture of the spider that had something with today's date and my name written on it. He got very angry when I asked this and said I was being unreasonable and he'd been very nice to me, etc.

It's possible that he does have the spider and did intend to send it to me. But the willingness to ship in very cold weather combined with the odd payment method and his refusal to get an updated picture suggests he may not be legit.

I've attached all the screenshots of emails and the pictures he sent me. There are a lot of emails so I will need to include some in a reply to this post.

More emails.

Final emails and tarantula pictures he sent.

I would say it's a scammed. Here are other inquiries of him. Bottom link says he's from Saudi Arabia.

https://aussiepythons.com/forum/show...U-Scam-warning

http://sa.eharaj.com/ads/pair-of-con...rots-for-sale/

I would say it's a scammer, you have to love auto correct!

Email search - magicoflife2@gmail.com

The following info is from a German FB page; the translation is off I am sure.

Definitely a spammer. Already well-known in the Arachnid Comminity:

http://www.tarantulaforum.com/thread...brummack.4928/

http://www.arachnoboards.com/ab/show...phebopus-ok.de

*Community*

Obviously I can't spell. :/

I'm glad I didn't send him any money!

Originally Posted by Will0W783

I'm glad I didn't send him any money!

Me too.

Scammers make it hard to trust anyone, so everyone should do careful research on a seller's history before attempting to contact the seller.

If it seems too good to be true... be careful and research first!