BEWARE - Herpfauna Plus

I sold these people a 16 month old leopard tortoise that has been a family "pet" for the last 13 months. I held back 3 babies this past year to see how they would mature and look as older animals.
I sold the animal as a normal leopard tortoise for $235.00 shipped. Which I believed to be a male because of the "V" shaped anal plates.
What do I see on KS today ?
A ad in the tortoise section with MY pictures of the tortoise being advertised as a female "blonde" leopard for $450.00 shipped. Not only did they use my pictures but they also tried to remove and cut out the watermarks I had placed on them.
This animal is in no way form or shape a "blonde", we raised this tortoise since it was 3 months old and it looked like every other leopard tortoise baby out there.
Not only that, but these people called me the same day of delivery to tell me that the animal was smaller than they thought and that they really needed a bigger animal to raise and eventually breed with one of the females they had. I asked them to send it back to me for a full refund...they declined to send it back...so they asked me for a $35.00 refund because of the size discrepancy and I obliged...feeling that I had measured the animal wrong and was off by 1 1/4 inches ( I measured the carapace instead of the plastron ).

Here are the original pics of the tortoise posted on KS and on my site...




The ad I have on my site is still there located in the "Shelled" section.

Below in the following posts are pictures they used in their ads and of the ad itself.

1st picture used in their ad....

2nd pic they used in their ad.....

and heres the ad.......

Beautiful Blonde Leopard 4 1/2 in female
Miami Florida
Posted by HERPFAUNA PLUS (Contact Me!) on January 23, 2004 at 11:21:21
Registered PetHobbyist User since 2002-09-01
Click on thumbnails to view fullsize in a new window

I have this beautiful blonde Leopard tortoise, healthy and eating like a pig. Looks to be a female, judge for yourself. Asking $450.oo shipped (lower 48 states) or will trade for a 4 inch Female Indian Star, will pay for shipping- Let's negotiate! Must send Pics. Postal Money orders or Paypal (preferred) accepted. Thanks for Looking, *Herpfauna Plus*

Well, you definately have them for copyright violation.

Sould you explain the difference between a "normal" and a "blonde" leopard tortoise?

OOops! that was supposed to be "Could..."

It looks like they have taken that ad down and put up one with their own pictures now.

Blonde leopard tortoises start out as "blondes" from hatching. They are 90%-100% "blonde" even as hatchlings....they DO NOT mature into the blonde coloration. As you can see by the pics above, that particular animal has just about equal amounts of black versus "blonde". Blonde leopard tortoises are also genetic, when mating true "blonde" animals....you will produce "blonde" offspring. This animal along with its siblings were all dark just like any other leopard tortoise hatchling. If you bred this particular animal...you get nothing but normal babies.

This guy e-mailed me and showed his true ignorance....he tried to explain to me that there are variations of "blondes"...even though I explained to him that this particular animal was NOT from a blonde line and therefor is not genetic. This particular animal is nothing more than a very nice maturing Leopard tortoise as I have 2 more here at home that are also developing similiarly.

What'll happen is this guy will sell it as a "blonde" and then new owner will breed it only to produce nothing but NORMAL babies.

UPDATE
This guys name is Jason Medina out of florida, he now claims to have nothing to do with Herpfauna Plus and that they are just friends who let him post with Herpfauna's KS account.

I wonder if they ever read KS's terms of service ???

Screen shot of the old ad before they changed it:

Sasheena...
Thanks for posting that screenshot, I couldnt figure that one out.

You are welcome. I prefer in threads where they discuss an ad to see the actual ad. Lends credence.

How I do it...

I open the advertisement so that most if not all show on my screen.

I click on the "print screen" button

I open "Paint" (start button, programs, accessories, paint) it comes standard with Microsoft Windows I think.

I hit ctrl-v (paste) and voila, it is in the paint program.

I select the pertinent area, with the square selection tool and copy it, create a new document (so as to avoid all the rest of the screen cluttering things up) and paste to that document.

I save as a .jpeg and now I have a screen shot that is not too large to post, that has the necessary "proof" for all the doubting thomases out there.

It's really sad that people will go to such lengths as these people. Bad enough for them to tell the world they have something they don't, but worse that they also complained and got a partial refund, and their third strike is using your ALTERED photos. Three definate signs of "scum" if I've seen them.