anyone heard of James Donovan?

[weiside]

I have a very interesting inquiry regarding him. If anyone knows him directly or through past deals, please email me and let me know. I'd like to clear up something that seems fishy.

[weiside]

I would like it if someone could help me out here. Something fishy is going on about a month after I closed a deal with someone. Here's my story:

I saw Lanier Reptiles advertising a ghost male ball python and adult female pair for sale on kingsnake. I went for it, and eventually purchased the pair for a very good price. I was surprised at how quickly the lanier's answered each email and thought them to be good people - and I still think this way. They have continued talking to me through email. Now here is the weird part. I recently talked to an acquaintance through email about a ghost ball that he almost got, but didn't. After I showed him pictures of my ghost, I was amazed to learn that he received pictures of the same snakes from a man named JAMES DONOVAN who was selling them. James said they were produced from hets by someone in St. Lous, which I'm assuming is the Laniers. This part is true. However, James never mentioned the snake being a Bell line ghost, while the Lanier's consistently told me it was Bell line.

This is very strange to me - same snakes, different people offering for sale. I've talked to the Lanier's about this and they were surprised. Now we both think that maybe this Donovan guy received pictures from the Lanier's and was trying to sell them as his own, to get some money possibly being the "middleman". However, he had so many pictures that now I don't know who to believe.

I have the emails which also tell me the IPs of the original email addresses. If someone would like to help me figure out exactly what happened, please email me at weiside@hotmail.com. I'm just a herp hobbyist and not a for profit breeder but I'd like to get down to the bottom of this.

Thanks for reading!