• Responding to email notices you receive.
    **************************************************
    In short, DON'T! Email notices are to ONLY alert you of a reply to your private message or your ad on this site. Replying to the email just wastes your time as it goes NOWHERE, and probably pisses off the person you thought you replied to when they think you just ignored them. So instead of complaining to me about your messages not being replied to from this site via email, please READ that email notice that plainly states what you need to do in order to reply to who you are trying to converse with.

Great people in the Business - TSE Scammed Group Donaters

LadyOhh

LadyOhh

Ohh, what a Lady!
Joined
Sep 2, 2005
Messages
1,534
Reaction score
38
Points
0
Location
Los Angeles, CA
To make this a combined effort and to show how many amazing people are out there in the business, I wanted to create an umbrella thread to have people who have received animals from the TSE scammed group to post the amazing things that the people out there in the business that donated did, as well as their prospective personal threads.

If you may or may not know, Chris Johnson of Top Shelf Exotics was in the business several years ago selling hets. He turned out to be a fake, phony and a criminal, and disappeared with tens of thousands dollars from more than 30 people.

Some people received animals that never proved, some people never received anything.

In a combined group effort, some of the people who were scammed got together and have been in constant contact to see what could be done.

Jon Dvoritz and myself, Heather Wong, have been trying to find people in the business that could sympathize with and help the people who were scammed by donating animals to the people who lost out on their dreams.

Luckily, there are people out there that do care, and do want to help those in need.

So, for those amazing people, I want to thank you each and every one of you for your help and your efforts.

If you have your own stories, please post here as well.
 
Hello Heather,

Here is my story, three years ago, I purchased a pair of Het Pieds, and a pair of Het Clowns from TSE before all of this information came to the surface. I spent more than 3k on these animals which evidently turned out to be normals.

It is great you and the others are trying to help out the people who got really screwed by him. There are plenty of us out there. It is very unfortunate that this happend to so many of us.

One day Chris will get his, and that will be a great day for all of us.

-Nick Bottini
www.nickrbreptiles.com
 
Yeah, I sent off about $1200.oo and never recieved anything. It's awesome to see the good folks in the industry banding together to help out people who were scammed.
One day I hope to help out folks in a similar manner.
 
I purchased 1.1 "het" albino, and .1 "het" orange ghost from TSE. I did actually receive the supposed het albinos, but never got ANYTHING for the money I paid Chris Johnson for the het orange ghost. My "het" albino girl was bred to a KNOWN 100% male last year, and no surprise, all normal babies.

Neil Golli has donated an '06 het G-stripe male to me, and we are just waiting for the weather here to become warmer (we're still having highs in the single digits if not BELOW zero) to get him shipped out safely. I'm super excited about this guy...a couple of my upcoming projects are taking a bit of a different direction now, but it's gonna be a good thing. :)

Several folks have worked really hard on helping out the folks who were scammed, and each and every one of them deserve a huge thank you.....from Jon who started all of this quite some time ago, to those who spent countless hours writing letters and making phone calls trying to find attorneys and such....to those who took the time just to send in their depositions....to Heather who took over and got things moving again when some of us could no longer keep going, or darn near gave up.....to the wonderful folks like Neil who are pitching in to remind us all that there ARE good people left in this business, and that the good folks need to be here to stay. There has been an enormous amount of time and effort from people to bring this to fruition.

A HUGE thanks to everyone involved.
 
Cat I kinda got lost in all of this long ago, did the money we donated ever get used towards anything? Along with the money collect with our dontated auctions? :shrug01:
 
I purchased a Sumatran black blood from TSE. This animal will be staying with me as long as it lives to remind me of Chris Johnson and the harm he did to a lot of Fauna friends. Cat, I agree with you Neil is excellent. I purchased two very nice looking ball pythons from him and I'm looking forward to see him in Daytona 08'.
 
varnyard said:
Cat I kinda got lost in all of this long ago, did the money we donated ever get used towards anything? Along with the money collect with our dontated auctions? :shrug01:
Click to expand...

I'm curious on this too. Many people donated to the "TSE Fund" but we have no idea what happened with that money. :shrug01:
 
I contacted Bobby privately and answered this, as I was REALLY hoping this would remain a thread about the positives....and I really should have included all of those who did donate funds in my many thanks...I owe you all a big apology for not mentioning you. It was really awesome the way you folks stepped up to help too!

As much as we tried, we could not get an attorney to take our case. As I said, countless hours were spent trying, to no avail. The donators should have all been informed either by email or on a private forum, we no longer had any concrete plans for the funds, and they were welcome to request the monies be returned. If anyone who donated has not been contacted nor read the forum, they are more than welcome to request that refund now. If anyone has any other questions, feel free to contact me, and I will get you in touch with who you need to be in touch with.
 
Adam,

There are people you can buy from with your eyes closed; just a hand shake and no papaerwork needed.
 
As far as the court is concerned a judgment was handed out for Chris to essentially pay us back. The best we can hope for is the court to allow Chris' wages to be garnished to pay off the judgment - however the court cannot force Chris to work - and he'll likely work off the books for as long as he can to avoid having to pay - it's not that hard to do - and people like Chris can't hold real jobs anyway. The DA decided against filing criminal charges - so there is no need to continue holding onto the funds that were collected - it's not going to move any more forward from this point.

As for the intent of the thread - I am really surprised to find this on the BOI - the original intentions regarding the donations was overwhelming for many of us - but there were too many egos involved and the execution and delivery fell apart. What could have been a good thing - turned into an embarrassment - IMO.

Certainly props to Jon for trying to put it together and Heather for trying to see it through as well as those that actually donated. :thumbsup:
 
I assume nothing was set aside for those of us that were scammed by TSE outside of the het scam?
 
I'll know definitively in about 3 months or so, Juliet is definately building eggs, but I think I can say without hesitation that I'm a member of this club since I bought my pair from Chris in 2005, at the height of his reign of deception. The only person I think I deserve restitution from is good ol' CJ. Of course that will never happen.
 
This has been a great effort on the part of many people, and it is through no fault of ANY of those folks that criminal charges were not filed. Many people HAVE stepped up and helped out in many ways, and just because it didn't all work out as wonderfully as hoped, there is no need for anyone to be less than thankful, nor proud of the effort put forth and kindness shown by others. No one had to do ANYTHING. It speaks volumes about those that were kind enough to step forward and offer whatever they could to try to soften the blow the Chris Johnson delivered to many of us.

There has been no question as the the donators receiving a refund....many of them already have, and I have already contacted Bob in regard to getting them out to anyone who hasn't already gotten them.

As far as anything being "set aside" for those outside of the initial TSE scam, my last impression was that folks were repeatedly asked to send their story, information, submit depositions, etc, and the ones who did so were included in the initial recuperation effort. I honestly can't say if there are donations/donators left over, or still forthcoming, etc.....but as Heather said....let her know what's up, and we can only go from there!
 
I fully intended this thread to only be about the POSITIVES regarding the whole issue.

If you have any questions, please PM either me or Cat regarding anything you may have to say about the TSE Scam or otherwise.

Otherwise, lets hope that this thread stays positive and about the people who donated and who are thankful, as the thread was originally intended.
 
With all due respect - I don't think that there is a rule that only positive comments can be made on a BOI thread. :rolleyes:

Continue sugar coating - I'll butt out.
 
Back
Top