David Reid said:
Just wondering: Could someone sell fake hets for a few years, before they could be proven out, and then use that money to purchase a visual, and then post pics of the visual showing people that they could indeed make hets?
Unfortunately yes. You sell hets the first year. At best it's two years before the females are ready to produce, but more realistically 3 years for most.
Even in the best case where the buyer has a visual male to breed with them, the first season of producing no visuals isn't confirmation. With a small clutch it isn't even cause for alarm.
Second season with no visuals raises questions, and for many is enough circumstantial evidence to highly suspect they are not hets. At this point the hets are five years old, and in the preceeding five years more and more hets have been sold to other people.
A few questions might have been raised earlier by fake het males who could have been bred at an earlier age, but you'll have a minimum of four years before serious questions are raised.
However, buying visuals will not necessarily help at this point. 2-3 consecutive seasons of those hets producing no visuals will be enough evidence to convince anyone that the seller has been running a scam and owning visuals will really do nothing to help that situation. However, in the 4-5 years they ran the scam, they brought in thousands of dollars, and even after the word is out, there will still be a significant percentage of potential buyers that do not know of their tactics. While sales will decrease, then can most likely squeeze an additional year or two out of it before being forced to disappear.
In the case that brought about this thread, they just made a stupid mistake. They should have never offered animals produced by someone not within their circle as something they are not. At the same time, I'm sure CRE has realized that the gravy train is about to stop. They've had their run, and it's getting time for the conclusive evidence to be seen. Therefore it's not a great risk they're taking, since they are likely already planning to execute their exit strategy.
Regardless of the low possibility of actually losing a lawsuit, they can find themselves in a few, which costs money anyway.
If I remember correctly I have seen the CRE table at a few shows. They had a pied, and albino, and a few other morphs there as display. Granted they weren't the best looking animals, nor in the best condition, but I wouldn't be surprised if they haven't sold a fair number of genuine hets as well. The reason being, when questions start being raised they will have customers available that have proven out animals purchased from them to add confusion and possibly a little weight to their insistance that it's just bad odds and the animals believed not to be het will prove out if given another chance.
It's all smoke and mirrors, and overall a pretty well planned scam. They claimed to be a co-op, a strategy that allowed them to offer animals at better prices. All the while they were selling normals as hets, so even when selling the hets at a huge discount were making a huge profit. Selling normals like that also allowed then to have an unlimited supply of their "hets", so they could fill every order made.
When they first came on the scene a few years ago I actually considered buying a few things from them, especially considering I could just drive down and pick them up. After seeing their table though, I knew I didn't want anything from their facility and even then had my suspicions about their intentions.
