• Responding to email notices you receive.
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    Posted 08/15/2025
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    Yeah, I know. They are a pain in the butt. But they pay the bills to keep my server running. Just a fact of life, I am afraid.

    Want to get rid of them? Simple. Just become a Contributor level member or above and they will be gone. -> Please click HERE."

    Is that too much for me to ask of you to keep this site running? Well, sorry about that. I too wish I could get everything for free. But alas.....

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    Google Adsense ad revenue for December, 2025 was just $30 over the cost of the lease for the server running this site. So, in effect, the money providing the incentive for me to continue running this site is coming SOLELY from the paid memberships and sponsorships here. Which honestly ain't much....

Bad Guy Derek Corrado AKA DC Reptiles

We can also take at look at this in a cognative, time sequence starting backwards.

FACT: Derek is in possession of the stolen frogs and is witnessed with them in hand as he delivers them to another member of the dart frog hobby community - Chris K.

If he is unwilling to divulge another person that he "obtained" the stolen frogs from, and surrounding details and other pertinant information - then a criminal charge of possession of stolen property is appropriate in this case.

It is up to HIM to account for exactly how the stolen frogs came into his possession. The mere fact of possession is the "mens rae" or all the nessesary gulit needed to go forward with a police criminal complaint in any jursidiction that I'm aware of.
 
lucille said:
Just curious as to the 'unique identifying markings'? Are all of these frogs different, so that they can be clearly identified?
Click to expand...


Yes Lucille. All of these frogs are marked different. Basically the same colors but like snakes they have different variations in their patterns. :thumbsup:
 
And does the owner have photos of the little froggies dated prior to the alleged theft?
 
lucille said:
And does the owner have photos of the little froggies dated prior to the alleged theft?
Click to expand...

It's possible, but probably not. The original buyer and seller have ID'd the animals that Derek returned and tens of people at the meet saw them. They actually all don't look the same to frog guys :)

Not sure how that would change things, though, as Derek returned the frogs.

None of the parties, Derek included, have disputed that these weren't the originally stolen animals.

Derek claimed on the Frog sites that he had nothing to do with it, and kept stressing that nothing could be proven. After the IP information convinced the community that he was lying, he returned the original frogs to the original seller (claiming that he recovered them from the real thief, who he can't name).
 
From what I understand, these are expensive frogs. No-one is just going to hand over something worth that much for no reason. It doesn't make sense to assume that there is a possibility that the frogs given to the person stolen from were not the frogs that were stolen in the first place.
 
Just to confirm, photos were taken of the frogs prior to the initial purchase and they match the returned frogs.

As for substantiating evidence, maybe a bit more clarity is needed. I received emails from the person saying that had the stolen frogs. When that person failed to deliver on their part of the return agreement I had Matt (melas) check the IP on the emails I received. I then entered the IP address into the IP search feature on DB (where I am a MOD) and it immediately came up with DC Reptiles. Prior to this I assumed that DCReptiles did not steal the frogs, based on private assurances. Needless to say, I believe the evidence to be irrefutable.
 
<moderator hat - off>
So, basically, you have shown that Ray (stemcellular) is not to be trusted; since his offer of anonymity was a total crock. I doubt that was your intent, but that is part of what I gleaned from the posts.

Other than that, I'm glad that a) the frogs are making their way back to the rightful owner, and b) that you are trying to get word out about the thefts.
 
hhmoore said:
<moderator hat - off>
So, basically, you have shown that Ray (stemcellular) is not to be trusted; since his offer of anonymity was a total crock. I doubt that was your intent, but that is part of what I gleaned from the posts.

Other than that, I'm glad that a) the frogs are making their way back to the rightful owner, and b) that you are trying to get word out about the thefts.
Click to expand...

I would disagree that Ray is not to be trusted. His offer of anonymity came with a time limit. This dragged on for quite a bit and eventually Ray said something along the lines of (liberally paraphrased) 'if not returned by (such and such date) I will no longer honor the anonymity.' This post of his can be found somewhere in that thread that was linked, I believe.
 
kyryah said:
From what I understand, these are expensive frogs. No-one is just going to hand over something worth that much for no reason. It doesn't make sense to assume that there is a possibility that the frogs given to the person stolen from were not the frogs that were stolen in the first place.
Click to expand...

Identifying ownership of property is a crucial step. Sometimes a wrongdoer cannot be nailed because that step was not taken. Part of the elements defining theft is the taking of another's property ......
 
The conditions of the deal were predicated on the person acting in good faith to deliver the frogs. If one reads the actual text from the emails on page 1 of this thread, as opposed to jumping to conclusions, they would see that many efforts were made to provide the individual with an opportunity to right his wrong (to the extent that I even offered to drive out of my way over the Christmas holiday to pick up the frogs...the individual indicated that he was too busy to deliver the stolen frogs). Furthermore, at no time did I actually release the individuals information. I simply told the individual what we had discovered and that I would no longer participate in the transaction.
 
lucille said:
Identifying ownership of property is a crucial step. Sometimes a wrongdoer cannot be nailed because that step was not taken. Part of the elements defining theft is the taking of another's property ......
Click to expand...

Gotcha ;) I wasn't looking at it from that angle, makes complete sense.
 
Keep in mind....this incident is a little more convoluted than most false advertising /non payment BOI type cases.
 
Matt (melas) actually summed it up nicely for the DB community...

Originally Posted by melas View Post
Okay so this is out there now . . . I've kept quiet on this thread as I was trying to remain neutral. I was asked to meet the self-admitted thief to get the frogs so that I could get them to Chris. I was contacted by Ray because of my proximity to the thief. My main concern in all of this was to first get the frogs back. Since that is no longer on the table here is what I know:

I will not devulge the person's name on here either - please contact Chris for that info. I have to say that I am INCREDIBLY upset by this whole thing and am very angry that this all went down at Scott's house. He has been nothing but the most GRACIOUS host and to betray his trust like this is absolutely horrendous!

I was in contact with the individual, let's call him Beelzebub early last week. I sent many emails back and forth trying to arrange for a pick up. Beelzebub did not want to call me over the phone but only wanted to use email. It was obvious that he just went out to hotmail and created some bogus account. We lost contact with him for a day and he had to contact Ray again to get my info because he lost the credentials to his account. His new account was the same as before but with a 1 on the end of it . . . so it was incredibly obvious that the account was created for the sole purpose of this thing.

Beelzebub continued to stall and complain about the distance, the economy, blah blah blah. I tried to remain neutral and understanding while forceful in trying to get him to meet me ASAP. He told us the area he was from and it was only an hour away from where I worked so I didn't think it was a big deal.

Ray and I started becoming very agitated with the stalling and so Ray asked, with my IT background, if there was anything I could do. I did some digging on the email headers and found that the email was being sent from a specific IP address and that it was NOT from where Beelzebub said he was from. A few hundred miles away in fact . . . so I alerted Ray to this and he compared it to the DB login IP's and it matched. It matched one individual. Ray contacted this individual directly and called him out over his personal email. The email we received back from this individual (we'll call him Lucifer) just so happened to be sent from the exact same IP address as the one's sent from Beelzebub and was also the same as Lucifer's DB IP address . . .

It would seem we had the thief caught red-handed. There are literally 4 billion possible IP address combinations. So the chance of this being a coincidence are essentially NONE. Presented with this information Lucifer denied the allegations and has tried to pass this off as being due to their involvement in play World of Warcraft. After several emails with Lucifer we found that he was holding to his "innocence" despite the information. At the same time we were making contact with Beelzebub. His attitude changed drastically - going from being extremely apologetic to antagonizing.

Also upon learning of the IP address issue BOTH Lucifer and Beelzebub's IP addresses changed. Beelzebub is now contacting us from a Blackberry that is also in the same area as Lucifer.

Another important clue that I found was that Beelzebub had continually misspelled the word "rough" - several times and spelled incorrectly in the same way each time. After doing a search on DB I found a post by Lucifer where he spelled it the same way . . .

I made no promises of confidentiality so here's everything I know. I have the emails, IP's, etc and will be MORE than happy to cooperate with the police. I would encourage Chris and Julio to pursue this as there is MORE than enough forensic network evidence to lock this up.

Sorry if this is a bit frazzled but I am really upset. I considered this guy a close friend. So many times I went back and forth on this but there is no denying this evidence . . . Lucifer . . . I considered you a true friend. I'm sorry this is the way it's going to go down but it was your choice.
 
hhmoore said:
<moderator hat - off>
So, basically, you have shown that Ray (stemcellular) is not to be trusted; since his offer of anonymity was a total crock. I doubt that was your intent, but that is part of what I gleaned from the posts.
Click to expand...

Nope, Ray (stemcellular) was stand-up from the start. He offered to be the intermediary just to help and let it be known that if the thief returned the frogs he would be kept anonymous. There were a lot of people on the boards that really tried to pressure him to give the info out, and he let it be known that he would not. Only after they had confirmed that Derek and the thief had the same IP address, confronted Derek (and the "thief") privately, and Derek (and the "thief") suddenly become uncooperative, did the info come out and it wasn't from Ray.

I can't think of how he could have acted more professionally.
 
For the record, I don't believe for a moment that Ray isn't to be trusted, or that his word isn't important to him....however, when only part of the story is being presented here, that is all we have to go by. I can't make it any plainer that what might have been said or "proven" on dendroboard is pretty much irrelevant here. Your forum does not have the same requirements as this one, so you can't link to a thread and call it a day. I referenced that fact earlier, and linked to the admin's statement on the matter.
You want to bring the story here - GREAT!! - bring it here....but the case must be made here, without the assumption that we know things because they were posted someplace else.
 
We're trying :yesnod:

Ok, Matt ties J Karpinski, DCreptiles and alluringeli to the same IP. Emails from this IP admit to the taking of the frogs. A person, who is linked to this IP, actually hands the frogs over (after a few months of this nonsense).

What else are you guys looking for? That's a serious question. We'll find it.
 
Post the emails where the person admitted to taking the frogs, and also post the IP addresses without information being blocked out. That would be a start.
 
frogface said:
We're trying :yesnod:

Ok, Matt ties J Karpinski, DCreptiles and alluringeli to the same IP. Emails from this IP admit to the taking of the frogs. A person, who is linked to this IP, actually hands the frogs over (after a few months of this nonsense).

What else are you guys looking for? That's a serious question. We'll find it.
Click to expand...

I'm curious as to why he returned the frogs.
 
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