Gary,
Kudos to you for trying to communicate with Nick. However, Nick is only one-half of this scheme. Mike has a video where he blatantly says that a boa that came to him as a "rescue" is going to make a great breeder.
They may have good intentions deep down, but it does not justify using craigslist (or any other method) to deceive people into giving up animals to be used as breeding stock or to generate revenue.
It is true that counties in Virginia have begun to re-examine laws regarding reptiles due to some recent incidents. I lived in Arlington for five years, was employed by the county, and kept several reptiles within county jurisdiction without incident. I support the citizen's right to stand up to government if something seems unfair, but I believe the effort has to be organized and not led by a lone, bumbling idiot with little to no knowledge of proper husbandry.
The reason that I am taking this so seriously is because I feel that people such as Mike and Nick are a disaster waiting to happen. When incidents involving reptiles occur, it results in a lot of very bad press, both for the keeper and the hobby as a whole. Virginia, like a lot of other states, does not have any problem legislating against the hobby to keep its citizens feeling safe. These two guys scare me...Nick has a two-year-old child in his condo...does he keep hots in the same building? Does he have hots in fish tanks in his bedroom? Who knows? This is the kind of guy who would drive a couple of hours up to Hamburg, buy himself a rattler, bring it back to his condo, and call himself a hot keeper. In all honesty, Gary, this guy scares me on multiple levels, for the safety of his toddler, the safety of his neighbors, and the rights of the hundreds of responsible keepers who live here.
Nick may or may not have hots in his condo, but he's not trustworthy. In one of his videos, he shows a pair of snake hooks hanging on the wall in their "snake room." The hooks are barely 9" long!
Call me pessimistic, but I can see something with Nick and Mike going terribly wrong, and because they are unbelievably desperate for attention, it will cause a lot of very bad publicity. Will it be the reason Virginia says "no more?" It might...