• Responding to email notices you receive.
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    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.

  • IMPORTANT! PLEASE READ!! About the Google Adsense ads being displayed

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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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    Addendum: 01/10/2026
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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 United Morphs - Nick Runde

I am shuddering at the possibility of someone killing a snake to get away with a scam. I really hope that's not what happened here...
 
Frankly, my blood is :censored: boiling looking at that poor snake. The thought that someone would actually kill that snake to perpetuate a lie and theft is horrendous!

The box is definitely NOT "smashed like crazy" and I agree with Ed. That blood on the bag is too red and there is not a trace of blood anywhere in the box.

In doing more digging I found this. Yeah, it's old (from 2012), is further proof that this Dakota Runde-Leto person is the one into reptiles. Nick Leto's FB doesn't reflect any indication of interest in herps of any kind.
 

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I have seen this "person's" photos before. I am just not sure where. I am not into FB, so it could not have been there. Might have even been on the BOI, but I do not remember.

Would a "person" kill a snake to perpetuate a lie? "People" kill people to perpetuate lies, too, so yes.

My spider sense is tingling when I see those photos. Things feel off.
 
The photo of the supposed dead snake is also suspect IMO. I see red spot of what could be blood but I see no trauma to the snake. The blood is just spotted on the snake and if the blood on the bag is actually real, that's quite a lot of blood considering it's so red and on the outside of the bag so it would of had to soak through and quite quickly to still be so red which is highly unlikely. The other thing that I noticed is the snakes mouth is closed in a normal position with no blood around it. For a snake to die and bleed that much where did all the blood come from if there are no lacerations on the body and the blood didn't come out of the mouth? At first I thought maybe the snake was taken out of the box and beaten while it was in the bag and not by some kids next door that decided to vandalize their neighbors mail. But I have a suspicion the snake in the photo might in fact be alive. The way the body is it looks like it's about to right itself from being held or positioned on its back for the photo. A dead snake that was just beaten to death won't have any muscle tone and would be limp as a wet noodle and that snake does not look that way at all.
 
Awesome spidey sense, Nick. I found the same pic at Select Morph's Photobucket.
 

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Yeah, I thought the same. A dead snake's tail doesn't curl. Seems quite obvious. I don't have a smart phone, so the pics when I first saw them were on a tiny little phone screen. It wasn't until right before I posted them that I loaded them from phone to computer.

What "Animal Control" would you suggest that I call?

A bit of a funny note... He claimed that he had no idea how to ship snakes. On his FB page, he's friends with "Ophidian Reptiles". I told him it's no problem. Just take the blackheads to Ophidian Reptiles (in Des Moines, relatively close to him), and I'll contact them and pay for them to ship them to me.

He then asked, "Where's Ophidian Reptiles?" That's when I told him it's in Des Moines, and that his FB page shows that he's friends with them. It's been silent since.

I'm ticked that I was stupid enough to go for this trade. Like I said, I've done trades before. I've had success every other time. Never again. Stupid scammers...
 
Oh geez ....

Where's the emoticon thingy for totally and completely red-faced?
 
The photos of his face are the ones I have seen before.

The photos of the snake related stuff trigger the spidey sense, but I have not seen those before.
 
Clark, sorry to see that this is happening to you.

As someone pointed out, you upheld your end so that means this person is still obligated to uphold their end. If neighbor kids really did kill the snakes, it is up to "Runde" to seek compensation from those individuals (and should have filed a police report).
Unfortunately, the things that "Runde" has said/done, has the ring of untruths/misleading.

The photos he sent look staged to me. The "blood" (don't know what he used as blood), on the snake bag, is too red, too concentrated on just one spot of the bag, and too even. That is not what it would look like if a snake had been beaten, while in a bag, creating that amount of blood.
The snake looks staged as well. It is not limp, does not have the injuries consistent with that much blood, etc. Plus, there should be no reason for all those "blood" spots above, and around, the snake. Whether this happened, or not, those spots of "blood" would be consistent with trying to apply something on a snake.
Also want to add that, with very little work, I can get some of my Balls (maybe most) to remain in that upside down position.
 
Clark, did he text you that photo? I want to pull the EXIF data on it to see the date it was taken.

There's no coagulation to the blood and it really is just entirely too red and too uniform on that bag for an animal that was supposedly smashed in it.

If he sent you the pic via phone or e-mail, I can recover the data.
 
Maybe he IS a genius! It says on his FB page that he graduated from Drake University when he was 13. But now he works at Jimmy John's as a "sandwhich" maker. I think he failed spelling at Drake.
 
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