Ezeke1
Well-Known Member
I never thought I'd be in this situation but I just got scammed out of a holy grail torch. I hope by sharing my experience I can help others avoid the same mistake.
It started with me asking on FB that I was looking for a OG Godzilla bounce. Many folks responded I reached out to one of them named David Vanloo from Orlando FL on Jan 25th. He claimed that he had a 3.5” mother colony for sale. Looking at his profile, he had a really nice photo of an OG mother as his profile pic and said he wanted $1250. As we conversed on FB messenger, we ended up talking about trading my holy grail torch for his Godzilla.
We traded pics of my torch and his Godzilla mother. I noticed the pics he sent seemed “off” and were blurry or had odd looking angles. He explained that he had a cheap android phone so pictures were very bad. At one point I requested video and he made an excuse the video didn’t work. My spider senses should of went nuts here but I was in the moment and really wanted a Godzilla bounce.
At one point I suggested we both put down a $200 deposit in Paypal to ensure we both follow through. Once shipments were received from both parties then we simply refund the money. He said he stopped using Paypal because he got screwed over a chargeback once. He simply refused to use Paypal and it didn’t make sense to put a deposit given we were both dealing with $1000+ corals. Once again my spider sense should warned told me to run.
On ship day, we were both supposed to document and provide pics of packaging and delivery evidence over messenger. We planned to drop off the corals at the end of day to reduce travel time. I documented and dropped him breadcrumbs through the packaging process all the way to my time at the fedex center. I have photos as well as video of my packaging. I sat at the fedex hub for 15mins waiting for proof of his package because he made an excuse he was running late and would send me pics of the corals in the bag as well as the Fedex pack slip.
The last dropoff time for my Fedex center was 9pm so when 8:45pm approached I got anxious. Finally he sent me a collage of pics that included a preshipment label and grainy pics of some shroom in a bag. At this point I should of walked away and taken my coral home because the shipment label was cropped to only show the printout and not the shipping box or any contextual information. In addition the pictures did not provide enough proof of the coral. Unfortunately I was in a rush at this time and took that as enough proof given that he was very responsive through our dealing. When he sent over the photo he promptly gave an excuse that the shipment label will take 2 hrs before a status shows up in fedex. I asked him if the pic in his profile was the mother and he said it was downloaded from the web. Another red flag but this point it was too late.
After we dropped off the packages he asked me questions about lineage of the torch. The next morning I woke up to check the tracking number and it was still a preshipment label. At that moment I knew the gig was up and sent him a few messages to a profile that no longer had a pic and I was blocked from his FB page. As it turns out his FB page no longer exists and is deactivated.
I was angry and felt violated by the scam. I’m very leery and cautious by nature so in part I blamed myself for not reading the signs during the deal. This was my first coral trade and will be my last. If anyone sees a guy from FL trying to sell a holy grail torch or an og Godzilla shroom I would advise you to tread cautiously. I’m sure this scammer is out to strike again.
It started with me asking on FB that I was looking for a OG Godzilla bounce. Many folks responded I reached out to one of them named David Vanloo from Orlando FL on Jan 25th. He claimed that he had a 3.5” mother colony for sale. Looking at his profile, he had a really nice photo of an OG mother as his profile pic and said he wanted $1250. As we conversed on FB messenger, we ended up talking about trading my holy grail torch for his Godzilla.
We traded pics of my torch and his Godzilla mother. I noticed the pics he sent seemed “off” and were blurry or had odd looking angles. He explained that he had a cheap android phone so pictures were very bad. At one point I requested video and he made an excuse the video didn’t work. My spider senses should of went nuts here but I was in the moment and really wanted a Godzilla bounce.
At one point I suggested we both put down a $200 deposit in Paypal to ensure we both follow through. Once shipments were received from both parties then we simply refund the money. He said he stopped using Paypal because he got screwed over a chargeback once. He simply refused to use Paypal and it didn’t make sense to put a deposit given we were both dealing with $1000+ corals. Once again my spider sense should warned told me to run.
On ship day, we were both supposed to document and provide pics of packaging and delivery evidence over messenger. We planned to drop off the corals at the end of day to reduce travel time. I documented and dropped him breadcrumbs through the packaging process all the way to my time at the fedex center. I have photos as well as video of my packaging. I sat at the fedex hub for 15mins waiting for proof of his package because he made an excuse he was running late and would send me pics of the corals in the bag as well as the Fedex pack slip.
The last dropoff time for my Fedex center was 9pm so when 8:45pm approached I got anxious. Finally he sent me a collage of pics that included a preshipment label and grainy pics of some shroom in a bag. At this point I should of walked away and taken my coral home because the shipment label was cropped to only show the printout and not the shipping box or any contextual information. In addition the pictures did not provide enough proof of the coral. Unfortunately I was in a rush at this time and took that as enough proof given that he was very responsive through our dealing. When he sent over the photo he promptly gave an excuse that the shipment label will take 2 hrs before a status shows up in fedex. I asked him if the pic in his profile was the mother and he said it was downloaded from the web. Another red flag but this point it was too late.
After we dropped off the packages he asked me questions about lineage of the torch. The next morning I woke up to check the tracking number and it was still a preshipment label. At that moment I knew the gig was up and sent him a few messages to a profile that no longer had a pic and I was blocked from his FB page. As it turns out his FB page no longer exists and is deactivated.
I was angry and felt violated by the scam. I’m very leery and cautious by nature so in part I blamed myself for not reading the signs during the deal. This was my first coral trade and will be my last. If anyone sees a guy from FL trying to sell a holy grail torch or an og Godzilla shroom I would advise you to tread cautiously. I’m sure this scammer is out to strike again.
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