...scumbags who do this kind of thing have a high probability of being caught. Here's my story:
In 1986 I was attending the IHS (Int'l Herp Symposium) in San Antonio TX. While gone someone broke in to my place and stole 2.0 adult Az Mtn Kings, 1.0 adult San Diego Mtn King (pulchra), 0.1 gravid Sinaloan milk, and a Samsung Radio/B&W TV combo. The Samsung sucked anyway, you could always hear 2 frequencies when the radio was on, lol! The thief didn't take any of the female mountian kings or any other of the 35 snakes I had, including my then 17 year old female BALL PYTHON. The guy took the time to smoke a couple butts and grind them out on my desk, and rifle through my underwear drawer (don't know if he was looking for my family jewels or had a fetish or what, I never DID find out, lol!). A friend who owned a petshop was looking after my mouse colony while I was gone...
So a couple years go by and I see an ad in the Bulletin of the Chicago Herp Society from a guy looking to obtain a female pulchra. At the time and to this day there weren't many of these in Illinois. So I called the guy, sent up a picture and verified the male pulchra he had WAS my stolen male. The dude said he bought the male from one [bleep]--- who was going to dental school up in Chicago and he had his phone # ("yeah if you have any questions give me a call.". It just so happened that this [bleep]--- did his undergrad work down in Champaign/Urbana where I was attending vet school. [bleep]--- had worked part-time in my friend's petshop...
So I give [bleep]--- a call, how's it hanging so on and so forth. [bleep], where did you get a hold of my STOLEN SAN DIEGO MTN King good buddy? Oh a black dude came into the petshop and I bought them. So why'nt you play the hero and say something to me, anything? Not a word. So I explained to [bleep]--- what REALLY happened. Jeez [bleep] if you get a felony while in dental school you might get kicked out of said dental school. Have you ever heard a grown man cry? Old [bleep] started sputtering and stuttering IT WAS DOWNRIGHT disgusting, LOL! So being reasonable I gave him 2 choices. Felony or $2000 like yesterday, refund the $200 to the guy in the ad, and the rest of the snakes back. Well he killed off the 2 male AZ's, but I also got back the Sinaloan in addition to the male Pulchra. [bleep]--- came up with the cash in ONE DAY! Chop chop toot sweet!
POST-SCRIPT: about 3-4 years later I was tending my table at a local herp swap and up walks [bleep] with wife in-tow, eyes down checking out deli cups. I recognize him, turn to his wife, and speed-tell the story to HER as he dragged her into the crowd! That was sweeet!
So the point here is that scum-bags who do these things ALWAYS trip-up and make a mistake. The smart guy in dental school did! What's the jerk-off going to do with $30000 of Jeff's snakes? Make a mistake. He already made the first one, he took 'em. HANG IN THERE JEFF!
Scott J. Michaels DVM
PS. I omitted [bleep]---'s last name to avoid any difficulties on my part, but when one-on-one I'm more than happy to name-drop. Payback's a medevac!

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Post has been edited to remove names.

Edited on February 2, 2004 at 23:17:05 by phwyvern.