Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Another Fish Delivery Scam

I have stocked alot of fish every spring and fall since 2003 and have been scammed by all the usual suspects from hatcheries and delivery guys from across the nation. You know the free fish guy from Arkansas, the Georgia Giant People, the fish guy from Missouri, etc, etc.

Well, I met a new fish stocking phony last night about 10 pm at a clients place. This guy has been trying to get my business for 3 years now and I finally gave him a chance because he had beautiful feed trained smallmouth bass and hybrid striped bass!

He was supposed to show up about 4 pm and then we would unload 1500 smb and 500 hsb at the first drop, then travel an hour and drop 200 smb and 500 hsb and then load up my cages and truck and I would deliver the rest from there.

Well he kept updating me throughout the day and finally we had him located about 3 hrs away with an arrival time of 7pm. I get to my clients place about 6:30 pm, unload 5000 lbs of fish food and get a call from the fish guy that he is only 150 miles away.

So anyhow he pulls in finally at 9:45 pm and starts acting a little weird when he sees that he is pulling into a monster morton building lit up and glowing bright. He reluctantly pulls in and asks me what my water temps were. I explained between 56-59 degrees so perfect for stocking!

He then explains to me that he takes better care of fish for stocking than any other live hauler and he really likes to take his time and temper the fish for acclimation. You see he hauls in 40 degree water and really likes to mix good with lake water at the edge of the lake.

Also when I started to mention things about water temp he goes into a speal about how he is acclimating for more than water temp, but PH and other water quality parameters as well. I told him that is fine and great for the hybrid striped bass, but the smallmouth bass will be just fine and we can "acclimate" them right here and me and my client will count them out and stock them into the lake just like we always do.

Keep in mind this is all in very friendly conversation and we werent even upset for hanging out and waiting all that time. So just before the moment we open the fish tanks for the first time to start to load the first couple buckets of water he loads up his buckets, says he doesnt need to drive all the way up here to put up with this *@#$ and just drives off into the night.

Out of the blue, just up and gone. Then he sends me a text to which I havent and wont reply to that they weigh fish onto the truck and I am a moron...

Anyhow I had $12,000 worth of fish ordered from this guy for delivery Monday and Wednesday and he was so excited to get my future business. Would have been so great for me too to have access to these types of fish from Southern Illinois as opposed to Arkansas.

Anyhow I would avoid fish farmers intentionally late that try to use big words to talk you out of looking at your fish and insist on stocking in the dark. Did he think I was born yesterday?

He had nice fish from the pictures he sent while loading them, I just dont think he had near the numbers as he was trying to sell me....

opossum hill fish farm or live fish for pond stocking would be the guy to avoid in the future. I hesitate to put his name, but feel in this case very valid for anyone in this zone to potentially avoid.

Thanks Nate! I feel for ya man. That sucks big time. I hope the customer understands that things were out of your control and that it shouldn't reflect on you.

Their web site reads like a multi level marketing scheme. $500,000.00 in profit fish farming LMB after only a few years. They will buy your product the first year. Looks "fishy" to me.

Thank God for people like Rainman! Even when his truck breaks down and he ends up in the hospital, the fish still arrive.

Sounds like a good opportunity to start a legitimate fish farm operation, Nate.

As long as what you said is accurate, the truth is the truth!

I suppose you hadn't paid a deposit?

Nope, no deposit. I also just found out this morning from my regular smallmouth supplier that Dennis came in yesterday and bought 1/2 as many as he was trying to sell to me, and they were much smaller than what he had promised to me. Thats why I went with him in the first place instead of my normal supplier cause he had these nice beautiful fish at his own farm.... running the numbers the only way he would have made any money after buying those fish was if he totally ripped us off....

Nate good job sticking to your guns, protecting your client, and reporting this operation to the forum. He lost a huge opportunity to work with a rising star in the business. Being a broker in the fish business must be tough - but ripping off people to ensure you're making your margins is a horrible way to live and will catch up to you eventually....like it did here.

Good job Nate. Even though your clients might be a little disappointed, you
did them a great service and protected them whether they know it or not. No telling how many of us would have/have been scammed by scum like that.
I really don't expect much when I buy from a fish truck,
When I've used Greg G. I've never been disappointed.

I love that quote! Yes Nate he did think you were born yesterday. And you called him on it and he got pissed!!! I mean cudos to you for not being ticked off at how late he was to begin with! Unreal.

Unbelievable. Think of how many people he successfully ripped off.

I'm new to this forum and the whole pond thing, but I had thought that it seemed to be a good business for scammers to run. Seems like it would be very easy to sell someone 3,000 fish instead of 5,000 fish without them knowing.

I've just got a small pond, but it seems like I should just get the fish myself, there are lots of fish farms very close so it wouldn't be a long haul (like 1/2 hour or so).

Hilarious how this guy must have intentionally arrived late so it was dark and he could complete the ripoff. Then he felt the walls closing in as his plans unraveled and starting to stall even more...Nate painted a nice visual of the entire exchange, I felt like I was watching it all go down! An EKG would have been steadily increasing as the conversation went on..."how in the Hell am I going to get this guy to close his eyes so I can dump my fish and get paid?" I'm surprised he didn't have a sidekick create some kind of diversion in the bushes to draw your attention away while he flushed all your fish in the lake and handed you an invoice. Talk about sweaty palms...why not just be honest and say I have half the fish I promised and they are smaller than I anticipated? Nate's a good guy would have paid him a fair price, and client would have at least gotten something for all his time and effort. Some folks never cease to amaze...

I know right? Instead nobody got anything??? Wow! What a doofus! My question is this. Why would you beg for someones buisness for that long and know Nate buys large amounts of fish and could be a GREAT client why would you try to scam him? Of all people you would want to take care of it would be him as big of a client he could have been??? Wow that's all I can say.

Glad you called him on it Nate. Would have hated seeing an honest guy get ripped off!! Good Job!

I wonder what he's going to do with all those fish now. Even if he had 50% of the original order, that's alot to deal with.I'll bet he's really wheelin' and dealin' now.

Good job in not being fooled Nate. Unfortunate that their are turds like this in the fish business just like almost any other business.

I must be more naive than I thought because this just boggles my mind that there are people capable of these things. How does a guy sleep at night pulling off this crap?

he sure ain't sleepin' in a

What really boggles my mind is that the fish business has crooks like this guy and others documented in the forum. I naturally think of someone in the fish business as being a pretty grounded, hard working person passionate about fish/water/helping clients achieve their dreams and mindful that their reputation is literally EVERYTHING. I'd expect this from some types of sales guys, but not fish guys. Weird.

There are too many people like this in the world. When my wife and I were planning our wedding, she found a "DJ" for the wedding and booked him. He told her that if she paid early, she would get a $100 discount. She paid him in full. A week later she was reading the news paper and called me out to the kitchen. She pointed at the photo of someone in the news paper who was just sent to jail for scamming old ladies out of hundreds of thousands of dollars with investment fraud and told me that's our DJ for the wedding...

I tracked his address information and various phone numbers from some whois lookups and contact info on his various web pages. The number he gave my wife and the numbers I found in my detective work were all disconnected. Had she not read that in the news paper we would have never known until it was too late. Luckily we managed to book another DJ in time and the wedding was great.

I hate to say it, but you can never give a person you are doing business with the benefit of the doubt anymore. Had I done something as simple as googling his name before she booked with him, I would have seen several 2 year old news articles with his name and photo from when the initial charges were filed (in the top 3 results from googling his name). Lesson learned, I now google anyone I do business with.

The guy:
http://www.attorneygeneral.gov/press.aspx?id=4070

Ugh, what a story...glad you made it out ok.

Never trust anyone with a goatee...that's my motto. They're always hiding something.

Maybe he's sleeping under it, though? S.S.S!

Nate, any chance he learned the fish business from REX ALLEN CURTIS? Sure sounds like the same operation.

They are in EVERY business.
I was just talking to my boss about this subject (not fish) yesterday. This applies to a number of people. If they see a way to screw you, they will. It may have not started out that way, with good intentions and all, but it happens all too often.

This guy sounds like it was intentional from the start, and the way he truly operates. Already deeply embedded into his thinking.

Good save Nate!

Sorry to hear about this Nate. At least you had no money invested.

Been there done that to some extent also. I related here before I drove 5 hours round trip for nothing only to have the fish farmer refuse to come out of the building, and when he finally did he wasn't going to sell me any fish, and refused to tell you why. It was prearranged too! Bill Cody was my witness. We think he may have thought I was going to start up a fish supply business and compete with him, which was not, and is not the case. My market is totally different. I would have been perfectly happy buying bluegills from the guy. It actually costs me more to produce my own fish on a small scale.

There are people in the industry in that their word and integrity is as good as gold. You just have to find them by trial and error, and it's apparent you've been down that road too.

My trout supplier John Nelski in Muskegon, Michigan has never done me wrong. Neither has Bill Lynch of Mill Creek Perch Farms in Ohio.

n8ly might have been born at night, but not LAST NIGHT!!!!