In November I came across a website for Captive bred wildlife foundation. I noticed a pair of rare boas they had for sale. I keep boas as a hobby, and these boas they had for sale had potential to give me babies that would make me a name in the business and provide a nice return on my initial investment of $8,000.
So on or about 11-1-05 I contacted Jeff Gee, owner of CBWF, and inquired about the available boas. He told me as his website claims these were 100% double het for albino leopard boas. Meaning this; these boas have the color and pattern of a normal boa, but both carry the genes for two different color and pattern morph of boa. One being albino the other being leopard.
So. When bred together would produce the worlds first ever albino leopard boa. A combination of the two genes. So in fact what im paying for is the genes that both of these boas (snakes) carry. Without these genes they would be worth maybe $100 for the both of them. Jeff gee was asking $10,000 for these boas, which was kinda high, so I offered 8k. He accepted my offer and within a day or so, he gave me his bank information and I had my bank wire his bank 8k directly to his account.
After that things start to go downhill. We make arrangements for him to ship the snakes to me via Delta airlines, typical way of doing this. I get a date and go to airport and they arrive a day late. So. I take them home, open the box, which looks like it had been used a million times, he couldn't even spring for a new box after taking 8k of my money. Well I go to put snakes in their cages and notice they are full of snake mites! This is a no no in our hobby. Anyone who claims to have over 30 years experience and for the price paid for these snakes, to send them with mites is horrendous.
Mites can be cured, which I did after having to quarantine them for 6 months, but having mites can transmit deadly disease from one snake to another and it just shows bad husbandry. I notified Jeff gee of this immediately and told him I wanted a full refund due to the fact the snakes had mites and were not what he represented in the ad.in the ad he had a different snake photo and the ones he sent were smaller then described. He refused to refund anything, and in fact had spent the money before I even had the snakes in my possession, which is a very bad business practice. He told me" If you cant handle mites from time to time, maybe you should collect gold coins for a hobby"!
I was floored. None the less, I made the best of it and looked forward to producing the worlds first albino leopard boas. But after all that had just transpired with Mr. Gee I started to worry about actual genetics of the snakes. If in fact they were what he said they were. Remember there is no way to visually identify the genes in a snake that is heterozygous for a gene. You basically have to breed it to get the desired appearance. So I tried to trace the snakes roots so to speak and found out I was lied to about where they came from. Mr. Gee would not tell me where he got them from.in efforts to try and make a long story shorter I will skip ahead a bit.
I just now was able to breed these boas, the resulting offspring were all normals. NO albinos, NO leopards and no albino leopard combo. I was kinda expecting this, after a Dr friend of mine who purchased a pair of the boas also from Mr. Gee had the same results earlier. So it is 100% clear, we were sold normal boas as 100% guaranteed double hets, when in fact the were just normal boas. The litter of boas I produced should have been worth close to 100k. But instead maybe $200 wholesale. I have been in contact with Mr. Gee for a while about this and he refuses to refund my money. He offers some boas, but none that are worth anything, and plus why would I want more of his sickly stuff sent to me. He guaranteed the genetics on these boas, that is why I bought them, strictly for the genes. Now he will not make right on the deal, with me or my friend who he ripped him off for 10k.
All of our contact from the beginning was through email and I saw these snakes for sale on his website. I now know he has ripped others off as well. Here is a link to the boas, he still has them on his website. Http://www.cbwf.com/Gallery/index.php? Id=68
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