That Time I Got Scammed Buying Cattle

Since we’re working on HoofnHorn, I probably need to tell the story about the time I actually got scammed buying cattle online. It is one of the experiences that helped shape my vision for what I wanted a livestock marketplace to be.

Years ago, I found cattle for sale out of state and sent the seller the money through PayPal Friends and Family, so I didn’t have protection on the transaction. I had a shipper lined up, and right before she was supposed to arrive, suddenly the seller said the weather was too bad for her to pick up the cattle.

We rescheduled, then there was another delay and another excuse. Eventually it became pretty obvious that I had sent a stranger money for cattle and I wasn’t getting any cattle.

He was in another state, which made figuring out what to do considerably harder. I had a friend with a connection to a sheriff’s department who contacted him on my behalf, and while I don’t know what charges could or would have ultimately resulted, the possibility of legal trouble apparently scared him enough that he started sending my money back.

I wasn’t the only one. A friend of mine in Tennessee had also sent him money for cattle, but she wasn’t having the same luck getting help from law enforcement, and that pissed me off almost as much as getting scammed myself.

So I started digging and found his mugshot and public records online. Since Craigslist was where I had originally found him, I started running Craigslist ads under Highland cattle for sale using his mugshot and information from those public records to warn other people who might come across him.

He eventually threatened legal action over the Craigslist posts. By that point I already knew where he lived, knew the interstate exit for his farm and knew there was a billboard beside it, so I told him if Craigslist bothered him that much, I would buy the billboard next to his exit and put his mugshot on it.

Then his girlfriend, who was involved in sending my money back, messaged me and told me he was making fun of me for selling Highland cow T-shirts. I told her if he was that interested in my T-shirt business, I would make him one for free, so I made a mockup using his mugshot and the charges listed in the public records I had found and sent it to her.

Apparently my research also uncovered some things about the man she was dating that she didn’t know. That became a whole different problem for him, and eventually my friend got her money back too.

I’m not recommending anyone handle a scam the way I did. I was mad, stubborn and had absolutely no intention of quietly accepting that someone could take money from livestock buyers and assume being in another state made it our problem instead of his.

I got my money back, and eventually my friend did too, but I never forgot how little I had to work with once that money was sent. Over the years I’ve also watched the scams get worse, especially on Facebook, and watched people send thousands of dollars for livestock only to find out the seller, the cattle or sometimes the entire listing wasn’t what they thought it was.

That is a big part of what shaped my vision for HoofnHorn. My own experience happened years ago, but watching the same basic problem continue and get easier to pull off online made me want a livestock marketplace where buyers have more information in front of them before they send money and where we can at least make it harder for scammers to hide behind a fake profile and some stolen cattle pictures.