Snakeman bites back criminals, thieves and internet
trolls.
Media release dated
21 August 2012
Today Australia’s snake man, Raymond Hoser took the law into his own hands and successfully got a third court intervention order against an animal hating criminal of the lowest form who had been attacking his wildlife display business “Snakebusters”.
Since 2006, some newly licenced imitators of Hoser’s hands-on reptile shows have been engaged in a war against Snakebusters with a view to tarnishing the company’s reputation, stealing clients and having Snakebusters shut down for the same purpose.
Included have been numerous false allegations against Hoser and his staff, including complaints to regulators, serious assaults on Snakebusters staff working at public events, numerous attempted thefts of reptiles, crank phone calls at all hours, attacks on property, including slashing a tyre, smashing a car windscreen, destruction of signage, attacking company infrastructure and more.
The attacks have since end 2008 also included bootlegging Snakebusters trademarks to dupe clients into booking with other firms, by using extreme “black hat” “Search Engine Optimization” (SEO) to beat Snakebusters on “Google” search results and then to trick potential clients that they were associated with Snakebusters.
In May last year the snake man closed down over 800 Youtube sites alone being used for SEO using Hoser’s long registered trademarks “snake man” and “snakeman” to unlawfully divert clients to a rival business’s website instead of Snakebusters.
Other attacks have included thousands of hate posts on Facebook and even the creation of several Facebook “hate pages” for the express purpose of inciting and planning attacks on Snakebusters at public events.
With police and DSE improperly failing to prosecute a number of these people for countless criminal acts and breaches of the Victorian Wildlife Act, due in part to the improper relationship between the parties, the snake man Raymond Hoser took matters into his own hands and now has three separate court intervention orders in place.
All the offenders made countless posts on the internet making false and defamatory statements against the snake man and Snakebusters using multiple and usually fake ID’s.
One of the offenders, Danny Wynn of 78 Olympic Avenue, Shepparton, using multiple ID’s posted hundreds of hate posts on Facebook pages and even created Youtube videos telling people to attack Hoser and his staff. He even registered a web domain in another displayer’s business name using a fake ABN.
Another offender, Benny Moylan, of Geelong, (currently in Finley, NSW) did likewise, but went further and contacted Hoser’s clients telling them to book instead with his friend, Sean McCarthy of company “Snakehandler”.
That firm has had two serious venomous snakebite incidents involving emergency trips to hospital, but has not been prosecuted by the DSE over either incident or for other extremely serious breaches of licence conditions that have put members of the public at risk of fatal snakebites.
Moylan also attacked the Snakebusters Facebook pages making hundreds of posts abusing Snakebusters customers using the worst possible language.
Moylan created a number of fake facebook ID’s including some masquerading as the Snake Man Raymond Hoser and then duping others to “Friend” or “like” him. While a number were shut down by Hoser with some difficulty after he became aware of them, Moylan continues to run multiple accounts on facebook.
In other words, a warning is issued to the effect that the person you think you may be speaking to on facebook, may not be whom you think it is!
Interestingly, while Moylan has in the past admitted to this conduct of creating numerous false facebook accounts (see for example his wall post dated 14 July 2011, 8.27 PM) for the purposes of attacking Hoser’s reputation, as late as last week, the false claim was made that Hoser was engaged in this practice for the purpose of trolling. This false claim was made widely by the trolls, spread rapidly and ended up being posted on numerous websites including Facebook pages of Mark O’Shea and Al Coritz (two men who attack snakes with metal tongs, which leave them injured to die a slow painful death), and internet forums “captive-bred-reptiles” and “Pilbara Pythons”.
Most of the fake facebook accounts usually also illegally used Hoser’s photos, which was usually the basis by which Hoser was able to close them down.
In other words a warning should be made in terms of potential facebook ID’s not being whom they appear to be.
A third offender, Andrew De Groot with his wife Elisa De Groot of 13 Kelly Court, Pakenham, Victoria, 3810, engaged in criminal stalking by posting in excess of 1,500 hate posts on the Snakebusters Facebook page in about a week, in spite of repeated earlier “cease and desist” requests. After these later posts were all deleted (without comment or reply) De Groot went further and sent threatening e-mails to Hoser.
When these were ignored, Hoser was phoned and yet more threats were made.
Andrew DeGroot also promoted a hate website he created called “Raymond Hoser the dumbarse snakeman” on Facebook.
The De Groots, who also posted hate messages using various assumed names had previously been apprehended by Snakebusters staff at events unsuccessfully attempting to steal reptiles, commit criminal damage to property, unlawfully creating disturbances and illegally making false complaints using false names.
As recently as this month Andrew De Groot sent Hoser an e-mail making further threats and saying he (Hoser) would never find him as he wasn’t in the phone book.
However Hoser found the De Groots listed in the electoral roll, which cross-matched a one-year-old newspaper clipping on the web (from the Pakenham Gazette dated 13 July 2011) and commenced legal proceedings against them. De Groot is associated with Michael Alexander of the rival company “Black Snake Productions”.
Now the De Groots and the other relevant criminals have been legally barred from attacking Hoser, his family, Snakebusters, their staff and their reptiles.
The legal protection of the reptiles are particularly important as the DSE and the Victoria Police have a policy of not prosecuting people who steal reptiles from Snakebusters but will with all their resources prosecute Snakebusters for having their reptiles stolen, if and when this happens!
The Snakeman Raymond Hoser today said, “Now we can get back to what we do best and that is what are independently rated the best educational reptile displays in Melbourne ... hopefully without further unlawful attacks and harassment.”
Hoser further said “It is outrageous that we have not had the support and protection from government to date in what is in fact the most successful wildlife education business in Australia”
Snakebusters are also the only 24/7 emergency snake removal company in Melbourne. The non-stop crank calls from the offenders in the middle of the night had forced Snakebusters to shut down the phones overnight putting people potentially at risk of fatal snakebites.
Hoser said “Hopefully the offenders will now comply with the law and stop putting lives at risk”.
The details of the three trolls and their attacks are posted here as a deterrent to others who may be incited by rival businesses to launch unlawful attacks on Snakebusters.
Raymond Hoser says, “We do all things by the letter of the law and only took out these orders as a last resort to protect myself, my family, my children, my reptiles, my staff and our property. In each case, the offenders were repeatedly and politely told to cease and desist, and that would have ended things there and then, but they refused. The offenders are named and shamed as a warning to others that if you unlawfully attack our wildlife education business, you may also end up being named and shamed publicly.”
Further details can be found by calling Snakebusters, via the contact details on the website.
Videos of the trolls in action can be found on the links below:
The videos were placed here as a result of the above named criminals breaching their interim intervention orders by petitioning Youtube to delete them from the “snakemanaustralia” Youtube channel. Due to the public interest importance of the videos detailing the illegal activities of these criminals they are placed here and as a further deterrent to others who may consider illegal attacks. Hopefully and provided these criminals comply with the orders made against them today, then these criminals will never have to be the subject of an internet posting or media release of any sort by us at Snakebusters ever again!
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