Latrobe city council paid $750 to put ratepayers at risk!
In an insane turn of events, Latrobe City Council allowed itself to get scammed by a person doing potentially illegal and unsafe reptile displays at an event. To make things worse they also had to pay Snakeman Raymond Hoser, who happens to be Australia’s foremost reptile expert, the sum of $750 to not attend the same event.
Late in 2018, Latrobe City Council booked the Snakeman Raymond Hoser and his business, Snakebusters Reptile Shows, to do a hands on reptile show at a council run event in January. Once they advertised the event and that the Snakeman was coming, an imitator rang up the council and defamed the Snakeman in order to get them to cancel the booking with the Snakeman and to run with the imitator instead.
The imitator does not have surgically devenomized snakes like Snakebusters do and so their reptile display on 23 January 2019 at Moe Library almost certainly breached work safety laws and put lives at risk. It was probably more good luck than good management that there wasn’t a fatal or near fatal bite at the event.
The organiser of the event, Rani Pentecost, cancelled Snakebusters at the last moment without giving a proper reason, other than saying she had discovered Snakebusters were not safe.
Noting Snakebusters are alone in the reptile display business with a perfect safety record spanning more than 30 years, Hoser asked for evidence to back the claim.
Pentecost was unable to substantiate her false allegation and so the Snakeman Raymond Hoser demanded a cancel fee for being told not to attend at the last moment.
Pentecost and the hierarchy in the Latrobe City bureaucracy dug in their heels and refused to pay, making all sorts of false claims to back their position.
Included were claims that Snakebusters had never been booked to attend the event.
It was a classic case of an oversized bureaucracy using its size and strength to tell a relatively small business to take a hike and wear the loss.
Using an ap, Raymond Hoser managed to record the relevant phone conversations showing Latrobe City Council had in fact booked Snakebusters to attend and that their last minute cancellation was not based on any good or valid reason.
After threatening to sue Latrobe Council for the money and for registered trademark infringement as well, and significant amount of stonewalling by the council, council realised they had no legal defence of their position and paid the $750 cancel fee demanded.
Of course the bite in all this is that the ratepayers at Moe were forced to endure an unsafe and second rate wildlife display in January and their council wasted valuable funds paying Australia’s best reptile show not to turn up.
Snakeman Raymond Hoser said “It is scandalous that council can be duped by an unsafe wildlife displayer in the first instance and even more scandalous that the council then lied to cover their mistake”.
Latrobe City Council and the ratepayers got off lightly in all this. Not long ago, Snakeman Raymond Hoser sued Bunnings for trademark infringement in similar circumstances and got tens of thousands of dollars in damages, corrective advertising and conditions imposed on both Bunnings and the unsafe wildlife display business who infringed Hoser’s registered trademarks at their store. In another case, Hoser got $39,500 from a group of businesses illegally using his Snakebusters trademark.
Unsafe imitators of Snakebusters have targeted events where Snakebusters appear at to steal Snakebusters clients by improper means. This typically includes false complaints to event managers and the like.
Making things worse is that these same unsafe imitators have repeatedly illegally used Raymond Hoser’s registered trademarks at events and online with a view to misleading and deceiving satisfied customers of Snakebusters that they are in fact Snakebusters, or associated with them.
Hence Raymond Hoser has had to take action to stop this misconduct and obtained numerous court judgements against various trademark infringing thieves and damages from thieves and secondary infringers.
A few years ago, Snakebusters were attacked by another pair of thieves (Margaret Irvine Osborne and Bana Irvine Osborne) when doing a reptile display at a camping expo at Morwell. They were working for an unsafe wildlife displayer and Snakebusters ultimately got court orders against them after they were videotaped plotting to try to steal a snake and smash up a car in a car park.
Another thief, Matthew Christopher Gatt AKA the Snake Snatcher, was convicted and fined $8k on 21 March 2019 after stealing a snake from a Snakebusters display on 9 December.
In this most recent case, Raymond Hoser made a point of chasing Latrobe City Council for the booking fee as he had cancelled other bookings to keep the commitment to the Moe Library and the money charged is used to maintain the health and welfare of the reptiles used in the wildlife displays.
While the Latrobe City ratepayers should be disgusted their money was used to pay for an educational service never provided, Raymond Hoser points out that at least with him the money is properly spent on wildlife conservation outcomes, as opposed to being wasted by a council bureaucracy on staff who are both incompetant and dishonest.

Further information at:
http://www.snakeman.com.au
Or by phoning 0412777211 (within Victoria, Australia).