Bonsai scam alert

Paradox

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Its in the other "Scam Alert update" thread...

Yes I see that now. Two threads with very similar titles, one gets down the list or off the "new post" list because you read it already.
New thread pops up, but you think its the old thread.

Dont know why we needed 2 threads and why people freaking do that.
Ive seen it happen on other forums for other things.
Its annoying and confusing
 
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Bruce Rhea is now in the goat business.
:oops:
He is no longer dealing with Bonsai's as far as I know.
His business plan(s) do not succeed.

I believe him to be a scammer and a con man through personal experiences and personal conversations with him.



Buyer Beware.....
 

Katie0317

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I Googled his name and added 'Goats for sale' and hit on this

Ivory Hill Farm with his name on it selling goats. LLC establish April of 2021, so it appears your money went to a goat farm. I imagine he'll be ripping off goat farmers now that he's burned through the bonsai people he knew.

 
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I Googled his name and added 'Goats for sale' and hit on this

Ivory Hill Farm with his name on it selling goats. LLC establish April of 2021, so it appears your money went to a goat farm. I imagine he'll be ripping off goat farmers now that he's burned through the bonsai people he knew.

He has.
Bruce Rhea got married in March 2021 to a girl who had an established goat farm. Sold most of her goats and pissed through her $$$, so the story goes.
Still married, Bruce is in a new relationship with the woman who owns 100 acres adjoining his property.
They are engaged while he is still married, and planning on building on her 100 acres come spring.
He is a REAL piece of work... he will take this one for all she's worth too; and move on.
STOP doing business with Bruce Rhea of Stillwater Bonsai or Ivory Hill or whatever he comes up with next.
Bruce Rhea is a scammer and a con man.
 

Wires_Guy_wires

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Damn, that sounds like it would make a good book.
Do keep us posted! I'd like to know where this goes.
NFT? Crypto? MLM schemes?
100 acres is a darn lot! Should've kept those goats!
 

Vance Wood

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Agree! And a shame that this is my first post on BNut. But I am 1000% certain of this info, or I’d not have posted.
He laid low after ripping off a very well known and respected bonsai person last June, but is now starting to resurface here and in Bonsai Auctions. There are other victims as well but not at the $2500 level.
eventually he will just change his name and company, and probably continue scamming the community. He’s here in this forum, if he’d like to respond, he’s welcome to it. But he won’t.
This is one of the reasons I do not buy things on line, they are seldom as advertised and sadly scams.
 

penumbra

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This is one of the reasons I do not buy things on line, they are seldom as advertised and sadly scams.
A bad apple will do that. I have been very fortunate but I don't spend a lot for individual plants online. I would never expect to find a quality bonsai there, but I get a lot of great starters for great prices.
I'm not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
 
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Hyphen

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He has.
Bruce Rhea got married in March 2021 to a girl who had an established goat farm. Sold most of her goats and pissed through her $$$, so the story goes.
Still married, Bruce is in a new relationship with the woman who owns 100 acres adjoining his property.
They are engaged while he is still married, and planning on building on her 100 acres come spring.
He is a REAL piece of work... he will take this one for all she's worth too; and move on.
STOP doing business with Bruce Rhea of Stillwater Bonsai or Ivory Hill or whatever he comes up with next.
Bruce Rhea is a scammer and a con man.

There seems to be a whole lot of missing information behind this entire thing and since google still seems to dig it up, its about time it gets sorted out.

First, some quick facts.

The person claiming to be wronged in this instance goes by the name of Andy Youtz. Owner of superfly bonsai. After several dealings with Bruce Rhea, including hiring him to ghost write some info books for use with superfly bonsai’s “bonsai kits”, the purchase of some trees, ect. Andy asked Bruce to acquire a tree for him. Long story short, Bruce did. Andy was quite happy with his purchase and proud of his tree. Several weeks later Andy and a bunch of bonsai folk got together and were talking tree as bonsai nuts do and Andy wanted to show off his new tree. Amidst that group, one of the folks made a comment “I wouldn’t have paid $100 for that tree”, Andy’s feelings were hurt and so the saga begun.

Andy never reached out as a respectable human being about the matter, he instantly went to “I have _______ (insert arbitrary number) followers on facebook and _______ (insert arbitrary number) who will destroy you if you don’t give me my money back. Now, I’m not sitting in front of a dictionary at the moment but I would be willing to bet if you looked up the definition of the word extortion it would surely sum up what was about to happen here.

As business goes, if you’re in business long enough sooner or later you’re going to get a disgruntled customer and since the invention of the internet there have been trolls. Welcome to the stage Tim Shoup. Now it doesn’t take a whole lot of internet sleuthing to discover that the profile “Tim Shoup” is nothing more than a cutout. Go to his profile here and look at his posts. ALL of them are on this bonsai scam topic, and the profile only came to be created at the start of this. You don’t have to have a PhD. To see what happened here.

Moving forward, if you spend any amount of time scouring around this forum, or google reviews for that matter you will find that Stillwater Bonsai has HUNDREDS of good reviews and had thousands of customers. On this forum alone there are several sale threads a good chunk of them even after Andy started his defamation campaign. Not a single person had anything bad to say, everyone got their trees, several people got bonus trees, and everyone was satisfied.

To summarize the Andy Youtz scandal, the only thing that really happened is that Andy got his feelings hurt and acted poorly by starting a defamation campaign. Nearly every other comment / cutout post / anything else on this subject are just ramblings of people who have 0 firsthand knowledge of anything.

Moving on, the latest post from ‘LST takes time’. Again, take a look at the profile. Currently 3 posts, all on this topic.

Likely the work of one Laura Calderwood. Since its posted here, might as well respond to it.

Nothing beyond the fact that after the passing of Bruce’s late wife, he ended up married again is true. If you just search the name Abby Schofield, or Valleys Edge Nigerians, you will see who the real con-artist was there. Here’s a friendly link to a facebook group with over 150 of her victims ( https://www.facebook.com/groups/468470107645815 ) You can make up your mind about the rest from there. Defamation is not at the top of my list of priorities.

In closing, a handful of brand-new profiles, just like this one, pop up and start spreading hate and defamation. Worse a handful of lonely internet souls buy into it and want to perpetuate it as if they have any first-hand knowledge. That’s just the way the internet goes these days.

Lastly….

Yes, the nursery was shut down due to Covid. Shocking isn’t it? Just like about a million other businesses in this country. What’s missing in Laura’s narrative is that Bruce was a farmer / rancher long before he started growing bonsai trees as a side business born from his passion for the art. Seems the internet sleuths never dug back far enough to find that his original ranch was incorporated in 2011 in Montana where he raised Boer Goat and Angus cattle before he moved to Maine. Growing tiny trees in field that could be growing food when the grocery store shelves were empty would have been irresponsible.

Stillwater Bonsai LLC Is still a legal company in good standing with the State of Maine. While it no longer operates as a nursery. Bruce still maintains several private collections for people across the north east as he has since moving to Maine in 2012 and still leads Yamadori hunting trips for groups several times a year. While it is unlikely the business will ever operate as a nursery again, it’s still alive and kicking, just not on the internet as who really wants to deal with kids throwing tantrums online these days.

This post will not be followed up on, so if any of you trolls out there want something to make you feel self-important, please feel free to start on your conspiracy theories again.
 

Bonsai Nut

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I have avoided conspiracy theorizing and have avoiding commenting until now but...

Why not just unwind the whole transaction? Seller gets his tree back. Buyer gets his money back. No harm no foul? Sure there will be some transaction costs (like shipping, etc) but you negotiate and compromise. Within one week everyone goes back to their lives... neither one 100% happy, and neither one 100% upset(?)

Life is too short...
 

Srt8madness

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Holy necrobump batman, the conman still has his lackeys running out and about defending his fraud 2 years later. Yeesh. Evidently this creep moved on to trying his scams in the livestock business. That'll go real far, LOL.
 

Srt8madness

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I have avoided conspiracy theorizing and have avoiding commenting until now but...

Why not just unwind the whole transaction? Seller gets his tree back. Buyer gets his money back. No harm no foul? Sure there will be some transaction costs (like shipping, etc) but you negotiate and compromise. Within one week everyone goes back to their lives... neither one 100% happy, and neither one 100% upset(?)

Life is too short...
It would be simple if one party wasn't trying to get one over on the other...
 

leatherback

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There seems to be a whole lot of missing information behind this entire thing and since google still seems to dig it up, its about time it gets sorted out.

First, some quick facts.

The person claiming to be wronged in this instance goes by the name of Andy Youtz. Owner of superfly bonsai. After several dealings with Bruce Rhea, including hiring him to ghost write some info books for use with superfly bonsai’s “bonsai kits”, the purchase of some trees, ect. Andy asked Bruce to acquire a tree for him. Long story short, Bruce did. Andy was quite happy with his purchase and proud of his tree. Several weeks later Andy and a bunch of bonsai folk got together and were talking tree as bonsai nuts do and Andy wanted to show off his new tree. Amidst that group, one of the folks made a comment “I wouldn’t have paid $100 for that tree”, Andy’s feelings were hurt and so the saga begun.

Andy never reached out as a respectable human being about the matter, he instantly went to “I have _______ (insert arbitrary number) followers on facebook and _______ (insert arbitrary number) who will destroy you if you don’t give me my money back. Now, I’m not sitting in front of a dictionary at the moment but I would be willing to bet if you looked up the definition of the word extortion it would surely sum up what was about to happen here.

As business goes, if you’re in business long enough sooner or later you’re going to get a disgruntled customer and since the invention of the internet there have been trolls. Welcome to the stage Tim Shoup. Now it doesn’t take a whole lot of internet sleuthing to discover that the profile “Tim Shoup” is nothing more than a cutout. Go to his profile here and look at his posts. ALL of them are on this bonsai scam topic, and the profile only came to be created at the start of this. You don’t have to have a PhD. To see what happened here.

Moving forward, if you spend any amount of time scouring around this forum, or google reviews for that matter you will find that Stillwater Bonsai has HUNDREDS of good reviews and had thousands of customers. On this forum alone there are several sale threads a good chunk of them even after Andy started his defamation campaign. Not a single person had anything bad to say, everyone got their trees, several people got bonus trees, and everyone was satisfied.

To summarize the Andy Youtz scandal, the only thing that really happened is that Andy got his feelings hurt and acted poorly by starting a defamation campaign. Nearly every other comment / cutout post / anything else on this subject are just ramblings of people who have 0 firsthand knowledge of anything.

Moving on, the latest post from ‘LST takes time’. Again, take a look at the profile. Currently 3 posts, all on this topic.

Likely the work of one Laura Calderwood. Since its posted here, might as well respond to it.

Nothing beyond the fact that after the passing of Bruce’s late wife, he ended up married again is true. If you just search the name Abby Schofield, or Valleys Edge Nigerians, you will see who the real con-artist was there. Here’s a friendly link to a facebook group with over 150 of her victims ( https://www.facebook.com/groups/468470107645815 ) You can make up your mind about the rest from there. Defamation is not at the top of my list of priorities.

In closing, a handful of brand-new profiles, just like this one, pop up and start spreading hate and defamation. Worse a handful of lonely internet souls buy into it and want to perpetuate it as if they have any first-hand knowledge. That’s just the way the internet goes these days.

Lastly….

Yes, the nursery was shut down due to Covid. Shocking isn’t it? Just like about a million other businesses in this country. What’s missing in Laura’s narrative is that Bruce was a farmer / rancher long before he started growing bonsai trees as a side business born from his passion for the art. Seems the internet sleuths never dug back far enough to find that his original ranch was incorporated in 2011 in Montana where he raised Boer Goat and Angus cattle before he moved to Maine. Growing tiny trees in field that could be growing food when the grocery store shelves were empty would have been irresponsible.

Stillwater Bonsai LLC Is still a legal company in good standing with the State of Maine. While it no longer operates as a nursery. Bruce still maintains several private collections for people across the north east as he has since moving to Maine in 2012 and still leads Yamadori hunting trips for groups several times a year. While it is unlikely the business will ever operate as a nursery again, it’s still alive and kicking, just not on the internet as who really wants to deal with kids throwing tantrums online these days.

This post will not be followed up on, so if any of you trolls out there want something to make you feel self-important, please feel free to start on your conspiracy theories again.
Really,. you made an account just to dig up an old thread that should have been left in the grave?
 
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