Re: Unofficial Hot Toys web-shop--legit?
I don't see any logical explanation to this either, except the stolen ID theory maybe.
There were other names involved in the scam, other people accepting payments or sending packages, and someone posted before that a couple of them were listed as Dave's FaceBook friends, which suggests they're the actual people we're talking about.
Unless the names were stolen from a single friends list on FB, that's a possibility. As well, if the guy on FB is really him it seems incredibly stupid that he'd leave his FB public, with his picture there, so that points to maybe the name being stolen.
However, as to a seemingly successful person pulling a scam like this, it happens all the time. Drugs, gambling, debts, etc, people have many motivations for needing easy money even if they're apparently lined up for a successful life.
Also, another suspicious thing about Razor's story. He says that he knew Dave from eBay, from before the online store, but I thought someone said before that Dave was banned from eBay for similar activity (accepting money but not sending items), his eBay was linked on here by someone. If that's true, it would seem very odd that Razor wouldn't know about that past trouble, wouldn't have seen that his favourite eBay seller was shut down, and thus had at least some inkling that he might be involved in a scam operation.
The more I lean back on my armchair here, the more I'm starting to think Razor might be one of the chief culprits in this operation.
The irony about this is that if razor would've come into the thread at the beginning and said "Hey guys, I'm Peter, I help Dave run this shop" a lot more people would've been like "Oh cool, I'm so glad a dealer is here to help answer our questions". And they probably would've gotten a lot more sales, which still would've been bad in the long run.
Dave himself actually did come here and posted and people did have that response, heh. His account is here:
https://www.sideshowcollectors.com/forums/member.php?u=19979