Blacklisted Sellers List

The following is a list of sellers who you should not purchase from. These users have stolen from other members of the site in the way of recasting. A definition of recasting can be found at the bottom of the post. Please support good sellers in our community by not purchasing from these people:

Videobob / tcbtexas / rcmsales - bobs prop shop - Bob Moseley

Has been banned for recasting Proton Pack shells purchased from Ross Arbuckle. He claims his shells are 100% authentic straight from Universal Studios and therefore his recasts are ok, however his shell was purchased from someone else’s copies, which makes them recast. In addition there is some discrepancy as to whether or not the shells are actually related to the real Proton Packs used in the movie, having provided very little proof. Furthermore Videobob has been banned from The RPF (and numerous other sites) for recasting, and has a long history of recasting and stealing Back to the Future parts from others (even from the actual BTTF cars at Universal). He should be avoided by all costs and is by far the #1 person on his blacklist to avoid.

Shawn Swift / GhostGuy / MIGHTY Microcontroller

Has been banned for ripping off fans for over ten thousand dollars worth of items. Sold several items in 2009 that customers have yet to receive (as of 2013). Sold the “MIGHTY Microcontroller” on Kickstarter and on GBFans and took more than $10,000 from a few members and then spent the money on living / personal expenses without providing anything in return. Fraudulently mislead customers to buy more time for himself. Posted libelous (proven false) remarks against his investors / customers in an effort to make excuses for his financial misdeeds. Has been banned as of May 2013. After the ban he is claiming his computer no longer works, and the packages he had shipped have been lost in the mail (very common lie from scammers). Avoid at all costs.

Note: As of June 2013, the packages he claimed had gone missing turned up at a post office, and were redirected back before finally being delivered. He is now refusing to issue refunds for Kickstarter backers, even holding some money as a form of blackmail.

Jeremy Moore

Recast numerous parts from many respectable sellers. He has also ripped off many people purchasing items from him in the past by taking money and not delivering products. Jeremy should be avoided at all costs, and has been banned since 2006.

Rhett Martin / Hotshot / hobby-farm-models (ebay)

Recast proton gun grips from another seller, and gun knobs from Phantom50. He also sold low quality parts that often required more work then they were worth. Poor customer service track record and has taken money from several people without delivering products as promised. Most recently he attempted to sell digital copies of the OMNI cover against the wishes of the item’s current owner. Has been banned since early 2008.

Also has a eBay username of “hobby-farm-models”. For examples of what he sells see this PDF: http://www.gbfans.com/Rhett.pdf

Charles Walker / PropFan

Has recast numerous parts over the past several years, and has lied about it when confronted. While some of his parts are of good quality, he has stolen the work of others to profit off of them. This seller should be avoided at all costs. Most recently (July 2008) he copied the work of user namebrand to sell recasts of his aluminum Proton Gun trigger tip.

wiggle_pickle_productions

Please see “Charles Walker” above. They are the same person as PropFan.

charleswallacedesign (eBay)

Has been banned from most major prop sites due to issues involving not getting prop replicas to the people he’d sold them too, as well as using an eBay auction to publically attack community member Ken Huegel. He sells metallic Proton Pack labels that are larger than they should be.

Xenepp

Also known as someweirdwhitestuff or scoobyisadog on eBay. Recasted Sean Bishop (Venkman71) Proton Pack shell for several years and has ripped off many users with his Night Vision Goggle frames.

Sebastien Clavet / 88MPH Studios / zamuler (eBay)

Took thousands of dollars of pre-orders for the Ghostbusters Legion Hard Cover book. No longer does business, but he should be avoided if he does reappear in the community.

Joseph Kerezman

Also known as Captain America or CostumeCostumeCostume on eBay. Keeps a poor level of contact with his customers, gives delivery dates for costume orders which are never met, has taken money for products not delivered and has a “no refunds” policy.

Mike Brewer / hansoloner / nuclear_brew / Spectre / protoman / Protonimus / joshuatgb / Broc Tickle / James Cartha, Yvonne C / Emmettbrown1.21 / doomsday1990 / allwrong / all _wrong / rickrolld2011 / itsmillertime1984 / millertime / captaincollectable2012, / 127thebestaround / mikeyjb327

Believed to also be Broc Tickle, James Cartha, Yvonne C and others which have been mentioned in the process of his dealings. Mike’s dealings involved items being subject to severe delay with little to no updates, items that never arrived to some buyers, and the employ of sockpuppet accounts and proxy servers to return to this forum after he was banned. It has recently come to light that he’d recasted nick-a-tron’s Booster Frame and was selling the copies as his own work.

Joseph Sciabica

Banned numerous times from Ghostbusters Fans. Helped Mike Brewer get back on Ghostbusters Fans and rip off more members. Banned again most recently April 2012 as “yeahbuddy88”.

Jesse Gerst - Crossarm-props-and-replicas (eBay)

Caught recasting resin Ghost Trap pieces he’d purchased from MultiMediaMayhem. When confronted, he presented photos to try prove he’d made them himself, however the photographed source parts bore no relation to the parts he was selling. For more in-depth information, visit his thread in the feedback forum.

Robert DeWitt II - Zombie Amusements (eBay)

Caught recasting resin Proton Gun grips he purchased from MultimediaMayhem. When confronted he presented photos of masters that he claimed the parts were cast from, but were unlike the parts he was selling. He also stole several photographs from the Ghostbusters Fans Shop early on to try and sell parts. His personal website also plagiarizes a terms of service from another website. He has been blacklisted since May 25th 2011.

Kelsey Hayes / kelso777 / Hayes Replicas / propcrazed (eBay)

Kelsey Hayes (username kelso777) has been banned for recasting MMM (irricanian, Colin Russel) parts as well as KC Ghostbusters’ parts. Parts that were recast include a Proton Gun casting from MMM, Trigger Tip, gun knobs from KC Ghostbuster.. among other parts. This user typically sells on eBay under the username propcrazed. Since being caught for recasting, the individual has pulled a lot of the photos from his photobucket and auctions. In response to the recasting claim, he created several videos showing him making MDF parts using MMM and KC Ghostbuster parts as masters to ‘trace’ around them. He claims his is how all of his parts were made. Photographic evidence that was saved from the auctions shows otherwise. This user was banned and blacklisted on April 13th 2012.

Neil Ward / Venky

Has been banned for taking payments for prop items and then failing to provide them to his customers. He would claim that items had been dispatched from his workshop and provide tracking numbers, but the items would fail to show up and the tracking numbers fail to provide any tracking data. As more customers became dissatisfied with his failure to complete their orders, his explanation behind the delays would change from one reason to another.

**David Rotheram / kernuyckdave / Proton Props / Proton Props UK **

Has been banned for taking payments for prop items and then failing to provide them to customers, some of his customers are still waiting to receive their commissioned prop replicas over three years (as of 2024) after they originally paid for them. As time passed, communications and project updates between David and his customers became less frequent, and less informative. Further to these instances, David has caused further frustration to his customers by engaging in an unofficial prize draw for Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, offering a prize of a replica Proton Pack, while still having customers who have been waiting years to receive what they’ve paid for.

What is recasting?

I would like to keep this list as accurate as possible.. and updated as frequently as possible. Please post in this thread with edits and adjustments as things change and more evidence is posted.

This list is only of users you absolutely should not purchase from.

Good feedback can be found here:

maybe this was discussed before, but either way i didnt see it. if copying sumone else’s work to make a profit without permission is so wrong, hows it any different than copying and making parts from the proton pack that was originally created by whatever prop company , and selling those parts for a profit? i know its not “recasting” but in general, is the same.

This sort of thing is a grey area. Technically, selling of completed props is illegal. The actual point that is being made is that someone actually built these parts in the first place. Those members of the community whom are using their talents to create parts (replica parts) to offer in the first place. The recast side of it is that someone they sold a part they made to.. takes that part and in tern copies it without any effort to make money and go over the original artists head.

Note that it absolutely would be recasting if someone took say… a Hero Proton Pack from the film.. recasted it and sold it. That is kind of the area you are trying to get into talking about. Perhaps you could get permission from the original artist and that would be fine. Otherwise there is no difference.

The other grey area that has been brought up are the Clippard valves. Why can we recast those in resin, but can’t for example recast a scratch built Clippard valve that someone made from PVC and whiteout caps? The difference in that becomes that it is a commercially available part that does not affect the sales of valves from Clippard. On the otherhand.. recasting something someone has made does affect the sales and directly takes money away from the original artist.

I hope this was clear. There will be an FAQ written when I have more time.

As additional explanation to why Rhett is banned from selling, even if there wasn’t a recasting issue involved, he was involved in two major incidents of complaint on Proptopia concerning poor quality of his parts which ranged from poor curing and packaging and extremely poor customer service/contact, it was felt he was given more than enough chances to try improve things but the improvement never came, and Sean Bishop decided that as each time a issue came up, which resulted in the For Sale forum being temporarily locked, that the only course of action was to ban Rhett as it didn’t seem like he was ever going to improve.

The grey area morality of recasting has been discussed ad nausium on the RPF. Recasting extends essentially to only what fans have made. If you cast a screen used item (at least on the RPF) you aren’t concidered a recaster. Same goes for found items, like the Clippards. If you were to mold and cast someone elses cast of a screen used item or Clippard that would make you a recaster.

As for people using the excuse that they “had to get what I could where ever I could”, if you’re supporting recasters knowingly you’ll most likely draw the ire of many honourable sellers and possibly be black listed among them and not be sold to.

This is very true parts will all look similar and they share similar plans, but think of it this way…

Millions of people are all taught how to write the English alphabet, but even those schooled identically have a distinct style… Regardless of the plans we are shown or how we are told to do things, humans are individuals and we almost always add a distinct mark to what we create… Scary as it might sound yes, 99% of the time an artist can identify his work almost immediately, regardless…

In this community it’s zero tolerance, so yes… Ironically in most cases a deal can be worked out with the previous artist, all it takes is communication rather then assumptions or flat out theft… But, interesting enough if you dig deeper you will almost always find that if they did it once they did it twice… I know I have been around a little longer then some but not nearly as long as others, and looking over the above list I can say with faith that there has certainly been more then one instance of questionable behavior on each and every one of them up there…

In the end the choice is yours…

I’m real glad this list went up since I’m brand spanking new to the prop world and this site. Ive been doing resin garage kits for at least 6 or 7 years now and recasting is a HUGE problem with them as well. So big infact that its put some of my favorite producers out of business (Screamin’, the makers of my mars attacks kit and Horrizon, the makers of my joker kit just to name some). I’m putting together my first every wand and so far everything Ive gotten has been great, and luckily for me from users who are not on the list. I was however planing to buy something from a few of these people and I’m glad now I didn’t. Even if parts are of exceptional quality I do no not support recasters in any way shape or form.

some people need to understand what recasting is all about.

In essence, the main reason why this hobby doesn’t support recasting. (by this hobby, I don’t mean Ghostbusters hobby, but prop making hobby in general - might it be star wars lightsabers or Back To The Future DeLorean Time Machine replicas)

Recasting is cheating on a seller/maker, stealing his work to benefit from it without effort from the recaster side and without benefit from the creator side, without his consent.

Think of it this way: you put time and effort to make a hard-to-find part, might it be a found item or custom creation. Let say you spend all your spare times for 3 months making it. Then, once its done, you mould it to be nice to people, and you sell it for let say 100$, which is good since its impossible to find, you spend several hundreeds in wrong parts to find what it was and to make a valid 1st generation mould, and to recoup your spare time from the last 3 months…

Then, one guy buy one from you and make a mould of it, and start selling some for 20$/piece. Its not important for him that its so cheap, as he didn’t invest time nor did he have invested in finding the proper way to make it; he’s got a cheap-ass mould that costed nothing and the material he uses is cheaper.

This is what recasting is about, and once it starts nobody wants to invest time to make something for the community as it will be only to benefit some cheatful stranger.

Keep in mind - if someone has 1 recasted part, chances are that other of his products are recast as well, but we didn’t realise it yet. An error is possible, but generally recasting is done with full knowledge and only for pure benefit. It stops being a hobby once it starts being a business. Want to support the hobby? avoid recasters at all costs as they are the ones making fans not want to develop new products that you need.

This is a bump of this thread in order to make sure that ALL NEW members are seeing this topic and reading it.

145will on eBay has 4 shells for sale as well as some misc resin parts. I have a feeling this could be Midwest Propshp again!

yes it is indeed midwestpropshop/loveusmokey

There is an auction on ebay right now, for a proton pack for sale, it’s from a seller called hobby farm, it looks just like rhett martins stuff, and I’m pretty sure that the seller lives in the same town as he did. Someone want to confirm this?

Hotshot has been offering me all types of stuff for my GB1 costume on the RPF the past few days. I’m glad this warning was posted.

**Does anyone have an opinion about captainamerica on eBay? The person seems to be selling a decent costume set-up but claims it takes 6-8 weeks for delivery. Any feelings on that or the seller that I might want to know about?

I’ve also had Hotshot trying to get me to buy a whole set-up from him on the RPF, but I clearly won’t since he was mentioned above. Thanks for the warning!**

He has his own feedback thread

In short he sells inaccurate suits for a large sum and has been known to never deliver or refund.

Are you speaking of captainamerica or Hotshot?

**Well, I guess that answers it. Sounds like oridering the no ghost patch and custom name tag is a good idea, but not going to buy anything else from him. I’m sure there’s plenty of people on here that can point me in the right direction for the best jumpsuit, elbow pads, belt, etc… By the way, I’m looking to make a GB1 costume, so any info you can give would be most appreciated! **

I would order patches from Katara8

It would seem, as of late, that it is safe to order patches from J. Kerezman/CaptainAmerca as long as you order patches and nothing else.

nothing else