A win for the reptile community! Mark Braud

[tttaylorrr]

Yea, he has more aliases. I've been tracking him for a little over two years, and I told him then I would catch up with him sooner or later and I kept my word. I found a way to track his new accounts and I would forewarn people, however without proof some of my messages fell on deaf ears of some of the group admins on facebook. I couldn't risk telling people how I was tracking him and it getting out, because then I wouldn't be able to track and warn people. In the end, I organized everything last night, slept for about 3 hours because I was so excited, then first thing in the morning I went and got all the legality handled with the sheriffs office and we got everything done. I was there, though he didn't seem to recognize me without my beard, and he asked who's that? I said: It's Neal and I was hardly able to contain my grin. His jaw about dropped and he looked like he'd seen a ghost.

INCREDIBLE!!! your diligence has stopped a lowly cancer from continuing growth into our hobby. you risked A LOT to do that; i assume you were smart about it considering what you shared. defamation is no joke! but this is a big win for us, and a hilarious photo for him to be known by.

thank you, thank you, thank you for taking a risk on our passion's behalf.

[Craiga 01453]

Well done, good sir!!!

Score on for the good guys thanks to our friend, Neal.

[Skyrivers]

Thanks and good job. Would like a little more back story? How was he scamming people? I don't like scammers.

[artgecko]

Great job! I saw this on a FB group last night but had no idea that it was a community member that tracked him down.

All that said, I feel bad for the kids... That's tough. :/ But they can't help who their dad is.

I'm glad this guy will hopefully be getting punished for scamming so many people and won't be able to scam any more.

On the FB group they were asking for people to come forward if they had been scammed by him. Is that still the case? I'll have to let people know in the groups I post in.

[bcr229]

On the FB group they were asking for people to come forward if they had been scammed by him. Is that still the case? I'll have to let people know in the groups I post in.

Yes I believe so.

It also looks like he's been ripping people off for years, not just reptile folks. Do a Google search on his name + "scam"; he's been a very naughty boy.

[Craiga 01453]

All that said, I feel bad for the kids... That's tough. :/ But they can't help who their dad is.

Here's to hoping they learn from Daddy's mistakes and don't follow his footsteps into the "family business".

[Neal]

Great job! I saw this on a FB group last night but had no idea that it was a community member that tracked him down.

All that said, I feel bad for the kids... That's tough. :/ But they can't help who their dad is.

I'm glad this guy will hopefully be getting punished for scamming so many people and won't be able to scam any more.

On the FB group they were asking for people to come forward if they had been scammed by him. Is that still the case? I'll have to let people know in the groups I post in.

That's not his kids. He was bouncing around staying with different people because he was running from a lot of people + he had an active warrant out for his arrest. I wanted to get everything lined up so this way he actually got arrested.

Also regarding coming forward, I tell any people that has been scammed by him or one of his aliases to file a police report and that you want to press charges. That's what gets things done in the legal system.

[Neal]

Thanks and good job. Would like a little more back story? How was he scamming people? I don't like scammers.

I'll tell you the whole back story, but it's long lol. The funny thing is he never ripped me off, or even tried. He apparently scammed people in the Paintball Community and the electronic community as well, but I haven't bothered to look into that.

I'm from Louisiana and for the last 15 or so years Sean Bradley has been one of my best friends and I hang out with him and sit behind his table at the shows, well I met Mark Braud in 2016 at the Baton Rouge Repticon show. Working in Law Enforcement for so long, I know how to read people and I just got a weird feeling from him. Though he continued to talk to Sean and ask questions regarding breeding and stuff. He added Sean and myself on facebook. While still at the show I saw him go around and buy up a lot of stuff from the show, and then before he left the show he had everything listed on the Louisiana reptile group for sale. I told him on facebook that he doesn't need to do this because he can't guarantee the health of the animal nor whether it's eating good and so on. He claimed he was only trying to get the value for when he breeds. Then over the next couple of weeks I saw him buying things and turning around and selling them the same day or a day later and so on. I told him all he's doing is flipping and when it became known that nobody would want to deal with him. He claimed he was only selling the stuff he didn't want from deals that came with stuff. Then I saw it some more, so I posted and started warning people that he was only flipping animals and to avoid dealing with him, then word spread and I believe he was spending money on animals and wasn't able to move them because people knew what kind of person he was. This is when I noticed him starting to scam people. I got into it with him when he started badmouthing Sean and then he threatened him with bodily harm. Now for those of you that know Sean, he's in a wheel chair and I look out for my family and friends so I told him that if he wanted to have an issue with anybody that I would gladly meet up with him. This is when he started talking trash to me, and I hate when people run their mouth and don't do anything so this is where he became a prime focus of me to catch him in the streets.

Now he's only scammed a couple of people at this point(that I know of in the reptile community). He would buy animals tell the people they were sick and want a refund then turn around and sell that animal a week later. So once this became known word spread past the Louisiana group. This is when he started making fake profiles on facebook. Then because I learned his MO, I was able to start tracking his new accounts. I started to warn the admins of the groups he was in that these aliases were in fact Mark Braud. Some listened, some didn't, they wanted proof. Unfortunately I couldn't reveal because if it got out then I would have to figure out another way to track him and his new accounts. After he started scamming on Core McDaniel and Preston Lloyd the other admins learned that I actually knew what I was talking about and when I would tell them other accounts they would listen. He was buying animals and paying with paypal, then when he would receive the animal he would file a dispute that he never got the animal, so he would get his money back & the snake. He would also list snakes he didn't have for sale, at a cheaper price and when people would pay him(he would tell them to do family & friends) he would block them and not actually send the snake. Then I notified paypal of him scamming and I believe they shut his account down, as I was able to show them proof. Up to this point he was well known to avoid, but the problem was people were only posting feedback on him, and not filing police reports. All the meanwhile I was searching for him and when I would get a beat on him I would always be late as he was jumping around because not only was he scamming people online he was scamming people in real life, so he had a lot of enemies. All the meanwhile he was making more and more profiles and he started getting people to pay him on facebook and he would just deactivate the account. One of his later scams which put me close to him was when he stole snakes from a guy and left him stranded in Brookhaven, MS and crossed state lines with stolen snakes. The guy had an uneasy feeling and took a license plate as they were pulling off, and though Mark was using the alias Dustin Grishom, when they ran the plates, it came back as Mark Braud and so he filed a police report for theft, 21 snakes totaling in $8,000 value. Also at some point prior to this he ripped a girl off for a vehicle in a neighboring parish. So now a warrant was issued, but the problem is, they don't actively go seeking people they have warrants for, and Mark was bouncing back and forth between friends, who may of not known he was being hunted. This is when I learned his girlfriend was Corrina D1ckinson(had to replace the i with a 1 for the filter) who is the girl in the photo and she was helping him scam people. At this point is where I really narrowed 3 of the locations he was going back and forth between. So as it stands in time he has an active warrant in St. Tammany parish for felony theft, and the police report with charges pending in Brookhaven for felony theft. I now needed to figure out a way to lure him to a spot(which I had been trying to do for over a year), but if he even thought that person knew me then he would back out at the last second. So I kept tracking him while getting closer and closer to finding him. This is where I really turned the heat up because I was getting him removed from the groups as fast as he was joining them, so when he made his Lance Brumfield profile I warned all the admins. However, two groups wanted "proof", so they didn't remove him. So I searched their posts for his account and found a girl tagged another girl in the post of him selling stuff. I messaged the two girls and told him that was actually Mark Braud a known scammer and to avoid him. One girl had said she got a funny feeling and had decided to pull out of the deal herself. The other girl I had messaged asked to see all the stuff I had on him. I showed her the screenshots in the FBI group and Louisiana group, along with a photo of him. This is where probably the biggest break came. She was delivering rats every weekly to a girl that he was normally in the vehicle with, though she never knew his name. I explained the situation of Cory who was the one who had his snakes stolen in Brookhaven and I got with Cory and we sent her photos of the stolen snakes. She confirmed that he was selling some of those. So it was asked if she could arrange that she or somebody she knew wanted to buy the splatter blast(one of the stolen snakes) and the reason for this is because the sale would go down in Livingston Parish and with the snake being stolen, that's possession of stolen property a new charge in a parish where he has no charges currently. So the setup was in place at this point, and we talked and we all agreed to meet at Bass Pro an hour prior to go over all the evidence and that prior to that I would go to Livingston Parish Warrant Division and get them the warrant from St. Tammany parish and the police report from Brookhaven. So we met at 1 with the two narcotic detectives who were in vehicles you had no idea belonged to cops(which was awesome by the way). We went over all the details, how everything would be planned. So now is when it finally hit me that we were going to get this piece of garbage off the streets, hoping he showed which was really good because he had seen this girl many times before and had no reason to suspect anything.

Now is when the waiting begins, and because of the sensitivity of everything I won't get into details of where, but we all staged in 3 different locations to where we could see what was going down, and that we all knew what vehicle they would be in so we could see it as it pulled in. So the deal was supposed to happen at 2, and about 5 minutes prior, we all see that vehicle..... Game on. So they police roll up, and they're one officer on each side talking to the people in the vehicle, a few minutes pass and we're all worried that he's not there because he would of been asked to step out. They call me and the gentleman over who was ripped off in Brookhaven and asked us to identify the snake. Yep, that was the stolen snake, but where's Mark? It was his girlfriend who had been helping him scam and another girl, so the phones were confiscated and they said that Mark was back at the girls house. Now because these two girls are facing a felony charge of possession of stolen property, they were more than happy to cooperate. I mean who wants to go down for something they didn't do, though Corrina should of, but the bigger target was Mark. A few days prior, I had messaged Corrina on facebook to have mark meet me face to face and she had blocked me. That was okay because when they were in that vehicle I asked who Corrina was and the driver pointed to the girl in the passenger seat, I looked at her and said: "Hello, I'm Neal." and I smirked, her reaction was priceless because her eyes got so big when that set in. So as of now Cory has one stolen snake back. The girls gave us the address of where they were staying, and they were told to drive there that we would all follow, and not to run or do anything weird. The two officers told us that they wanted us to wait around the corner while they went into the house, so we did. When they had Mark out in handcuffs they called us over to identify the rest of the snakes. Cory was able to get three more of his stolen snakes back at this point. Now keep in mind the last time Mark had seen me was two years ago and I had a full beard, which I no longer have because I have to stay clean shaven. So when I walked up Mark asked: "Who's that?". I walked up and said: "It's Neal" I also tossed the b word in after Neal. He turned pale white as it hit him because two years ago I told him that sooner or later I would catch up with him at some point, so he's looking like he'd saw a ghost and his jaw dropped. I couldn't contain my evil grin and thought to myself that's right, I keep my word.

Now without people filing police reports and wanting to press charges, none of this would of been possible. I would of caught him but it would of been a different kind of meeting versus him getting arrested. I told Sean two years ago that I had his back if anybody ever wanted to cause him bodily harm, so as soon as it was said and done I rang Sean as soon as I was back on the road.

Through the two years of tracking him and all of the aliases he's used, I was able to routinely get his phone number and put pressure on him. I would also message him on all of his fake aliases once I had them removed from the groups to taunt him. With every message or text or phone call he would get more paranoid and start to get sloppier. When you're constantly running from the law and from people who are after you it starts to weigh on you.

[Prognathodon]

Great work!


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[Cheesenugget]

Thank you for getting this scumbag caught. I work on fraud cases all the time dealing with shady doctors and other characters but catching them or getting enough evidence to get the state to act is hard, because they too bounce from clinic to clinic, changing names and hands, etc. I'm glad that there are people like you out there who does the right thing for others, even when some may not appreciate it or that you were a simply bystander doing all of this work for the victims.