If you are one of the scam victims who paid $85 for at least 261 sales of this book in 2009, please step forward. You are not alone!

Forum topic: Was anyone else here ripped off (purchased Last Unicorn Deluxe Edition)?

UPDATE: 182 additional sales are documented, with a list provided by a reader, raising total known sales from 79 to 261. There may be more.

Sales are documented below. 79 x $85 = roughly $6700 for this scam alone. And this is from ONE offering (out of how many offerings?) of ONE title out of many.

For 10 years, Connor Cochran has consistently offered “reservation” pre-sales for “special”, “deluxe” goods that are never intended to be produced.

The scam method starts by offering something that sounds almost “too good to be true”. (It is.) Buyers extend trust because of the name Peter Beagle attached to it. That’s the CONfidence that CONnor counts on for a CON game.

After the sale, the goalposts move. Connor makes promises of extended delivery times: later, “soon”, “end of the year”.  They move again… and again… hanging from a fraying thread of buyer confidence.

Connor strings victims along until the Statute of Limitations runs out to bring claims to court. He counts on attrition of claims by delaying them.

@FanAgainstFraud @shaunduke @SkiffyandFanty Huh, I'd totally forgotten about that! I ordered the Two Hearts/Last Unicorn package in ~2004.

— Crystal Huff (@arisiacrystal) November 27, 2014

If an angry buyer does run out of tolerance, and makes pressure- Connor promises to send a refund check or replacement goods. Nothing arrives. If a buyer complains AGAIN… oops, it was lost in the mail! Wait again for another promise. And the process repeats. (This site holds piles of private emails documenting it.  We are preparing to release some. If you are one of the victims, please share. EDIT: here.)

If an angry buyer wants to take it to court, Connor has free service from disgraced ex-lawyer Charles Petit to fend them off.

If the claim persists through this attrition process, Connor counts on the amount of sale being less than the effort to legally pursue a claim. Few will go that far.  The cost to pay off a few claims will be only a small portion of the total take.

That’s the method of these scams: keeping them under the radar in size, spreading the net widely, and keeping individual claims isolated from one another. This is why fans need to help each other and tell their stories.

What a way to raise $6700 at a time! The saddest part is, if a person worked an honest job… they’d probably make twice as much in honest pay for the work.

What made you go bad, Connor? Why did you stoop to this? How did you go from being a fan, to scamming them? Where did your conscience go?

In late 2014, the Conlan Press website refers buyers to a long-expired promise, in a string of broken promises of delivery.

___

Buyers (of this title) have been strung along since 2009.  As a buyer said in 2010:

“They shouldn’t be selling stuff and taking your money unless the product is ready for shipment IMO. Those hundred books with the special pages and illustrations etc should have been all done before they announced they were selling them.”

Documents of sales:

From: Connor Cochran connorfc@earthlink.net
Subject: Your Extra-Deluxe LAST UNICORN reservation request
Date: October 25, 2009

Hi.

You are getting this email because you sent in a reservation request for the Extra-Deluxe LAST UNICORN hardcover.

Good news! Your request came in while we still had copies. So you are now officially on the Reserved List.

Send your payment via PayPal to customersupport@conlanpress.com. For those of you who live within the United States, payment will be $75 each for your books and $10 for shipping/handling. If you live outside the United States, payment will be $75 each for your books and $15 for international shipping/handling. When you pay, make sure you use the message portion of your payment form to send (a) your correct mailing address, (b) how you would like Peter to sign your book, and (c) a conceptual cue for me to use as a starting point for your unicorn sketch. You can also send all that information via separate email, to connor@conlanpress.com, if the form doesn’t have enough room.

Peter and I will add our material to these Extra-Deluxe copies in the order that they are purchased, so the sooner you pay, the sooner you will get your special books.

By the way — even if you pay right away, I’ll still be calling you in person to chat and thank you for diving in to get this extra-special book. I’m looking forward to speaking with as many of you as possible.

All best,
Connor Cochran
Business Manager for Peter S. Beagle
& Publisher, Conlan Press

And then the goalposts moved…

From: Connor Cochran connorfc@earthlink.net
Subject: YOUR EXTRA-DELUXE LAST UNICORN HARDCOVER (TEXT & SKETCH UPDATE)
Date: December 29, 2009

Hi!

Peter and I have been working through these, in order, as fast as we can. It’s taken much longer than either of us thought it would, for which we both apologize. The simple truth is that we both seriously underestimated how much time it would take for us to make our additions to all these copies. Now that we’ve been at it a while we know better.

For all of you receiving this email, here’s where things stand: because we are working through these in purchase order, Peter hasn’t yet gotten to adding his extra material to your books. He is taking one day a week out of his writing schedule to work on this, and finds that he can usually get through 15 copies before his hand starts to cramp up. Based on that you should be able to look at where you are on the list, below, and see roughly when he will be getting to your copy.

After he completes his part, your book will go on the sketch stack for me to make my addition. But there are still a lot of books ahead of you, even then– it usually takes longer for me to add a sketch to each copy than it does for Peter to do his part — so it could be several more months from now before your finished copy ships to you. Peter and I think you in advance for your continued patience.

SOME IMPORTANT NOTES:

1) If you see asterisks next to your name, below, it’s because I’ve never gotten a cue/suggestion from you for personalizing your unicorn sketch. If there is anything you’d like me to keep in mind when doing your drawing for you, something that might make it a little more specifically your own, please get that to me ASAP.

2) Please send me a quick note verifying your best current shipping address. Some of you have moved since making your purchases — and for those of you who haven’t, I still want to make sure the shipping address I have on file is the correct one.

All best
Connor Cochran
===================================================
1 Juliet Fox
2 Bob Kennett 2 ***
3 Kwok Ting Lee 1 ***
4 Kwok Ting Lee 2 ***
5 Jane Ludgate
6 Elizabeth Larsson 1
6 Elizabeth Larsson 1
7 Elizabeth Larsson 2
8 Honora Foah 1
9 Honora Foah 2
10 Honora Foah 3
11 Melissa P. Mosley
12 Sabeen Mapara
13 Art Morris
14 Geoff Guthrie
15 Robert Neal Coulter
16 Veronica Victoria Hough
17 Lorian Taylor
18 Rachel Baker 1
19 Rachel Baker 2
20 Rachel Baker 3
21 Patrick Lake
22 Angela Dalton
23 Katherine Stokke
24 Meghan Martin
25 Eliza Coleman 1
26 Eliza Coleman 2 ***
27 Eliza Coleman 3 ***
28 Jennifer Allen
29 Jill D. Horne ***
30 Erin Osborne-Martin
31 Kristen Cass
32 Sean & Laura Holland
33 Nicole Monelle ***
34 Natasha Christenson
35 Joshua Villines 1
36 Joshua Villines 2
37 Kim Holec 1 ***
38 Kim Holec 2 (for Mike Langford) ***
39 Ashley Armstrong
40 Ashley Armstrong
41 Sherry Bovee
42 Deirdre McLeod
43 Charles Hill
44 Alesia Tom
45 Amanda Tripple
46 Heather Boyer
47 Eva Richeson
48 Jeanine Holscher
49 Marysia Przeslawski-O’hear
50 Aziza Khan
51 Edward Geoghegan ***
52 Seth Breidbart
53 Sarah Rosenthal
54 Linda Williams
55 Linda L. Pang ***
56 Linda L. Pang ***
57 Erin Murphy ***
58 Edward Ecklund
59 Edward Ecklund
60 Marvin Prather
61 Cody A. Aichele
62 Kenn Quist
63 Annie Williams
64 Charles E. O’Bryan 1
65 Charles E. O’Bryan 2
66 Charles Edward Hardin gift
67 Ivan Yakubovich
68 Rebecca Edgeworth 1
69 Rebecca Edgeworth 2
70 Margaret May C. Lambert
71 Susan Kanner
72 Amanda Grosvenor
73 Angela Clayton
74 Marty Sandler (for Alyn Darnay) ***
75 John Mooney
76 Larry Womack
77 David Ray
77 David Ray
78 Jose Gabriel Dominguez Reyes
79 Anita Thomaston

5 years and many broken promises later, still waiting…

UPDATE: 182 additional sales are documented, with a list provided by a reader, raising total known sales from 79 to 261. There may be more.