Puerto Rico forum member death

[TropicalFruitHunters]

A friend from PR just forwarded me the link below.  I believe this is our forum member PuertoRicoFoodForest.  He purchased the incredible farm of Felipe Osborne Shea, that our group always visited when in PR.  Don't like to speak ill of the dead, but...my friend had repeatedly warned me to stay away from this guy saying what a scammer he was.  There is obviously some truth to this since I'm seeing several folks in one of the Facebook groups say the same thing.  Damn!  We've been trying to secure a visit to his farm too.  Glad we didn't now.
https://www.telemundopr.com/noticias/puerto-rico/hombre-ultima-con-un-disparo-a-su-hijastro-en-las-marias/2286715/?fbclid=IwAR2mIQwf4hJpTMKSBLd5Twa1LVaFTNgWFz5oFnRNJQ4MfsG30_HiHbMEwxg

[digigarden]

yikes it reads that his mom put a restraining order on him and he went to her house and crashed the door. so the family claims he pointed a gun on them so his stepdad shot him. i'm sorry the guy was so problematic. RIP

[Bush2Beach]

Very sad to hear of Tre’s passing. He was very enthusiastic about growing all sorts of rare fruits.
I wonder why his family was at the farm he was resuscitating in Las Marias if there was a restraining order. More questions than answers at this point. Thanks for putting in the good works that you did in your time .

[ScottR]

Wow, Damm, that's a sad way to go

[driftwood]

unfortunately placed an order with him on the day he died... hoping paypal can get it back to me.. I should have known when cashapp wouldnt let the payment go through to his account and he could only accept "friends and family" cause paypal wouldnt approve his biz license. I would have backed out but it seemed like many well known fruit people followed him on IG.. Lessons learned. Unfortunately he seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

[happyhana]

Believe this was also username Ertdude?

[TropicalFruitHunters]

It is tragic.  Not only a loss of life, but this farm is a rare, tropical fruit paradise and needs to be preserved.  There was quite a bit of back and forth on the Facebook group concerning this fellow...and  most coming from a few people I know who has dealt in person with him...and also who has met him and his family.  Seems a lot of fraud has been going on and many name changes with it.  There have also been deadly threats to a few individuals thrown in to boot.  Sounds like the entire family has some "issues" and this certainly came to light. 

From what I understand, the mother purchased the land at her son's request.  The mother and step father lived at the farm.  I had been trying to secure a visit to the farm for our last trip to PR, but communications with this fellow was sporadic at best.  His last response was well after our trip and he said he had not been to the farm in several months and didn't know when he might get back.  This may be where the restraining order came into play and the reason for not being at the farm.  Some crazy shit for sure guys.

[johnb51]

Let's hope by some miracle the farm passes into good hands.

[brian]

I went looking through my forum messages to see if I bought anything from him... I bought some sugar apple seeds a few years ago and received them no issue.  These are so common there isn't much room for error, though.  I didn't notice anything usual about him.

[happyhana]

My one seed deal was a hassle and the last. Wish I’d known he was behind PR food forest before ordering, oh well, live and learn, only buy from established transparent reputable sellers.

[W.]

There was a discussion of this incident on the Buy, Sell & Trade part of the site: https://tropicalfruitforum.com/index.php?topic=42406.0.

I did not realize that PuertoRicoFoodForest and Ertdude were one and the same. Ertdude had many interesting seedlings at a good price, but he always offered them in the winter when there was too much risk of cold damage to ship them to my location.

[brian]

I've had all kinds of seedlings and plants delivered in winter from various sellers with no issues, from Hawaii, California, Florida.   

For fresh fruit that spoil in days... yeah that sounds risky for sure

[elouicious]

I placed an order from tre a couple years ago at this point, this was when they had just taken over the farm and, other than being slow to ship, I didn't have any problems with him, clearly some things changed as the years went on but he provided me some ultra rare plants and that farm deserves to be in good hands

[roblack]

RIP

For the record, my dealings with Ertdude were positive. Not even sure if he actually is the same person.

Tragic and sad, either way.

[TomekK]

So sad to hear of this tragedy. I did a few trades with Ertdude, and they were mostly positive, with Tre just being a bit slow to respond. He was doing good work at restoring Machabca, at least preserving it and trying to clean it up. I hope someone can continue Tre’s work there.

Rest In Peace, and prayers for him and his family.

[Nick C]

Wow thats wild. Bought seeds and trees from them multiple times and never had any issues.