If you have been ripped off by Chris Gilcrest under any of his company names, contact the Ventura County District Attorney and fill out a written report with any supporting documentation you have.Contact Catherine Mano 805-662-1703 with the DA's office to add a complaint to this case. Case Nbr 9:10-BK-16202-RR. Also be care as this company is also doing business under the names. That's what I'm doing. They need as much as possible to arrest this guy (again) and indict him (again). Maybe this time they can put him away for a while. This guy is apparently a rip-off artist with webskills. He was finally run out of Tulare County and is now in Ventura. I pity his new wife, if he even has one. If there indeed was a divorce, I'm glad the former wife finally got away from this schmuck.
If you've been ripped off by Christopher Morgan Gilcrest, you should also call Intuit at 1-877-559-7866 and report Growquest Growers, Chris Gilcrest and all of his other businesses for fraud to their risk management and underwriters department. You won't get your money back, but you'll have the satisfaction of helping to close his account with Intuit, forcing him to find another funding middleman. Paypal won't do business with him as they have a money back guarantee if you don't get your merchandise and I'm sure they had to pay out big bucks for his fraud.
Two months. No rose. No refund. I ordered a Chihuly 36" standard rose tree from Chris on Dec. 1. He required payment through Intuit. I usually use Paypal. (They have a money back guarantee for non-delivery. Must be why Chris prefers Intuit, the do nothing tax people) I waited for a bare root rose tree. Finally e-mailed him on Feb. 1 as I think 30 days is quite long enough to get a tree. He then e-mails me on Feb. 16 that he has to call me for a credit card for delivery since it's no longer in his system. (It was never in his system). The tree is all "boxed" and waiting for FedEx but I haven't paid for shipment. Apparently the $10 was for a wooden crate, not shipping a bare root rose in a cardboard box like any other nursery. Then he says he's just going to delivery it himself. Well, that's come and gone and still nothing. Now he says it will go out FedEx on Monday, Feb. 27, 2012. Still no rose. No tracking number. NADA. I'm lucky. I'm only out $58.94. Some people lost several hundred dollars.
But plenty of excuses from ol' Chris. The guy doesn't respond to e-mail, but boy, when you start putting up negative feedback he is johnny-on-the-spot with threats. Sorry, Chris but 247 redundant complaints can't all be liars. He'll give you excuses about his family life in turmoil. He'll play dumb asking you what invoice you're talking about. Then he'll just get angry, call you names and threaten you with legal action. Because it's obviously illegal to pay money for a plant and expect it to be delivered.
This guy is a fraud DON'T BUY FROM HIM. He's declared bankruptcy but is still pretending to do business.
Check him out on
Scaminformer,
Ripoff Report,
Dave's Garden,
Gardenweb and the
Ventura County Star. Don't forget the
Santa Barbara Better Business Bureau.
Check out
Lysette's video on YouTube and you'll see exactly what kind of business he's running. A vapornursery. But to see the over 600 videos Chris has posted on YouTube you'd think he's the biggest outfit in the free world. All a sham. None of that is his.
Google either of his two addresses and then zoom in with the satellite view.
134 Davis Street is a small garage behind 132 Davis Ave, a small house (look at the street view).
590 West Main St. is in the median of the road.
Santa Paula,California 93060
His website is very impressive but it doesn't exist. No nursery has that kind of inventory and he can't most of those plants. But then, he doesn't have to because he never delivers them. He just takes your money. So he can have the largest vapor stock of vapor plants in the western hemisphere. (Check out the rose trees. No nursery has that many rose trees of any size. They just don't do that many varieties in any given year.)
If you have been ripped off by Chris Gilcrest of Growquest Growers, please call Intui and the Ventura County District Attorney's office to fill out complaints against him. Maybe we can kick him out of Ventura like Tulare kicked him out. (Kudos to the tenacity of the Tulare D.A.'s office.)
1 Updates & Rebuttals
He's back in business.
#2Author of original report
Wed, September 14, 2016
Within a month of being released from jail Christopher Morgan Gilcrest is now doing business as a landscaper doing hardscape. He's calling himself Earth Stone & Rock and is living in Lancanster, CA. He has four domains: Palmspringsgoldgravel, Palmsprings-goldgravel, Decomposedgraniteinstallations and Decomposedgranitecost. All dot coms.
He is also back on Youtube, this time as EarthStoneRock and doing his same old scams. He walks around taking video of someone's front yard and bloviates on what they did right or wrong like he's an expert, he stumbles across some workers installing a gravel driveway or landscape and videos them like they work for him and it's his installation, he goes out to the desert and videos and implies that he gets rocks just like them from private property in the Mojave desert.
It's all hot air.
He's got an "air quarry" just like he had an "air nursery".
He's also made a new profile on LinkedIn but you can read both his Growquest one and his Earth Stone & Rock one. He's gone from a PhD from International Horicultural school to Santa Barbara City College.
I question he even graduated from high school.
So he's out of jail, his second or third strike, I'm not sure, and he hasn't learned a damned thing. He's up to his old scams. I'll be following him to see how long it takes for him to get arrested again.