Complaint Review: Hinojosa's Cross Trainers/Leo Hinojosa

My husband & I found a website http://www.hinojosascrosstrainers.com on an individual in Michigan, Leo Hinojosa, who sells personal protection and police dogs. We contacted him 9/20 about purchasing a personal protection dog from him. On 9/21 he sent us several emails describing "Merik", a German Shepherd and refers to him as "both on and off leash obedience, sport and personal protection trained." He refers continually through the 1" stack of emails I have from him to his training the dog. When I asked about what language his commands were in, he replied, "In both English and German but I mostly use German but have introduced English to him." I wired Leo Hinojosa a bank wire of $4900 for this dog on 9/24 from my account at Texas State Bank. I have an email from him stating receipt of the $4900.

I then have further emails from him stating dates he planned to take the dog into the vet, etc. We first became concerned about Leo when I was surfing the net looking at other German Shepherd websites to learn more about the breed, and I accidentally found one of the photos Leo had shown me stating it was "a b***h I have for sale"---on another breeder's site. I asked him about this, and he stated he must have sent me the wrong picture---that he had used that picture to demonstrate something to another person but that he also had a b***h named Anka and that he must have gotten the pictures confused. He apologized profusely. Still, we became a little concerned.

We received Merik on 10/15. The dog did not respond to basic protection commands in German such as sur Vatch (Watch) and Giblaut (bark). I became concerned that the dog was not trained. The dog did not exhibit prey drive in retrieving objects, and he did not know even some of the obedience commands that Leo had told us that he knew. I took him to Malinda Julien at US Tactical K-9 in Abilene for a protection training evaluation.

Malinda Julien feels strongly that the dog has had no protection training at all. The dog does not even have the basic temperament for protection training. He is a very sweet dog, a good pet with some basic obedience. We talked with Malinda about her classes, and she said that one of the requirements for her classes was a shot record. I pulled out the shot record Leo had given me and Malinda noticed it was not from a vet but Leo had just typed it out. She phoned the vet who did the health certificate, attached to Merik's crate for shipping, and that vet said that the shots were given in CALIFORNIA on October 2nd. Leo lives in Michigan. This became a huge red flag.

We then looked at the AKC papers and come to find out, the dog's paperwork was transferred to Leo on October 4th. I phoned the original owner listed on the paperwork and she was SHOCKED to find out that we had the dog---the story then unfolded.

Leo apparently located the dog about September 10 on the German Shepherd Dog Webring classifieds (the ad is still there, I have printed it off). The original owner was looking for a nice pet home for the dog for $1500. Leo made an initial contact with the owner to find out more info and got pictures of the dog at this time. When I contacted Leo on September 20, Leo sent me pictures of the dog as his OWN dog and began describing the dog as if he lived in Leo's home. Over and over, he describes training the dog. In email after email. We said on September 21 that we would buy the dog and that we would wire transfer the money September 24 into Leo's account. On September 24th, Leo contacted the owner that he wanted to buy the dog as a personal pet for his wife and demo dog for his obedience classes, and that he would wire her the money immediately. At this point he began stalling us on shipping the dog, saying he was having problems shipping. He continued to tell us day to day progress of the dog's training and he did not even have the dog. The original owner sent Leo the paperwork on the dog on October 4th. He did not receive the dog itself until almost a week later. He had the dog for only DAYS prior to shipping him to me on October 15th. He did NO training on the dog. After shipping him to me, he continued to email the original owner updating her on the dog's progress in HIS home. We did not clue Leo in that we had the dog evaluated. I began asking him MANY questions about the dog's training. Malinda Julien also emailed him with questions about the dog. Leo began calling the original owner with these questions, asking for details, all the while telling us lies in email still claiming he trained the dog. After speaking with the original owner, I sent Leo an email stating that I had spoken to the original owner and the jig was up. That the dog was only worth $1500 as a companion pet, and that we expected our money refunded. We are becoming very attached to the dog, and we have promised the original owner that he will NOT be returned to Leo but we feel that we should have at least a partial refund as the dog does not have the training and therefore he is NOT worth $4900.

Leo did not answer my email. At that point I contacted the breeder whose site the picture of the OTHER dog had appeared on that Leo had shown us. The breeder did not know Leo and she said that Leo had NO business showing a photo of her dog to ANYONE claiming it to be his animal for sale.

Leo then emailed me and said I had 3 options. 1. return the dog for a full refund, 2. return the dog for a replacement dog, or 3. keep the dog and get a partial refund. On option #3, he said that he paid the $1500 for the dog plus $600 for shipping from CA to MI, then $400 for shipping from MI to TX so that he would refund the $2400.

We wrote him back that we would not return the dog as we had promised the original owner that we would give the dog a permanant home, she is VERY concerned about the dog's stress level being shipped all over the country. We said that we would accept option #3, but that we did not feel that we should have to pay the shipping from CA to MI as that had nothing to do with us and was just part of his agenda. I told him he had 24 hours to deposit the money by wire transfer back into my bank account.

Leo saw his "way out"---he then wrote me back and said I only had ONE option, to return the dog for a full refund. We did not feel that he would return our money no matter what; we certainly were not going to risk the dog or go against our word to the original owner by sending the dog back to him. I wrote back that was unacceptable, and we would accept as we had said before that he would send $3000 by wire transfer to our bank account. I sent this in an email and by certified letter and by regular mail.

I am appalled at the violations of the Michigan Consumer Protection Act, fraud in interstate commerce, and the misrepresentation that occurred during the purchase of this dog from Hinojosa's Cross Trainers. I have reported this incident to the FBI's Internet Fraud division, The Attorney General of Michigan (both the consumer protection and high tech crime units), The Attorney General of Texas, the National Fraud Information Center, the Federal Trade Commission, the United States Postal Service (mail fraud, as some of the documentation was mailed), the National Consumer Complaint Center, and I will continue to report it to anyone else who will listen to me. Mr. Hinojosa thinks that I will get tired of this and give up. He is sorely mistaken. I do not feel that business practices such as fraud, misrepresentation, and violations of the consumer protection act should be overlooked. I do not care how much it costs me or how far I have to go, I will have justice in this matter.