I checked in with Iona before making this post.

I'm sure for those of you around long enough thought the fishbutts horse was long gone, but I discovered something today I thought important to warn new members of.

Stevi owned and operated a mermaid tail company called Fishbutts that ended up scamming a lot of people out of 1000s of dollars and selling shoddy tails. For the official summary of everything that went down you can check out this entire board, along with this warning thread: http://mernetwork.com/index/showthre...EAD!-%E2%9A%A0

Recently I used the built in function on instagram that allows you to add anyone who has ever emailed you, and stevi came up as an instagram user. I went through her instagram and linked social media accounts and looked at all the public postings, and did a bit of digging after I saw some postings that had me worried. It looks like She is making and selling fabric tails along with mermaid leggings, and mermaid themed underwear and bathing suits and taking party bookings. Normally I'd just roll my eyes but I saw a bunch of newer mernetwork members asking her questions and trying to place orders. I could not find her specific etsy or website if she is operating one, but I thought it important you know who she is and what she did before you decide to send her money.

I am all for redemption stories, there have been similar situations in the mer world and I'm cool with giving people second chances. But those people usually do something to earn it eg: merberry's tails fell apart and some tails weren't delivered but they have been making a solid effort for a year to refund and pay back people. While I am still weary of their new company Finspo to me it's a good step in regaining community trust to actually pay back money. To my knowledge (correct me if I am wrong) based on the posts in this board, and in the above mentioned thread, Stevi has done everything she can to bury the fishbutt's legacy and hasnt paid back a cent and many tails fell apart and many didnt even get tails they paid for. Stevi fell on hard times, her company crashed and burned, and she turned her back on the mer community leaving many broken hearted (and just plain broke) mers.

So I am warning you please research people before you buy from them. A really good way to do things is put their email address into google and see what pops up. Sometimes you find caches of old websites etc. And don't order anything through a site like instagram especially if you dont know the person. At least when you do paypal you can dispute things. BUYER BEWARE. If you decide to give her a chance, that's your prerogative and I wont name some of the people I saw I'll PM you instead. But it seemed like you are all just ignorant to who she is or maybe didnt make the connection to who she is. After talking with Iona I decided to post a general warning for anyone else who may not know too.