“It’s a big surprise,” said Edward Castillo, owner of Cowboy’s last ride.
Castillo makes handmade cowboy caskets. They can each take up to 50 hours to carve, sand and stain.
So when he received an order for seven caskets from a reverend in Australia, he made that order a priority.
“You know he gave us a credit card, a number, name everything went through,” he said.
Most of his orders come from emails, so there were no red flags, until the bills came.
“He said that he had some friends who own funeral homes, so you know I knew automatically that
the credit card probably wasn’t going to be in the same name, which it wasn’t, two weeks later, you know they’re fraud,” said the Early native.
Now he’s got thousands of dollars of debt from the bank. He’s also got seven caskets with no one to claim them and no clue who to bill them to.
“You know there’s no words to explain you know how a person could do that,” said Castillo.
Bank representatives told Castillo that order was made using a stolen credit card. He believes that person hoped he wouldn’t find out about it until after he shipped out the caskets.
“I pray that my sales pick up if worse comes to worse I guess pay for it,” said the business owner.
It’s been a hard lesson to learn – one he doesn’t want other small business owners to have to experience firsthand.
“Be very careful, especially the mom and pop businesses, the small businesses is who they’re targeting cause I’m sure I’m not they’re only one,” he said.
Castillo is currently looking for an attorney to represent him and help lower his debt to the bank. He’s also filled out a fraud form with the FBI.
Photo contributed by BigCountryHomePage.com. For video of this report, please click here.
