CASPER, Wyo — A 21-year-old Casper man accused of an online bait-and-switch scamming decided this week not to change his plea and will instead challenge the Casper Police Department’s investigation at trial.
Casper police got the case from Raleigh, North Carolina, where a man said he sent the seller $10,890 for some gold and silver coins and received a box full of raisins, aquarium rocks and raw beans.
The suspect, Seth Aaron Fisher, is presumed innocent unless found or pleading guilty.
Assistant District Attorney Amanda Kirby asked the judge in a filing to exclude any argument of a possible alternative suspect at trial.
In response, Public Defender Tim Cotton wrote that the money trail never led to Fisher.
The transactions reportedly occurred in September and October of 2024, according to the affidavit.
The victim said he had been able to get the address for the person that sent the boxes, and had also been in contact with someone who claimed to have also been swindled by Fisher. Casper police knew that person to be a known associate of Fisher’s, the report said.
A search warrant for Fisher’s suspended Ebay account showed that money actually went to two PayPal accounts under two different people: one a known associate of Fisher’s and the other a family member, police said.
Cotton pointed out in his defense filing that when CPD Detective Jonathan Schlager wrote the report and testified at the preliminary hearing, he had not spoken to those two people
Schlager had also only been able to contact Fisher by phone and thus could not verify his identity, Cotton said.
Of that conversation, Detective Schlager said Fisher initially claimed that he never sold anything online, and then claimed that someone had stolen his wallet and implied the thief had stolen his identity.
Fisher then said he had all five-stars reviews as an online seller and that any of those customers would come to court and testify for him, according to the report.
During the investigation, several bags of raisins and beans were reportedly found when a search warrant was executed at Fisher’s address, the report said.
Fisher has posted bond and appeared Tuesday, at the scheduled change-of-plea before Judge Kerri Johnson, who said the case would return to the top of the trial stack.
