Beware: ZephyrTheDrake-0

**The initial date of “when” is a guesstimate as Zephyr had deleted the chat logs to hide all the evidence. I was unable to get a screenshot of the initial agreement.**
 

Zephyr was someone I had been introduced to via a YCH group commission completed by the artist Karukuji a handful of years back. After the completion of this YCH we decided to stay in touch.

We remained mostly friends on and off for the past several years where I could go several months without hearing from him only to have him message me if he wanted something from me for his own selfish reasons. 

An example of this is when I was able to get a commission opportunity with a very skilled animator so I was trying to see if any mutuals wanted to split the art with me. He had ghosted me for several months only to shoot me a message to get in on this commission. To which I had told him “no” because I found it odd he only just then decided to message me when I was fishing for people. 

I had a discussion with him about how this wasn’t ok to do after ghosting me for so long and he apologized. I declined his involvement with my commission and said if he wanted to get art with me in the future he would need to do better about communicating with me rather than only messaging me to get art. 

He did end up getting better at messaging me. He even ended up commissioning me for one of my Scales & Tails commissions. Normally I require a $100 deposit to reserve the spot since I had issues in the past of people backing out last second when I was ready to start the commission (I do these commissions on a monthly basis) but since he was a friend I was able to waive the fee. When his month eventually came up he was in a financial situation where he couldn’t afford to pay me the full amount. We had discussed it and agreed that I would work on finishing the art for him with the promise he would pay me back later for the finished art. 

(advertisement date of the Scales & Tales commission slot availability)

I finished his commission in June of 2023 and as of writing this have not received payment for its completion:

https://www.furaffinity.net/view/52654113/

During this time I had been friends with Zephyr, I had seen several people posting warnings about him saying that he was very irresponsible about money where he would bid on YCHs despite not having the finances to actually pay for it. Despite these warning signs from others I was still on Zephyr's side being sympathetic to his situation. I even sent Zephyr some of my paystubs so he could use me as a reference to try and get an apartment to rent. I would NEVER do this for someone online but I had considered him a good friend so I was willing to do it to try and help him out of a bad situation.

At this time I was also expecting art from the artist Karukuji (that I had been waiting years for) who Zephyr was also expecting art from. Karukuji would message me saying he was going to be canceling all active commissions and would be issuing refunds to all parties in his queue. 

Karukuji insisted on refunding my money to Zephyr since I didn’t have a Boosty account and then Zephyr would just forward me the refunded money. I rejected this idea because I didn’t trust Zephyr to actually send me the money because Zephyr already owed me $250 and has yet to pay me so why would I trust Karukuji to send him an additional $485 to MAYBE send back to me?

Karukuji would end up refunding my commission money to Zephyr anyway despite my concerns that Zephyr would be dishonest about forwarding me the money. 

I had discussed this situation with Zephyr about how Karukuji wanted to cancel all owed art and issue refunds to which Zephyr. I figured with Karukuji refunding him he might finally be able to pay me back for the money he owes me. 

Zephyr would end up sending me my money but only the amount that Karukuji owed me and nothing more. 

If Karukuji was refunding everyone of their commissions then why wasn’t Zephyr able to pay me back the money he owed me? If Zephyr got refunded from Karukuji then surely he should’ve had no problem paying me for the art he owed. I tried to challenge Zephyr on this by asking him about it and he would respond saying it’s “none of my business” but I think it very much is my business. Zephyr said he would pay me when he has the money to do so but didn’t have it at this time.

Over the next few months after this I would have futile efforts to try and get the money he owed me as he always had a new excuse for why he couldn’t pay or he would promise payment and then ghost me. 

Finally we agreed to a payment plan where he would make payments until he paid off his full debt for the art I completed and then we could finally go on our separate ways. 

Instead of paying off his balance, he would instead just end up blocking me and pretend like the money he owed was nonexistent despite promising me over and over he will pay it. He would also end up deleting the telegram chat history so there was no incriminating evidence and he would also block me on PayPal so I would be unable to send him money requests. 

Here are a few of the screenshots I was able to salvage from this:

(screen cap date January 8, 2024)

(screen cap dates January 11, 2024)

(screen cap date February 9th, 2024)

(mod note: 2 payments of 50$ equaling 100$ has been confirmed, one additional 50$ payment is unaccounted for. For the purposes of resolution, Fr0stbit3 is willing to settle for 100$ to consider the payment owed)