I am sure you are right. I kept trying to give him the benefit of the doubt and believe at least SOME of his stories - why, I don’t know. 
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Because you are a nice person 
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I have too many snarky comments running through my brain, so I’m not going to bother picking out a specific one.
I will say the basic idea of a lawsuit over buying an expensive horse that went lame less than a year later would generally sound like a stretch to me. You can buy an expensive horse and have it go lame the next day, or the next week or the next month, unfortunately.
But it does sound like there was a lot of other stuff going on here.
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According to Aziz’s lawsuit, Peppercorn went lame within a month. I’m not sure who took that and made it “less than a year”, which is technically true, but it gives a much different impression.
Secondly, the pleadings explain why the Aziz’s bought another horse. That’s because the second horse was bought in the same time period as the first. They didn’t know they were being lied to and cheated on, yet.
Lastly, EL is very good at stringing people along. He agreed to replace the first horse, Jumping Mouse, with a new horse, Rominka. Well, that’s not quite it. He agreed to put the $100k that Jumping Mouse was sold for, towards Rominka’s $250k purchase price. Now… I wonder how much both these horses were overpriced by EL and what he paid for them… it looks like a merry-go-round at this point.
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That’s still a thing that can happen with horses, unfortunately.
But it does sound like there was lots of other stuff going on.
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Guessing that it wasn’t about the lameness itself. The lameness was the beginning of the journey of discovery that the horse was not as represented.
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From the article and as I guessed:
After reviewing images of Lamaze, Robert Kotler, a plastic surgeon in Beverly Hills, told The Daily Beast his condition seemed like the result of an external injury, perhaps a major infection or tumor, though he couldn’t say for sure. Another plastic surgeon, Jay Calvert, had a different take, with the same caveat about certainty: “It’s fair to say that something’s going on with his nose and maxilla that would be consistent with cocaine use. There’s very few things that do this.”
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Oh, you’d be surprised. When I was struggling a bit professionally in my mid-20s, I read somewhere that the going rate for a black market kidney was $60k. My initial reaction was, “holy shit, where do I sign up?” 
No substance abuse history at all, other than weed a handful of times in college.
At the time I probably would have started some kind of initial inquiry had the information been at least somewhat accessible with some effort. In your 20s you think you’re bulletproof and that nature designed you with 2 kidneys because “one to keep, one to pay off debt.”
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Interesting. I couldn’t get the linked pleading to open.
I went back and looked at the earlier posts in this thread because for some reason I thought the Aziz suit involved a KWPN gelding named Bright, but that horse is actually involved in the Chad suit. That one was purchased for over 600,000 euros, and then sold a few years later for 8,000.
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Yes. Sounds like it’s a matter of “cocaine nose.” A well known example is Artie Lang.
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A merry-go-round, indeed.
In the article, he says this about buying and selling horses:
Lamaze developed a profitable business buying and selling show jumpers. His first big score came when he acquired an $800 horse at the racetrack; he says he found a buyer who paid him $150,000 for it. (The Daily Beast was unable to confirm this independently.) This kind of deal-making embodied his approach to business: There’s “nothing illegal” about fat margins, he says. “If somebody’s willing to pay it, who cares?”
So yeah, I think he’d screw over buyers, his own clients, even those faithful folks who thought they were his friends, if he thought he could wring more money out of them. Ethics be damned.
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I’ve wondered since I first read about his “new kidney” whether it was a black market kidney.
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Some people think he still has the two kidneys he was born with.
His timeline does not hold up.
He could have heard some of these medical stories from any source. Obviously uninformed and imaginative. And adopted them for his own because he needed excuses that extreme.
A hallmark of these liars about medical procedures is that there are no records to back them up, or if there are records, they don’t support the story.
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Renn_ you are a much kinder person than I am.
I read that statement and my thought was “BS”.
It is typical of addicts to rationalize and manipulate.
Here he is both rationalizing and trying to manipulate the sympathies of others, in my opinion.
He was an addict before, during and after.
And to the people who think he was a poor guy being used for personal gain by others’?
Huh? He was riding other people’s horses, horses they bought, they paid for him to ride, and for years of training and showing expenses
Can we even guess what it costs to show a horse at that level?. And because of Other People’s Horses and Other People’s Money HE became a top rider and became wealthy.
Please, who is “using” whom?
And in response to the suggestion that he was “the only good rider the Canadians had”, I am sure many would beg to differ. 
And now, there seem to be doubts that he even had that poor, disadvantaged upbringing he has made hay out of for all these years.
You can’t be a teen riding and skiing and be all that poor.
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Well, I had a horse drop dead under me of an aortic rupture and it took me awhile before I could get on another horse without worrying that one was going to die today too. So of all his BS, that one rings true to me. (Even a stopped clock is right twice a day?)
And like I said, that’s why I wish everybody had accessible therapy. Not an accessible bottle, baggie, or vial of self-administered pharmaceutical help.
I feel sorry for the circumstances that got him to a point where he felt like the choices he made were the right ones. I don’t feel sorry for him for making those choices, or experiencing the consequences of them… as he should.
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This sums up my thoughts and feelings too.
As someone who has lost two of my siblings to cancer, and watched them face slow and painful deaths with courage, his behaviour is despicable.
As I said earlier, being a cheat, a thief, a liar is one thing - but this? is disgusting.
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Just from experience with other people, not EL who I do not know … circumstances are not always the cause of this type of behavior. Sometimes it is just who someone is.
He was already making a lot of money - by his own account. He behaved as an unprincipaled opportunist when he saw a way to make even more.
He had a path to a good honest living that would have kept him comfortable and secure. He chose another way.
He had the means and the supporting friends to address his addiction(s). He chose another way.
He’s burned so many bridges, totally unnecessarily. He did it all on his own.
I am very skeptical because of his continuous pattern of behavior. He could have stopped at any time. He could have not started at all.
He could have followed an ethical path to solid success and riches. He is the one who twisted and used the people who were most supportive of him. The people who could have helped him through his challenges.
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Do you think EL didn’t have the means or support to go to therapy or rehab?
There is a difference between having the means and also the want to. You cannot help a person who does not want to be helped. BTDT
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The forged letters and other documents … interesting to think how that was managed. Letterhead, and all that sort of thing. Coming up with the content text. Typing it in. Using the names of credible doctors. Some of them don’t know who he is.
He even admitted to at least one. He seems to think that forging a letter from a doctor is just something everyone can understand. Not a biggie – to him.
Oh wait – other people did it. Or – did they?
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Just “wanting” help and having monetary access is no guarantee of successful rehab. Many people try and fail, repeatedly, and many people with the means to afford rehab die from their addictions after many tries.
I have to say, I felt very sorry for EL when Hickstead died. It was a terrible thing. I have no similar sympathy for him now, only pity.
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