Why Hortor Got Blacklisted

In short, they got blacklisted for scamming / ripping off fans for over a decade.

Note: A person called "Azmaveth" is discussed here. This person should not be confused with the [Puerto Rican band "Azmaveth"], nor with [a guy in the secular scene] with the same name. All three are completely unrelated.

Being such big figures in the scene, I can see why many people were surprised by my choice to call out Hortor (and their label ExhortMetal / EM Label & Distro) and blacklist their bands. Originally I just had a note on Hortor's page warning about them not sending out merchandise. This was because despite myself being one of the people ripped off by them, I was advised by a couple friends to leave them on my lists of Christian bands. I knew from the beginning that was a ridiculous thing to do, but I figured people who were part of the scene (and Christian culture in general) knew more about how to handle these things than I did. As more and more examples piled up though, I decided to stop waiting around, listening to these people, and instead called out this serious injustice within our church. The people who are known to be involved in this are Azmaveth, Adunamy / Abril, and Varme / Fredy A. Please do not lump Hortor's many former band members, or other bands they played in, etc in with this scandal, unless UNDENIABLE PROOF comes out that others were involved.
Here's a list of all examples I know of where they scammed people.

1) EEE Recordings
Back when EEE released Christian music, they did a trade with ExhortMetal. EEE sent their shipment (over 30 CDs) but ExhortMetal never sent theirs. This happened all the way back in 2008. [Source]

2) Myself
In December 2015, I ordered a HB t-shirt (which I later learned was bootlegged) from Hortor's Facebook page. I talked to Azmaveth, yet was given Adunamy (Abril M.'s) PayPal address for payment. I never got the shirt. [Source 1] [Source 2] [Source 3] For some reason, I don't have screenshots of what happened after this, but Azmaveth later replied about "sending another shirt but it would take a long time". While the Mexican post office is notoriously slow, it would make no sense for them to send another shirt since they "already sent the first one". If people that used this tactic were legitimate, the responsibility would be on the buyer to show that they didn't receive the item. Of course this is impossible, since they never even gave me a tracking number...

3) NokturnalWolf
In an interview from 2015, ex-band member NokturnalWolf mentioned that Hortor took money from him. As far as I know, this was never repaid. [Source]

4) Derrick T.
January 2016. "They took my money and never sent my shirts. Now they are avoiding my inbox messages." [Source]

5) "americanpride"
This person's comment was what made me finally decide to take action on this whole situation. They commented shortly before I unlisted Hortor's page, "I wish I have read here before buying from them. I guess there gonna keep my money and not send my t shirts. There not real Christians the band h o r t o r". [Source] Later, in an email, they told me they never got a tracking number from Hortor, either, and similar to Derrick, Hortor started ignoring them, too.

6) David S.
"Really sad. I got scammed too. $70 for a box set and never saw a single CD yet alone the box." [Source 1] [Source 2]

7) Gergely K.
"has happened to me as well. when I sent a polite message asking for some clarification / update, got silence as a reply. thought it was a one-off but evidently not. sad." [Source 1] [Source 2]

8) Vision of God Records
"I'd ban them as well
They also bootleg bands stuff.
Freddy has me blocked on Facebook for calling him out on bootlegging our bands shirts." [Source]

9) Terry M.
"Yep. I ordered a Whitecross shirt 2 years ago and never got it. Had no idea about the bootlegging, though." [Source]

10) rockpirat.sos
"Zero Communication! I paid to this seller the money for CD,and after two months, the paypal refund me the money because it seller did not send anything!!" [Source 1] [Source 2]

11) Randall
"I read all this before, but when I saw Fredy Acosta from Hortor and Beeroth on Face Book in a video where he was advertising some CDs I wanted to get, I contacted him. Without going into all the details, I was willing to give him a chance, but when he wanted to sell me many CDs and I said I would just get one CD for now and the rest later, he suspiciously backed out and seemed like he was trying to scam me, and refused to sell me just one, and then started talking stupid crazy crap to me. Anyone else had any recent contact with him, please state it, as this was in January [2022] that I had contact with Fredy A."

As I find more examples (of which I'm sure there are...) I will add them here. And before anyone mentions it - yes! I am quite aware that some people have had positive experiences with Hortor, and in addition to the negative feedback on Discogs for example, there is also some positive. I don't know why Hortor blatantly scam some people, and not others... However, my job isn't to explain their weird behavior. My job is simply to call out these scam artists and make sure they stop using the church of the righteous, living God, to further their lies and greed!