Facebook horse seller ordered to pay damages after selling unfit animals to buyers

A thirteen-year-old girl lay motionless on the ground after a horse kicked her in the head during a riding lesson in south Wales. Her mother, Fiona, thought in that moment her daughter might be dead, might have broken her neck. The girl was rushed to hospital with concussion and spent two weeks recovering at home. On the side of her helmet, you could see the hoofmark where the animal's hoof had connected with her skull.

The horse had been purchased six weeks earlier through Facebook, marketed as a "teenager's dream." During the lesson, it bucked and bolted with the girl partially mounted before delivering the kick. Fiona later discovered the animal had never been properly trained to ride. She had bought it from Tasha Lee Hopkins, a horse seller operating through a Facebook group called CT Sports Horses, which advertises itself as selling "safe sports horses" with six-month warranties. The horse's original owner, whom Fiona tracked down after the incident, revealed they had owned the animal since it was two years old and had never ridden it. Hopkins had not disclosed this when making the sale.

Fiona is one of five women who have told the BBC they were sold horses unfit for riding or suffering from serious, undisclosed medical conditions by Hopkins, who operates from Neath near Swansea. The pattern extends back at least seven years. One buyer alleged she received a horse with an undisclosed broken back. Another, Kayleigh Sweet, paid £6,250 for a horse named Otto in March 2024 after Hopkins assured her it had been recently checked and cleared by a veterinarian. Within a week, Otto went lame. Sweet discovered the horse had been diagnosed with chronic arthritis as a three-year-old, had undergone surgery that failed to improve his condition, and had been recommended for euthanasia by a vet. Otto's original owner had kept him only as a companion animal, not for riding. When Sweet's own vet confirmed the arthritis diagnosis and she informed Hopkins, the seller refused to honor the warranty.

Sweet pursued legal action. Earlier this month, Hopkins appeared at County Court in Swansea and was ordered to pay Sweet £11,000 in damages and expenses. Otto was returned to Hopkins during the proceedings; Sweet does not know what has become of him since. Another buyer, Hayley Vaughan, purchased a horse called Bonnie for £1,400 in 2019 for her sixteen-year-old daughter. After one ride, the girl reported discomfort. X-rays revealed Bonnie had a serious back injury and a painful spinal condition. The veterinarian told Vaughan there was no way the horse could ever be ridden safely and warned her never to let her child ride it again. When Vaughan contacted Hopkins, the seller offered to take the horse back but refused to refund the money. Vaughan found Bonnie a retirement home but lost her entire investment.

World Horse Welfare, a leading animal welfare organization, has warned of "too many cases" where horses unsuitable for riding are passed from seller to seller until they end up in poor situations. Unlike the dog trade, which operates under regulatory and voluntary industry standards, horse trading in Britain has no such oversight. The organization recommends that prospective buyers view horses in person, have them examined by an independent veterinarian, and ride them if appropriate. None of the five women who claim they were mis-sold horses by Hopkins had obtained a pre-purchase veterinary examination.

Sweet is now calling for horse passports to be converted to digital format. Paper passports, she argues, can be replaced with blank versions that conceal a horse's medical history. "People should have the truth from day dot and things aren't masked," she said, "because you can quite easily get a replacement passport for a horse that has nothing in it." She added: "I don't think I'll ever find peace until there's some underpinning security for animals and for people when it comes to processes like this." The Welsh government acknowledged that while paper passports remain a legal requirement, digital technologies could strengthen equine identification records.

The BBC put all allegations to Hopkins but she did not respond to questions. Facebook's owner Meta said it has removed the CT Sports Horses group and associated advertisements for violating its policies. The case exposes a gap in consumer protection: horses, unlike many other animals sold commercially, operate in a largely unregulated marketplace where buyers must do their own due diligence or risk purchasing animals that cannot safely be ridden—or worse.