How to protect yourself from pet scams
By Gina Spadafori
July 26, 2008
The Los Angeles Times has a reminder on the “lost pet” scam:
The scam: A phone call from someone who reports finding a beloved pooch is usually cause for celebration. But Western Union warns that it could be a cruel scam. The company has received reports from owners of lost dogs who say they’ve been called by people identifying themselves as truckers. The dog, a supposed trucker says, was found along a highway.
How it works: The driver says there was no time to get the dog home because of a tight delivery schedule. Now the truck is across the country, but the trucker offers to put the dog on a flight. All you have to do is wire money for the fare. Or sometimes the trucker will also say the dog was injured, and request additional money to cover vet bills.
The outcome: You show up at the airport to meet the flight, but your dog doesn’t arrive. The con artist had gotten your number off a “lost dog” poster or advertisement and never had the pet at all. The nearly surefire way to tell this was a scam was that the money had to be wired — that makes it easy for the fraudster to pick it up and hard for you to trace it.
More on the scam from Western Union.
Also … the bulldog scam continues. We get these in our e-mail inbox every day. Don’t fall for this crap.
Related: My friend Liz, who owns 1-800-HELP4PETS, has launched her dream site to help lost pets get home. Check it out: The Center For Lost Pets, especially the excellent advice section.
Gah, I have the bulldog scam forwarded to me at least three times a week. On top of it arriving on it’s own regular as clockwork. And NorCal Bulldog Rescue gets e-mails and calls on it all the time.
There is another variant where the “owner” is financially devastated and has one bulldog and one maltese (or whatever) puppy and for just the cost of shipping they can be yours!
I just dump them all but I am alarmed as to the number of well meaning and generally intelligent people whom I personally know who forward these to me thinking that there are actually dogs in trouble.
Comment by JenniferJ — July 26, 2008 @ 8:19 pm
Latest Scam:
Please add Anthony Peter to your list. $350 for a $2000 dog, now that’s bargain. They claim to have left Houston for Africa and couldn’t part with their puppies so they flew them all the way there. Anyway, glad you are alerting people. Their email is kriston.ar@gmail.com
Can’t the police get the names of the real owners of these email addresses from Google? It is a criminal act right? My 2nd grade daughter writes better that these people. FYI I asked for an address and got one which was a commercial business. When I told them that no one in Texas had a drivers license by that name they were offended. Encourage people to use http://www.publicdata.com to check people out. If someone will give me their real address I’ll talk to them.
Regards,
David
Comment by David D. — June 14, 2009 @ 5:56 pm