If you’re looking for a furry new family member online, chances are good that you’ll find a scam. The Better Business Bureau (BBB) estimates that 80 percent of sponsored search links for pet sales may be fraudulent, advertising animals the supposed sellers don’t own.
Pet scams hook consumers with adorable photos and heart-tugging tales of critters in need of forever homes. Sometimes the crooks impersonate breeders, creating slick websites that offer popular breeds at steep discounts. Or, they post ads on social media or online marketplaces like Craigslist, posing as pet owners forced by personal or financial circumstances to put a beloved pet up for “free” adoption to a loving family willing to cover shipping costs.
If you respond, they’ll ask due-diligence-type questions about your home situation and experience with pets, but the only query they really care about is whether you’ll wire a payment. They’ll direct you to a website for a transport company (also bogus) so you can track your nonexistent pet’s progress, which will invariably be delayed by contrivances requiring more money, such as insurance or a special travel container.
The swindlers are betting that your emotional investment in the anticipated pet will keep the payments coming, into the hundreds or even thousands of dollars. If you become suspicious, they may resort to threats, claiming the animal will die or you’ll be charged with animal abandonment (a real crime but one that does not apply in situations like this). Don’t get caught in their trap!
Warning Signs:
🐾 The asking price is far below the normal rate for a popular breed (pedigree Maine Coons average between $1-3k USD for pet, and upwards of $5k USD with the right to breed).
🐾 The person offering the animal insists on shipping and rebuffs offers to collect the pet in person.
🐾 Emails from the seller or the shipping company have poor spelling and grammar.
🐾 The seller requires payment by money transfer that does not have a dispute option (such as Western Union or MoneyGram), gift card or prepaid debit card.
🐾 The shipment is continually held up by demands that you wire more money for, say, insurance, pet food, veterinary care or a special crate.
So what can you do to avoid scammers?
👉🏼 Be skeptical of deep discounts.
👉🏼 Do a reverse-image search for pictures of a specific animal you are considering buying or adopting.
👉🏼 Copy and paste text from a sales site or ad into a search engine. If you find matching images or text on multiple sites, you’re probably dealing with a scammer.
👉🏼 Do search for the seller’s email and web address to see if the person has been the subject of complaints, and check the seller’s name against watchdog lists of suspected scammers (links below).
👉🏼 Don’t be swayed by authentic-looking websites. Scammers swipe photos, videos and testimonials from legitimate pet sites and create detailed web pages for fake transport companies.
👉🏼 Don’t deal with an advertiser or seller who doesn’t provide a phone number or will communicate only by email or text.
👉🏼 Don’t deal with someone who won’t take payment by credit card, which offers you far greater protection in case of fraud or dispute.
👉🏼 Don’t believe threats that the animal will suffer or you will face criminal charges if you don’t continue sending money.
If you suspect or have been victimized by a pet scam, you can report it to:
🐾 The Federal Trade Commission (online https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/#crnt or by calling 877-382-4357)
🐾 The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) https://www.ic3.gov/default.aspx
If the scam occurred online
🐾 The BBB Scam Tracker https://www.bbb.org/scamtracker
🐾 PetScams an online watchdog that catalogs and reports on pet-related fraud https://petscams.com/report-pet-scam-websites/
🐾 You can also check sellers’ emails and websites against lists of suspected scammers maintained by PetScams and the International Pet and Animal Transportation Association (https://www.ipata.org/pet-scams), a trade group for companies that ship animals.
NOTE: This blog post was adapted from the following source.
