How A Puppy Scam Works

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The Inquisitor
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How A Puppy Scam Works

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Unread post by The Inquisitor » Sat Jul 06, 2019 11:11 am

Article retrieved from https://petscams.com/.

A petscam normally works in three parts:

1. The Hook

The hook is simple. The scammer will offer pets for sale or adoption. These scammers will create a custom website and advertise on Facebook, Craigslist, TradingPost and any other classified ad websites.
They will interact with you by mail, SMS or phone to convince you that they have a pet to sell or give away.
The aim here is to get the intended victim emotionally invested in a fictitious pet. When people act on emotion they are easier to scam.
A scammer can target 50 people at a time. They use a series of “canned” responses which they copy and paste when replying to you. The emails are long and verbose asking questions and answering questions you have not asked. If you ask a question that is not in their script they give a short curt answer. If the “pet” is being sold and not offered for adoption the scammer will con their victims into giving hundreds of dollars in the first part of the scam.

2. The Sting
This is where the majority of money is stolen.
You are now emotionally invested in the pet. If the pet was sold (not for adoption) you are also financially invested as well.
The scammer will create a Pet Delivery Website so that you can track the delivery of your new pet.
You will be given a “tracking number” which will direct you to a webpage created and controlled by the scammer. This webpage will show you that your pet is being delivered.
A day later you will receive an email that the delivery is delayed as you must pay fees. The scammer will update the webpage created for you in order to convince you that the fees are legitimate. Fees can include:

Delivery fees
Cage fees
Ventilated cage fees
Vaccines
All of the above

3. The Threat
Once you refuse to pay anymore money to the scammer they will threaten you. Once of the most common threats is “Animal Abandonment”. Again this is part of the scam. Animal abandonment is a crime and rightly so but in this scenario, even if it were true, animal abandonment laws would not apply. You can see more on animal abandonment here:
http://audubonportland.org/wcc/urban/ab ... tscams.com

Puppy Scammers can go as far as to create a website that looks like a law enforcement website. If they think they can frighten you into paying more money they will continue to phone, email and text.

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