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Detecting Internet Scams
Scams Targeting Puppy Buyers
Source
Before the Internet, when one wished to purchase a puppy they were, for the most part limited to buying something local. Things have changed, the world now relies on the internet for so many things. People can research the different breeds, a world of options has opened up to be almost endless. This has also opened up new opportunity for scam.
You have decided to bring a new pet into your home, you have researched and read up on all of the pets traits. Next you need to find a breeder, rescue or someone who has what you are looking for.
There are a lot of scammers posing as breeders, pretending to sell fictitious puppies. They take your deposit and you never hear from them again. These scammers are usually running out of foreign countries, posing as USA or Canadian breeders selling adorable little puppies, when in fact they don't even own a dog themselves let alone have a puppy to sell. The vast majority of breeders advertising puppies for sale are legitimate breeders, however you must keep your guard up for these scam 'breeders'.
How can you tell if the breeder you are dealing with is for real and not one of those scams running out of countries such as Nigeria or other foreign countries?
Most good breeder listings do their best to weed out scams. Granted they don't always catch the scammers. Ads for scammers do run in the best breeder listings from time to time, but are removed as soon as the scammer is detected. The scammer opens up the ad page with a stolen credit card and it can be very hard to tell that the credit card has been stolen.
A lot of these scammers create a website to sell their so called "puppies". They steal images and text off of actual breeder websites. At first glance their websites look really legit. You fall in love with the picture, contact the scammer and begin to talk to them about purchasing the adorable little puppy. Eventually you send them a deposit via usually Western Union, and you suddenly never hear from them again. You never receive your puppy, because there was no puppy, and you just lost your money.
Because these scammers are running out of third world foreign countries, catching them is difficult to almost impossible. In order for you to prosecute the scammer, the country you are in would have to work with the country they are in. In most cases, the country the scammer is running out of is not willing to cooperate. The cost of prosecuting the scammer is very high and the country you are in will most likely not be willing to fork out the money.
So what can we do about these scams? We can educate ourselves on how to detect them, and not fall for it. If scammers can't scam us, they wont make money and we all know it's the money that is driving them to do it.
Useful tips on detecting a scammer posing as a breeder:
- Look at the website very closely for clues. For example, these scammers are stealing pictures from other websites and adding their own description under them. One website pretending to sell Beagle puppies had a photo of a dog that was clearly not a Beagle puppy. They also had photos of male puppies and under the photo claimed the dog to be a female or vice versa.
- Ask to see more photos of the same puppy from different angles. Ask to see a picture of the same puppy when it was a few weeks younger. Can the breeder produce them?
- One reason these scam websites look so legit is because they are stealing text from real breeder websites. Copy and paste a sentence or two from the site in question into a Google search with quotes around the text; for example, if they have a list of references. The quotes tell Google to look for those exact words in the same order as you have them typed. If you find another website with those same exact words on it, a red flag should go up. Either the site you are investigating has stolen the words, OR they have had their words stolen from them.
- If the website has its own domain name and is not a free website such as GeoCities etc... Take the domain name address and go to http://www.DNSstuff.com. Put the domain name into the "WHOIS Lookup". Does the country in the domain name records match the address the website has as their contact info? Keep in mind, hosting companies are often within the same country as the site owner, but not necessarily inside the same state or town. They rarely, if ever, however use a company outside their own country.
- Does the website have a phone number down as a contact? And if so, have you been able to speak to a real person? Most scammers will not get on the phone. One, because their English is very bad, and two, the phone bill would be very high since they are in a different country than you are. Also, with caller ID, they do not want to take the risk you can tell they are not out of the area they claim to be out of. Some of these scammers pretend to be deaf or have another odd reason why they cannot talk, getting a relay operator to relay their messages for them. Relay operators are not allowed to reveal it is a scam. By law they can only relay the message without giving their own input.
- Take the area code of the phone number listed on the site and enter it into the Reverse Area Code. Does the area match the area the breeder claims to be out of?
- Copy and paste the email contact info into a Google search. Does anything else come up under that email address? A lot of times nothing will come up, and that really does not tell you anything. However from time to time you will get results under an email address. Look at the results and where this email address has appeared elsewhere on the internet. Looking at the Google cached pages can be helpful in viewing expired ad pages. Sometimes you will discover the same email address has claimed to be in many different areas of a country. For example one email address may appear selling English Bulldog puppies out of New York state in the USA and also appear selling puppies in California inside the USA. This is a clear warning sign of a scam.
- Does the "breeder" you have contacted communicate in broken English? Since most of these scammers are working out of foreign countries, their English is not very good. They will usually have many spelling and grammar errors in their emails.
- A red flag should go up if the scammer will only take their payment via Western Union, or another odd form of payment.
If you have a bad feeling about a "breeder", it is best to steer clear. Go elsewhere for your purchase. If you use your common sense and do not ignore any warning signs, you can usually tell if it is a real breeder on the other end. Lets not contribute to a scammers booming business.
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