Scam Alert
Let Me tell you about (We’ll call her Lisa) she’s a senior citizen that had two dogs of the same breed for the past 13 years. Sadly one of them passed away due to health issues.
Lisa hated the surviving dog “being alone” and felt that she was depressed since her friend had passed that’s understandable. Lisa started looking for a new companion for her remaining dog hoping it would cheer her up.
She thought she found the perfect mate and was ready to make the purchase but thanks to Paypal and their Security precautions they blocked the payment as suspicious because it was indeed suspicious because Lisa was “buying a puppy” that was going to be shipped to her.
RED FLAG 🚩 of course, she didn’t know why her payment wasn’t going through so the seller told her that he’d accept bitcoin 🚩 well I’m known for taking cryptocurrency for payment (in person) so a quick Google Search and she’s on the phone with me and explaining the situation and asking me if I’d send the Bitcoin payment to the seller for her because she knows nothing about it and her PayPal isn’t working…
I told her no. No I won’t send that payment for you let me tell you why…
After I explained that it was a Scam and that’s the reason her PayPal wouldn’t send it she was feeling so “foolish” and so thankful that she called me because she would have lost $400.
Puppy Scams are notorious on the internet you should always deal with a person directly and locally if you are planning a purchase in a significant amount.
That’s not to say there isn’t legitimate breeders out there but for every legit one there is 12 fake ones. The scam ones may have the perfect site the perfect reviews the perfect pitch the one thing they don’t have is the puppy.
What you can do though IF you insist on making a purchase from a non local breeder do your homework. Verify the business and I don’t mean doing a Google search and looking at reviews call the local authorities and explain to them that you’re making this large purchase from a business that claims to be in their town and see if it actually exist or call the local Chamber of Commerce and ask them if they’ve heard of the business if that business operates in that city they will or should know about it.
IF the seller asks for any type of weird payment option like Bitcoin, Western Union, Gift cards that’s your cue to walk away.
Anybody can be taken advantage of it doesn’t matter if you’re a senior citizen or a student in college. Scammers are getting more and more advanced every day. It’s becoming harder and harder every day to be able to tell the difference between a legitimate deal and the fake deal.
The one thing that we all can still do is to keep ourselves and those around us educated and what to look for in a scam and to look out for each other.
Be safe out there in the interwebs.
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