Scams Targeting Puppy Buyers

Before internet if someone wanted to buy a puppy they are limited to buying them locally. 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 ‘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 or classified ad page to sell their so called “puppies”. They steal images and text off of actual breeder websites. At first glance their websites look really legit.

These scammers often steal pictures from the internet of the most irresistible dogs and puppies and post them for sale.

A good way to determine if a picture of a dog or puppy posted for sale is really for sale is to see if they have photos of that puppy when he/she was younger.

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:

1. 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. 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. OR they will give you a phone number that is not theirs. You will have to call the phone number to confirm if the number exists and if the number they provided are theirs.
2. Normally, the “breeder” will be in an other country therefore you may not pickup the puppy personally.
3. The puppy is too cheap to be real.
4. “Breeders” who say the puppy price includes shipping OR the shipping cost is $100-$200 when the asking price of the puppy is $500 or less. Just the ticket to ship a puppy is $375. This does not include  the travel crate and health certificate!
5. The ‘breeder” states that he/she can ship the puppy overnight. You can not ship a puppy overnight!
6. The “breeders” will not accepts credit cards.
7. The “breeder” state the pups are 50% off!
8. The “breeder” does not have photos of the parents and the puppies when they were at a younger age.
9. The “breeder” does not have videos of their puppies.
10. The “breeder” does not have the date of birth of the puppies. The reason is due to the fact they can use the photos of the puppies again and again.

Check out our list of puppies scammers!

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.