Puppy scams

I believe most of us at some time would have received an e-mail offering us all kinds of money for assisting someone, usually in Nigeria, with transferring funds or such like.

There are also lottery scams around which request your credit card information or bank account information. The objective is not to deposit money on your account but to achieve the means to withdraw what is on your account.

Some scams will offer puppies and dogs. So people need to be very careful buying a puppy or any other live animal over the internet. A scam could offer to give away an expensive puppy/dog and ask only for the shipping costs.

This is the link to the article about a puppy scam Nigerian Puppy Scam here

The stories there make interesting reading and I am sure that there would be other tales around.

There is also the scam where the person would try to purchase a puppy and then would deliberately overpay for the puppy (with some excuse like misunderstanding shipping costs etc.) in funds which would turn out to be fraudulent, the seller not knowing that the money received is not good, may send a refund of good money. The “scammer” then vanishes and the money sent will “bounce”. And I would hope that at this time the puppy/dog has not being shipped.

Besides the scams are the puppy mills who really don’t care where their puppies go and the puppies if they arrive at their destination may have all kinds of health and temperament problems.

People always seem to be more vulnerable at this time of the year and it makes good sense in today’s world to be cautious buying or even giving out personal information to strangers.

Puppy/dog scams can exist throughout the year and it can be easy for the “scammers” to send pix. of puppies/dogs they don’t own.