Listen on Apple Podcasts | Google PodcastsThis is part 1 of Yahoo Finance’s Illegal Tender podcast Season 6 ‘The Puppy Crimes of Quarantine’. Listen to the series here.
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Google PodcastsThis is part 1 of Yahoo Finance’s Illegal Tender podcast Season 6 ‘The Puppy Crimes of Quarantine’. Listen to the series here. Listen on Apple Podcasts | Google PodcastsThis is part 1 of Yahoo Finance’s Illegal Tender podcast Season 6 ‘The Puppy Crimes of Quarantine’. Listen to the series here.
Story continuesAnother scam has come into my world and it's one that will break the hearts of animal lovers. The decision to bring home a new puppy during pandemic lockdown isn't flawed logic. A new puppy is a major distraction. It's a milestone moment that's cause for celebration. It gets the whole family involved, and overnight stay-at-home and shelter in place orders grounded us. All of the excuses people made to not get a dog suddenly faded.
People fell in love with pictures of floppy-eared fluff balls with puppy dog eyes, deals were brokered, contracts were signed, money was sent, and for some, a wild goose chase ensued because the alleged breeder was bogus. Stories from the heartbroken and conned are rampant. The Better Business Bureau issued a warning in May alerting consumers that puppy scams are spiking, with more reports about bogus pet websites in April than the first three months of the year combined. In 2017, the organization an in-depth investigation and concluded that at the time, at least 80% of the sponsored advertising links in internet searches for pets may be fraudulent.
Suzanne's a retiree who lives in sunny Southern California with her husband. She's a proud grandmother who recently became a great-grandmother. Suzanne's been a dog owner for years and recently lost a beloved Yorkie pup. During the pandemic, she started her search for a new four-legged companion. Both women followed leads from targeted Facebook ads. Between the two of them, nearly $10,000 was lost and some of it was never recovered.
But first, let's connect with Suzanne and hear her convoluted account of an alleged dog breeder who basically held her dog hostage because his friend's car broke down in Arizona and wanted Suzanne to pay for the auto repair. Here she is recounting how she lost close to five figures and her husband almost drove from Southern California to Denver to pick up a poodle that never existed.
Now, after I started looking for the puppy elsewhere, I didn't see anything that I liked better than this one particular puppy that he showed me, so I questioned ... it was only $884. Now, that should have been a red flag for me right there. If I would've been thinking about the cost of specially bred puppies and AKC puppies, I would've known that this was awfully cheap, and so-SS: Actually, it was ... maybe it was ... my husband told me last night and now I can't remember.
SS: No, drive to Denver. The second part was to get her out of the airport to pay ... I can't remember what his ... for one thing, he had a very thick accent, so it was very difficult for me to understand a lot of things.SS: On the phone also, besides texting. Texting was the easy part, I could've saved it, but a lot of it was verbal because the phone line went to this WhatsApp also.
Then, his friend, he says,"My friend James is going to be bringing her." So, I get a phone call from James and he said he's in Arizona. From the time they left, supposedly, and Ron, my husband said he probably never even left the state of Colorado. This is how untimely and unethical the whole thing was. He said his car broke down and he needed money to fix it.
SA: Right, but there's definitely public record of who owns it and who lives there, so I'm just interested if you can-SA: Yeah, you can definitely pursue this, but that's the reporter in me. We got to look this up, we got to see if this could be a dry cleaner, this could be a Mexican restaurant, we have no idea.
And so, then I started threatening. I was getting angry because I wanted this puppy very bad. I really started getting attached to whole idea of having-
The rest of the world needs to come together and intervene for Americans...
I don't understand something,if somebody can explain to me.who is the scam here,the person who refuses to get a pet from the shop for $2,500 with papers,and prefers to have it ship to him for a hundred dollar which shipping fee is included?
We're doing BLM this month...not puppies