Andrea 
The free dog scam online
“Dogs for free adoption”, “Puppies alone to adopt”, “Puppy gift of .. name of the dog’s breed.”
These are some of the ads that circulated online on ad sites but not only.
But behind it there were no actions done with the heart, but online scams discovered by the postal police in different areas of Italy.
Attention that these criminals turn inside the social pages of Facebook and Instagram that deal with puppies and adoptions, they inform themselves about the methods, the laws to make everything appear as likely as possible.
The ads appear on Italian sites but then, as investigators discovered after the reports, behind it is an organization based in Nigeria.
Attracted by images of sweet puppies, the adopter had to email his data with the assurance of receiving the much-desired four-legged and saving him from a difficult situation in Africa.
But then the request started: instead of a donation, the scammers asked for a contribution to cover health expenses or to overcome bureaucratic problems that suddenly popped up on the journey from Africa to Italy.
All this by leveraging on the goodness of adopters: those who wrote by email knew how to leverage the psychological aspects of people.
And so the payments, from 200 up to 1500, came via Pay Pal until the phantom donor disappeared and the victim continued to send empty emails for days.
7 rules to follow so you don’t fall into the free dog scam online
- Always make sure that the breeder is ENCI certified and get to know him personally. Why should you buy a puppy from a person you don’t know?
- Establish a phone contact with the people you’re in contact with by email. You will see that they will not respond and if they do you will understand that they are neither Italian people nor other European countries
- Be wary of those who give/sell purebred puppies on the internet. Prices to buy a purebred puppy start from a different kind of figures (usually not less than Euro 800.00)
- The costs of making an animal travel by plane without a companion (i.e. as a special cargo) are undoubtedly higher than Euro 150/200 required in the first phase of the scam. Usually the figures for organizing this type of special transport start from Euro 800.00
- Pay attention to the content of the communications you receive, at the linguistic and grammatical level: many of the communications received by potential scammers are written in incorrect Italian and the information about the email is summary or presented in a disorderly manner. Be wary of this type of communication. These are clearly automatic translations made through search engines
- If you are contacted by a BLISS Pets account, always make sure that the email addresses are or are correct and do not have small variations.
- If you are contacted by other domains not connected to that famous portal that sells or gives puppies, do not answer, call us on the phone!
Conclusions
Scammers are very ade skidded at people’s emotions and which levers to use and today the online world allows them to get a precise target of people by simplifying their work because there is no physical contact but only a digital exchange.
This allows him to stay hidden but does not prevent him from doing as in this case “The free dog scam online”.
The purebred dog likes I know and if it is free it attracts even more but if you can the dog adopt it in the kennel! He will be grateful for his whole life!
My advice is always to check when you have to shop online going to check every aspect before proceeding to send money or information to strangers but above all it is full of kennels full of dogs waiting for someone to take them and give them love.
Stay Tuned! and watch out for the free dog scam online.
Street Fight Mentality & Fight Sport
