[News] Yorkie Adoption Scam

[littlewhip]

we have some local scamming going on big time. posted thru postaroo, which i guess is a free site for posting, i have personally email a few people that responed to there ad to let them know ( SCAM ALERT PLEASE EMAIL),some people really do not know the diff like we do and its so sad one person was advertising free yorkies & english bull dogs and there pulling pics off diff web sites, this is a great start to keep us all up to date

[xxmxaxrxyxx]

thanks for sharing...a lot of consumers need to be educated about this scam...you can find it in almost every online newspaper around the states...argh!

[PANAMA69]

Before I got Phoebe, I almost was scam by this people she had the yorkies and toldme that this man was going to Nigueria for several months and he couldn't take the pups , she was very smart but I had a feeling that somenthing was wrong so I told them no thankyou and then she lower the price and they were very persistant but I stop answer the e-mail and thank God that was it.

[Our baby yorkie]

Originally Posted by Desiree

I've e-mailed several "breeders" the past few days trying to find a Yorkie in my price range. Since most good Yorkie breeders are charging more than my sweetheart will let me spend on a new puppy right now I decided to look on sites/ads I normally would never look at when searching for a pet. What I've found on many of these sites like Yahoo is that out of all the breeders I contacted (which were quite a few) only one was not a scammer. I reported a few that I found on Yahoo, but I don't think Yahoo's even doing anything about it since I never received an e-mail back from them saying they would investigate it or remove the ads from those poster.

Sometimes these "breeders" don't ever mention Africa even though they are from there. I ran into a few of these but after they'd give me their phone numbers I'd do a search on their area code only to find that the phone number links them back to Africa. It really is sad and I feel so bad for those people that fall for it.

However, I've heard that you can use an escrow service such as www.escrow.com to protect yourself a little better if you absolutely must purchase a puppy online. This will allow your money to go to a secured trust account where they will make sure the money is actually valid (protecting the seller) and then give the seller the ok to ship the puppy. Once the buyer receives the puppy and has it vet checked or when the agreed amount of time to have the puppy vet checked expires the escrow company will pay the seller. The escrow service will charge a percentage, such as 4% of the cost of the puppy, but I think that would be worth it compared to hundreds or thousands that you'd lose to a scammer. It sounds like a win/win situation to me. Has anyone tried this by any chance?

If you dont mind me asking you which one is not a scam??
I have been looking for a yorkie also and yes even received many emails from the people in so called Africa

[melmel84]

I hate scammers! Get the word out there! Do not send money to anyone that promises a free yorkie from over seas! These horrible people are just trying to take your money!

For example
henriettayorkies@yahoo.com

This person tryed to scam me! I was looking for adoption of an older yorkie until she said that the dog was free and red flags went up in my mind! She wanted me to send money western union to Nigeria and so on and I have heard of this scam before. So she had said that the dog was AKC registered so I asked her for the number and thats when things got nasty. She is stalking my email and writting horrible messages to me becuase I called her scam! Be warned they are out there and they will do anything to take our hard earned money! If something sounds to good to be true it most likely is! Remember that!

[YorkieAunt]

Originally Posted by Yorkiesforever

I had the same story but mine was from canada....it was a scam also.

This is the first time I have heard of one from Canada. Did they say where in Canada? I know that this scam has been going on for years and it usually is from Africa. They do advertise in all the papers and all the internet sites all over the world. I personally wouldn't buy a puppy that I couldn't hold and look at first. That's just me though. I have to agree though that the price of Yorkies seems to be rising at an alarming rate. A puppy that would have cost $400 - $500 a couple of years ago is now being sold for over $2000. That gives the scammers more reason to try and scam people. I guess everyone must do their homework first and if it looks too good to be true then it probably is.

[wookie]

It seems like this is some big business in Africa. I'm imagining rows and rows of people in a 8-5 job (Like a call center from hell), on desk with computers lurking to scam desperate people like us looking for a puppy or cars seems to be a hot topic too.

Back in February, I was helping my sister look for a car and thank god I came to check out what my mom was doing. She almost sent $4000 to someone trying to scam her!! I checked out all her emails (they were emailing each other for weeks!) and educated her on what were the red flags. They claimed that she can pay through ebay (even though the car was not listed in ebay), they had different address of where to send the money, their phone number did not match the state/county where the money should be sent. There was even a 3rd party or escrow party in a different country!

What has the world gone too??