Scammers prey on Richmonders with missing pets
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A new scam is targeting local pet owners who've lost their pet and posted online about it, the Richmond SPCA tells Axios.
Why it matters: This might be the cruelest scam in history.
How it works: Fraudsters are finding online missing pet posts and calling the owners to tell them their pet has been found, but is injured, Richmond SPCA spokesperson Tabitha Treloar tells Axios.
- They're using spoofed phone numbers so the call looks like it's coming from the Richmond SPCA.
- The scammer, impersonating someone from the shelter, says the injured fur baby needs urgent surgery.
- And the shelter, the fraudster says, needs immediate payment via Venmo, Zelle or another payment platform to cover the cost, which is usually thousands of dollars.
What they're saying: "It's really devastating for pet guardians to be targeted this way — people are understandably vulnerable when a pet is missing," Treloar says.
Threat level: It's not just the Richmond SPCA, which has gotten at least four calls from locals targeted by the lost pet scam in recent weeks.
- The Richmond Animal League had reports of two identical incidents last month, RAL spokesperson Allana Maiden tells Axios.
- Richmond Animal Care & Control posted about three incidents in which its number was spoofed for a similar scam in February.
- And it's happening nationwide, according to a post from Professional Pet Tracker, a Virginia-based pet finding service.
Zoom in: In one of the incidents at RAL last month, a couple was told they needed to pay $2,000 to cover surgery for their injured and missing cat, Maiden says.
- They negotiated to pay just over $1,000 up front and the rest when they picked up their cat.
- When they showed up at the Chesterfield shelter to bring their kitty home, RAL had to break the news: they'd been scammed. And their cat was still missing.
- RAL never heard back from them to find out if their bank was able to reverse the charges, or if they found their cat.
The bottom line: No shelter would ask for money to treat a pet over the phone, per their posts.
- And if you get a call like this, the shelters ask locals to hang up and call them directly to report the scam.