I previously posted about an incident where an acquaintance was trying to purchase a bengal cat online and ended up being swindled out of $700. These cats can be very expensive, and while $700 is a lot of money, it still seemed a bit cheap to me. Some quick research online showed that it was indeed a scam, and I directed the individual to filing a police report and contacting their bank. I decided to identify for more sites to help raise awareness.
I have never tried to purchase an animal online. The thought has never occurred to me, but after this scenario was presented to me, I realized that this is actually a pretty easy scam to fall for if you do not know what to look out for. During my initial 10 minute investigation, I encountered quite a few websites that seemed fraudulent, but turned out to be legitimate people selling bengal cats. They really did not look too much different than the fraudulent sites I was investigating. Because of this, I decided to take a small amount of time see just how many exotic cat pet scams I could identify. Some of these have already closed up shop and moved on to a new domain, some are still active. Hopefully they help in identifying future scams. I know that I did not find every one out there, so be careful and use caution when shopping for animals online.
The scam starts off by you making contact with the seller by text message, email, or a web form. I tried calling one and my call was ignored. You state that you are interested in a cat and they begin negotiating with you. They require you to send the payment upfront; Sometimes it is in the form of monthly payments until the cat is "paid off" and other times they'll take 50% before "shipping" the cat, and then 50% after the cat is "in transit". You send them the money, they send a tracking code to a fake shipping company that they control (royal-express-usa[.]com in my case), and then they demand you send the remainder of the money. They receive the money through various payment processors such as CashApp, Zelle, and Paypal. The scammers net $700 - $2500 per success.
