A new scam
is on the rise on Craiglist as owners of missing dogs are finding their
beloved pets for sale on the classified ad site - and are then having to
buy them back.
The
practice, known as dog-flipping, either begins with a dog genuinely
being lost or escaping from a yard, or worse being stolen from the
owner.
Whoever ends up in possession of the dog then sells the pet for profit, usually through an online portal such as Craigslist.
A
family from Houston, Texas, the Lowes, found themselves victims of such
as scam when their 11-year-old Yorkshire terrier, Sushi, escaped from
their yard in December 2014.
The same day the family received a strange phone call asking if they were missing a dog, ABC reported.
When
the Lowes were unable to find Sushi, they redialed the number of the
person who had called them, who then denied any knowledge of the dog.
A
few weeks later, Kara Lowe, saw an advert on
Craigslist offering a dog for sale that looked just like Sushi, but now
named Sparkle.
Suspicious,
Kara contacted the seller, but this initial confrontation failed and
the trail went cold after the ad was removed from the site.
Seven long months went by and a second advert for the same dog appeared.
This time
Kara pretended to be an interested buyer and a meeting with the seller
was arranged last Friday in the parking lot of a Sam's Club in Cypress,
Texas.
Kara
brought along an animal rescuer friend, Kathy Vasquez, armed with a
microchip reader, but at first they were unsure it was Sushi.
'I didn't think it was her,' Lowe told ABC. 'Her coat was a different color. She'd been dyed.'
The dog also didn't seem to know her, but Kara pressed on and the sale went through for $250.
'It was priceless,' she said. 'I figured even if it wasn't Sushi, it was somebody's dog that we could save and try to return.'
Her
friend's microchip reader then confirmed that the dog was in fact
Sushi. By that afternoon Sushi was back at home playing with the Lowe's
children and other dogs
