If you are shopping online for a pet this holiday season, use caution. Complaints continue to escalate into Better Business Bureau’s Scam Tracker as fake pet and puppy scams are on the increase, according to the latest BBB Risk Report. Scammers know that few things pull at a person’s heartstrings like an adorable puppy. And as consumers rely on the internet to find new pets, they will be met with a slew of heart-tugging ads. A BBB study found that many of the ads are scams, and anyone looking online for a pet is extremely likely to encounter one.
The FTC estimates only about 10% of victims report these crimes – so the problem is likely more widespread. When the pandemic hit in 2020, the number of pet scam reports skyrocketed.
Soon after cities and states began to impose tighter restrictions to curb the spread of COVID-19, BBB Scam Tracker saw a spike in pet fraud reports, with nearly 4,000 reports received in 2020 from the U.S. and Canada. Data from BBB Scam Tracker shows more reports about fraudulent pet websites in April than in the first three months of the year combined. The COVID-19 bump continued into the 2020 holiday season, with consumers reporting 337 complaints to BBB about puppy scams in November 2020, a dramatic increase from 77 for the same month in 2019.
The median loss related to pet scams reported to Scam Tracker in 2020 is…
