Possible scam?

I just got off the phone with my brother. His roomate's girlfriend has decided she wants a yorkie and she contacted some breeder. That breeder didn't have any puppies, so she referred her to another breeder, Liona (Leona?) Hillary in Las Vegas. The girlfriend was told to wire $600 to Hillary, who then called and said she was on the way to the airport with the puppy to ship it and she would call the girlfriend with the shipping information later. The later call never came, the wire transfer has already been picked up and the original breeder isn't answering any calls. Apparently the girlfriend neglected to get direct contact information from Hillary. I told them to go file a police report to start a paper trail if they should need to get a subpoena.

Question #1: Has anyone heard of this lady before or anything related to her?

Question #2: Can you help me help her find a decent yorkie breeder or rescue? The poor girl wants a teacup yorkie; I've already talked her out of that. I think. But I'm pretty sure that if I can't find anything, she's just going to get on nextdaypets.com or something and get another BYB/mill horror.

Wow, Zoom, that's terrible

Could you give us the area they are looking into getting a dog from? Like where they live, so we could check petfinder and stuff.

How long ago did this "scam" take place?

I did a search in the white pages and found Leona Hillary listed in vegas if that helps at all.................here is the link

http://kevdb.infospace.com/_1_SVNT5C03GHVKMI__info.metac.sbox/white-pages/kevdb?showrec=65710470:res-us&OTMPL=/white-pages/details.htm&QN=hillary&QF=leona&QC=las+vegas&QS=nv&qsubcat=singlematch

Last night and they are in Boulder, CO (the ones looking for a puppy). I'm looking at Petfinder right now...the girlfriend is home most of the day, would like a puppy or at least something still pretty young and it has to be small because she lives in an apartment. Works part-time.

She should call the local police agency and file a report in an attempt to re-coup some of her money at least. If no one complains then this just keeps on happening.

See if it's the same phone number as ACooper found for this woman in Vegas too.

Possible scam? Sounds exactly like a scam. I wish people would do their research. Best of luck to her. And kudos to you for helping, Zoomers.

Yeah, that's what I thought...I get to talk to so many bizarre people these days because I'm the "Dog Girl" in my family, so everyone they meet who wants a dog or has a question is put in touch with me...

Well, in all honesty, I'm glad they do come to you. They need someone "in the know" to help inform them. So, I'm sorry, I really am, but then, I'm really not. If you catch my drift.

Definitely a scam. And, I'm sorry for your friend, but who ships off that much money without knowing who they are dealing with or what they are getting? I hope she gets it sorted out.

She's not my friend, I've never met before in my life. Ohh, you would have laughed to see how hard I was rolling my eyes on my end of the phone. I mean, I feel bad for her, but yeah...wiring $600 to a lady you've never met who has a pup she'll ship off at the drop of a hat? *cringe*

But everyone has to start learning somewhere. I emailed the YTCA homepage and also petfinders homepage so she can start reading up and looking at good sites. And she knows if she has any more questions to call me or leave a message on myspace or something.

I hope she does. It probably hit her hard and she realizes that she needs advice. Assuming she's a normal sane sort of person

scam scam scam..yikes..

Let me tell ya what happened to a friend of mine quite some time ago,,
her jrt took off, she lives in the woods, but near a main thorough fair (sp)
anyhow, she advertised in a local newspaper.

Couple days go by,,this "trucker" from Chicago calls her, says he was driving thru that area, and picked up the dog, was making a deadline so he couldn't stop, so he had the dog in Chicago..She was to wire him x and he would fly the dog back to her with a "friend" who owned a small plane that was coming that way..So she wires him x..after he got that, he wanted MORE x, to buy a crate, said the dog would be leaving the next day,,he'd call from the airport..
she wires him more money...the next day he calls says he is AT the airport, (ohare?) puts another guy on the phone who is the "pilot" who says the fair is more than anticipated,,he needs more x or the dog will not get on the plane.

By now my friend is really smelling a rat,,she says,,'get the dog to bark over the phone'...(this dog was a big mouth having it bark should not have been a problem),,the guy gets irate and says he'll do no such thing, and if she doesn't wire the money he's going to let the dog loose in the airport parking lot and be done with it..She tells him she'll wire the money and call him right back..

Instead she calls airport security,,who tells her this is not the FIRST time this has gone on, but they would definately check out the airport..

needless to say it was all a scam...how did a person from chicago know the dog was missing? Going thru local newspapers via the internet ..

diane

That would be the day I wire a complete stranger 600 dollars before eyeballing exactly who she is and exactly where she is. In fact, that would be the day I wire a complete stranger money at all.