Scammer’s phone 7077502891
Scammer’s email [email protected], [email protected]
Country United States
Type of a scam Online Purchase
Initial means of contact Email
This website is fake and it uses the title of selling munchkin kittens. You will fill an application and go through an extreme simple interview. Then it will ask you to send $400 or $450, and then it asks for another $400. After all that, they will say the kitten is ready to ship. Then it asks another$1575 saying it is refundable. I realized it is a scam after that.
DO NOT SEND MOENY THROUGH QUICK PAY BECAUSE YOU CANNOT ASK IT FOR BACK!
This website is definitely a scam website. It says I should pay 400 to reserve the cat, after paying it, it asks another 450 to finish the process. Then I am told to transfer another 1575 for a insurance. It keeps asking for money through quick pay and you cannot get quick pay money back once it is delivered!
High pressure sales, received an email the morning of supposed delivery that I needed travel insurance. Nobody would take cash, paid via google both to the alleged breeder and then the pet travel company. I then received another email requesting another 1500 to have my kitten delivered from Indiana to ohio. These people are crooks and heartless. Stay away. Stay away from Pet port shippers too. What a headache. I hope karma gets them all good.
I am so sorry seeing it and I was cheated by it just yesterday. Hope we can all go through it.
http://munchkinkittens.company.com/ is definitely a scam! There is no kitten at all.
How did I identify it: I have lost $1000 to order a munchkin cat (which I didn’t notice at first, only to think about this is a great deal).
The I was asked paying by Zelle which I just regard it as a normal payment, but then they asked me to pay another $1575 for the airline insurance, I found it abnormal, so that I ask them to send a picture of they carrying the kitten to the airport, then the phone number is no longer available to me.
http://munchkinkittens.company.com/ is definitely a scam! There is no kitten at all.
How did I identify it: I have lost $1000 to order a munchkin cat (which I didn’t notice at first, only to think about this is a great deal). The I was asked paying by Zelle which I just regard it as a normal payment
Victim Location 73505
Type of a scam Online Purchase
The initial website looked credible and didn’t hit any of the *immediate* red flags. Lots of information, address, contact numbers listed, request information about the cat’s living situation, not too cheap, etc. I sent a message via their website. The first red flag was that they texted me almost immediately. I thought that was odd, as I had sent the message late at night. However, I let it slide for the time being. The person who was talking to me did not ask me any questions about my living situation or anything else. They just said they would send the contract and that they used Zelle for deposits. While this seemed rushed, I figured that if this breeder depended on this income for a living, they might have been hit hard by the coronavirus measures and were desperate to make a sale. Since Zelle deposits money into their account immediately, I wondered if perhaps they had bills coming up or something. I told them to send me the contract and that I would take a look at it the next day. They sent me three texts telling me that they had sent the contract and asked if I received it. The thing that really made me do my research was that they asked for payment via Zelle or in Bitcoin. The average person does not use Bitcoin and I doubt that a cat breeder has a lot of use for it.
So I started delving further into their website and researching how to identify scams. It took a long time because these guys clearly did their homework but here’s what I tracked down.
First, the phone number was for a skype or google number. While that may be a way to preserve the seller’s privacy, it didn’t sit well given the other information I was getting. I googled the phone number, and found it listed on another website claiming to sell sphinx cats. Again, does not bode well.
Second, I couldn’t find any information about the seller using the name he gave me on the contract. He also spelled his own email address wrong in the contract. Not an article, or
Third, I searched on google maps for the address on the website. It looks to be a regular suburban house near Tulsa. It’s certainly possible that a small cat breeder could live in a house in a neighborhood, but it just seemed a bit off that a breeder with supposedly several kittens to sell didn’t have that much space.
Fourth, I searched for the name of the website in relation to scams but didn’t find anything. Then I searched for scams near Tulsa, OK and found seven. I looked through the reports and looked at what others had reported. While none of them were related to munchkin cats, nor did they have the same, name, phone number, or address, there appeared to be some similarities. I copied the "client testimonies" and searched for them on google, but didn’t find anything similar. I searched the website for information about the breeders (how long they had been operating, what vet they used, the names of the supposed "champion bloodlines" listed on their website). I noticed that nothing on the website had been posted before November 2019, which seemed odd. And it didn’t sit well with me either that the cat was listed as 10 weeks old on the website and in the contract. Why wouldn’t you just put the birth date so you didn’t have to routinely update the cats age?
Furthermore, in our messaging, he didn’t talk about the things I would think you would want to discuss if you were selling a kitten. We didn’t iron out the details of the delivery before signing, he didn’t talk about its personality, or what food or litter to use.
Finally, I selected a cat, and did a reverse image search and saw that the cats photo was posted on other websites. I did this with three other photos and found that they were all on various websites, many of which had been posted before November 2019, which led me to believe they were the original source and not the person I was talking to.
As I delayed signing, he sent me a video of the cat playing in a large white warehouse looking area – an area that cannot possibly have been in the tiny suburban home listed as this business’s "address".
Then, in the final straw, he asked me if I was serious about purchasing the cat. All of the other pet scam reports I had read on the ScamPulse.com talked about the person becoming pushy or accusatory if delayed or confronted. I said I had found pictures of all his cats on other websites and that there were too many red flags for me, and to please not contact me again. He immediately became aggressive, telling me that I was unbelievable, that was why he had sent me the video of the cat, and that he could send me other photos. I’m sure he could, because I found multiple pictures of the cat on other web listings but at this point I saw no point in engaging with him further. Be very careful about purchasing online. It seems obvious it was a scam now that I’ve outlined everything I’ve found, but it took a lot of homework to get there. I can easily see how someone more trusting could get taken in.