The Puppy Scam

Now that we are moving into a new villa that lets us have pets, my girls have been nagging me about getting a dog.

We talked about getting one from the pound (SAD) so they went and had a look to see what was there. Unfortunately, not very many were on offer, so they went looking further afield, and came across some cute ones that were free for adoption in Abu Dhabi. A pair of Maltese free for adoption on www.muamat.com . So I used the contact box to get some more information.

Two days later I got a reply from Jessica Adama (adamajessica@yahoo.com) which read

hello thanks for your interest towards my puppies which are available i got 2 male and femal e

so where are you located?

will you need both?

do you wish to have more of their pics?

thanks and waiting on you

I wrote back saying we really only wanted one, that we were currently in Khalifa A and were about to move onto the Island. And yes I did want some more pictures.

The girls were excited and kept asking me if there was a reply but nothing turned up for a couple of days. Then finally I found a reply in the spam box on Googlemail, but it hadn’t been languishing there, it had only been there for 40mins by the time I found it.

Alarm bells immediately went off as I read the text, and I didn’t tell the girls about it until I could do some research. Here is the text.

Hello

Sorry for all the Questions and the late reply. (i mean no offense)

but just that i

really need a very loving home for this puppies

As you can see i am giving this puppies out for free, i

am giving out them for free since they were owned and taken care

of by my late wife whom i lost to a drunk driver couple of weeks ago.and

i have relocated to QATAR due to the mobile nature of my

job as a company driver. right now i can't take proper care of this

puppies which was a

sole responsibility of my late wife. they really do remind me of her

sad memories all the time i look at them and hurts deeply. So, my

greatest desire is to find someone who can properly take care of the

puppies and if you can, i can arrange for delivery if you cannot come

right up here for the pick. Delivery am sure will be moderate since we

spend just too little bringing the puppies up there (if you will be

taking both as you said then you are to pay 1250AED ) .

If this is ok by you, i will immediately need the following

details

full names.?

home address?

city?

postal code..?

phone number?

in order to change the ownership papers and get them registered for a

home delivery to your home(at your door step)

Be reminded that these puppies are for free and all you will have

to do is to pay only for the home delivery of these puppies to the

delivery agency which will deliver the them to your home.My prayer

is that you love and care for this puppy just as my wife did and i

will be always great full to you if you should.Do let me know if all

is fine ... again i will like you to mail me as soon as you receive

the the puppies ok so we can talk also on their feeding schedule

thanks for understanding _

And waiting

thanks...

Something also to note is that the email came from a different email account! This time is was jenniffer lucas (lucasjenniffer@gmail.com)

Neither email had been signed. Hmmm, so they want me to send money for delivery. They have advertised as free for adoption in Abu Dhabi. They have ascertained from the first contact that I am in Abu Dhabi, but now state that they are in Qatar so a transport service is required. Now money is involved and we are talking about a distance that is a little too far to go and pick them up. Convenient that!

So the first thing I did was do a google search on the names and email addresses. And low and behold they showed more puppies for sale ads on muamat.com but this time in Dubai and Sharjah! Most of the ads on muamat.com don’t have email address showing so I think this scam artist probably is behind a whole lot more of the pet ads they are hosting. To their credit muamat.com do have a scam warning which does specifically mention this kind of deal – I found it at the bottom of their scam advice page.

8. Free Pet Delivery at the cost of shipping price

• The user offer you to take the pet free, but you have to send him shipping and insurance cost
• You are requested to send the shipping and insurance cost for the pet through Western Union or any other mean
• If you sent the money, the user demand more and never send you the pet.

Armed with my evidence I showed the girls. It was a good lesson for them in internet dishonesty. They were disappointed though.

Gulf bad news – how to get your credit card details stolen.

We are in the process of looking for a new house to live in and find ourselves pouring over property ads in the paper. It occurred to me that instead of trying to search out the direct from owner ads which would avoid exorbitant real estate agent commissions, that I should let them find me! An ad in the accommodation wanted column was called for. So I sat down and wrote a short ad that I thought would get them banging down the door to me. The number to call is in the front of the paper so I phoned in to place my ad. The Gulfnews classifieds receptionist thanked me for the call, explained the rates and said that I could place the ad online. That was fine but I wanted to place the ad now, could she please take it. No, I needed to put it online and then someone would contact me. But if I put it online why would they need to contact me? Well they would tell me how much it would cost and give me the number to fax or email the payment details to. Hang on, I said – surely I would put the credit card details on the site. No she explained, I had to email them and no I couldn’t give them over the phone then either. Needless to say I was astounded. They expected me to fax or email my credit card details! I might as well post them here on this blog for all the security that involved.

Now over the last month I’ve had two calls from the subscription dept of Gulfnews reminding me to renew my subscription, and how if I did it online I’d go into an extra prize draw…

So I thought I’d test out this online renewal and see what the deal was. I went into their site and armed with my subscription number and credit card, I painless connected to a secure https site and in a few minutes had signed up for another year’s delivery. Okay, so let’s try the classified. I logged back in to their site with my gulfnews log on (they have all my details of course from the subscription) entered the details, dates and content of my ad and pressed enter. Nothing much happens except the screen tells me that their staff will be in contact with me. So far it seems it is going downhill the way the receptionist foretold.

A day or so later, as promised, I got an email to say my ad would be a paid one (as opposed to their free categories), fine, I knew and expected that, and that I should send my credit card details by email or fax to … Stop. I AM NOT GOING TO SEND MY CC DETAILS BY EMAIL! Also I don’t have a fax, its old tech and also not secure. Email is definitely not secure.

The return email tells me not to worry, that their site is secure and all the other people send their details that way, but if I’m worried I should send a fax.

I reply, that the fact that their site may be secure is immaterial because the email that is travelling to them is not. It is passing through an unknown number of nodes to get there. When it arrives, it could also easily be forwarded on to some other people without my knowledge. There is plenty of sniffing software freely available that will look for emails with credit card number strings in them. The bank itself would not cover me for any loss resulting from the misuse of my card if it could be shown that I had sent the details by email. They would claim I was negligent. In addition, even if I did have a fax machine, one wrong number dialled and my details could be anywhere. If I get the correct number it would be sitting in a pile of faxes in some unknown part of some office. No, No, I will not be faxing the number. Not only that, I believe that asking me to send my cc details by email would make Gulfnews complicit in any misuse. They should desist the process immediately. As well as addressing this directly with the classifieds, I also emailed a complaint to the paper as a whole. Why, when they have subscription on a secure website, don’t they have payment for classifieds on the same system. I point out that I am happy to phone the number to a live operator that I have dialled, where I can have a little more trust in the authenticity of the process and can also get some accountability details.

The only option they can offer me is to drive all the way across town to the parking nightmare near the corniche and find their office which is a villa somewhere near a mosque (no, that’s me being sarcastic, its near the Sri Lankan embassy, but it would have been more inspiring if they could give better location details, such as an address). I suggest that they should invoice me, after all I am a registered customer. They ignore this suggestion.

A few days later I receive a reply from the paper to say they will be creating a web payment for classifieds in the future...

The result. I don’t place an ad! :-(