Pet Shipping Scams: How to Tell a Real Shipper From a Fake One

There is a version of this business that does not exist. It has a website, a phone number, a tracking page and a logo, and its entire purpose is to take a second payment from someone who has already been robbed once. Anyone arranging pet transport should know how it works, because the fake shipping company is not a side effect of the puppy scam. It is a designed part of it.

The Better Business Bureau’s study of puppy fraud describes the setup plainly. A fraudulent seller advertises an animal, and then, in the BBB’s words, “a separate site, also bogus and set up by the frauds, will provide information on how to ship the pet.”

That detail matters more than it first appears. The buyer who has just wired a deposit for a dog is not asked to trust the seller again. They are handed off to what looks like an independent third party, with its own branding and its own staff, which confirms the seller’s story and asks for money on its own account. The handoff is what makes the second payment feel safe, and the second payment is usually the larger one.

It also means a legitimate pet shipper and a fake one are competing for the same search results, and the fake one has no operating costs.

Money is not requested once. It is requested in a series, and each demand arrives with a reason that sounds like logistics. The BBB study lists what follows the deposit: a “special crate”, “health insurance”, “food and water”, and quarantine fees.

One case in the study shows the shape of it. The buyer was told the dog had been transported as far as Oklahoma City, and was then instructed to purchase health insurance for the animal at an additional cost of $980. The animal is always in transit, always most of the way there, and always one payment short of arriving.

The losses are not trivial. The BBB found that most victims lose between $100 and $1,000, and that some lose considerably more, with one case at $5,000.

Two things about that sequence are worth naming, because a real transport arrangement does not have them. A real quote does not grow after you have paid it, and a real crate is something you can be shown, priced and invoiced before the animal moves, not a surprise that appears when the animal is already somewhere you cannot see.

This is the fastest test there is, and the Federal Trade Commission states it without qualification:

The BBB found the same thing from the other direction: those paying for the pet are almost always asked to send money through Western Union or MoneyGram.

There is no transport reason for any of it. Those methods are chosen because they are hard to reverse, and a company that insists on one has answered the question before you have checked anything else.

Here is the test that does not depend on spotting a detail, and it is the one worth remembering.

A pet transport company is hired by the person who already owns the animal. A family moving abroad, an owner relocating for work, a breeder or rescue sending an animal to a home that has already been arranged and paid for directly. The shipper’s client is the person who can put a hand on the pet.

In the scam, the shipping company appears inside a transaction between a buyer and a seller who have never met, and it asks the buyer for money. That configuration is the fraud. It is not that the shipper is careless or unlicensed. It is that a genuine transport arrangement does not have that shape, because the person paying for transport is normally the person who already has the animal.

If you are buying an animal you have not seen, from a seller you have not met, and a transport company you did not choose is asking you for money, the animal is the least likely thing at the end of it.

We arrange transport for animals whose owners we deal with directly. We quote the route before anything is paid, the quote itemizes what each line is for, and it does not grow in transit. We do not take payment by wire transfer service, gift card or cryptocurrency, and we do not take part in the sale of an animal.

If someone has given you our name in connection with a puppy you are buying from a stranger, call us before you send anything. It will not be a booking we made.

Stop sending money, including any final payment framed as the one that releases the animal. There is no animal to release, and the sequence continues for as long as the payments do.

Contact the company you paid through straight away, because some payment services can act on a recent transfer. Report the fraud to the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov and to the BBB Scam Tracker, which is what feeds the studies that make this pattern visible in the first place. Keep the listing, the messages and the receipts.

The FTC’s alternative is worth repeating as written: consider a local rescue or animal shelter, where animals of all breeds and ages are waiting to be adopted.

Search its name with the words review, scam and complaint, as the FTC advises. Then call and ask about the animal rather than the payment: the route, the crate size, the airline and the flight. A real operator answers those without hesitation, because they are the job. Anyone who moves straight to payment method, and particularly to a wire transfer service or a gift card, has answered the question for you.

They would not. In the BBB’s cases that request is one of a series following the deposit, alongside a special crate, food and water, and quarantine fees, and in one case it was $980 for health insurance while the dog was supposedly in Oklahoma City. A genuine quote covers the crate and the carriage before the animal moves.

It is one of the BBB’s listed red flags. Its study describes French Bulldogs with a market around $3,000 being advertised by fraudulent sellers under $1,000. The low price is what gets the first payment. The transport fees are what collect the rest.

We work for the person who owns the animal. If you have bought a puppy from a seller you have not met and been told a transport company will be in touch, that arrangement is the pattern described on this page, and the safest next step is to stop and check before paying anyone.