Online directories are a great way to connect prospective dog owners with breeders, especially if there are in different cities. Did you know though, that there is a fraud scheme targeting prospective pet owners seeking to buy from out-of-town breeders?
Fraudulent Pet Transportation Schemes
Paws en route became aware of one such scheme when were contacted with respect to transporting a pet to an out-of-province buyer. While no financial damage was suffered, one of our clients received a fraudulent invoice for pet transportation. The fraud artist was clever enough to include Paws en route’s logo and address but the originating email (Hotmail) and a spelling error alerted one of our clients to report it to us. The matter has now been put to the police.
Criminals who specialize in invoice fraud are often aware of some details of dealings between companies and their clients. If clients pay these invoices it is often difficult to recover the funds so both parties are at risk. To help protect our clients, Paws en route has taken several steps:
- We only send invoices to clients from pawesenroute.com email addresses;
- We include details (dates/routes/pets names) in an invoice, making it more difficult for a fraudulent person to masquerade as the company;
- We list our company phone number for clients to call if they have any queries or suspicions; and
- We keep client records, calls and driver details confidential (the company has a sophisticated system for electronic record-keeping that splits records across several cloud services to make them resistant to any hacking attempts)
We urge our clients to be vigilant too. Often signs of fraud are:
- If it sounds too good to be true, be careful
- The sender is not from the company (wrong email domain, i.e. not @pawsenroute.com)
- The details (date, pet name, service provided) are wrong in some way
- The invoice is unexpected or varies from what was agreed
- The account details or payment method looks insecure or cumbersome
