Edhat Reader
I’m writing to warn people of a new scam regarding dog walking on social media sites, craigslist, and Nextdoor.
Several friends have almost fallen victim to this clever technique. Scammers will go on sites and look for locals advertising dog walking and pet sitting services. They’ll contact the person online and say they live out of the area but will soon be moving close and need help with their pet.
They’ll ask this person to get supplies for their pet and to pre-book services for when they arrive. They even go as far as talking to you on the phone and having some other scammer act as a “previous dog walker” explaining the pet and their quirks.
Then the scammer will email you a check to deposit because for some random reason they cannot pay any other way. None of my friends went farther than this, thankfully, but one specific scammer has been emailing a ton of people in the local area.
Below is a sample email from scammer “William Longman.” Be careful out there!
The lengths scammers will go these days is absolutely insane.
It’s not clear to me what the scam is, but I believe you.
see below comment
I believe what these scammers do is provide a fraudulent form of payment that is likely stolen. They’ll earn your trust then for a seemingly innocent reason will ask you to deposit it for them. It’s usually a much larger amount than you need, then they’ll ask you to credit the remaining balance to them in some other payment form. So they get cash from you, then the stolen funds will eventually be deducted from your account when the victim learns this, meaning you’ll be out the entire amount.