It sounds a simple enough warning, but apparently it has to be repeated over and over again: people wanting to buy a dog should not try to purchase pedigree dogs from Africa through the Internet.
The police in Finland are warning of crooks operating on various e-commerce sites who accept money from prospective buyers but fail to deliver a dog, or anything else for that matter.
According to the police, at least since the summer of 2008 pedigree dogs presumably from Cameroon have been peddled through the Net.
In Finland such ads have been placed at least in the Keltainen pörssi and Verkkopirkko online retailing sites.
Messages have been exchanged in English, and payments for the animals have been requested in the form of international money transfers through Western Union.
The police are aware of more than a dozen Finns from various parts of the country who have fallen victims of this kind of scam, but the actual number is believed to be even higher.
The authorities regard the selling of non-existent dogs as a typical swindle originating from Nigeria.
Detectiver Inspector Jari Liimatta of Lieksa Police, who has investigated one such fraud, says that it is not even certain that the swindler is in Cameroon.
A telephone number mentioned in the advertisement would suggest a country in Central and Western Africa.
The fraudster or fraudsters have not been caught.
One Finnish victim of the African dog sale scam explains on the Suomi24 chat site how he agreed to purchase a puppy from Cameroon and hurried to send the seller a few hundred euros.
“I am seriously annoyed, for I really expected the puppy to arrive in Finland”, he writes.
“But there never was one.”
Caveat emptor.
