Eight days after her cat disappeared, Krysta Franco’s phone rang. The caller said they were with the Animal Rescue League of Iowa, the Des Moines shelter, and they had wonderful, terrible news: her cat was alive, but a car had struck him, and surgery could not wait. The bill would be $2,400, and it needed to start now.
Franco sent $500 through a payment app, everything she could manage in the moment. There was no cat. There was no surgery. The Animal Rescue League had never called. She had been talking to scammers the entire time, and the detail that made it all feel real, the specifics about her cat, came from her own lost-pet posts on social media, as Des Moines station KCCI reported in November 2024.
Read that mechanism again, because it is the whole scam: they did not find her cat. They found her flyer.
Why this con works on smart people
The lost-pet scam is engineered to hit people at their most exploitable moment. Someone whose animal has been missing for a week is sleep-deprived, guilt-ridden, and primed to believe good news. Franco put it plainly to KCCI: she and her family were acting out of emotion, not rationality, and learning her cat was still missing felt like losing him twice.
The FBI has been warning about exactly this playbook. Scammers know pet owners become distraught when a four-legged family member goes missing, and they run several variations on the theme. Some pose as shelter or rescue staff whose “found” pet urgently needs paid treatment. Others lurk in missing-pet Facebook groups and post that they have rescued an injured animal and taken it to a vet, then collect “reimbursement” from the grateful owner. Still others advertise fake pet-recovery services, professional trackers who will find your dog for an upfront fee and then evaporate. The Missing Animal Response Network keeps a running catalog of these invented companies, and it is long.
Every version shares one anatomy: urgency, emotion, and a payment request before you have seen your pet.
The verification habit that defeats it
The counter-scam is not cleverness. It is a short, boring procedure you commit to before the crisis, because in the crisis you will not be thinking clearly.
Hang up and call back through the front door. If anyone claiming to be a rescue contacts you, look up that organization’s number independently, on their website, not from the caller ID or any number the caller gives you, and verify the claim directly. The real ARL of Iowa, after fielding reports of impersonators, told pet owners exactly this, and added a rule worth memorizing: a reputable shelter will never demand payment before you can come in and see your pet with your own eyes. Anyone asking for money over the phone, sight unseen, has told you what they are.
Make them prove they have your animal. The FBI’s recommendation is to ask for information or photos that are not already public. This is where the scam’s own fuel runs dry: everything the caller knows came from your posts. Someone who genuinely has your cat can photograph him next to today’s newspaper, describe the belly marking you never posted, or video-call you from the vet’s lobby. Someone who sends back a re-cropped version of your own flyer photo has answered your question.
Know the red flags cold. Per the FBI: no new photos, edited versions of your own images, threats, and requests for money or security codes. That last one covers the verification-code variant, where a “shelter” texts you a code to “confirm your identity.” The code is actually resetting one of your accounts.
And post smart in the first place. When you publicize a lost pet, hold back one identifying detail, a scar, a chipped tooth, an exact collar tag, so you always have a test question no scammer can answer.
If scammers do contact you, tell the rescue being impersonated so they can warn the community, report fraudulent websites to PetScams.com, and file with the Federal Trade Commission. Reports are how the next Krysta Franco gets a warning instead of a bill.
What’s new since this was written
The scam has kept evolving. In May 2025, the Better Business Bureau updated its lost-pet scam guidance to flag a newer text-message variant, in which scammers respond to lost-pet flyers by texting that they have the animal, then pivot to demanding payment or verification codes. Consumer-protection agencies also continue to report that pet-related fraud is broadly undercounted, since only a small fraction of victims ever file a report, which means the real toll of these schemes is almost certainly far larger than the complaint numbers suggest.
The defense has not changed, though, and that is the encouraging part. Verify through the organization’s real number, demand proof only the true finder could have, and never pay to see your own pet. Those three habits beat every variant invented so far.
References
- KCCI Des Moines. Animal Rescue League says phone scam is targeting lost pet owners, impersonating organization.
- Federal Bureau of Investigation. FBI Tech Tuesday: Beware of Lost Pet Scams.
- Better Business Bureau. BBB Scam Alert: Lost pet? Watch out for this scam.
- Missing Animal Response Network. Missing Pet Recovery Fraud Alerts.
- Federal Trade Commission. Report Fraud.
