Pet owners in Sedona targeted by scammers
Original article appeared in the Sedona Red Rock News, 8/22/24: https://www.redrocknews.com/2024/08/22/pet-owners-in-sedona-targeted-by-scammers/
Article by: Joseph K. Giddens/Larson Newspapers
Photography by: David Jolkovski/Larson Newspapers
Staff at the Humane Society of Sedona received a phone call on Aug. 9 from a resident inquiring about how to make a payment of $1,200 for emergency surgery on their missing cat.
“We were confused because we didn’t, to our knowledge, have an injured cat,” HSS Executive Director Jennifer Brehler said.
Later that evening, Brehler continued, “I was up front with another employee and a man and woman pounded on the window, and we opened it up. They were not in panic, but pretty urgent. They got a very similar phone call … and the [scammer] was saying, ‘Your animal came into the Humane Society of Sedona. It’s severely injured. We need to do surgery right away, but you need to give us $1,700 before we can start surgery. And if we don’t do surgery, your dog’s going to die.’”
