Scammers in San Francisco are targeting people who’ve lost their pets.
The San Francisco Animal Care Agency says it got calls this week from two people who had posted information about their missing pets.
Apparently someone called them from a number that appeared to be the Animal Care and Control Office.
They claimed to have found the dog or cat but say, to get it back, the owner needs to make an immediate cash or gift card payment.
Get a weekly recap of the latest San Francisco Bay Area housing news. Sign up for NBC Bay Area’s Housing Deconstructed newsletter.
“In both cases we don’t have their dog and we would never call someone and ask for cash. Ae would never ask for gift cards, it's a scam. Both of the people who received these calls on their phones, it looked like they were calling from here, it had our phone number on there displayed but the call was not from here,” said Virginia Donohue of San Francisco Animal Care and Control
One of the people that received the call said they got his number off a flyer and that their dog was inside their facility and they couldn’t send him a picture.
“Saying the dog was in the vet getting a chip and he needed me to send him money but he said the system was down, they could not take any cards or cash,” said Scott Teason of Vallejo.
Local
In this case, the caller was asking the dog's owner to use a Cash App to send a $79 fee. Fortunately the owner decided to call animal control to verify the fee and animal control said they will never ask for any payment over the phone.
