Updated Oct. 2025
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been accessible to the general public for a few years, and the pet industry has been seeing an uptick in scams due to creative uses of AI and social media engineering. Common AI tools being used are ChatGPT, Gemini, and Nano-banana. Easy access to tools that create instant content means easy ways to create fake breeder online presences, easy ways to spoof identities, and easy ways to scam unsuspecting puppy buyers.
Here’s some scams to watch for:
–Spoofing identity – pretending to be someone else.
- Spoof a website – Spoofing means a website that closely resembles a trusted brand as well as a domain that is virtually identical to the legitimate website to confuse visitors. With AI tools, it is possible to do this with the click of a few buttons. The fake website may take payments fraudulently.
- I personally know of a breeder who had their entire website spoofed with a similar domain name, used the breeder’s name on the website, but funneled contacts for puppies to a scammer and funneled payment to a fraudulent account.
- Hack someone’s Facebook account – Gaining access to a legitimate persons’ Facebook account can be used for many types of fraud. Common ones in the past were to message someone through the hacked account, tell a sad tale of being lost in a foreign country with no wallet or passport, and ask for money to be sent. Other scams include selling Taylor Swift tickets or posting high value items from an estate sale in hopes of friends sending money to the hacked account. There are endless variations of scams.
- Some of these accounts will pose as sellers in resale/BST groups to scam people. Most groups will have a list of rules for payment and ways to verify members.
- Profile Cloning – Create a duplicate Facebook profile to get friends to accept. Then they start phishing for private information, engaging in fraud scams, and spread viruses.
- Hacking into other accounts – Hack into existing accounts by stealing passwords, like AKC Marketplace, to funnel puppy inquiries to themselves and collect payments. Note, like your bank and credit card company, AKC is unlikley to call you to ask you for your password.
–Create fake identity with believable social media profiles.
- Create an identity as a breeder online with puppies to sell. Puppies may or may not exist. This is used to lure buyers into sending in payments or to buy puppies that are not as advertised. Facebook is flooded with these types of scams, and it is very difficult to vet them. Thanks to AI, fake photos can be generated to make a fake Facebook profile appear legitimate.
- Create Facebook groups often named “*Breed Name* puppies for sale.” They will infiltrate legitimate breed groups and spam posts with the link to join the fake sales group. Now with AI, it is very easy for scammers to generate pictures and text to make their Facebook profiles and pages look real.
- Interact as if they are a legitimate breeder. Thanks to ChatGPT, anyone can post the responses to questions on Facebook that sound plausible. Thanks to image generation tools, anyone can provide pictures of puppies that may or may not exist. Some easy to spot signs are when the replies tend to be superficial and lacks depth of knowledge.
- It is also not uncommon to see suspicious profiles posing as puppy seekers. They may be trying to gain access to personal information, looking for opportunities to steal puppies, or looking for cheap puppies to use for nefarious reasons.
- Create fake Club events and profiles
Here are ways that Puppy Seekers and Breeders can protect themselves.
- Insist on talking on the phone or meeting in person. While it is easy to create a believable fake persona online, it is difficult to come up with believable answers in the moment on the phone or in person. I find this especially helpful with interviewing homes as they will start to stumble, have significant gaps in basic knowledge if they claim to be a sports or show handler, or give inconsistent answers.
- Turn on two factor authentication on your social media profiles. This will make it more difficult for your social media profiles to be hacked.
- Be careful when accepting requests on social media platforms – including LinkedIn. Fake profiles trying to gain access to information has skyrocketed.
- Watermark your photos before posting. Using apps available on the phone, it is easy now to add text, icons, or stickers onto photos before sharing on social media. Scammers can still use AI to edit pictures or create new versions of your photos, though it can slow them down.
- Verify contact information for the breeder to ensure you are contacting the person you intend to contact instead of a fake social media profile, wrong phone number, or wrong email address.
- Be cautious when giving out personal information such as when you will be home, which shows you will be attending, your work schedule, and other private information. Be extra cautious when you get an email requesting specific information but does not introduce themselves.
Originally Published Oct. 2019
The pet industry has changed dramatically, and new lines of businesses have popped up. Retail Rescue is one of the biggest changes in the last decade, and now we’re seeing the rise in digitally astute brokers. It used to be obvious who was a broker, but now with the digital presences accessible to anyone with an Internet connection, it has grown increasingly difficult to figure out who is an accountable breeder and who is a broker. Don’t be catfished by a broker posing as a breeder.
Brokers are starting to build slick websites using the same phrases as accountable breeders. They claim to have health tested and DNAed parents who have a plethora of titles. They have photos of puppies on their Facebook pages and Instagram accounts. They are well-versed in Google ads, and they have all the right answers.
These websites are duplicated in mass with just a change in the breed for the many breeds the broker carries. It takes an understanding of both the digital world and the dog world to uncover the irregularities. Here are some tips on differentiating the two.
–Advertised as Health tested: A Breeder can send you the link on OFA.org for each dog. The large majority of breeders in the USA send their results to OFA. A Broker that doesn’t health test will not be able to do this. Some brokers are even claiming that they test for breeds that are not applicable to the breed they are selling. Here is the Canine Health Information Center (CHIC) list of the tests that are recommended for each breed.
-Advertised as Champion / Champion Lines / Conformation (some spell it confirmation) / Show dogs: You can easily find dogs that are shown in the America Kennel Club shows by Googling the dog’s registered name and the breed. For example, this is the Google search results for my first Greater Swiss, Dixieland’s Blazing Maximus + Greater Swiss Mountain Dog. There are not as many entries as he was actively shown in the early 2000’s, but you can see where he is referenced by other webpages. Here is a more recent search result of my current special using the words Musicbox Got Your Six + Lowchen. The vast majority of dogs that are exhibited in the United States with AKC will have some type of reference to show results. If you cannot find any online show results, the dog is likely not entered in AKC events.
-Photos of the Litters: A breeder has direct access to take photos of their litter as they grow, whether or not the litter is raised in their care or the care of co-owners. Photos of puppies are notoriously difficult, but a breeder should be able to provide some, even if they are not picture perfect. I tend to send photos of the puppies as they grow directly to the homes. Only a few of my many photos are Instagram worthy. A broker will probably not be able to provide photos of the litter as they grow as they may not have access the puppies. *Be aware that these broker websites often steal photos from breeders. Be leery of photos where it looks like many different locations, the puppies look markedly different, or the photo style is very different. They likely have stolen photos from multiple sources.*
-Type of photos: This point digs in a little deeper into what you can learn from photos. If the breeder only provides photos of the puppies outside or in environments obviously not the inside of a residential environment, it is highly possible that the puppies are actually being raised by a commercial breeder and sold through a broker or public facing entity. Many accountable breeders have kennel and puppy areas in their home or on their property set up for raising puppies, so you’ll need to combine that information with other photos you might see. Do you see photos of other people with the puppies? Do they seem clean and free of debris? Do you see evidence of items used for enrichment? Are there pictures of the puppies being socialized in new environments? These questions will help you assess whether or not the breeder is truly spending quality time with the litter. *Puppies are messy. Do not expect puppy areas to be pristine at all times, but it is reasonable to expect some level of cleanliness.
-Ability to see the litter through Facetime or some other chat or video service: Some breeders are happy to Facetime or live stream video the puppies. This allows you to see that they are raising the puppies themselves. Not all breeders are able to do this due to technology challenges, Internet speeds, or busy schedule. Don’t be alarmed if a breeder declines to engage in Facetime. I don’t offer it unless I have a few hours to spare.
-Knowledge of the breed: Check the breed’s parent club page to see what are current issues in the breed, upcoming events, and the list of regional clubs (not all breeds have regional clubs). A breeder, even if not a member of the parent club, will know basic information about the breed. A Broker likely does not. You can check to see if the breeder is listed on the parent club or regional club breeder list. Not all accountable breeders will be listed there, but it is a place to start.
-Knows other people in the breed: Breeders know each other. They might not know everyone, but they will know at least some people. Breeders use each others’ stud dogs, talk to each other about shows, and have a network of breeder friends. Breeders who are active also have a digital presence. Breeders in dog clubs will most likely have references to them on various websites. You can do a quick Google search on the breeder’s name + the word dog, and you should get at least a few hits. This is the Google search on the late beloved Dorothy Nickles, one of the first judges I exhibited to in my early days. People who are active in dog sports and dog clubs will have similar search results. A broker will likely not know other breeders by name. A broker’s name might not have many web hits that pertain to the dog breed, but there may be many hits that pertain to many dog breeds. It is becoming common for these brokers to use the same name (sometimes multiple fake names) as the front for brokering puppies.
–Beware of hacked AKC Marketplace accounts. There have been documented cases in which a breeder’s AKC Marketplace was hacked, and a broker’s phone number was superimposed over some of the existing photos. Please do call the phone numbers listed on directly on the breeder’s website. Hacking into a website is slightly more complex than hacking into an AKC Marketplace account.
–Claims to be an AKC breeder or to have “papers”. There is no such thing as an AKC breeder, though sometimes breeders might qualify for AKC recognition like the Breeder of Merit program. However, there is no such things as AKC certified breeder. And breeder can list their litters on AKC marketplace so long as they registered the litter, which is not difficult to do. Any “papers” are easy to generate.
*-Digital Presence: Not all breeders have a digital presence. In some breeds, the breeders are not on Facebook and don’t have a website. That doesn’t mean that they aren’t accountable breeders, it just means they are a bit more difficult to find. You may have to call around to get ahold of them. However, just because someone has a digital presence, that doesn’t mean that they are accountable breeders. Many brokers have Facebook pages where it is easy for them to post comments and appear to be relevant or active in the breed when they are simply looking to sell their puppies instead of contribute to the breed.