Under Construction

Please be aware that there are fraudulent “breeders” that are active in the Internet. I have received numerous emails, phone calls and messages from people who have been ripped off. Ont of America’s prominent basset hound breeders recently stated that at least two of the people who contacted him regarding his recent litter of bassets stated that they had lost substantial amounts of money to a breeder who claims to sell basset hound puppies on the Internet. While, due to the possibility of being sued for slander, I can’t state which Internet “breeder” is I can say for certain that they have ripped off people.

This fraudulent breeder, like many others, makes all sorts of claims that make them look legitimate. These people have learned to say “all the right things” to get your attention and make it look like they’re legitimate breeders. They make it sound like they are doing all the “right things” as well. At first look some of these people sound wonderful. It’s all a hoax to get your money.

In this blog I’ll provide some important signs to look for that may hopefully help you from being a victim of these scammers. Unfortunately just by writing this blog I may be helping some of them to avoid some of the things I’ll be presenting here. In ALL cases it’s important for those who are looking for puppies to be extermely careful.

The first thing I notice on these alledgidly fraudulent breeder website is the puppy photos they include. Most of the time there is no consistency in the photos. If puppies sre from the same litter they should be taken in the same location. What most of these questionable websites show are numerous puppy photos but none of them have the same background. On one I viewed recently the backgrounds ranged from concrete to grass to being on furniture or even in a bed. There were no photos of the puppies together or with their mother. Often there is just one photo of each puppy alone.

The reason for this is that the scammers search through the internet and elsewhere for puppy photos to post on their websites. In fact ofter the same photos can be found on different websites. One of our close friends noticed this when she was searching for a basset hound puppy. This may happen because the same scammer has more than one website or they wre working together with other scammers. 

Another thing that’s easy to look for is photos of people with the puppies. If the puppies are shown with people do you see the same person with all or most of the puppies. Again if a reputable/responsible breeder shows people in the photos with the puppies the sdame person or people will appear with different puppies.

Normally a reputable/responsible breeder will show photos of the puppies together and especially some with their mother. Individual puppy photos will be taken in the same location. Often these breders show each puppy individually “stacked” which means how they would be presented to a judge at a dog show. These breeders will show numerous photos of their litters.

Here’s where things can and do get difficult. Scammes can and do steal photos from legitimate breeders. A close friend had a beautiful litter of puppies and posted their photos on the Internet. A few days one of her friends sent her an urgent message. That friend had found another “breeder” that had posted the same photos and was selling them. I think that eventually the fraudulent photos were taken down but I’m not sure. The only recourse my friend had was to contact law enforcement with the information but often they are either overwhelmed or unable to track down the perpetrator. 

Another problem we are facing in this area is our modern computer technology. A photo editing app on a computer can easilly be used to change the background on photos. While this is possible it takes a lot of time and effort and most of the time the people doing it aren’t good at the process. They leave signs that can be detected by close examination. The other modern computer process is creating photos using AI. There are many Artificial Intellengence apps available on the Internet today that can produce photos. Frortunatelly for now they’re not great at accuracy. Ofter feet, for example, don’t have the right number of toes. Like hands are for people AI image generators seem to have trouble with paws but they’re getting better.

No matter who the breeder is study any and all photos on their website for signs they aren’t legitimate or they could have come from somewhere else. A good photo of puppies together and then the same puppies shown individually is difficult to do well. That’s unless they are stolen from somewhere else. When that happens you’ll need to look at other possible signs.

This blog is unedited — More Coming Soon