A devastated pet owner from Manchester has been conned out of £500 after a fake company promised to provide drones to search for her missing budgie.
PhD student Sunny transferred the money after falling for the scam in a desperate attempt to find Ding Ding, who was last seen on Whitworth Street and Canal Street at around 11pm on Thursday August 29.
Sunny put out an appeal on social media after her beloved blue-bellied English Budgerigar escaped through a small gap in an open window.
While appealing for information on various Manchester-based missing pet Facebook groups, Sunny was directed to a company profile on the site which appeared to offer pet recovery services.
She said: “What we now know is a fake account suggested me to go to their page. I was so desperate so when they asked me for the money I just transferred it, I just thought there was hope.
“They asked me for £700 but I could not afford it.”
After transferring £500 to the fraudsters, Sunny later realised the service was a scam targeted at pet owners who had recently lost their pets.
“The person who promised to search for my bird for me, I really trusted them, and they have a Facebook page with 6k followers so I trusted it,” she added.
Images sent via WhatsApp to Ding Ding’s owner show a large drone on the back of a pick-up truck along with the message “getting ready x,” promising that thermal imaging technology would be used to search for the bird.
And Sunny is now keen to warn other pet owners about the dangers of such practices.
She added: “The important thing is to let people know that are looking for their missing pets and emotionally attached to not start trusting people and make sure these accounts aren’t fake.”
The scam, which is an ongoing practice on social media, targets emotional pet owners who have posted about their missing pets in groups dedicated to lost or missing animals.
After connecting with profiles on Messenger or What’s App which appear to be concerned local residents, owners are directed to a company profile which appears to offer search and rescue services for a fee.
Ding Ding, an exhibition budgie, is twice as large as his wild budgie counterparts and has lived with Sunny for over a year in her central Manchester apartment along with his budgie sister, Song Song.
According to Sunny, the pair have enjoyed exploring her apartment, bobbing their heads to music while also taking an interest in the culinary delights she whips up in her kitchen.
When Ding Ding went missing Sunny also took to the streets of Manchester to hand out flyers about her missing pet but later received a tirade of abuse over the phone.
She said: “We also put posters around the streets and we have received calls but most of them are horrible teenagers saying ‘we got your budgie give me three hundred [pounds]’ or saying that they killed the bird.
“It was horrible and on the first day I was really desperate and I was crying.
“There are still a lot of kind people who are trying to help and support us they don’t have any information but they just want to say good luck which is really nice.
“Whilst there have been some horrible things it has also been offset by some lovely, lovely people out there who are trying to help.”
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