NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — Pets are part of the family, so went a pet goes missing, it's all hands on deck to bring them home.
Friends of a Nashville cat owner did what a lot of us would do — they posted about the missing black cat, Ming Mei, online. Unfortunately, that almost led her to losing more than just her pet.
Vernell Hackett's friend owns Ming Mei. Hackett helped her friend get the word out that the six-month-old cat was missing. She posted on the lost pet sites and social media too.
"People did call in and say 'I have a black cat' or 'we found this black cat,' but they weren't her cat," explained Hackett.
Fast forward a few days, the women got a good lead. The person who said they found said they found Ming Mei at work. They even had a photo.
They were told to meet up at a gas station in Bordeaux to retrieve the cat. That's 15 miles away from where the cat went missing. It was also 11 o'clock at night.
When the women got there, the person called. They called and demanded $50 before they would show up with the cat.
"They asked for money: 'Are you going to pay me.... for my trouble?' And Liz said 'yes, when you bring me the cat and I ascertain that it is my cat then I will pay you a reward for finding my cat,' and the person said 'No, You have to pay me first," Hackett said.
The women knew better than to pay a stranger up front, so they called off the meeting.
"You want to give them the benefit of the doubt but we just felt like it wasn't... it didn't feel right..." Hackett said.
Amazingly, the very next day Ming Mei was found at the neighbor's.
As for the photo the scammers sent — the one that reeled them in — the women now think it was a doctored photo of Ming Mei.
"It looked like it had been blown up. You can do a lot of things on computers these days. It looked like someone had taken a picture of a picture and blew it up a little bit... when you're trying to find your cat, you don't examine every aspect of what you're looking at when you see they have a picture of a black cat," Hackett said.
Even the FBI is warning people about lost pet scams. In November, the El Paso FBI Field Office posted about the tactics that scammers use. They said scammers have pretended to be animal services, and demanded money to pay for their pet’s injuries before releasing their pet to them.
They are also going onto popular social media platforms creating fake profiles, joining missing pet pages, and then posting about a hurt animal. They allege that they have taken them to the veterinarian and are looking to find the owner, only to swindle money out of them, leaving the pet owner heartbroken and with less money. They have even set up fake companies that are “the best in finding missing animals.”
It is suggested to ask to see your pet in person or ask them to share a detail about your pet that you didn’t include in the lost pet post.
Fostering Hope provides Christmas for kids in foster care. I'm delighted to see Fostering Hope expand this year to expand their reach to now include kids in Foster care in metro AND foster kids in East TN hard hit by Helene.
-Bree Smith
