The Lake Dallas Animal Shelter’s mission to find homes for its rescued animals was recently jeopardized by an online scam.
Scammers hacked into the shelter’s Facebook page on July 1 and posted a series of adoptable dog photos with links to pay the adoption fee via a cash app, Lake Dallas police told NBC 5 DFW.
“So [people] think it’s a legitimate post and they’ll click on the link and then they’ll make an adoption that’s not actually real,” explained Lake Dallas Police Lt. Connor Farrell, according to NBC 5.
As previously reported in The Dallas Express, animal shelters across North Texas are at maximum capacity due to a steady stream of owner surrenders and stray intakes. This often means that otherwise adoptable animals are being euthanized to make space.
Meanwhile, fraudulent posts detract from genuine ones and run the risk of putting off some potential adopters.
Although some people contacted the shelter about the animals appearing in the fraudulent posts, no one has claimed to have lost any money to the scammers so far. The Facebook page also appears to have been wiped clean of the scammers’ posts.
Farrell credited those who follow the Lake Dallas Animal Shelter for quickly spotting the fraudulent posts, which asked for $300 instead of the normal adoption fee of $60.
“It was quite amazing actually how quickly people picked up on it and were posting on our Lake Dallas police page,” he told ABC 8 WFAA.
According to reporting by WFAA, the Lake Dallas Animal Shelter has not been the only target of hackers in the region and the police are working with Facebook to remedy the issue.
While the Lake Dallas Farrell Animal Shelter might ask for food donations, it would not write a post asking people to make an online payment, Farrell explained, according to WFAA.
The website for the City of Lake Dallas refers to Petfinder as a legitimate resource for finding out about the dogs and cats available for adoption at the shelter.
Otherwise, Farrell encouraged anyone looking to adopt a pet or make a donation to go directly to the shelter to do so “to avoid any suspicious posts,” according to NBC 5.