I don't see my post to this that I posted on Saturday morning I believe, maybe it didn't post, but I was in-contact through email with the OP until Bowie had his accident, and I knew she had emailed me after that because I saw the alerts pop-up, but I wasn't online at all last week so I apologize, it was just due to Bowie having a horrible accident and us going back and forth between home and my CAV, and then also to work and back...So I need to catch-up with the OP on this...
ParrotGenie...There are 2 women who are partners and own this business, Ana and her partner Lily...Ana is located in Scranton, PA and Lily is located in Hazleton, PA...There are no buildings or an actual "business" that you can go and visit the birds in, but rather they each have basically what I would call a warehouse where they keep the birds that they buy...This is why they have PO Boxes and not listed business addresses....I have personally driven past the one in Hazleton and it's a dump. That's how they have advertised and done business for years, but now as you see they don't sell birds locally, they don't want to, and they don't advertise locally because they don't want people to be able to want and come see the birds before they buy them, they only want to sell to people out of state that have to buy the birds sight-unseen and have to air-ship them to them...They have recently started doing what our lawyer at the Rescue calls a 'Drop-Shipping" scam, which is what you are describing..Yes, these 2 women are tied to other large-scale operations in other states, but they both do in-fact operate as Parrot-Brokers out of these 2 facilities in PA as well. Their new affiliation with other scammers in other states is fairly new, but being watched closely...I wasn't aware that they were that involved with these other large-scale operations as much as they apparently are...
As I told the OP, even when these 2 first started out, they were shady as hell and everyone local to them stayed far away...The first time I even realized how horrible their practices are was years ago when I first started working at the Rescue, back when they would still advertise birds that they had for sale on all the local Craigslist Pet-Pages...They were very stupid back then and didn't cover their tracks very well at all, and they were searching all of the local PA Craigslist pages (anywhere they were willing to drive to from Scranton or Hazleton) for birds/parrots that people were re-homing...They bought every parrot they could cheaply from their prior owners, posing as women who simply wanted to adopt a bird to add to their families as pets...A lot of the time they didn't pay a cent for them, they were just re-homed to them because their owners wanted them to go to responsible, experienced homes...Then they would turn around and sell the birds for hundreds or thousands of dollars...And back when they still advertised and sold locally in PA, they would get caught posting a bird for sale that had just been posted a week or two prior for re-homing by their original owners (with fully made-up histories, ages, genders, etc., basically they just wrote their life-stories for them)...So that's when they stopped advertising locally and stopped selling them locally...It's literally impossible to buy a bird from them locally because you cannot see the birds first, and you cannot go and pick the birds up in-person or pay them in-person...They have to be air-shipped to you...
I once tried to see some Budgies they had advertised under "Lily's Parrots", which they said were "hand-raised and hand-fed, bred BY THEM "on-site", etc. I first contacted Ana, but she passed me off to "her partner, Lily", and gave me her phone number because "that's where the birds were bred and hand-raised, by her partner Lily"...When I contacted Lily she was horribly rude right from hello, and told me that not only could I not see the birds before purchasing them, but that I would have to pay $125 PER BUDGIE to air-ship them to me in State College, which is a 2-hour drive from Hazleton...When I said that this was ridiculous because the cost of shipping each bird from Hazleton to State College was more than the cost of the bird, and I was more than willing to drive to her any time that was good for her, she hung-up on me and never called me back or returned any of my emails either...
*****Bottom-line to what is currently being investigated is not only where their birds actually come from, where they are held/stored until they are sold, and whether or not the Health-Certificates, DNA Certificates, etc. that they supply with them are real, but also now whether they have regularly been committing Felony Mail-Fraud by taking money from people who are expecting a certain bird but being shipped a totally different bird, and with a history that is nothing like the phony one they list...Because animals/pets are considered "Personal-Property" in PA, there are limited things that law-enforcement can do about a lot of their practices or about how they treat the birds that they do buy from wherever they can get them and that they store in nasty, dirty warehouses; So the best way to nail them is by charging them with crimes such as Federal Mail-Fraud. It's sad, but that's really all that can be done as far as criminally charging them with anything due to the way the animal/pet laws in PA are written.
What everyone needs to know about Ana's Parrots and Lily's Parrots in Pennsylvania is that none of the birds they sell are ever bred, hand-raised, or hand-fed by them, and none of the bird's histories that they list are true. They buy every bird/parrot, both babies and adults, from any and every source they can find them, whether that be birds being re-homed on sites like Craigslist, in local newspapers, on Kijiji, and yes, birds that they "adopt" from local Avian Rescues and Animal Shelters (they pay an "adoption fee" or "Re-Homing Fee" of a couple hundred dollars for a Macaw, Cockatoo, CAG, etc., and then sell them for thousands of dollars)...They don't get their birds vet-checked and many of them are sick or injured, or have behavioral issues such as Feather-Destructive Behaviors...They don't know what medical issues their birds have because they don't know anything about the birds, they simply buy them/adopt them/rescue them from wherever they can, then they advertise them and sell them. They don't ever see a vet...It's really awful...
And the worst part is they use threats and intimidation to get people they've screwed-over and taken-advantage of to delete any negative reviews or comments that they've written online. And they themselves delete any negative reviews/comments from their own websites and social media pages that they control the second they're posted. They threaten people with civil lawsuits for "slander" and "libel", which is completely BS and they know they can't sue these people for posting negative reviews or comments about their experiences buying birds from them, but they just hope that they can scare the people enough that they'll not post anything negative and delete them if they already have...And filing complaints with the BBB or AG in Pennsylvania is usually useless, again because of the way animals/pets are considered "Personal Property" in PA...They will literally offer a "Replacement Bird" to these poor people who have spent thousands of dollars on a sick bird, but the people have to literally return the sick bird to them first...Then they just re-sell the sick bird again right away, and often send the person another sick bird...And that's only the people who actually file a complaint with the BBB or AG, they typically scare most people out of doing it in the first place for fear of a lawsuit because "They lost a lot of business due to your negative review, so I'm suing you in Civil Court for the amount of money I lost due to your Slander and Libel"...It's crap and would be thrown out of court if they ever did file them, which they never would, but it works...
I wasn't aware of the "Identity Fraud" thing, but am no surprised at all. Not one bit. These women are horrible people who take advantage of others on a daily basis, they lie, steal, commit fraud, and worst of all they exploit and abuse birds, and they rip people's hearts apart daily...And I hope one of them is reading this thread, go ahead and file your Lawsuit against me for "Slander", lol...Good luck!!!
