Identify a scam

[ShreddedOakAviary]

I was recently asked to look into a lady who claims to have 13a pairs of hyacinth macaws, so I did. Several people were curious and had tried Googling her name. I Googled her phone number and used Google cashe to find some of her old ads too. After some dead ends I tried a slightly different approach... I saved all her photos of hyacinths from her website to my phone.... I then used a really handy Android application that allowed me to search the internet for the same photos.... guess what! Her photos came from a wildlife preserve specializing in public tours in Brazil.... so... I called them and asked if they had given this lady permission. Of course not, and they were quite upset. So, I then took the photos and used all the search engines inline I could think of and scanned page after page.... the remaining photos were stock photos from photo hosting sights. I pulled up all the past ads I could find, and she used the same photos since the beginning.

Now I need to decide if I should take this further and email her to buy a baby and see what happens, or should I just leave her to her dishonest idiotic self?

 

[ShreddedOakAviary]

Truth is I believe she might actually have or had a pair of hyacinths. I need to take a trip to the eastern edge of the country and see for myself. (Or send a friend or family member) anyone live in NY?

 

[Enjru]

I would be quite upset if she had been able to deliver on all her past sales, because I would then suspect that she is the front for an illegal bird smuggling ring.

Otherwise, she is just cheating people of their money, and lots of people cheat, have cheatED, are cheatING and WILL cheat for financial gain, including TONS of rich people who can afford corporate lawyers and accountants to get them into a lower tax bracket, so she's not that different from everyone else. I suppose if she's cheating poor people of their money, you could report her to the police, but can we really call anyone who lives in the developed world "poor"?

Personally, I'd very much enjoy drilling her to a manzanita play stand if she is somehow associated with the illegal bird trade, but I wouldn't worry too much if she's just scamming people without getting real birds involved.

 

[QuackQuack]

This is probably a scam, BUT I thought I would mention that I did have to use a 'stock' photo I found online to run an ad for a stray dog we found. We did really have the dog, but there were no good pictures!

 

[ShreddedOakAviary]

Yeah, that's what stock photos are for, but in her case it looks like most of the photos are "borrowed".