John Peter Selling Yorkies Pup Texas

Well, I have noticed that many of these scammers, especially from other countries use two first names together--John Peter, Allan David, Richard Allen, etc. that sound very American. If you communicated ONLY by email it's pretty much a given that this was a scammer not even located within TEXAS or the UNITED STATES. I've seen ads in the local papers, even in St. Louis and Kansas City where they are trying to sell English Bulldog puppies for $500 and they just leave an email address on the ad. NO PHONE NUMBER! That would be a BIG RED FLAG to me. Also, avoid wiring money to ANYONE unless it's a relative YOU are wiring money TO...It's not traceable and they have your money and there's nothing you can do about it. Look up the online ads in the Kansas City Star and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch...that's just two of many newspapers in the US making them TONS of money. After a while you'll be able to pick out the scams yourself. Notice the writing style...the broken English most of the time.

According to the newspapers, the United States and its victims have made Cameroon/Nigeria very wealthy. They sit at the Internet Cafes and scam their day away. They even set up fake websites. Do a WHOIS search using www.networksolutions.com/whois to find out who they REALLY are and where the business is registered.

If they give you a phone number, do a reverse search or google their "names" and see if you come up with other victims. Ask for tons of references. Not email addresses...phone numbers. If they've been in business and are legitimate, plenty should come up if you google the business name...or their names.

In this day and age of the Internet, don't be gullible and just trust anyone...DO NOT EVER WIRE MONEY using Moneygram or Western Union...another red flag. These people use stolen photos pretending to own merchandise or puppies or whatever else...they don't. They copy other ads practically word for word so you think they know what they're talking about.