A Northeast Pennsylvania woman is accused of scamming a Reading resident out of $400 for a pit bull puppy that never existed, city police said.<\/p>\n
Investigators identified the purported seller as Destiny N. Kohut, 23, of Montrose, Susquehanna County. The victim told police that she realized she had been duped when she arrived at a prearranged meeting spot in Allentown on May 28 to pick up the dog and Kohut never showed. Kohut then blocked her on all communication apps, according to police.<\/p>\n
According to court documents:<\/p>\n
A Reading police officer was dispatched to the victim\u2019s home May 28. She said she found the puppy for sale on Facebook Marketplace and paid Kohut $400 in installments through a cash\u2011transfer app.<\/p>\n
After completing the final payment, the victim agreed to meet Kohut at a park in Allentown, roughly halfway between their homes. When Kohut failed to appear, the victim tried unsuccessfully to reach her before returning home and contacting police.<\/p>\n
She provided officers with chat logs and financial records documenting the payments.<\/p>\n
Police said attempts to contact Kohut and persuade her to return the money were unsuccessful. She was charged Wednesday with theft by deception.<\/p>\n
Kohut was not in custody as of Thursday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Northeast Pennsylvania woman is accused of scamming a Reading resident out of $400 for a pit bull…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":217403,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[349,202,182,139,28,128,130,129,432],"class_list":["post-217402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-berks-county","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-top-stories-tmc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/217403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}