An Erie woman thought she was bringing home a new furry friend. Instead, she says she was scammed out of more than a hundred dollars by someone posing as a local kitten rescue.<\/p>\n
The Erie Crime Victim Center says online fraud can be especially difficult because scammers often build trust before asking for money.<\/p>\n
In this case, the scammer allegedly created an account posing as Noelle\u2019s Foster Kittens and used old kitten photos to make the page appear legitimate.<\/p>\n
We spoke with Amy Blackman, co-assistant director of the Crime Victim Center, about what people should watch for when interacting with similar accounts online.<\/p>\n
Noelle\u2019s Foster Kittens says the scam is especially frustrating because the organization has worked hard to build trust in the community.<\/p>\n
The vice president of Noelle\u2019s Foster Kittens said in a statement, \u201cAs a small, volunteer-run nonprofit, we work incredibly hard to build trust within our community, so it\u2019s upsetting to see someone use our name, photos, and reputation to take advantage of people who are simply trying to give a kitten a loving home.\u201d<\/p>\n
The organization says scams like this can also take time and resources away from caring for kittens and finding them safe, loving homes.<\/p>\n
Officials urge anyone looking to adopt a pet online to verify the organization, watch for red flags and avoid sending money before confirming who they are dealing with.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An Erie woman thought she was bringing home a new furry friend. Instead, she says she was scammed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46527,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[113514,136,138,137,113513,113515,6725,62125,18673,663],"class_list":["post-269257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-erie","tag-crime-victim","tag-erie","tag-erie-headlines","tag-erie-news","tag-kitten-rescue","tag-noelle","tag-nonprofit","tag-online-fraud","tag-pet-adoption","tag-scam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269257","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=269257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269257\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}