Man Nearly Scammed by Face-Swapped Photo of His Missing Dog

A man was nearly tricked out of reward money after a scammer sent him a face-swapped, digitally altered photo of his missing dog.

Dog owners searching for lost pets are increasingly being targeted by scammers using edited images to convince them to pay ransoms.

According to a report by First Alert 4, Diontye Harris of Belleville, Illinois, lost his one-year-old dog Spicy when she ran off after being startled by fireworks over the Fourth of July weekend.

Harris searched for his dog, whom he describes as like a “daughter” to him, until 2:30 A.M. After failing to find her, he posted a photo of Spicy along with his phone number in several local lost pet Facebook groups. Within hours, he received a message claiming someone had found Spicy, sent from the email address. The sender, known as “[email protected],” included a photo of a dog that looked almost identical to Spicy, but Harris noticed the paws didn’t match with his pet’s.

“My dog has white tips on her paws, and this dog didn’t,” Harris tells First Alert 4. “But the face was exactly the same.”

The scammer asked Harris to send half of the reward money before providing an address. Harris says he was skeptical but admits his emotions almost led him to pay.

“Even though I knew it was a scam, I was so desperate for my dog that I almost sent the money anyway,” he said.

However, before he transferred the reward money, someone in the neighborhood called to say that they had found Spicy in their backyard. Harris realized that he had been duped by the scammer and that the individual had sent him a face-swapped photo of Spicy to con him out of the reward money.

First Alert 4 reports that it identified the same email address “[email protected]” had contacted a second victim, Chicago-based Thaila Davis, whose family lost their dog Asher on the same night. Davis says the scammer also sent an edited photo of Asher and requested a reward upfront via a payment app. She recognized the scam before sending any money, but acknowledged the emotional manipulation via the edited photo was strong.

“I had a text from someone saying they had my dog,” Davis recalls. “They sent me a picture, and at first, I believed it. It looked like my dog.”

Last week, PetaPixel reported on a photographer who claims he was tricked into believing he had been selected by National Geographic to shoot a wildlife project in Kenya. The scam led to thousands of dollars in donations from sponsors.