Reptile Posting A Scam

[babygurl_rsx_1369]

:(Hello Everyone... I feel like such an idiot! I am a sucker for animals, especially Chameleons, Panther Chameleons in particular. I recently had a panther chameleon that had past away and I have been seaching to find another one. I finally found one and had been talking with this gentlemen for a few days and I then decided that I would like to purchase the chameleon from him. I had found his add on a canadian website that led me to believe that he was in Toronto. Well when we decided to go threw with the purchase he gave me the address to send a money gram to and it was in Douala Cameroon, by this point I had already fallen in love with the picture and wanted to purchase him anyway, I was told that it would be no problem at all and it was only going to cost me $150.00 which was ok. Then I received an email from this "agency" stating that he had already paid so much money to have it checked and have all the papers completed to have the chameleon sent, which then ment that I was now supposed to pay $250.00 ($140.00 for the refundable insurance, stating that the chameleon is completely their responsibility and $110.00 for the Electronic travel crate to keep it up to temperautre). I informed him that I wanted him to pay some of the money and that I would pay the rest, which took abit of arguing to get him to do it. Then everything was supposed to be fine, or so I thought. It then became that they could not ship it through the france flight as I had called to check the progress and they said they had no idea what I was talking about. Then I recieved another email form the "Agency" stating that they needed another $95.00 so that they could ship him through the UK as they could no longer do it through France. I obviously refused to pay the $95 and told him he could pay for it... once again it was abit of a struggle but he did according to the "agency" and he assured me that everything was now good and it was going to be on its way. And of course I recieved another email saying that I now needed to pay $65 in order to get the chameleon from UK to the US. We finally just said enough he pays for everything else that comes up through this "agency" and that is that, I will take my loses as it is.

So as a fair warning to everyone stay away from any adds posted by:
name.....Kinyuy Edwin Tatah
Address........Akwa ,street 55
City.........Douala
Country..........Cameroon
Zip code...........00237

with the following email of himself:

reptileshome25_2007@kittymail.com

and the "agency":

CAMEROON AIRLINE AFRICAN PET SERVICE
DOUALA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
PHONE 00237 74100507
PO:BOX 508

and the email:

cameroonairlinespetservice@airportemail.com

[John Fairheart]

Sorry to hear you got taken in, and thanks for the intel. Posting it here will certainly provide references for others.

To that end I'd like to share some additional info for readers.

The email addresses provided, kittymail.com and airportemail.com, are free webmail accounts that anyone can sign up for. The latter, airportemail.com, may sound official and as seen here was used deliberately with an 'airport' persona to make it look real. In fact, it has as much authority as my toe-nails.

Purchasing any animal from a foreign nation is not easy to do, and certainly ANY advertisement for an animal that exists beyond your own national borders should be avoided unless you are fully compliant in all the legislation governing the import of live animals into your country.

I used to be involved in the import of Oil Paintings from Hong Kong and Embroidery Machinery from the USA, and that was complex enough to make your hair stand on end... animals are a whole new ball of problems.