Sarah Watt sold her wedding dress to buy a therapy dog to help her four-year-old son cope with his disability.
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She paid $3,800 for a gorgeous "cavoodle" called Bambi.
On the seller's website, the cross between a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel and a miniature poodle seemed intelligent and gentle - just the right type to sooth and delight her son.
He was so excited that the family bought toys for the dog. They were even told on which flight from Tamworth the new pet would arrive.
A courier was booked to bring the dog to their home.
It never happened. The whole thing was a scam.
They took the toys back to the shop. "We were so hurt and thought we'd never be able to afford to buy a new dog in the near future," the mother said.
Her son was deeply upset. "He was with us and in the moment we handed the stuff back - we knew he understood exactly.
"We carried him out of the store bawling. It was the most horrible experience."
Since the epidemic and the lockdown, it is an increasingly common horrible experience.
There have been 36 reported puppy scams in the ACT so far this year. Canberrans have been duped out of $31,400, according to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.
In Australia, there have been 1,627 reports of puppy scams, with over $1.6 million in losses. That's three times higher than the figures for the whole of 2019 with two months of 2020 still to run.
"A lot of people are stuck at home and going online to buy a pet to help them get through the loneliness of social isolation," the ACCC's deputy chairperson, Delia Rickard, said.
"Unfortunately the rush to get a new pet and the unusual circumstances of COVID-19 makes it harder to work out what's real or a scam."
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The scammers set up fake websites or put adverts online, complete with the cutest picture of puppies in the most popular breeds. The "seller" often claims to be in places beyond usual driving range - like Tamworth.
"Once you have paid the initial deposit, the scammer will find new ways to ask for more money," the ACCC's deputy chairperson, Ms Rickard, said.
"And scammers are now using the COVID-19 pandemic to claim higher transportation costs to get across closed interstate borders or additional fees for 'coronavirus treatments'."
The advice of the RSPCA is to be very wary. "You need to see the dog," Michelle Robertson, its chief executive in Canberra, said. A responsible breeder would want to meet the buyer to make sure the dog was going to a good home, she felt.
Apart from scams against owners, dog-napping - stealing valuable dogs tied up outside a shop - has been known.
There is no separate category in the crime statistics for thefts of dogs (as there is, for example, for car theft) but ACT Policing did recognise that dogs have substantial monetary value.
"People can pay thousands of dollars for a pet so it's sensible to take precautions, as you would for any other valuable item," ACT Policing's Acting Inspector Karen Drake said.
