Police Put Bite on Woman Over Free Dog Scam
By CHRISTOPHER FAHERTY,
http://www.nysun.com/new-york/police-put-bite-on-woman-over-free-dog-scam/53641/
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ShareLaw enforcement officials have filed a criminal complaint against a Manhattan woman who is alleged to have fraudulently advertised free pure-bred puppies on major Web sites.
Janet Goris, 33, of the Lower East Side, was charged with luring four prospective dogs buyers into sending her "shipping and handling" payments of between $300 and $400 in exchange for baby English bulldogs, the Queens district attorney's office said.
"It is doubtful that the puppies even existed," the Queens district attorney, Richard Brown, said in a statement.
Ms. Goris allegedly told investigators she sent 90% of the profits from the puppy scam to accomplices in Nigeria. She placed advertisements on Web sites such as Yahoo Classified and livedeal.com, where she posed as several different religious figures, sources said. She was arraigned on charges of grand larceny and conspiracy and released without bail Friday, the Queens district attorney's office said.
A victim of the alleged scam, Jenny Chavis, 30, from Sebring, Fla., said the advertisement she found on Yahoo Classified claimed the puppies belonged to a traveling evangelical minister, the Reverend James Collins, whose mission helped find homes for the baby bulldogs.
"I have four children who were so excited to pick the dogs up from the airport," Ms. Chavis said. "I cried for days."
Ms. Chavis said she was instructed to wire $400 to a Western Union branch in the East Elmhurst section of Queens. After the funds were processed, a man who said he was Rev. Collins contacted her, she said.
"He asked for another $200 to get the dogs released from Customs," Ms. Chavis said. "That's when I knew it was a scam."
Officials are continuing the investigation in hopes of digging up more details about the alleged scheme, sources said, including the identity of the man who claimed to be Rev. Collins and possible ties to organized crime in Nigeria.
Ms. Goris will return to court later this month, the Queens district attorney's office said. If convicted, she faces up to four years of prison.
