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If you ever have any intention of buying a horse, selling a horse, using social media to market your business, have friends who are in the horse industry, or you're trading bums or unicorns that's none of my business - but this post is relevant to you. 

Someone gave me the idea for this blog post a few weeks ago after they'd unknowningly sent a deposit to a scammer through Facebook, thinking they were coming to pick up one of our horses that they were buying. It had been on the back of my list to accomplish, until yesterday - when it quickly moved to a priority after waking up to multiple messages (yet again) of a person stealing our horse advertisement to scam people on Facebook. Nothing will motivate you more than a lazy bum of society using your hardwork and name to take money from an innocent person, so here we go...

Horse sale scams are exploding across Facebook groups and pages. Scammers steal real photos, videos, and entire descriptions from legitimate trainers and breeders relying on their hard earned business. Scammers then re-post these ads as their own under a fake profile and request deposits or transport fees from unsuspecting buyers. KEY WORD: DEPOSITS. They're getting smarter and it's getting harder to spot them, but if you take these steps and you'll be able to spot it. 

RED FLAGS:

• Price is suspiciously low. A $15,000+ horse advertised for less than $5,000? Low pricing is bait. 
• They immediately push deposits or hold fees of some sort - then they get pushy. A legitimate seller is never going to message you multiple times to ask if you're interested or demand a deposit. 
• They avoid phone calls, FaceTime calls, or allowing you to come actually meet the horse in person. Most scam posts will include an email address as their contact info. Trust me, no one dealing in real horse business is communicating primarily by email. We all have phones and WE WANT TO talk to you. 
• Photo quality doesn't match the account. Professionally shot photos by someone with zero horse-related activity elsewhere = stolen media. And if you look, 95% of professionals have watermarked photos. Reverse search it on Google or look up the watermark, I bet you find the original poster.
• The scammer's Facebook profile doesn't look legit. Few profile photos, random profile photos, low friend count, if your gut tells you it doesn't feel right - it probably isn't. 
• Some scammers even copy ENTIRE FACEBOOK PROFILES. If there's multiple variations of a Facebook profile, no meta verified checkmark, they are continuously posting horse sale ads and no real content, there's weird punctuation or grammar in the profile name... RED FLAGS.

HOW TO AVOID SCAMMERS AND VERIFY A LEGITIMATE SELLER:

• Google their name or business. A real program has a footprint: website, past sales, reviews, previous buyers posting updates, consistent branding across platforms, etc.
• Copy & Paste the horse description in Facebook or Google. 9 times out of 10 the real post will pop up because all scammers are doing is copying & pasting.
• Reverse image search on Google.
• You used to be able to ask a scammer to provide real time verification. Meaning they would write your name and the date/time on a piece of paper in front of the item. THIS DOES NOT WORK ANYMORE because scammers are using chat gpt to create the images you request. 
• The most important thing I can stress is to PICK UP THE PHONE AND TALK TO THE PERSON SELLING THE HORSE. This is the easiest and most fool-proof way to avoid scams. 

We've found that Facebook is 0 help in bringing down these scammers. Recently someone copied our meta-verified (blue checkmarked) business page "Jones Family & Versatility Horses" and created a fake page called "Wyatt's horsemanship,versatility, horses". Trust me, we're not special falling victim to the scammers. This has been happening to everyone we know in the horse industry. You can help by: 

1. Commenting "This is stolen from ______"
2. Report the page/post as Scam/Fraud
3. Message the original owner (although most times they're blocked from the post or group and can't do anything about it)
4. Share in your groups or on your own page to warn others

I'm including some images below of a scammer who just stole our advertisement yesterday. I was actually quite impressed after viewing "her" profile as she actually appears somewhat legit if you didn't know better. But as you can see in her ad, the contact info was an email and she clearly copy & pasted our ad - which you would easily find by searching it on Facebook or Google. In this particular case, she is the ADMIN of the "UNWANTED SAFE BROKE HORSES FOR ADOPTION" group - in which I recommend deleting this one immediately and reporting..

FINAL REMINDER: Have a real conversation with the person you're buying a horse from. If anything feels "off" - walk away. Additional tips are welcome in the comments. PLEASE SHARE AWAY - you might save someone you know from falling victim.