HOUSTON – A new scam is targeting people who have lost a pet.
Unfortunately, the most recent victim was Conroe’s Lisa Sousley.
Sousley and her daughter Zoe love their dog, Spooky. Spooky and Zoe are only a year apart and have grown up together.
“We found out when she was 9 months old [that] she was autistic.”
So for Zoe, Spooky, her service dog, is more than just a pet. He’s family.
“He sleeps with her,” noted Sousley. “I mean, he loves her.”
Sousley and her daughter are staying in the city while her mother undergoes heart surgery. They knew the commute from Conroe would be too much during this difficult time.
“We drove to our house in Conroe to pick the dog up because we knew we would be staying here a few more days,” she added.
On the way back to the hotel, Sousley says she stopped at the H-E-B on Rayford Road.
She left Zoe and Spooky in the car for a few minutes. When she returned, Spooky was gone. He had jumped out of the window. But because Zoe is non-verbal, she couldn’t tell Sousley where he ran off to. She immediately posted on Nextdoor and Facebook, hoping someone would recognize him.
“I posted on there and said we were in the parking lot at H-E-B. That’s where I went wrong,” she said. “I put my phone number in there.”
One day later, she got a text.
“She says ‘Hi I am Donna, did you lose your male dog?’” the woman said.
The person texting her asked for her to send a Google verification code to prove she was in fact Spooky’s owner.
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