Scammers use AI-generated images of lost dogs to target pet owners
Popular Science...
Increasingly realistic, easy-to-make AI-generated images are a major asset for online scammers looking to trick unsuspecting victims. While past AI-generated scams have tried to deceive people with fake celebrities or potential love interests, attackers increasingly have a new target: distraught pet owners searching for their lost companions.
Over the past few months, numerous reports have surfaced following a similar pattern. A pet runs off or goes missing, prompting its owner to frantically post photos online or on flyers asking for help bringing them home. Shortly after, the owner receives an image of what appears to be their pet, injured and awaiting surgery at a veterinary hospital. The sender then demands money, claiming it is needed to perform the operation and save the pet’s life. But here’s the catch. The animal was never injured or on an operating table at all. The photos sent to owners were completely fabricated, generated by AI using the real images of the missing animal as a reference.
Dennis Morida, a dog owner in Florida, experienced the scam firsthand. Earlier this year, his young German shepherd, Hazel, squeezed through a hole in the backyard fence and ran off. Morida quickly posted photos of Hazel on social media and neighborhood apps asking for help. Within a few hours of posting, he reportedly received a phone call from someone claiming to be a sergeant with the St. Petersburg Police Department. The voice on the line claimed Hazel had been hit by a car and was currently at a local vet awaiting surgery. To support the claim, the caller sent an image of what appeared to be Hazel preparing for an operation. It looks remarkably realistic.
The supposed officer then asked Morida to immediately send $1,900 via the mobile payment platform Zelle to cover the operation costs. Morida complied, only for his bank to flag the transaction as suspicious. Eventually, he sent a smaller amount and was told by the caller that he could pick up his dog the next day from Pinellas County Animal Services.
“It seemed so real and so legit at the time,” Morida told local news outlet Tampa Bay 28. “We would do anything to get the puppy back, to get Hazel back.”
Morida was ultimately reunited with his puppy, but not quite the way he had expected. Before he could make his way to the vet, he looked outside and was shocked to see Hazel sitting in the yard, completely unharmed. Though relieved, the family began putting two and two together and realized they had been the target of a scam.
A similar case took place in California in December 2025. A local veterinary office reportedly received a call from an elderly man who claimed someone had contacted him saying his service dog, Chewie, had surgery at that location. Chewie had gone missing several months earlier, and his owner had shared images of the dog online hoping to find him. Chewie’s owner told the vet that the unknown caller had sent him a photo of what appeared to be Chewie recovering from an operation and demanded he send money to get his dog back.
Situations like these apparently aren’t one-offs. The Animal Compassion Team, a Fresno, California-based nonprofit, told a local outlet KGET that they receive around 20 calls per day reporting similar incidents.
Tomas Sinicki, a scam protection expert and managing director at identity theft protection firm NordProtect, tells Popular Science that this growing trend represents the latest evolution in a worrying pattern of scams facilitated by easy-to-use AI image generators. Pet owners in particular are ripe targets.
“This pet scam is an example of personalized social engineering — a troubling evolution of the generic phishing schemes we’ve learned to watch out for,” Sinicki says. “It’s horrific because it exploits emotional vulnerability, targeting people in moments of distress when they’re searching for a glimmer of hope.”
Sinicki adds that AI-generated images and voice clips are often seen as enough “proof” to get past a target’s skepticism.
Insult to injury for already taxed and animals shelters
In a slightly different case, scammers are also reportedly using AI tools to generate fake images of dogs from real shelter animals, making it appear as though they are about to be euthanized. Monica Wylie, the director of San Jose Animal Care and Services in California, recently told Fox KTVU that her organization received hundreds of phone calls from concerned people begging them not to kill an animal after seeing an AI-generated photo posted online.
In some cases, the images depict the animals with large, exaggerated human-like tears. The posts sometimes also solicit monetary donations to supposedly keep the animals alive. However, Wylie notes that the animals prompting these calls were never actually candidates for euthanasia in the first place.
We got bombarded by just call after call after call,” Wylie told Fox KTVU.” That misinformation is damaging. It’s doing a disservice to the public and to the sheltering community.”
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A chunk of those calls can be traced back to a still-active Facebook group called Saving Shelter Dogs from Euthanasia. The page, which has over 126,000 followers, has posted multiple times per day for months, with many images appearing to show telltale signs of AI generation. Overall, the posts appear to be a mixture of both genuine and AI-generated content, further blurring the line between what’s real. Though the page appears mostly to direct users toward shelters, it also has a $1 per month subscription option.
Popular Science reached out to Meta (Facebook’s parent company) asking about the apparent AI images on the page, but has not heard back. It’s possible some of the posts violate the social media giant’s own rules. Meta AI’s Terms of Service has a section that explicitly prohibits its users from using AI in ways that could “deceive or mislead others,” for scams or misinformation. Meta did not respond to our request for comment, but the page in question became inaccessible following our inquiry.
“Attack scenarios related to social engineering, including deepfake scams like this one, are becoming increasingly common lately,” Sinicki said. “AI is doing for cybercrime what the assembly line did for manufacturing—allowing criminals to mass-produce highly sophisticated, customized attacks at a scale and speed we’ve never seen before.”
How pet owners can guard against scammers
Still, there are some steps pet owners can take to protect themselves from scams. Sinicki advises people to be skeptical of any messages received from unknown numbers, especially when they create a sense of urgency around quick payment or immediate action. He also advises taking a breath and verifying information through a separate channel. In this case, that would mean finding a shelter’s or vet’s official website and calling their listed phone number directly. Finally, and most pressingly given the issue at hand, Sinicki advises people to be increasingly skeptical of images or other “proof” sent by unknown contacts.
“In our new reality, you can no longer trust your eyes or ears,” he says. “Treat any photo, video, or audio clip in an unsolicited message as potentially fake.”
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