By Michael Zwelling

For The Sentinel

When David and Stephi Luken saw the classified advertisement for a Yorkshire terrier puppy, they didn't immediately respond with checkbook open for what appeared to be a great deal.

They did, however, respond by looking to find out more information about the puppy for sale and hoping that perhaps they had been mistaken in their initial suspicion.

"I saw the ad in the paper and the price was definitely too low and we were afraid that it might have been another one of those backyard breeders," said David Luken of Kensington.

David and Stephi run a Yorkshire terrier rescue group and currently house seven of the small dogs commonly referred to as "Yorkies."

"We e-mailed to express an interest and that's when we began to smell a rat," David said.

That rat is what some are calling a variation of a scheme called the Advance Fee Scam, often referred to as the Nigerian Scam, although it can be based in any foreign country.

In the past decade there have been several variations of the scheme, some ask for tax money up front to pay taxes on lottery winnings. Still another is done through personal advertisements where a man or woman claiming to live in the United States is set to meet their American love interest when they are called to Africa on a family emergency. The person would really like to come back immediately to meet and get married but they need cash sent to them to buy an airline ticket back to the U.S.

The newest version, it would seem, involves the sale of purebred canines.

The Lukens contacted the alleged owner of the Yorkshire terrier, who said he lived in the United States in his classified advertisement, but later said he had been called to Nigeria on business but had the dog with him. He could ship the dog but would need payment in advance.

"All the B.S. detectors went off and we knew it really wasn't right," said Stephi, who has been rescuing Yorkies for about 10 years.

"They are high energy dogs," she said. "They are 150 pounds of dog in a five pound body."

Stephi wasn't alone in her concern, when she contacted the Yorkshire Terrier National Rescue Inc. she found that there had been warnings posted about similar advertisements.

Kim Hood of The Bulldog Club of America said that they too have heard of similar ads offering purebred dogs for a fraction of what the cost should be.

Bulldogs, Hood said from her office in Baltimore, can be quite expensive, ranging from $1,500 to $3,000 and finding one at a substantially lower price should set off alarm bells.

"We had someone who called us because they had answered the same kind of ad, then they were contacted and told that the dog had been sold and they would need to send more money for a different dog," Hood said.

The person who initially asked about the dog did not send any additional money to the person who was based outside the United States.

Law enforcement officials in Maryland say they haven't had any complaints yet about the alleged scam, but that there may be people who simply don't want to come forward.

Contact Michael Zwelling at mhzwelling@yahoo.com.

Photo by Marketa Ebert