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Letter to the editor- Beware of scams and missing pets

To the Editor:

I send my sympathies to April Stanley on the loss of her cat and loss of her money! We received a phone call from William Muniz (now I know who he was) about 2-3 weeks after we lost our Jack Russell Terrier in January. We had flyers up in the Emerald Bay Road area (where we lived) and also put the flyer info on the Internet.

This creep called late on a Sunday night and told us he had “Scooter.” He had “rescued” him after he had been hit by a truck and had a broken leg. The creep said he had trouble finding a vet (yeah, right) on Emerald Bay Road but had finally got him all fixed up and that he was fine. He was within a half-hour of catching a plane back to Canada and would leave Scooter at a shelter, even though his wife had grown attached to the dog. We told him we had an uncle in the vicinity and would have him come pick up the dog. That’s when the creep balked. He asked how old our Uncle was. Such a strange question. He said since the dog was so active he was concerned that Scooter would be too much for our Uncle to handle.



He never asked for money, although we told him we would, naturally, reimburse him for the vet bill. I believe when we mentioned our Uncle he then figured we wouldn’t be wiring any money to him and he cut the conversation short. He said he had to call some friends that he was supposed to be meeting and would call us right back. As soon as we hung up we realized we had been scammed. I had read a story in the Reno paper a few months earlier about this same thing happening to pet owners there. We called the phone company immediately to try and get a number but they couldn’t help us. When the phone bill finally came in we found that he had called (collect) from a phone booth in Oakland.

We hope they throw the book at this low-life. It’s a cruel hoax to do this to people who are grieving. Thankfully, we didn’t lose any money, but we still never got our sweet little terrier back either and that’s the saddest thing of all.



Mickie Ovrid

Gardnerville, Nevada


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