[00:00:10] Bob: Puppy abandonment, Oh my God.
And meanwhile, all you want to get is a puppy for your husband, right?
[00:00:16] Tana Mundinger: Hmm-hm.
And then I, I finally put a call in to the police.
And um, they said, “There is no such law as puppy abandonment.”
[00:00:32] Bob: Hmm.
So how did that feel?
[00:00:36] Tana Mundinger: It, uh, sunk, my heart just absolutely sunk.
(MUSIC SEGUE)
[00:00:45] Bob: Welcome back to The Perfect Scam.
I’m your host, Bob Sullivan.
What a set of criminals did to this family at this fragile time is unimaginably cruel.
Hold onto your hearts as you hear the story that Tana Mundinger is going to share with us.
So one, a very sad story, but two, very happy endings.
Now meet Tana who lives in a place with a great name, Mustang, Oklahoma.
[00:02:06] Bob: You and I actually have several things in common.
The first is Oklahoma.
[00:002:16] Tana Mundinger: Okay.
Well I lived in Perry, which is uh, about 20 minutes from Stillwater.
I grew up in Perry, um-mm.
[00:02:21] Bob: Oh, okay.
Well where is Mustang?
[00:02:24] Tana Mundinger: It’s west of Oklahoma City, on I-40.
If you keep driving west on I-40, you hit Mustang.
[00:02:31] Bob: And how long have you lived there?
[00:02:46] Bob: Family is very important to Tana.
She’s got a big one.
[00:02:50] Bob: You have 20 grandchildren.
[00:02:52] Tana Mundinger: Yes, uh, of course this was a second marriage.
My husband has uh, 8 grandkids and I have 12.
[00:02:59] Bob: That’s a lot of Christmas gifts.
[00:03:00] Tana Mundinger: That’s a, that’s a lot, hmm-mmm.
A lot to keep up with.
[00:03:04] Bob: Tana and her husband have been married for 21 years.
[00:03:09] Bob: And how did you meet?
[00:03:11] Tana Mundinger: Through our church.
And that’s when he was, you know, first married at that time.
Your, your kids knew each other, that’s very, very nice.
[00:04:10] Tana Mundinger: Hmm-mm.
[00:04:17] Tana Mundinger: Uh-huh, right, yeah, and his children have been really good.
So and his son has helped out a lot, and then of course the daughter in Mustang.
So they’ve been very, very supportive.
[00:04:58] Tana Mundinger: He was a lost and found.
And I said, well let me see.
And he had never had a dog before.
And he just took up so much with Max.
And of course that’s when he was doing the paint contracting.
And they would sleep together.
So he was just his very good companion.
[00:05:49] Bob: I’ve seen the video of them sleeping together.
I mean it’s, it’s painfully cute.
[00:05:54] Tana Mundinger: Hmm-mm.
[00:05:56] Bob: So they were always together.
How long did you have Max?
[00:05:59] Tana Mundinger: We had him for 14 years.
[00:06:02] Bob: Wow.
So he lived a long life.
[00:06:12] Bob: And tell… when did he pass away?
[00:06:15] Tana Mundinger: In September.
[00:06:16] Bob: This, this most recent September.
[00:06:18] Tana Mundinger: Hmm-mm.
[00:06:25] Tana Mundinger: It was.
So Tana pretty quickly pivots away from that decision.
[00:06:49] Tana Mundinger: Uh-huh, yes.
[00:06:57] Tana Mundinger: Right.
I hadn’t told him what I was doing, to look for a dog.
[00:07:20] Bob: I feel like you’ve done that to him before.
(laugh)
[00:07:25] Tana Mundinger: Yes.
(chuckles)
[00:07:28] Bob: Remember, Max had literally just walked into their lives.
[00:07:42] Tana Mundinger: Well that’s when I had started researching.
And my other daughter had a Goldendood–, a what is it?
[00:08:02] Bob: A Goldendoodle, yeah.
[00:08:03] Tana Mundinger: Goldenpoo, something like that.
[00:08:05] Bob: Yeah.
[00:08:06] Tana Mundinger: And it’s a bigger dog.
[00:08:14] Bob: And so she does what we all do now when we look for anything.
[00:08:27] Bob: Do you remember anything about the ad?
I mean were there a bunch of pictures of puppies?
What did it look like?
[00:08:31] Tana Mundinger: Yeah, there was a bunch of pictures of puppies in it.
[00:08:33] Bob: Was there actually a specific puppy you had picked at that point?
[00:08:35] Tana Mundinger: Yes.
It was a, a tan puppy.
And the name was Sally.
So they start working out the details.
[00:09:02] Tana Mundinger: And so he sent me a contract.
So everything looked legit with the contract, you know, saying that and so forth.
So…
[00:09:37] Tana Mundinger: And then he asked me to purchase American Express gift cards.
I mean I, I’m just acting very leery of this.
And he says, “Oh, no, no, no.
You’ve got to trust me.
You know everything is okay.”
And I said, “Well, I’ll tell you what.
[00:10:16] Bob: This time he says the payment works, and so everything is in order.
Muffin is on the way just in time.
They sent me a tracking number.
[00:11:02] Bob: You made the puppy a room, right?
[00:11:05] Tana Mundinger: Yes, I bought some things.
[00:11:07] Bob: Now like what did you, what did you buy?
[00:11:08] Tana Mundinger: I bought a dog bowl, some treats.
And it didn’t come.
[00:11:21] Bob: Instead, another message comes from the seller on the 27th.
But she goes online to check the balance of the cards and she’s disturbed by what she sees.
The value from the cards have been sent to numerous places.
And then the other one said Full Advances.
And, you know, you would think that it was going to be put on hold or whatever.
[00:12:16] Bob: And then the next day, another request.
[00:12:45] Bob: Then still another request.
And when she balks at that, they threaten her.
[00:13:09] Bob: Puppy abandonment, Oh my God.
And meanwhile, all you want to get is a puppy for your husband, right?
[00:13:14] Tana Mundinger: Hmm-hm.
[00:13:21] Bob: …the puppy’s going to get here.
[00:13:23] Bob: And then the one more thing becomes a request for her personal banking information.
And I said, “Oh no.
We’re not going there.”
[00:13:59] Bob: That’s enough to drive Tana over the edge.
And then I, I finally put a call into the police.
And um, they said, “There is no such law as puppy abandonment.”
[00:14:18] Bob: Hmm.
So how did that feel?
[00:14:20] Tana Mundinger: It, uh, sunk, my heart just absolutely sunk.
[00:14:32] Tana Mundinger: So I said, “I’m not sending you anymore money.
This is it.”
And the breeder kept texting back about, “Why are you so angry?
You know, we, we were trying to work with you.”
And I said, “You’ve got $5850.
I’m not sending you anymore money.
“No, no-no.
I’m, I’m done.
[00:15:11] Tana Mundinger: Not really.
And they said, “Well you’re in Oklahoma, you have to call there.”
[00:15:38] Bob: Ah, I’m really sorry.
And so I just contacted them and said, “Have you done anything on a puppy scam?”
And I just kind of told them my story.
And it was about a month later before they called and said that they wanted to interview me.
That’s how feelings work.
[00:17:01] Tana Mundinger: Hmm-hm.
[00:17:03] Bob: Um, but there’s a happy ending, I understand.
[00:17:05] Bob: Yes, dear listener, I promised you two happy endings.
Here’s the first one.
The TV show produced an overwhelming response.
Viewers from all over Oklahoma called in.
[00:17:41] Bob: So Tana goes out to meet Gracie.
And they’re not really a farm dog.
And so she just really, really just came right to me without any qualms whatsoever.
[00:18:15] Bob: So how long have you had Gracie now?
[00:18:22] Bob: Hmm, and obviously they’re, she’s adjusting, everyone’s adjusting?
[00:18:26] Tana Mundinger: She’s, yeah, she’s adjusting real well.
And they said it could be like three months before they feel like this is their home.
I think she took over the home right away.
[00:18:43] Bob: (laugh) It’s her home.
[00:18:50] Tana Mundinger: Uh-huh.
(chuckles)
[00:18:52] Bob: And does she, does she take naps with your husband?
[00:18:54] Tana Mundinger: Yes, she’s sleeping with him right now.
[00:18:57] Bob: Oh my God.
[00:18:58] Bob: The two of them bonded almost immediately.
[00:19:01] Tana Mundinger: She’s a sweetie.
She’s very cuddly and everything, so yeah, he still calls her Max.
[00:19:06] Bob: That’s okay.
I’m sure she doesn’t mind.
[00:19:08] Tana Mundinger: Hmm-hm.
I said, “You know, well her name’s Gracie Mae, so Gracie Max.”
(chuckles)
[00:19:13] Bob: (chuckles) Close enough.
[00:19:15] Tana Mundinger: Hmm-hm.
Well I promised you two happy endings, so here comes the second one.
The good news is that word about the significance of these scams is reaching the right people.
[00:19:54] Henry Person: Hi, yeah, my name is Henry Person.
I am an investigator on Goggle’s Cyber Crime Investigation Group, or CCIG for short.
So this was already a priority for us.
In late 2021, we received a tip from the AARP Fraud Watch web link about a puppy scam.
They paid $700 for the puppy, but ultimately they never got it.
So we received that report, and that’s when we started looking.
In this specific case, however, we wanted to take things a little bit further.
[00:21:58] Henry Person: Well it generally works like this.
We’re investigators, so we pull on the threads and we chase down answers.
Oftentimes this involves pivoting from an initial report to find new lines of questioning.
We could take a look at the fake website and ask ourselves, what’s unique about this website?
Where are they getting these pictures?
Are they using a template?
And from there we can develop signatures and see where they show up elsewhere.
And this helps up build on an web link.
So bad actors, no matter who they are, are human.
Did he use his real name registering a website 8 years ago or something?
[00:22:58] Henry Person: Yeah, it was, it was along those lines.
[00:23:15] Bob: So, they had a name.
Nche Noel Ntse, and a location.
[00:23:30] Henry Person: So that was definitely a challenge.
And we ended up deciding to sue this individual.
[00:23:54] Bob: Google decided to sue an individual who lives in Cameroon.
It was a novel approach, in fact, the first time Google had done anything like this.
So that’s useful.
The second piece of this is deterrence.
[00:25:33] Bob: Deterrence and education thanks to a federal lawsuit.
This new approach is part of a larger strategy at Google says our next guest, also from Google.
Tell us about it.
We work with the Abuse Teams that are for each product.
[00:26:36] Bob: Erin has been working in the investigations team for a long time.
[00:26:57] Bob: So all, pretty much your whole professional life, right?
[00:27:01] Erin Thackston: That’s correct.
[00:27:02] Bob: Why are you so passionate about this subject?
[00:27:50] Erin Thackston: Absolutely.
I’ve done a lot of work in the malware and botnet space.
Uh, we also look at money laundering, potential account compromises, cases of harassment in some instances.
If it comes across our platform, we will in–, learn about it and investigate it.
So explain to me how these things end up intersection with Google products.
[00:29:39] Bob: So forgive me, but this problem sounds so enormous.
You’re like the police force for the universe.
There’s a lot more out there beyond just Google, and it is huge.
And unfortunately like a lot of, there’s a lot of cross industry abuse.
Those then are able to come over to us and um, be action.
But yeah, it, it is a really monumental task and it’s only growing.
And criminals thrive on that.
Those could be abused unfortunately.
Do, does it look like they’re using a lot of operational security?
[00:36:17] Bob: Google has a helpful set of tools for consumers on its various websites.
So I asked Erin to talk me through them.
Take time to ask questions, think it through.
So double-check the details you’re getting.
And then Stop, Don’t Send.
No reputable person or agency or company is going to demand payment at that very moment.
Like they’ll appreciate you having caution, right.
[00:38:42] Bob: Google also has a suite of websites with simple tools you could use.
Kind of like a quick safety checkup.
[00:41:05] Erin Thackston: Yeah, it doesn’t take long at all.
It’s an all-hands on deck problem from the largest tech companies to, well, you and me.
The future of the internet depends on it.
[00:42:06] Bob: And we like to think the Fraud Watch web connection is a big help.
So it’s something that we feel passionately about.
I think they’re doing great work.
Be sure to find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
For AARP’s The Perfect Scam, I’m Bob Sullivan.
