The Rule of Thumb is to NEVER make any payments before personally meeting up with the owner and pet. Never let your greed overrule your rational thinking.
There’s really many scam pet sellers selling non existent imported pets. The imported pets commonly advertised by scammers are pedigree pets that are not native in Malaysia like Persian Cats, Siberian Huskys.
The scam seller will 1st put a high price on the pet and then reduce the price by 50% after negotiating with the buyer and will ask for upfront 20% deposit due to the price reduction. Once the deposit is paid the scam seller will try to get more money after a few days by claiming that the pet was stuck at immigrations quarantine and request a release fee which is claimed to be paid to the immigration offices. Then once the release fee is paid, the scam seller will disappear with the deposit and the release fee paid by the buyer. Some scammers even go further by threatening the buyer further to pay all upfront right on transaction date to do the exchange.
Reported by TheStar news portal here, a 50 year old guy from Melaka got scammed but he realized it after paying the deposit and decided not to proceed with the transaction but got death threats from scammer (seller). The guy got baited when he responded to some Facebook ads on cat for sale.
This type of pet for sale scam also happened in other places outside Malaysia, in Hong Kong for example.
Links