gingermalinois.com: Potential Puppy Scam
I lost my Malinois in early 2024 due to a botched spay procedure and I find myself periodically checking various breeders online and shelters as well since at some point I do want a Malinois (no rush to getting another dog but definitely on the books for this year or next), and I notice one particular google search result at the top of the search results for gingermalinois.com. I think there’s a strong case this is a scam though. Here’s why:
1. If you open the website it appears to be relatively well set up for a dog breeder’s website, which is odd because good dog breeders rarely are doing this much marketing. The good ones sometimes don’t market at all because their dogs are spoken for before they’re born. When I clicked on the link for one of the puppies named Mica who is currently listed as 12 weeks old and search the source image, it is a Pinterest post from 2019 which is odd since this is June 2024 and Mica is 12 weeks old. I get using stock photos for generic portions of the website but if you are advertising a specific dog and posting stock photos of a dog that are obviously from several years ago and stolen from someone’s Pinterest or Instagram posts, that’s definitely dishonest. Also, looking closely at these photos and knowing Malinois, this puppy is probably closer to 5-6 months old. The ears are perfectly upright and the face is too developed. I dug through my camera roll and this is the level of development my Malinois was at around the 6 month mark.
2. The price of these puppies is way too low. Mica is listed for a price of $750. You can expect to pay between $2,500 to around $3,500 for a Malinois puppy that age from an AKC registered breeder. There are sometimes options for a lower price if the breeder is just wanting to offload the remainder of a litter but generally they are not going to go through the effort of creating a profile for puppies they are just trying to get rid of. The price is not reasonable.
3. There are some additional red flags on the various tabs of the website. For example, some of the wording on the “Health and Training” tab is…like it was written in Chinese and then translated to English. For example, “Dogs are great bunch to train and exercise especially the Belgian Malinois. A peppy and ready for action dog breed the Exercise for Belgian Malinois vary with the levels of engagement or work.” It’s English but reorganized into a different sentence structure than any native English speaker would use. Similar to the puppy profiles being random images stolen from Pinterest and Instagram, all of the infographics on this website are stolen from various websites with no effort made to cover up where they are coming from.
4. Reddit reviews on this breeder don’t look great. There seems to also be multiple threads for gingermalinois.com and gingermaligators.com. I can’t figure out if they’re the same but the reviews of both are negative and indicate that money is collected to purchase puppies but no dogs are ever seen.
5. The Facebook page is also odd. There is a subscriber section where you can pay $.99 a month for exclusive content. I’ve never really seen a breeder charge a subscription fee to see pictures and videos of dogs. Also, delivery options listed on the Facebook page are dine-in, outdoor seating, pickup, etc., which is odd given that this is a dog breeder page. The phone number on the Facebook page is 484-559-7755 which only seems to be associated with a scam that was reported to the Better Business Bureau which you can see here, not even a real business because there does not seem to be a corporate entity associated with the website or Facebook page. There is a mix of what appears to be original photography and stolen images from Instagram on the Facebook page. For example a photo of a black Malinois puppy on the lap of a blonde who’s pretending to let him try a mixed drink is directly linked to someone named Madison Taylor who is a dog trainer in Georgia and does not appear to be associated with this breeder who is in Pennsylvania.
I could go further but I don’t think I need to. This does not appear to be legitimate business. It’s a relatively well assembled website of stock images and infographics that are almost all stolen from other people’s websites, Instagram pages, and Pinterest pins. Don’t buy from this breeder. They can feel free to sue me but I doubt that they see this post.
