'Scum threatened to cut up my dog if I didn't pay £500, I paid but it was a con'

Sick scammers are trawling Facebook looking for posts about pets and claiming to have kidnapped the dogs. And one gang is reported to have made more than £100,000 from the con.

Hundreds of cases have been reported nationwide and a single gang is thought to have made more than £100,000 from scam calls. Holly Thackeray, 31, told The Mirror she was conned after her American Bulldog Chapo escaped from her garden.

The mum-of-two said: “I searched for him for days and put ads on social media. Then I got a call from a man who said he had Chapo.