Highland games: Scammers stealing photos of popular cattle breed for online fraud scheme

Shane Paschke says the red flags came up when the guy selling Highland cattle online started offering excuses to not meet.

Paschke raises Simmental and Charolais cattle on a ranch near Nipawin, Sask. He'd gone shopping online in the fall of 2023 to buy aHighland cow for his nieces and found an ad for the animals in the province.

The seller said he lived in Saskatoon. Paschke said the man wantedhalf of the $900 price sent by e-transferas a deposit.

"I told him I could be there in two hours, I'd bring the cash and pick it up. But it was no, no, always an excuse," he said.

"[He said]there was a long list of people that wanted them. So if I wanted it, I hadto send the money now."

Paschke passed on the deal.

The cuteness factor

Britt Venn owns the Black Powder Cattle Co. in Oxbow,a town tucked in Saskatchewan's southeastern corner. She's a registered breeder of Highland cattle and is very aware of what's happening online.

"The way the scam works is that they typically rip off the photos of legitimate producersand then they present the animal for sale as if it is their own. So there is no actual animal involved in the scam. It's just a make believe fictitious advertisement that says that there is an animal in existence," she said.

She said Highland cattle are targeted"because of the cuteness factor. It gives an opportunity to pull at the heartstrings."

But the cattle are much more than cute, she added.

Their heavy coats allow them to thrive in Prairie winters. They forage like goats,produce a rich milkand a beef that is fit for royalty literally. According to the Highland Cattle Society, Queen Elizabeth II began raising her own herd at Balmoral in 1953.

Venn said one of reasons the scam works is that typical buyers of Highland cattle are new to the livestock industry and not necessarily familiar with the questions that need to be asked.

Theworld of registered Highland cattle in Canada is heavily regulated, with an extensivepublic database that shows every animal, its lineage and owner.

The unregistered industry is where problems may arise, she said.

"There just isn't the level of due diligence and policy and standard operating procedures that shows this cow has been bred appropriately," she said.

Opportunisticscammers

Cpl. Owen Third is with the RCMP's livestock investigation unit. He said that while scammers are using images of Highland cattleto steal from people, it's not really livestock theft in the conventional sense ofthieves rustling actual animals.

"They're just using Highland cattle as their source of scamming," he said.

"It's not uncommon for them to use snowmobiles, do the same thing with other ads. It's just that I guess they found a niche in the Highland cattle."

Venn hopes the online scams don't deter small-scale farmers wanting to get into the Highland game.

"Don't let these barriers to entry deter you because you know, there's money to be made, there's excellent beef to be produced, there's milk to be collected, there's cute babies to be enjoyed. Youjust have to be cautious," she said.

"There is a list of reputable producers published online in every province. It's all searchable."