Police in the department of Paysandú, in western Uruguay, seized 19 bulldog puppies that were smuggled from Argentina, having crossed the General Artigas International Bridge from Colón (Argentina) to the city of Paysandú (Uruguay).
The incident occurred in the early hours of last Sunday when the staff of the Investigations Unit were conducting a tour of the area near the international bridge. That's when, leaving a sandy area, they noticed the presence of a vehicle making suspicious movements near the bridge. The car, with license plates from the department of Artigas, in the north of the country, had a man behind the wheel, local newspaper El Telégrafo reported.
The authorities asked the driver to stop the car to identify him and, while checking the data with the registry of persons held by the Ministry of the Interior, they inspected the vehicle. There they found several bundles of clothing that turned out to be tight bulldog puppies.
All of them from pedigree, nine of them belonged to the French bulldog breed and ten of them to the English bulldog breed. Fourteen pairs of shoes, two dog food kits and 240 nylon bags were also seized, which was reported to the National Customs Directorate.
A court order ordered the dogs to settle in an NGO in Paysandu called “Friends of Animals”. The person in charge of the place, Laura de León, said that this unfortunately “is a situation that happens very often, but the smugglers are not caught, as it did this time”.
The man who was found with the puppies is now charged and is convicted of “a crime of reception. In addition, he was sentenced to six months 'imprisonment for effective service.
The business of pedigree dogs
In Argentina, these types of pedigree dogs are sold for a sum of 20,000 Uruguayan pesos, about 460 dollars. In Uruguay, they are usually sold for at least 1,000 US dollars, which would mean 43,000 Uruguayan pesos, almost double that.
The most common places to buy them is with breeders of the breed or through veterinarians who put up for sale while they are puppies. Another common place is Mercado Libre, where under the search for the words “French bulldog” 11 pages appear and only the first one has a total of 43 dogs offered. There, dogs that do not claim to have documents proving their pedigree sell between 20,000 and 30,000 Uruguayan pesos ($460 and 700 dollars), while those who claim to have them raise prices to 1,200 and 1,400 dollars.
Thanks to this market, scams have appeared related to the sale of dogs with pedigree in Uruguay. Although public complaints of this type of crime are not so common, on December 27, 2021, the sale of breed dogs was reported on the web, which ended in losses of tens of thousands of dollars.
A woman and her partner offered fashionable pedigree dogs through Mercado Libre and on the Facebook Marketplace. They promoted their non-existent dogs as if they owned a kennel or a pet store. Who is currently accused, used different users through which the victims contacted each other.
The maneuvers began on February 19, 2018 and ended on February 24, 2021, the date of the last complaint. To date, 64 cases of fraud have been filed against this woman, with an amount exceeding 34,000 US dollars.
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