For The Love Of Dogs: The Scam Shelters Abusing Animals For Clicks

Summary

Chameleon Podcast Episode Summary

Episode Details

• Podcast: Chameleon (Audiochuck | Campside Media)
• Episode: For The Love Of Dogs: The Scam Shelters Abusing Animals For Clicks
• Release Date: July 9, 2026
• Host: Josh Dean

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Overview

This episode of Chameleon, hosted by veteran journalist Josh Dean, exposes an international scam operation based in Uganda that preys on compassionate animal lovers worldwide. The episode investigates how fake animal shelters, primarily in the town of Mitiana, use social media to fabricate stories of animal suffering and solicit donations—often escalating to staged and real abuse to create more graphic, heart-wrenching content. Through interviews with whistleblowers, activists, and experts, the episode reveals the depth and horror of these scams while shining a light on the community-driven efforts to fight back.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Trap for Animal Lovers

• Sarah Herbert’s Story (00:45–06:41)
  • Sarah, an animal lover and artist, shares how her activism drew her into the world of online animal rescues. After supporting legitimate shelters in Morocco and Uganda, she encounters a Ugandan “rescue” that repeatedly posts videos of starving dogs to solicit funds.
  • Despite donating time and money, she notices nothing changes for the dogs: “I paid the money, got no acknowledgement … I was still seeing these videos of the dogs starving and drinking milk.” — Sarah Herbert [06:16]
  • Her suspicions grow when the scammer presses for more connections and funds.

2. The Scam’s Scale and Method

• Social Media Algorithms and the Illusion of Legitimacy (03:58–06:36)
  • Algorithms push countless “rescue” pages to animal lovers’ feeds, making scams hard to distinguish from real organizations.
• Nicola Baird’s Mission (07:29–17:07)
  • Nicola, a veterinary pharmacist in Yorkshire, runs the Instagram account “We Won’t Be Scammed.” She builds a following by exposing fake rescue pages and warning donors.
  • She describes how social media became flooded with images of suffering, exploited dogs: “These are good guys, genuinely caring for animals in their community … how can I help them?” — Nicola Baird [09:11]
• Escalation to Abuse for Clicks (13:45–16:21)
  • Around 2022, scammers begin staging increasingly horrific injuries, often inflicting real harm on animals to boost donations. Nicola recounts the rescue of Finn, a dog intentionally mutilated to generate sympathy: “His leg had been cut off, sewn up, cut off again. They’d attempted to take off his other hind leg. Half his face had been burnt off with acid …” — Nicola Baird [15:07]

3. Ground Reality in Uganda

• Realities vs. Online Claims (10:21–12:51)
  • Meg Jaque, an American animal rescuer living in Uganda, debunks the narrative of mass starvation: “We don’t have starving people here … there’s always something for everybody to eat here.” — Meg Jaque [12:36]
  • She explains the nuances of animal ownership and stray populations in Uganda.
• How the Scams Spread & Evolved (17:37–22:07)
  • The scam begins with one individual, rapidly copied by others, and social media algorithms reward ever more extreme abuse. Crucially, donations become the main cash source, incentivizing cruelty.

4. Financial and Emotional Toll

• Manipulating Western Donors (22:24–25:12)
  • The scams predominantly target middle-aged women with online personas of vulnerability, sometimes evolving into romance scams. Victims have sent hundreds of thousands of dollars, sometimes losing life savings: “One woman … sent nearly $50,000 in three months to one scammer.” — Nicola Baird [24:21]
  • Victims feel deep betrayal and often become activists themselves after learning the truth.

5. Community and Platform Response

• Crowdsourced Vigilance (25:12–26:11)
  • “We Won’t Be Scammed” forms a global volunteer network reporting scam accounts, operating around the clock.
• Escalating Threats (26:11–28:08)
  • As activists gain success, scammers retaliate with threats, hacking attempts, and intimidation: “They would threaten the safety of my family … our witch doctors are powerful and will make your life a misery.” — Nicola Baird [26:53]
• Local Authorities & Legal Hurdles (27:39–28:36)
  • Ugandan authorities' inertia stems from local economic dependence on the scam's cash flow and weak animal protection laws: “The penalty for animal abuse in Uganda, £24. And I think it’s up to three months in prison, which is just nothing, is it …” — Nicola Baird [28:12]

6. Tipping Point: Media Exposure and Crackdown

• BBC Africa Eye Investigation (28:36–29:31)
  • A BBC documentary in May 2026 brings international attention, forcing local government action and prompting raids, arrests, and shelter closures.
  • “The reputation has now been destroyed for that town … No investor would ever want to come to that town. The whole town is full of scammers.” — Meg Jaque [28:57]
• Rescued Animals and Evidence (30:11–31:27)
  • Police and activists rescue dozens of animals to be rehabilitated and used as evidence; resources remain stretched.

7. The Shift to New Scams

• Emergence of “Orphan” Scams (33:00–34:36)
  • As animal scams become harder, scammers pivot to fake orphanages, lining up local children for staged photos. “They round up all the kids in the neighborhood … They pawn themselves off as ministries, orphanages, which are illegal here in Uganda.” — Meg Jaque [33:49]
  • No evidence yet of direct harm to the children, but concern escalates as scammers chase more “profitable” extremes.

8. Platform Accountability & Ongoing Efforts

• Limited Social Media Action (34:54–35:47)
  • Activists have some success getting accounts taken down, but the scale is overwhelming. The incentive to stop the scam lies in choking off platform access.
• Call to Action: How to Spot a Scam & Protect Yourself (36:20–37:19)
  • “Use your brain, not your heart. Look at the address on a page, check out the charity number, ask questions … if you ask a scammer questions, you got a lot of lies and then you’ll get blocked.” — Nicola Baird [36:24]
  • “We know the dogs they're using. We know their cats, their rabbits, pigs …” — Nicola Baird [36:59]

9. Reflections and Hope

• Real-Life Impact vs. Online Angst (37:19–38:51)
  • Donations, if aimed properly, could revolutionize animal welfare in Uganda.
  • Despite trauma, rescued animals thrive in safe homes: “They broke them physically, but they haven’t broken them mentally. These are happy dogs now. Yeah, they're having wonderful lives.” — Nicola Baird [38:20]
• Long-Term Activism and Vigilance (36:06–36:53, 38:51–39:00)
  • Nicola and Meg vow to continue exposing scams and encourage others to verify before giving.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “I just, I kind of got weird vibe.” — Sarah Herbert [06:41]
• “They are feeding off people's good intentions.” — Josh Dean [09:30]
• “It was a network of animal abusers … beating dogs to break their legs, burning them with acid, mutilating them for money.” — Nicola Baird [15:30, 19:41]
• “One woman … sent nearly $50,000 in three months to one scammer.” — Nicola Baird [24:21]
• “If you ask a scammer questions, you got a lot of lies and then you'll get blocked.” — Nicola Baird [36:24]
• “They broke them physically, but they haven’t broken them mentally. These are happy dogs now. Yeah, they’re having wonderful lives.” — Nicola Baird [38:20]

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Key Segments & Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment | |-----------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:45 | Sarah Herbert’s intro and initial scam experience | | 07:29 | Nicola Baird and the genesis of anti-scam activism | | 13:45 | Shift to deliberate animal abuse; Finn’s story | | 17:37 | How scam operations grew in Mitiana | | 21:42 | Influence of click culture and copycat tactics | | 24:21 | Romance and emotional manipulation of Western donors | | 28:36 | BBC exposé leads to political and legal consequences | | 30:11 | Shelter raid and animal rescue logistics | | 33:00 | Transition to orphan scams | | 34:54 | Social media accountability and anti-scam efforts | | 36:24 | Practical tips for identifying and avoiding scams | | 38:20 | The resilience of rescued animals and hope for change |

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Conclusion

This harrowing episode traces the arc of a social media-driven scam that combined cruelty, digital savvy, and the best impulses of animal lovers against themselves. But it also highlights a counter-network of activists, whistleblowers, and experts who persistently fight back, revealing scams, rescuing victims, and working to reform both system and perception. The episode ends with a call to vigilance, reminding listeners to verify before donating and to channel their compassion through trusted avenues.

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For more tips or to verify a charity or shelter, listeners are encouraged to contact the “We Won’t Be Scammed” Instagram account.

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“If we can be a role model for other countries that are facing this type of thing … that’s what we want to do.” — Meg Jaque [36:09]

Transcript

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[Sarah Herbert]

hello.

[Meg Jaque]

What is the.

[Josh Dean]

What do you want me to say? Chameleon Chameleon Chameleon Weekly

[Sarah Herbert]

I have a fluffy cat named Muffins and one day I was just bored and I had pipe cleaners and I'm like, I'm going to make a little pipe cleaner cat that looks like her. I'm losing this group on Facebook called oh shoot. I think it was just called like I love black cats or something like that.

[Josh Dean]

This is Sarah Herbert. She's a Chameleon listener who recently called us with a tip, which is a thing we love, by the way, so please keep doing that.

[Sarah Herbert]

I posted a picture of Muffins and the pipe cleaner cat, but I posted like separate photos and all these people were like, oh my gosh, the poor cat. They thought it was a before and after photo and they felt really bad because the first image of the pipe cleaner cat, I'm like, no, it's just a pipe cleaner. So then all of a sudden all these people wanted to buy them and that's how I started making them.

[Josh Dean]

Don't worry, this isn't today's scam. Sarah wasn't calling to inform on herself, but it does bear some similarity to this week's story in the sense that you probably should question everything you see online. Soon, Sarah's homespun pipe cleaner kiddies were doing a roaring trade on Etsy. They now supplement her other art and day job working for a pharmacy. The page expanded to include other products, pipe cleaner, cat accessories, pipe cleaner mice, and digital pet portraits.

[Sarah Herbert]

Usually someone that has passed away dog or cat's passed away.

[Josh Dean]

If it's not obvious already. Sarah loves animals.

[Sarah Herbert]

I've kind of been an activist in a way since the 90s. I don't eat meat. I'm just like love animals all around and do a lot of rescue.

[Josh Dean]

This was evident by the fact that Sarah was speaking to us from her garden shed, the house just too full of meowing rescued cats to facilitate an interview. Sarah is the type of person who will come to the aid of any animal that finds itself in a tough spot. She used to run a Facebook page dedicated to vegetarian and vegan. I guess you might say plant based memes. And one day she was contacted by a woman through that site.

[Sarah Herbert]

Her name is Denise and she moved to Morocco. She saw all these street cats and it was really depressing. She wanted to help them. So she started a rescue. And I thought I want to practice my drawing skills a lot. So I offered to start, start supporting her rescue by donating these drawings. So she gets donations and then I do a drawing. This little win win for everybody.

[Josh Dean]

Sarah ended up meeting a lot of people online and she always did her best to support animal welfare efforts when she could. One of those people was Ella, who ran a cat shelter in Uganda.

[Sarah Herbert]

She's actually got like a catio built now a really big outdoor area that the cats can stay. She adopts out cats in her area, takes in a lot of kittens. She'll have kids from the area that'll bring her kittens. They found and that sort of thing. And she gets them rehabilitated and fixed and, you know, tries to find them homes.

[Josh Dean]

Sarah found it easy to connect with people like Ella and Denise thanks to algorithms. The data point was clear. These women loved animals and especially helping them. Shelters were regularly popping up in Sarah's feeds.

[Sarah Herbert]

You know, they'll recommend pages according to what you follow. And they began showing me some pages for this one rescue and I'm trying to remember the name of it. I believe it was Caretaker of all pets. And I was really excited though. I'm like, oh my gosh, I wonder if Ella knows them.

[Josh Dean]

Ella didn't know this particular shelter, which seems strange given that it was also in the same part of Uganda. But Sarah didn't find that weird. There are just so many dogs out there in the world that need support. Her desire to help them outweighed any further suspicions.

[Sarah Herbert]

Their dogs were all starving. And this guy that was doing this rescue, he would show all of these dogs going crazy at lunchtime and he was bringing out bowls of milk with just a handful of kibble floating in him. And dogs are going crazy and he's posting that he's not getting any money and he's broke and the dogs are starving. And I was watching every day he was posting this and I thought, oh my gosh, I'm going to help him out.

[Josh Dean]

Sarah offered to do for this man what she had done for Denise in Morocco. She would give him a cut of her pet portraits which he could promote to a significant number of followers.

[Sarah Herbert]

I left the fundraiser up for maybe a week or so and didn't get any feedback. And I was like, okay, this particular

[Josh Dean]

effort hadn't worked, but Sarah was still very worried about the dogs, so much so that she took an extra shift at the pharmacy.

[Sarah Herbert]

I don't work Saturdays, but I'm like, I'm gonna go in and work and it's for a good cause. I'm gonna donate all the money I make that day to this guy. So I went in and worked and sent him the hundred dollars. And I thought, for a guy that is not getting any money for these dogs, surely $100 can buy a good amount of food.

[Josh Dean]

I've done the math and yeah, given the exchange rate, $100 probably would feed a medium sized dog with actual healthy dog food for half a year.

[Sarah Herbert]

So I paid the money, got no acknowledgement, and I messaged him, I said, hey, did you get the donation I made? And he's like, yes, thank you. And that was pretty much it. I was like, okay, cool, got the money. And then I'm still seeing these videos of the dogs starving and drinking milk.

[Josh Dean]

Sarah knew animal lovers. Something didn't feel right.

[Sarah Herbert]

He started liking my posts and then sending me messages like, do I know anybody else that wants to help out? And I just, I kind of got weird vibe.

[Josh Dean]

Sarah's instincts here were spot on, as I'm sure you've now guessed. She was a victim of a scam. And it goes deep. Taking $100 from one kind woman doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of what was actually going on in Uganda. I'm Josh Dean and this is Chameleon, the show about people who know how to find and exploit our weaknesses. This week, the scammers who take advantage of animal lovers around the world.

[Nicola Baird]

Chameleon.

[Josh Dean]

Chameleon. This is Chameleon Weekly.

[Nicola Baird]

Hi there. I'm waiting till my dog, my daughter's just come in from her exams and the dogs have just gone mad, which is just typical, isn't it?

[Josh Dean]

This is Nicola Baird, another dog lover with some more pets, interrupting the recording process. Not a problem. I actually mind, I gotta say, they're really loud.

[Nicola Baird]

Mine as well. So we've got quite a. I've got four dogs, so they're all talking to each other at the moment. Shh, shush.

[Josh Dean]

Nicola is speaking to us from Yorkshire in the north of England.

[Nicola Baird]

So I'm a mum of four teenagers and obviously a lifetime animal lover. And I'm lucky enough I run a veterinary pharmacy as well. So I'm really lucky that my love of animals is actually my work as well.

[Josh Dean]

She runs an Instagram page called We Won't be scammed. Dedicated to informing the world about people who use fake profiles to solicit money from unsuspecting animal lovers. Which is not a problem I was aware of, but also one that doesn't surprise me in the slightest. A few years ago, Nicola couldn't have imagined she would run an Instagram account with nearly 25,000 followers.

[Nicola Baird]

I wasn't even on Instagram until Covid and I joined because we were just in lockdown and there was nothing else to do, was it? And it's all how we were communicating. And just after the restrictions were lifted, I started to notice a few African pages showing dogs in poor conditions in these little wooden huts and they were starving with men begging for food and water.

[Josh Dean]

This was exactly the same phenomenon that Sarah had seen.

[Nicola Baird]

And I didn't know much about Africa. I've only visited as a tourist and I just probably, like a lot of people had a preconceived idea. These are good guys, genuinely caring for animals in their community. They don't have much money and how can I help them?

[Josh Dean]

Nicola now knows more about scamming in Uganda than almost anyone. But she's describing a prejudice she once held that scammers are using to their advantage. Well meaning people in the west often imagine Africa as a place where swarming packs of rabid street dogs terrorize the starving populations. Where people don't love dogs the way we do, even if it's deep in the subconscious and the image of an animal in need trumps a full analysis. It's this cliche that enables scammers to operate and it's cruel because they are feeding off people's good intentions. But Africa is of course an enormous multifaceted continent. The animal welfare situation in Uganda seems to be unique to Uganda.

[Meg Jaque]

I'm basically been entrenched in this for years. So I would call myself an expert about this.

[Josh Dean]

This is Meg Jaque. As you can tell, she's American, but she's been living in Uganda for the last 13 years. And yes, Meg also loves animals. She's rescued 300 of them herself. Meg runs a food processing company in her day job. But she's also the third woman this episode with a side hustle and a significant one. She's the secretary and one of the founding members of the Animal Welfare Alliance Uganda. It was formed in 2025 to focus the efforts of various organizations involved in animal welfare in the country. There actually are roaming dogs in Uganda and this does cause some issues. But. But the situation is nuanced.

[Meg Jaque]

So there's Two categories of roaming animals. There's the ones that roam, that are owned, because most people here don't have a wall or a fence to keep their animal in, so they will roam. And then there's community dogs. They're not really owned by anyone, but they just hang out in front of the Duca or the shop, and somehow they manage to find food. And then they have a safe place to sleep at night that's just kind of outside.

[Josh Dean]

In the capital, Kampala, there are other dogs that can be more of a problem. The government sometimes puts out poisoned meat to target them. But this is as dangerous as it sounds, because other animals or humans even could and sometimes do get hold of the meat. Part of what Meg does is provide education and an alternative for managing populations, which is the real problem here.

[Meg Jaque]

They can say, hey, can you have an organization come into my community and spay and neuter so we can control the population? The overpopulation of dogs and cats or kittens and puppies that come in. The communities are very welcoming of this. These people who have the dogs, especially these kids, they love their dogs. They're not really mistreating them. Now, do they sleep in the best of conditions? No, because nobody can afford them and don't want them in their houses. But they're not just left out, you know, in the dirt to just linger and become sick, et cetera.

[Josh Dean]

The images that Sarah and Nicola had seen on social media suggested that people were so hungry they could barely afford to feed themselves, let alone their dogs. But the idea that Uganda's population is starving, it's not actually true.

[Meg Jaque]

We don't have starving people here in Uganda. We are a breadbasket for every other country around here. There's always a banana tree, there's always a jackfruit tree. There's always cassava in the ground. There's always something for everybody to eat here.

[Josh Dean]

So the images that were popping up on Facebook and Instagram just didn't jive with the reality on the ground. Meg didn't see these posts herself until 2024 because she's not on Instagram, where the scammers do most of their work. She heard about it one day at her clinic when she got a call from someone in Switzerland, and they said,

[Meg Jaque]

I need your help. There is this guy in Mitiana that has scammed me out of money and now he's torturing animals. He's got this dog that he's poured hot oil on, has scarred the whole back. He's cut off the ears. We need to get this dog away from this guy. Can you help me?

[Josh Dean]

Meg found this incredibly shocking. It wasn't a problem she recognized, and in her line of work, she would know. Nicola, back in the uk, can pinpoint a moment a couple of years earlier when something shifted on the scam account she'd been following since the beginning of lockdown.

[Nicola Baird]

Suddenly, in about 2022, these horrific injuries started.

[Josh Dean]

I want to say, if you find hearing about animal abuse difficult, think about skipping the next few minutes. What we're about to discuss is pretty hard to hear.

[Nicola Baird]

I would see animals, dogs and cats with burnt eyes. They were paralyzed, they had paws that were burnt. I would ask them how did they get that injury? And they would say, just put its paw in a cooking pot. Well, dogs don't go and put their paw in a cooking pot. You know, they've got the same safety mechanisms that humans do. It was just quite extreme cases. And I was asking the vets and just straight away they said, it's abuse, Nicola, but doesn't happen by accident.

[Josh Dean]

In other words, scammers in Uganda were herding dogs for no other reason than to persuade people across the globe to send money. There was one dog named Finn whose plight really affected Nicola.

[Nicola Baird]

His leg had been cut off and the bone was exposed and this poor dog looked terrified, absolutely terrified. And I said, we need to get that dog to a vet immediately. It will be in extreme pain. And they just. They said, that's great.

[Josh Dean]

Nicola sent money for a vet and

[Nicola Baird]

then the next day they sent me images of Finn, this poor dog, being operated on, and he was fully conscious while they were operating on him. The conditions were just awful.

[Josh Dean]

Nicola shared it with her vet colleagues back in England. They took one look and said, that's abuse.

[Nicola Baird]

And that's when I thought, right, I need to get this dog out of there and I'm going to have to sort of play the system here. I'm going to have to pretend I don't know what's going on. And with the promise of lots of money, and I would set up fundraisers for them, I managed to send the vet to collect Finn. And I can't tell you how awful the state of Finn was when we got him. His leg had been cut off, sewn up, cut off again. They'd attempted to take off his other hind leg. Half his face had been burnt off with acid and it was necrotic. There was just no fat on this poor dog. He was absolutely starving. He was riddled with fleas, ticks, worms. He would not have survived another day it was heartbreaking.

[Josh Dean]

I'm pleased to say that Finn got out. He's now living his best life in Yorkshire with Nicola. In fact, you heard him yapping to his friends at the opening of this episode, which is good news for Finn, but he was just one dog.

[Nicola Baird]

And then they posted another dog with exactly the same injuries. So again, we went to get this dog and I managed to get four of the dogs free from them. With the promise of a lot of

[Josh Dean]

money, this obviously wasn't sustainable. Nicola couldn't rescue all of Uganda's abused dogs one at a time. And the problem was getting worse.

[Nicola Baird]

And then suddenly there was an explosion of them. Hundreds and hundreds of these pages, and all with the most awful abuse.

[Josh Dean]

After the break, we find out who these scammers really are and learn how Nicola and Meg and all the others fought back to try and shut them down. Welcome back to Chameleon. There was one important detail about the scam pages that Sarah and Nicola kept seeing. They all seem to be based in the exact same place. Mithiana, Uganda.

[Meg Jaque]

If you're driving and there's traffic, it can take anywhere from 90 minutes to 3 hours to get there from outside of Kampala. It is a small town and it's surrounded by farms.

[Josh Dean]

Meg was surprised to discover the scam, but she does understand why it made sense. In a place like mitiana, something like

[Meg Jaque]

65% of the population is under the age of 35, and there's not enough jobs, you know, and younger generations are not wanting to work in farms. And younger generations are becoming more sophisticated with electronic devices.

[Josh Dean]

So no jobs. And a rapidly evolving digital skill set among young people. Meg doesn't know for sure, but she now has a good idea how this particular scam got going. It seems to have been the work of one guy.

[Meg Jaque]

He figured out a way to make people donate to him.

[Josh Dean]

The scamming started small.

[Meg Jaque]

I don't think he did it in a harmful way like these latest scammers have done. I think it was just more of a let me show a younger person holding a puppy saying, you know, I really want to be able to take care of this animal. Can you please help me feed it?

[Josh Dean]

And it worked. People sent money, so others started copying him.

[Meg Jaque]

When that person allegedly started to show other kids how to do the same thing, then they each created their own pages so that each of them started to do that as well. They figured out what type of video worked, what type of photo worked, so the algorithm started to work right.

[Josh Dean]

Social media was the tool. The scammers Used to reach a targeted audience, but it also rewarded more and more extreme practices.

[Nicola Baird]

It follows a pattern. So in 2021, 2022, it was all burns. It was burnt eyes, burnt backs, mutilations. Then it became a lot of something called a trans venereal tumor, also known

[Josh Dean]

as a sticker tumor. This cancer is a very rare type that can be transmitted from dog to dog, usually during mating, but not always.

[Nicola Baird]

And there were a lot of these. And they were actively violating these dogs with branches to recreate tumors, because they had found that dogs with tumors brought in a lot of funds, and it had become a network of animal abusers that were torturing these dogs and then selling them on to the scammers to then use to make money from. They will beat these dogs to break their legs, and then they will snap the bone to make the bone protrude out of the leg. Because, again, the more graphic images, get more donations. And then there will be one dog that makes them a lot of money, and they will pass that dog around, and you'll see it on multiple pages, and it will get so much attention and people donating to try and help. And then that dog would just disappear. And we've seen this time and time again.

[Josh Dean]

She means the dog would eventually succumb to its injuries.

[Meg Jaque]

What we hear is they became about 10 different gangs, all centered around potentially 10 different shelters. There would be one main scammer that maybe owned that property, and the others would rent the time in their shelter to take the videos. But they would always try to share a different backdrop, even within the same compact. So some of them would show the banana trees and grass, and some of them would show the brick wall in the background. They're very quick to copy if it can make them money. So anything that they could have possibly done to make more money, they did it.

[Josh Dean]

MamaCarTV is a Mexican social media account with the tagline One Subscribe Equals One bowl of Food. The food is delivered to street dogs on a remote control car with a gopro attached. It's legit and kind of genius. One video has 34 million views on TikTok alone. Well, the mitiana scammers apparently follow it, too, and were inspired to create their own nefarious version.

[Meg Jaque]

They didn't use a little remote control car, but they started to take dogs out onto busy streets and roll out, you know, plates of dog food. Meanwhile, they're on leashes. So it's not like they just found them on the road, you know, trying to pawn off somebody else's idea Collectively,

[Josh Dean]

these scammer sites had thousands of followers. And that in itself, in today's world, means money from the social media platforms.

[Meg Jaque]

These boys, they got smart. The more followers, the more clicks. These guys started to collect money, but

[Josh Dean]

the real cash cow was always the donations.

[Meg Jaque]

And I'm telling you, we have evidence that there's several Americans that have given these kids $100,000. One kid.

[Josh Dean]

You know, Meg thinks the Mitiana operation grew to include about 300 boys and young men running 10,000 social media accounts across TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, even LinkedIn. The locals have a name for these kids, Psychas. And the psychas have fleeced unsuspecting bleeding hearts abroad out of an estimated $2 million or more. If you're one of those people, don't feel ashamed. We all get scammed. It's one of the reasons this podcast exists. It's just so easy for cynical opportunists to target our blind spots, especially when the scammers know exactly what buttons to push.

[Nicola Baird]

It's middle aged women that are falling for this scam. When we tell them it's a scammer, they will be fiercely loyal to the scammer and say, no, I'm his mummy, I love him, he's my family, I'll do anything for him. He facetimes me all the time. He'd never lie to me. Or they are completely in love with them. They think this is love, this is romance.

[Josh Dean]

Here's where this particular scam has learned from, one that you are perhaps familiar with, one we've previously covered on Chameleon, that being the romance scams that often originate out of Ghana and Nigeria. In these places, the tactics of the scammers spread through informal gangs and networks. They evolve and improve over time. And it certainly seems like the Mitiana boys had taken some inspiration.

[Nicola Baird]

Some women have sent hundreds of thousands of dollars, pounds to these scammers, bought them houses, cars, sorted visas for them, everything. There was one woman in particular. She'd sent nearly $50,000 in three months to one scammer.

[Meg Jaque]

Nope, sorry. You've used all the money that your deceased husband has left you to support kids who are not taking care of animals. They are building their own lavish lifestyles.

[Nicola Baird]

And it's only when you show that person, look, they're not an orphan, they're not 17, they're not poor. And that's when I think the reality kicks in and they go through a grieving process. You know you've been betrayed, but you will get really angry because they all then get really angry and then they want to join the mission to stop the scammers as well.

[Josh Dean]

Nicola has been more than happy to have the support. It's the backbone of her success with the we won't be scammed account.

[Nicola Baird]

It very quickly grew and I think a lot of people had caught on to the fact that this was a scam and I think they needed an outlet to go, oh, I thought it was a scam too. Glad you pointed this out. Daily I'm getting sent so many of the fake pages. Oh, I found another one for you, Nicola. I found another one. We've connected with so many great people around the world.

[Josh Dean]

The evil potential of social media that has been weaponized by the scammers was now being used against them.

[Nicola Baird]

It's all consuming. We find that by the evening when the Americans and Canadians are waking up, it takes off again with what they found. And then during the day, it's the Europeans going, you know, and we're on it constantly. The group is never quiet it. Every hour there's loads of messages. But if it's making a difference, I don't mind at all. I think my kids are used to it now. They're like, oh, it's mummy, he's backsawing.

[Josh Dean]

Scammers awareness is only part of the battle. It wasn't going to save these poor, abused dogs. But the scammers did recognize this small but growing threat to their business business.

[Nicola Baird]

Back in 20, 22, 23, it was so much easier to liaise with the scammers to get the dogs free because it wasn't well known. And they obviously, I didn't have my page then, so they weren't fearing that they were going to get exposed. Now they just don't do anything. They're horrible. I started the page and I was very quickly getting death threats. And when the page started to take off, they all paid in to hack the account to bring it down.

[Josh Dean]

Nicola knows this because she had informants undercover on the boys, WhatsApp groups.

[Nicola Baird]

They would say, let's target the account today. Let's flood her with comments. Let's mass report the page. They would threaten the safety of my family, but they would say, your life will be terrible because we know who you are and our witch doctors are powerful and we will make your life a misery. A lot of their threats were almost. They were quite immature threats, quite threatening, but very immature. I was terrified. I was. I was lucky to have the support of the group to say, let's keep going.

[Josh Dean]

Nicola was not going to go to Uganda herself. But it was hard to get the authorities there to pay attention or care.

[Nicola Baird]

We really struggled getting the police and the government to act Because I think they've been quite happy for this money to come into the area, because these young men are suddenly bringing in all this money and buying cars and going to restaurants and going to hotels and going to bars. So it's bringing money into the area. You're dealing with a corrupt system from top to bottom. And these scammers in Lithiana have become really powerful because money talks in Uganda. They can bribe the police, they can bribe people over there to leave them alone.

[Josh Dean]

There's also just not a lot of disincentive for criminals here.

[Nicola Baird]

The penalty for animal abuse in Uganda, £24. And I think it's up to three months in prison, which is just nothing, is it, you know, for all that pain inflicted. And only since there's been international media that I think Uganda's starting to act, thinking, oh, this doesn't look so good for us anymore. We need to start addressing this.

[Josh Dean]

On May 4, 2026, a BBC Africa Eye documentary reporting undercover, blew the lid off these pet rescue scams to a much larger audience.

[Sarah Herbert]

What Charles was telling us was difficult to hear. He said that scammers had gone beyond neglect, Intentionally harming dogs for content.

[Meg Jaque]

The BBC documentary sent this country into a tizzy, and the ministry of agricultural, animal industry and fisheries started to have to have, you know, closed door sessions that day. The police had to have a regional meeting. Basically their comment was, we didn't know anybody cared about rescuing animals. You know, once this was brought to light, they had to really step it up because now the whole world was watching them. The reputation has now been destroyed for that town. Right. You know, no investor would ever want to come to that town. The whole town is full of scammers.

[Josh Dean]

Animal welfare alliance, Uganda. Meig's organization, along with supporters like Nicola and others working undercover, had prepared the evidence to help the police.

[Meg Jaque]

We basically shared information nonstop from the minute the BBC documentary came out. Our lawyer actually moved to Mitiana from Kampala that evening. We had informants that were giving us information saying, oh, by the way, he's now at this place, or look, he's posting on his feed that he's driving in Jinja. It was very, very intense. We knew this had to stop. It was basically ruining the reputation of animal welfare in Uganda.

[Josh Dean]

On May 13, the week before we spoke to Meg, the police stormed two shelters in Mitiana. Two scammers got away and are still at large. But one man, Owen Godfrey Membe, was arrested and pleaded not guilty to a charge of animal cruelty.

[Meg Jaque]

He was definitely the leader of one of these 10 gangs and highly respected. You know, he's got a cute face. He was easily attracting, and I hate to say this, but he was easily attracting women donors.

[Josh Dean]

Owen appeared in court on May 28. The judge could not provide any timeline for when the trial will take place. And worryingly, we've already seen evidence to suggest that he was back online scamming less than 24 hours after he was out on bail, though likely using old pictures. But what about the animals who were rescued in the raid?

[Meg Jaque]

We had already sent crates to Mitiana on Sunday with our vet. So we have 52 dogs and six cats. We have built an emergency shelter for these animals because they're now under quarantine and part of evidence for the criminal case. So we're collecting information about all of them, rehabilitating them, and then we'll get ready to adopt them all out.

[Josh Dean]

Meg's been visiting the dogs as often as she can.

[Meg Jaque]

They are all very sweet dogs. I mean, I guess the one benefit was that they were so used to having so many different men coming into these shelters to take the videos with them and feed them so any of our new caretakers can go in and feed them. I brought them tennis balls the other day so they could start to play and maybe become real dogs. Two of the females had puppies over the weekend, so we now have two new litters of puppies. We've actually surveyed the neighborhood, and so much of the community is willing to adopt a lot of these animals.

[Josh Dean]

Meg and her team simply don't have the resources to rescue a few hundred other animals that police would like them to pick up. But they're doing what they can. This is, I think, about the happiest possible ending here, or at least the beginning of the ending. Too many people are now wise to the scam for it to keep working, at least on any large scale.

[Meg Jaque]

I do notice that across my feed, I have a lot fewer of these scammer sites now. I'm not on Instagram. I guess I'm not young enough, but I am on Facebook. There's still a few that are posting.

[Nicola Baird]

I think they'll move on to another scam, but I think they will be very aware and frightened now to post a dog with a visible, you know, abuse injury.

[Josh Dean]

The worry, of course, is that whatever these extremely creative young men move on to could be worse.

[Meg Jaque]

There's one guy called Magala Arafat, somebody from Alabama sent me a message the other day. Can you verify if this guy is a legitimate shelter? I wrote back. I said, did you see the BBC documentary? She's like, well, but do you have any evidence? I said, well, then why don't you email the district veterinary officer of Mitiana and ask him for the evidence that he has not authorized any animal shelters in his community. Then one of my fellow members showed me. Arafat Magala also has a child site.

[Nicola Baird]

We do call upon your donations and support so that we can get some food for these orphans. As you can see, today we are managing serve some food to the widowers and to the orphans.

[Meg Jaque]

So what they've now started to do is they round up all the kids in the neighborhood and they line them up and they give them, you know, a cut watermelon and a banana or something like that. They pawn themselves off as ministries, orphanages, which are illegal here in Uganda.

[Josh Dean]

And these orphanage sites are now popping up all over the place.

[Meg Jaque]

So now all the ones that come across my Facebook feed are the kids, the boys now feeding kids, just feeding. It's not like they're harming the children. That would be a real, you know, criminal offense here if they were caught doing that by the government. But they're exploiting them because they are not their children. It's not their orphanage. These are not starving children. They're just rounding up the neighborhood kids.

[Josh Dean]

I hate to say it, but the worry for me is that given how we saw the animal abuse escalate, it could happen here too, as the scammers push for more extreme images to generate more and bigger donations. Surely the social media companies need to take some action.

[Meg Jaque]

I do report things to Meta and I have successfully been able to get them to take two accounts off. One very super scammer, actually. Apparently he's the richest one. I got his page deleted and then I got another one page deleted the other day.

[Josh Dean]

In fact, working with an organization in Asia, Meg and her allies have been able to shut down 2,000 TikTok sites, which is progress, but I would argue not enough. Because if you stop the accounts, you stop the scamming and ultimately the abuse. There's just no incentive then. And Nicola, who has set up a companion we won't be scammed orphanages account would soon find her efforts redundant. I don't think she'd mind, but I also doubt she's going to stop until every last scam site has been exposed.

[Nicola Baird]

They just want to do these animals justice for what they've been through. It's like a horror movie. You know what they've endured. But things are changing. I think this is the first time we actually do feel that things are changing for the better. And, you know, we can stop this.

[Josh Dean]

Meg is also in this for the long haul.

[Meg Jaque]

If we can be a role model for other countries that are facing this type of thing as well, that's what we want to do. We want to be able to show people that this is possible.

[Josh Dean]

Nicola urges people to be vigilant and to learn the ways of the scammers.

[Nicola Baird]

To protect yourself, use your brain, not your heart. Look at the address on a page, check out the charity number, ask questions, go through a page and see if there are updates. Does the animal improve? Do they gain weight? The ones that are legitimate, if you ask them questions, they will answer and they will happily answer. If you ask a scammer questions, you got a lot of lies and then you'll get blocked.

[Josh Dean]

And if you're not sure, ask. That's what we won't be scammed is there for.

[Nicola Baird]

We are more than happy to check the legitimacy of any page. I can see straight away a page is a scam. I know all the scammers in Uganda. We know them by their faces. We know where the shelters are. We even know the dogs they're using. We know there's cats they're using, rabbits, pigs. They're using lots of animals at the moment.

[Josh Dean]

Think of the things Meg and her colleagues working towards reforming animal welfare in Uganda could have done with the money from those donations.

[Nicola Baird]

If that had actually been used for good. Can you imagine? Uganda would have this amazing reputation for looking after animals now. There wouldn't be loads of stray dogs, cats. They wouldn't be all these injuries because real charities post updates and the animals get taken to a vet and they do improve.

[Josh Dean]

It's less visible, but it's the real important work.

[Nicola Baird]

I think that's how the scammers are winning because they just show the extreme that gets the people, that sense of urgency, emergency, you've got to help me now. And that's when people click and pay without thinking.

[Josh Dean]

The work's not finished. But the efforts of these women shows that scammers, even the ones with large operations working from what can feel like unreachable terrain, can be stopped. A happy ending is possible. You just have to witness the progress made by the dogs Nicola rescued to see that.

[Nicola Baird]

It's wonderful to see them. They're not starved anymore. You know, Finn's got. He's a tripod and then Charlie's missing an eye. But they are happy dogs. They live in the moment and they love, they love life. But what they're getting in that day, and I think that's the resilience of an animal and a dog that, you know, these men, they could have broken them and they broke them physically, but they haven't broken them mentally. These are happy dogs now. Yeah, they're having wonderful lives.

[Josh Dean]

I think Chuck would definitely approve. Chameleon is a production of Campside Media and Audio Chuck. It's hosted by me, Josh Dean and was written by me and Joe Barrett. It was produced by Joe Barrett. Our associate producer Producer is Emma Siminhoff. Sound design and mix by Tiffany Dimmack. Themed by Ewin lytramuin and Mark McAdam. Our production manager is Ashley Warren. Campside's executive producers are Vanessa Gregoriadis, Matt Sher and me, Josh Dean. And finally, if I can ask a few favors before sending you on your way today, please rate, follow and review Chameleon on your favorite podcast Podcast platforms to help spread the word. I know everyone says this, but it's true. Ratings and reviews really do help and if you have any feedback, tips or story ideas, you can email [e-mail] or leave us a message at a special number we've set up. 201-743-8368. Add a plus one if you're outside North America. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.

[Amica Insurance Narrator]

I think Chuck would approve.