With the holidays fast approaching, many of us are on the hunt for the perfect gift. And maybe you are thinking that now is finally the time to get the puppy you have always wanted. But the Better Business Bureau of Central Florida warns that puppy scams are big during the holiday season. This is something that Bobby Richardson said he knows about all too well. This past spring, Richardson caved. He finally said ‘yes’ to getting a family dog. “So we started looking. And a couple of the breeders here in our area just seemed to be a little bit more than we wanted to spend,” he said. Richardson and his family live in Mississippi. He started searching online and said he found the perfect Maltipoo from a breeder in Orlando who sent him photos and videos. “Oh, we were very excited,” he said. “I was probably more excited than anybody.”Richardson said he communicated with the breeder by email, where she told him the puppy cost $700 and said this was a 50% discount. Richardson said he signed a sales agreement and sent the money on a payment app. “It took a few days before I even realized that it was a scam,” he said. Richardson said the next day, the breeder told him she was bringing the dog to the airport. But then, he got another email that said he needed to pay more money: $1,000 this time. “A crate, a specialized crate that would travel better,” he said. “The crate that the breeder used to ship the dog in wasn’t the right kind with the bad weather that day. So I ended up having to pay for that as well.”And then Richardson got a third request for money. This time it was an email asking for $2,000 to pay for vaccines and a permit before the dog could be taken to Mississippi. “So at that time, I reached out to our vet,” Richardson said. “And our vet said, ‘you may want to report this. This could be a scam.’”Richardson said he refused to pay the final amount. “This industry, the pet industry, is fraught with scams,” Holly Salmons said. Salmons is the president and CEO of the Better Business Bureau of Central Florida. We checked in with her after Richardson filed a report on the BBB’s tool Scam Tracker. “Oftentimes, the scammers will come back to the intended families and ask for more money. They’ll say the puppy is sick. They’ll say we need to upgrade their transportation to you,” Salmons said. “And once you’ve fallen in love with this video or this photo, you feel like, ‘well, how can I not?’ Because you really intend on making that a member of your family when in the end, there was no puppy.”Richardson said he and his wife held out hope and went to the airport anyway. “We were probably at the airport a good hour or so,” he said. “Of course, there was no dog. And then all communication stopped.”Richardson said he and his family were heartbroken. It is because of situations like this that Salmons encourages people to see the pet first or have someone they trust visit before paying up. “Really do your homework so that Christmas morning you’re not left with a broken heart,” Salmons said. That is why Richardson said he is sharing his warning with others this holiday season. “The thing that I would like people to know is 'do more research,'” he said. “If it seems too good to be true, more than likely, it’s too good to be true.” Now, Richardson said his family’s hearts are full again. The month after losing the dog ‘Cody’ that they were expecting, they found a real dog. “We went with a local breeder here in Central Mississippi. And we named him ‘Colbie,’” he said. “And have fallen in love with him.”Richardson said he was able to get all of his money back with help from the payment app and his bank.