http://www.watoday.com.au/wa-news/perths-vicious-dog-fighting-hoax-20130220-2erhs.html
WA
Today [Australia]
20
February 2013
Rania
Spooner
Court
and crime reporter
The
internet has been flooded with chilling tales of an organised underground dog
fighting ring operating out of Perth's
suburbs.
Family
pets have been systematically stolen from their yards to be trained as fighting
dogs, according to reports appearing on social media and online classified
websites this week.
While
many in Perth claim to know somebody who knows somebody whose pet has fallen
prey to a kidnapping, authorities and social media experts have dismissed the
warnings as a viral hoax.
"No
suburb is safe," reads one popular flyer doing the rounds on Facebook and
Google+ this week.
Larger
breeds would be starved and tormented into brutal fighters, while their smaller
counterparts would be used as "bait", according to another popular
Facebook post.
An
image warning people of a system, in which red squares were put outside homes
to alert canine thieves to a potential candidate, was uploaded to Facebook and
shared more than 9000 times on Tuesday.
"These
red symbols are tags that people stealing Perth
dogs are putting on your gates/fences," the post read.
"These
tags identify which house has a dog that needs to be collected later that
day/night by these disgusting creatures. [...]