Buytigers

Buy Tigers is a satirical website which claimed to sell tigers online and ship them worldwide. It was made by a 25 years old italian programmer, Aldo Tripiciano. The website since its launch generated furor after members of the public complained to animal rights organizations such as PETA, resulting in an investigation by the Indian Wildlife Crime Control Bureau and the Italian government to prove that the website was not running. and not a scam.
Following the investigation, the website's author published an explaination page (still available at ), revealing the site was a prank.
Altough the explanation page is publicly available, the site keeps generating petitions to shut the site down or complain to its ISP.
Start of the website
On March 5, 2006, the first version of the BuyTigers.com site was published by Tripiciano on a private web server. Helped by his knowledge of web marketing and search engine optimization, and in forums, the author managed to provide his site with quick popularity, with an average of 300 unique daily visits after 3 months from its launch.
Afterwards, when links to the BuyTigers.com website then spread across the world, many concerned animal lovers sent complaints to the and the Indian Government.
Description of the spoof
BuyTigers.com consists of a single-page website with pictures showing young tigers fed by smiling volunteers, running on water and happily sleeping. Those are presented as real examples of animals offered for sale. The site claims that tigers, despite being strong and dangerous predators, are trained to be lovely, loyal and "totally harmless" pets. The website also claims having been shipping tigers worldwide since 1984.
The site pretends to sell a "Tiger package", offered at a price of 13400$ which includes a 5 months old female tiger, an ivory collar, tiger toys and a "Hello Tiger" guide with instructions for training the animal. There is also a "hello tiger" book image, which is in reality a football book for children written by Almee Aryal.
Controversy
Since 2007, groups such as the PETA have received hundreds of complaints. Animal welfare groups declared the site as fake but stated they did believe it was potentially harmful, because it could encourage exotic animal owners in searchinh the. Other animal rights groups have stated that the site creates an atmosphere of cruelty to animals. There is no evidence to date that the site is anything more than satire.
In his truth page Aldo declared the site is not a scam, as he never even answered any e-mail. Aldo says that through the site he received and is still receiving more than five e-mails daily from from potential buyers, angry animal lovers and journalists. He claims having received more than 10.000 e-mails since the site's launch.

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