Looking for a real weighted highland cow and don’t want to get scammed? I found the real one here. Read on and I’ll prove it.
During the summer, my long term partner shared an Instagram ad similar to this one:
Well aint that a fucking cute cow.
In case that Instagram post gets deleted, here’s what the cow looks like:
So like any loving partner, I immediately thought to myself “this is going to be a hilarious Christmas present. I’m buying it right now.”
I went to their website and saw it was built on Shopify. Great, love it when I can use that fast Shopify checkout.
Then I scrolled through the products and options. “Oh shit, they even have a JUMBO version for $60! Gimmie that one!”
Smashed that purchase button so fast.
Then I got this confirmation email:
“FUCK, I just got scammed.”
Yes, that is a blank confirmation email. They didn’t even bother to update the default Shopify message.
It immediately occurred to me that one of two things would happen:
- There’s always a chance it’s not a scam and these idiots just don’t know how to set up a Shopify account. In which case I’ll get my jumbo weighted highland cow. VICTORY.
- If it IS a scam, I’ll have a whole new investigation and can tear down these muppets. ALSO VICTORY.
Some of you might be thinking “Lars, you dumbass, it’s clearly an AI cow. You are not as sharp as I thought you were.”
To which I say: “I had that same thought! But the cow is fucking real! I found it! I bought it! I have it right fucking now!” Yes, the image is AI but the cow is real. But more on that in a minute.
Back to the scam. I waited.
And I waited.
After weeks and weeks, I FINALLY started getting shipping notifications. The package was coming from China.
As it meandered its way through US customs, I actually forgot about it. Got busy with other stuff.
Then one day a package arrived.
Spoiler alert: it was not the cow I ordered.
But before I show you the cow that I actually received, I want you to take a moment, and in your mind’s eye, imagine what you’d expect a scam highland cow to look like. How shitty is it? Does it scream cow fraud? Is it even a highland cow? Is it bad enough to ruin an entire Christmas?
Take a minute.
Alright, here we go.
THIS IS THE COW I RECEIVED:
No lies: it took me 20 MINUTES to realize this was the highland cow that I ordered.
I was like “what is this? who sent this to me? what idiot would ever pay for something like this?”
ME. I’M THE IDIOT THAT PAID FOR IT.
Now now, let’s not get too hasty. MAYBE it’s an honest mistake. (there’s no fucking chance it’s a mistake but let’s try doing the right thing). So I reached out and asked for a refund, using the email address that was listed in their refund policy:
The email address did not exist.
ALIGHTY THEN.
Chargeback time!
So I gave my credit card company a call, explained the situation, they initiated a chargeback that same day, and I went back to waiting.
Within like 2 days the scam company approved the refund. I got my $60 back. Even heartless highland cow scammers bow to the whims of Visa and Mastercard.
I could have let things go at that point. But what’s the fun in that?
After some digging, I discovered that a highland cow scam company (along with some bottom feeder scammers) had completely taken over the product category. The scam is so prevalent that people are blaming legitimate content creators and stuffed animal companies after they get scammed.
At this point, if you do buy a weighted highland cow on the internet, you’re more likely to get scammed than get a legitimate product.
So who’s real and how does the scam work?
The Instagram Stuffie Scam Cycle
Here’s how the scam works:
- Find a viral consumer product with a good margin. If it was me, I’d look for products that were constantly selling out AND above $50. You also want a product that’s using influencer videos heavily.
- Create a fake website along with fake company profiles on Facebook and Tiktok.
- Steal the legitimate creator ads, run your own ads with them, and direct people to your fake website.
- After orders come in, either ship an inferior product. Or ship nothing at all.
- If you really want to dial this up, start charging customers multiple times.
- Once all the complaints come in and the chargebacks escalate (takes about 3 months if you drag your feet on shipping), shut the whole thing down.
- Start over with the new brand and website.
- Repeat until the product is completely burned, then move on to another product.
In this scam, the only real cost is the ads. And since you don’t have to worry about turning a profit with a real product, you can outbid all the legitimate companies. Your ad costs will be higher but the rest of the order is pure profit.
Doing this once is easy. The part I’m most impressed by is how these folks have managed to stay ahead of the merchant account companies and payment gateways.
Let’s go through all the steps in detail.
The Perfect Product to Scam
A weighted highland cow. The perfect viral product. Cute, adorable, and weighted. The perfect salve to… well… everything.
This highland cow, from Uoozii, is the real one. They only sell it on Amazon.
How do I know?
I fucking ordered it. And it arrived. Here’s a photo:
The cow is, indeed, real.
The best part if you’re a scammer? It keeps going out of stock. I’ve seen it go out of stock multiple times in the last 6 months. They can’t keep up with demand. That leaves the door wide open for someone else to feed that demand.
And the price point is delicious. $50 can cover a ton of ads with plenty left over. Assuming you don’t care about actually delivering a product. What? You want a product?! For money?! In this economy?! Such spoiled consumers!
The Influencer Ecosystem That Sells Real Products
Uoozii is smart. They’ve tapped into the influencer ecosystem to sell their products. There are tons of folks doing shorts for all tons of consumer products. I assume that Uoozii sends them a free version of the product and then the creators get a percent of all the Amazon sales. It’s pretty easy to sign up and become an Amazon affiliate. Some deals may involve a flat sponsorship fee too. TikTok Shop also has their own programs where I assume everyone is getting a cut.
Jessica Ciraulo is a influencer/creator. Basically she posts a ton of videos on all sorts of products.
Jessica regularly posts about the highland cows, whenever they come back in stock. Here’s a recent one:
She has people post comments (probably to trigger the Instagram engagement algo), and then sends links via DM.
She’s not the only one, Mary Fortune did a post here:
Allie Sholtis has also done highland cow posts, like this one where people are complaining about scams:
There’s a whole batch of this stuff on Instagram and Tik Tok. Every time I went looking, I found new creators running very similar ads for the highland cow. There are a ton of folks doing this.
Just so anyone doesn’t get the wrong idea: these creators are NOT part of the scam. So don’t send them any hate mail.
And we’ll get to the real scam in a second but:
- The folks in the comments on many of these videos were scammed
- They were NOT scammed by these content creators (that I know of)
I was actually able to trade a few emails with Allie and she claims she worked directly with Uoozii. I believe her.
In the cases that I looked at, the influencers promote the legitimate company: Uoozii.
It’s the next step of the process where everyone gets fucked.
The Beginning of the Scam: Facebook, Instagram, and Tiktok Ads
For the vast majority of people, the first time they encounter the fabled highland cow stuffy will be from a paid ad on Instagram or TikTok. Take this suspiciously inactive company profile:
See that creator post on the right?
It looks extremely similar to many of the legitimate creator posts:
At one point, that video WAS a legitimate creator post that pointed to a legitimate product. But no longer.
HugMates hijacked that video and is using it as their own.
Maybe I mixed things up and am blaming HugMates unfairly?
The website that scammed me was highlandplushy.com. Guess what’s listed as the domain in the HugMates Facebook profile:
HugMates isn’t running any Facebook or Instagram ads right now but they used to. My bet is they forgot to scrub their accounts as they started cycling through new brands.
Pretty simple setup here:
- Create a fake profile on Facebook for your ads.
- Steal one of the hundreds of real highland cow creator videos, use that video for your own posts and ads.
- Then point people to your own website.
So where did the HugMates ads go?
The Highland Cow Scam Websites
Today, the website that I bought from (highlandplushy.com) is dead. They shut it down a few months ago.
I didn’t grab a screenshot from the original site but here’s the homepage from the Internet Archive:
Yes, I know the images are all broken. I sincerely apologize for not thoroughly documenting the scam in motion.
Here’s the Trustpilot page for that domain which is full of complaints about scams:
If they shut the website down, did these folks pack up and run away with their money?
Of course not! They’re still at it.
They currently have an active site at highlandcowplushie.com. Here’s the homepage:
It does have the same stupid banner at the top in the exact same style.
The other dead giveaway that it’s the same folks is the privacy policy.
Here’s the privacy policy on the dead site I ordered from:
And here’s the policy from the current site:
I was going to highlight which sections were identical but THE WHOLE DAMN THING IS IDENTICAL.
So yeah, the same people. All they did was swap out the entity (KairaCo -> Highlandcowplushie). The same people are behind both sites.
In between these two sites, I believe this crew also ran highlandcowplushy.com, I’ve seen a few reviewers mention this domain. Here’s the order of their sites that I’ve caught so far:
- highlandplushy.com
- highlandcowplushy.com
- highlandcowplushie.com
How original. Just burning through every domain variant they can get their hands on.
The highland cow churn and burn.
Why Rotate Through Different Highland Cow Brands?
Simple: to stay ahead of scam complaints, bad reviews, and credit card chargebacks.
If you spin up a brand and website, then run a bunch of ads of Facebook or TikTok, it’ll take about 3 months for the scam to catch up with you. At least if you drag your feet on shipping.
By that point, word starts to get out and your best bet is to shut everything down, switch to a new brand, and cycle through again.
For Maximum Profit: Charge Credit Cards Multiple Times
If you delight in reading hundreds of reviews about scam products like I do, you’ll come across tons of claims about people receiving extra charges on their credit cards when getting sucked into the highland cow scam.
Like this one on the TrustPilot page:
It’s not just a scam for the initial purchase, the charges keep coming. I even found people that said they had to cancel their credit cards.
This didn’t happen to me (luckily) but I 100% believe it.
It’s one the easiest ways to juice your scam profits. Especially if you’re gonna burn the whole brand down in a few months anyway.
The Highland Cow Bottom Feeders
It’s not just one company doing this scam. There are tons.
Go to the Facebook Ad Library, search for Highland Cow, and you’ll come across tons of different websites all running the same scam.
- Run ads on Facebook
- Steal a creator video and use that as your ad.
- Point people to your fake website.
- Don’t deliver a product at all or deliver an inferior product that costs almost nothing.
- Repeat under new brands as needed.
Here’s an ad from the PlushJoy account:
Same as always: a legit creator video used as the ad.
Here’s the cow on their site (plushjoy.co):
$9.95? Yeah, no fucking way that’s real.
There are a bunch of comments on their Facebook profile complaining about not receiving orders:
Here’s another ad that used a video from Jessica Ciraulo:
And this is the page it points to on their website (atgreenic.com):
People also claim this is a scam on their Trustpilot page:
These are just a few. I’ve dug up at least another dozen all doing the same thing. It’s endless.
The Impact of the Highland Cow Scam on Legitimate Businesses
This scam is EVERYWHERE.
How do I know?
Go into Instagram or TikTok and just search for highland cows. A bunch of legitimate creator posts come up. Many of them have people complaining about the scam in the comments.
Allie’s post is not an anomaly:
So many people are getting scammed by these ads that there’s a flood of them going back to the real creator posts and expressing their frustration. Many of these folks have no idea that they got sucked into a scam funnel via ads that stole the creator videos.
SnugglePals is a legitimate company selling weighted highland cows. Here’s a post of the founder talking about the scams:
Here’s another one with him breaking down the impact to his business:
People are going to SnugglePals and leaving bad reviews about how they got scammed… by a different fucking company. SnugglesPals is losing out on revenue because of this.
A stuffed animal company founder has been forced to do PSA videos on Insta to lessen the harm inflicted on his business from highland cow scammers.
So that’s where the state of the stuffed animal market is at. Yippie.
Where to Buy A Stuffed Highland Cow (And Not Get Scammed)
I got scammed by buying from the wrong website. MOST websites selling weighted highland cows are scams right now. And MOST ads selling weighted highland cows on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok are also scams. Be careful.
Do NOT buy from an ad that you see on Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok. Most (but not all) are scams.
There are two legitimate places that I found to buy your weighted highland cow. Don’t fret! They do exist!
I assume that you’re looking for this cow:
That is one of the real weighted cows that I ordered. The ONLY place to buy this cow is on Amazon.
If Amazon says it’s out of stock, DO NOT buy it from any other website. It is likely a scam.
Only buy it from Amazon or a location that’s linked directly from the Uoozii website. I believe that Uoozii was also on TikTok shop at one point but it looks like they took it down.
Uoozii is a real company and this product listing is real. I wouldn’t trust anything else.
Another Real Weighted Highland Cow
SnugglePals also sells real weighted highland cows. How do I know? I bought one.
Here’s it is:
SnugglePals is based in Oregon and has an active Instagram account. They do run ads regularly so if you see an ad from the SnugglePals account, that’s legitimate.
They also sell out regularly. If they’re out of stock, be patient and wait for a restock. Don’t try to find a different website. You’ll most likely run into a scam.
SnugglePals vs Uoozie
I REALLY wanted to prefer the SnugglePals highland cow. But if I’m being honest, the Uoozii highland cow is better:
- The fur is softer.
- The weight distribution in the paws is delightful. If you wiggle the highland cow, you can’t help but laugh.
- I think the design is a bit cuter.
Yes, I realize that I’m a middle-aged dude pontificating on the weight distribution in the paws of a highland cow stuffie. I do not know how my life ended up here.
ANYWAY.
Both are high quality. Both are real. You can’t go wrong with either:
Who Benefits the Most From the Highland Cow Scam?
Facebook. Sorry, “Meta.” And any other ad platform that allows these ads to run.
While you have to explain why your Christmas or birthday present failed miserably, Facebook made money from duping you. They made money off duping me. Facebook got paid to show that ad to my partner. She shared the ad with me and then I paid the scammers in an attempt to do something delightful for her.
I never would have paid the scammers if Facebook hadn’t allowed that ad to run.
That ad is the reason I got burned.
Even as the scammers rotate through different brands and accounts, or other scammers jump in to nibble at your pocketbook, Facebook makes money every step of the way.
I’m shocked that it’s so easy to rip a legitimate creator video without any edits, post it as an ad, and send people to ANY WEBSITE ON THE INTERNET.
There are always going to be scams out there but this one feels a bit too fucking easy. Come on Facebook. At least look like you give a shit.
They could do something about this scam and the countless others that are likely running at this moment. I believe they choose not to. God forbid ads revenue takes a dip to protect your own users from scams.
