COBB COUNTY, Ga. — A dog mom in Cobb County is rejoicing after police found her two stolen dogs after the thief created an Instagram page to collect the reward money.
When JC Banks got home from work on Monday, her two French Bulldogs were missing. Somehow they'd escaped her yard.
"We just ran out frantically, across the street, in the neighborhoods. And people were telling us, the neighbors have your dog," she said.
Her neighbors had terrible news; they'd given her two dogs, Duke and Egypt to a man who claimed he was the rightful owner.
"I really never thought that I would see them again because it went from a lost dog to a stolen dog," she said.
A week went by, and Banks didn't know if she'd ever see her 4-legged kids again; that's when an internet sleuth spotted them online.
The man who'd taken them made a fake Instagram page for her dog Egypt; others saw the post and demanded he give them back to Banks.
He then pretended that he found the dogs to get her to pay the $5,000 reward posted online.
"At that moment, we went from frantic to just parents that were furious!" she said. "So by all means necessary, legally, we were getting our dog back."
Banks called the police, and they set up a meeting at a Chick-fil-A with the man she suspected of stealing her dogs.
She had to show the man the reward money on Facetime before he agreed to the meeting, but 10 minutes later, the man and her dogs rolled into the parking lot.
"The Cobb County Police Department was on top of it!" she said. "They didn't look at them like pets, they treated them like they were missing people. They said we have 48 hours, just like what you see, we have 48 hours."
Cobb police arrested the man on the spot, and Banks took her babies home.
"What was so funny, we dropped all the money everywhere! We weren't concerned, we just wanted the dog! Then we thought about it, like, we should get this," she said.
Now home, Banks said that the police department has checked in with her and the pups since the ordeal. She said Egypt is still a listen shaken up, but Sir Duke Tennessee Banks handled it like a champ.
"It's just a reminder of how stories can have a good ending if we do the right thing and we have faith," she said. "And they're home right now, they're home."