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SAN FRANCISCO — A California man has been sentenced to 30 months imprisonment for tricking owners of lost pets to wire him money. 

William Muniz was indicted in May and sentenced Friday on charges that he duped at least two pet owners to send him money on the false promise that he would return their lost pets. 

Muniz, 40, told a Colorado woman that he found her cat while passing through Denver with his wife on a motorhome. He said he would fly the cat from San Francisco to Denver for $172. The woman wired the money but the cat never arrived because Muniz had never found it. 

The defendant was also accused of a similar scheme in Oregon, in which he duped $900 from the owner of a yellow Labrador retriever. While the owner wired the money to Muniz, Muniz did not deliver the dog. The government said the FBI investigated the case for a year.