Written by Mindi Callison, August 2024
For those of you who know what we do at Bailing Out Benji, welcome back 🙂 For those of you who are new friends, thank you for finding us! Here are a few things to know about what we do before you read any further.
Bailing Out Benji obtains Certificates of Veterinary Inspections (CVIs) through Freedom of Information Act requests (FOIAs) in order to track the movement of puppies and kittens as they move from breeders to businesses across the country. These documents, which are required for interstate animal transport, provide details on the breeder, the buyer, and the number of animals shipped. By analyzing CVIs, our team can identify patterns, exposing how commercial breeders, brokers and puppy mills sometimes attempt to disguise their operations in order to bypass laws intended to protect animal welfare.
Now on to California.
In 2017, after 36 cities in California had passed ordinances prohibiting the retail sale of commercially bred dogs and cats, the entire state passed one too- AB 485. This bill was designed to end the ‘puppy mill to pet store’ pipeline across the state. While advocates were busy celebrating, the pet industry was plotting. This bill and a similar ordinance in Chicago became the inspiration for businesses like JAKS puppies to create shell nonprofit rescue organizations in order to continue selling puppies in retail stores where it just became illegal for them, as breeders, to do so. Our research uncovered this “Puppy Laundering” scheme and we worked hard to get the sham nonprofit shut down. Sony Productions even covered our work.
So you can imagine our surprise when we noticed another alarming trend in 2020, right at the beginning of the outbreak. While states were cracking down on import and transport regulations, hundreds of puppies were leaving commercial dog breeders in the Midwest and were heading to businesses and people in California that didn’t exist. The very same breeders that were once selling to the stores in California are now sending shipments of puppies to addresses that lead nowhere. Because our team needs to entertain ourselves while working with depressing subject matter, we nicknamed this case “California and the Case of the Disappearing Puppies”.
Since California wasn’t a priority research state at that time due to the lack of puppy stores, our initial findings came from a very small FOIA done to see if the main puppy-export states had any businesses breaking transport laws during the pandemic. We knew we had something, but not enough to figure out what was going on. Once we published our transport findings, we pivoted and began to pull everything we had for California imports. Over the next few years we would discover that more than 650 puppies were heading to businesses named Companions To You, Millionaire Mutts, PupsRUs, SimplyPets, and Forever Puppies/Pets.
Businesses that didn’t exist.
The addresses on these federally required documents led to parking lots or sometimes even tire shops, with names of people and companies that appeared to be ghosts in an already secretive industry. Thankfully, the breeders who were sending their dogs listed themselves correctly.
Our team compiled all of the evidence we had and in June of 2020 we filed complaints with both the Iowa Department of Agriculture and the United States Department of Agriculture, imploring that each entity open an investigation into the destinations listed on the CVIs in order to make sure that licensed and regulated puppies are going somewhere safe, humane and legal. Our complaint to IDALS read, in part:
“…We are hoping that IDALS can contact the veterinarians and the licensees who are sending puppies to this location in order to make sure the puppies are safe. The Iowa breeders have hung up on anyone “not official” and refused to answer questions regarding the company that the puppies are being sent to. This is very concerning due to the high volume of puppies going to an address and company that does not exist…”
We heard nothing and no investigations were opened into our complaints, as far as we could tell. We even asked other organizations who had access to more contacts and resources to help us get to the bottom of it, but we were turned away.
As we found more evidence, the complaints to each department continued. Where were these puppies going and were they being treated humanely? How were they being sold and was there anything protecting these consumers?
It wasn’t until May of 2023 that we would feel hopeful about this case again. Two reporters from the LA times reached out to us after hearing the Puppy Kingpin podcast and asked for our help on a story they had been working on. At the end of our interview, we pitched them this story and shared how much evidence we had continued collecting over the years. They were intrigued and we officially handed our case over to them and they began a year long investigation into Steve Kruse, Brian Lichirie and their role in the Case of the Disappearing Puppies.
The trail of imported dogs — some from facilities that had been cited for abuse and neglect — persists, despite California’s efforts to stem the flow, The Times found. Journalists Alene Tchekmedyian and Melody Gutierrez not only found out where our ‘disappearing puppies’ were going, but they tracked them down to Monique Matthews.
Matthews was not only importing and brokering puppies without a USDA license, but she was found guilty of two counts of animal cruelty. Authorities found more than 50 puppies in stacks of cages and containers in Matthews’ Norco garage. The temperature in the building was 95 degrees and smelled of urine, according to Norco Animal Services.
Read the LA times investigation here.