He was paid to cremate their pets. He’s accused of tossing them in landfills.

Article content

A funeral home owner in Pittsburgh was charged with deceiving more than 6,500 pet owners who paid for their animals to be buried or cremated, only to have the remains thrown in a landfill or be given the ashes of unknown animals instead, state prosecutors said.

Pennsylvania’s attorney general office announced the charges against Patrick Vereb on Monday, accusing the 70-year-old owner of Vereb Funeral Home and Eternity Pet Memorial of taking in total at least $657,500 from customers who had paid for burial and cremation services for their pets between 2021 and 2024.

The office accused Vereb of taking payment for private cremation services, then disposing of many of the pets’ bodies at a landfill and providing customers with ashes of other, unknown animals, charging him with felony counts of theft by deception, receiving stolen property and deceptive business practices.

“This case is disturbing, and will cause devastation and heartache for many Pennsylvanians,” Pennsylvania Attorney General David W. Sunday Jr. said in a statement Monday. “Our pets are members of our families, and this defendant betrayed and agonized pet owners who entrusted him to provide dignified services for their beloved cats and dogs.”

Vereb surrendered himself to police on Monday afternoon and was arraigned and released without bail, the attorney general’s office said, and a preliminary hearing will take place on May 9.

Vereb could not be reached for comment early Tuesday and the attorney general’s office did not respond to a request for additional comment.

The website for Eternity Pet Memorial, one of Vereb’s companies, offers cremation services starting at $175 on its website and says pets’ ashes will be returned to customers after private cremation services. It also offers a range of memorial tributes such as cremation monuments that cost up to $695 and the chance to plant a grove of trees in memory of a pet for nearly $500.

Jackie Schultz, who runs Ricki’s Rescue, a center for disabled and special-needs cats and Chihuahuas, said she was “very upset” following the charges, having used Vereb’s company around 20 times over the last five years for cremation.

Schultz said she had met with Vereb several times and even recommended the company to others. “I would have used another service if I had known that my pets were just getting discarded,” she said.

The attorney general’s office said many of the alleged victims were walk-in clients, as well as pet owners from 20 veterinarians and businesses that worked with the company. It launched a website for people who believe they may have been affected to provide details and receive updates on the case, “considering thousands of consumers have been harmed.”