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Update: Gina Price is Found GUILTY

Updated news from two of the trial witnesses: Gina Price has been found GUILTY!

From John Hoffman –

I am very pleased to report that this afternoon, July 14, the jury in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee convicted abusive puppy importer Gina Price of fraud by mail, fraud by wire, income tax fraud and social security fraud.  The jury acquitted her on 2 counts of witness tampering because they were unable to sufficiently recall the revlevant testimony.

Ms. Price was remanded to the custody of the U.S. Marshall pending sentencing on December 8, 2008.

There will likely be stories in at least two local newspapers tomorrow.  I will forward copies.

John E. Hoffman, Lawyer

This note from Tom, another trial witness, details how Gina tried to play the ‘poor, sick, crazy lady card’, and failed –

Gina Price was found guilty on:

1. Wire Fraud
2. Mail Fraud
3. Social Security Fraud
4. 2 counts false statements to Social Security
5. 2 counts False tax returns

They are looking at between 72 to 84 months in prison. Hopefully it will be close to 7 years.

Its finally happened!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

SHE PULLED HER MENTAL THING AND THE JUDGE CALLED AN AMBULANCE, SHE REFUSED THE EMTS OF EVEN TOUCHING HER. NANCY HARR ASKED FOR IMMEDIATE INCARCERATION SINCE THE RISK OF A RUN WAS GREAT.   (Judge) AGREED, Said ” US MARSHALL, PLACE THIS WOMAN IN CONFINEMENT”

…….YEAH AND WOO HOO!

The case has been well covered in the Tennessee newspapers, with Knox News and the Tricities Paper doing an excellent job. Reporter Mac McClean in particular did a wonderful job. It was refreshing to see newspapers and reporters not blowing this off as just ‘another dog thing’.

You can read the full reports on the jury’s decision here and here.

And before you leave… Go read Charlotte Creeley’s excellent blog – “What if the Price Trial Was Conducted by Dogs?

My thanks to those who’ve been following the trial via this blog, and to the witnesses who’ve been sending me reports from the trial.

Gina Price's victims have their say in court

I’ve written before about the responsibility puppy buyers have to do their homework before shelling cash for a puppy they’re not even sure exists. In spite of this, it’s impossible not to feel for the people who’ve been victimized by puppy brokers like Gina Price.

Over the last week, some of Price’s victims had a chance to tell the court about their experiences with the puppies they bought from Rebel Ridge.

Jere Judd wanted an American-born English bulldog puppy he could register and one day breed.

He said he got an imported pooch so diseased it had to be euthanized two months later.

Tony Diliberto wanted a “Tennessee born and bred,” healthy bulldog for a pet.

He said he got an ailing import and $800 in veterinarian bills.

Michelle Cates said she wanted a snow-white bulldog that would be a mirror image of the mascot of her favorite college football team, the University of Georgia Bulldogs.

She said she got a spotted import beset with health problems and a slew of excuses for missing paperwork.

In the best tradition of scumbag puppy sellers everywhere, Price had the standard ‘send me the dog, and I’ll kill it and give you your money back’ guarantee. I call that the ‘dead dog clause’. It’s a get out of jail free card for sellers, because what loving owner is going to ship a sick puppy across the country to a certain death?

Diliberto said Price also assured him that his $1,200 payment was buying a purebred sired at her kennel. Within days, he learned the dog was an import with serious medical maladies, he testified. Diliberto said he contacted Price.

“She said, ‘If you want, you can ship me the dead dog, and I’ll send you another one,’ ” Diliberto said. “I said, ‘That’s sick. The dog’s not dead.’ She then said, ‘Send me the live dog, and I’ll put it down (euthanize it) and send you another.’ I realized then I wasn’t dealing with a rational, sane human being.”

Price’s attorney, clearly grasping at straws, presents this ‘guarantee’ as normal and reasonable. The grieving owner not only disagrees, but points out a simple fact – you can’t ship a dog without a health clearance, and you can’t ship a dead dog at all.

..defense attorney Richard Spivey noted that Price listed on her Web site a “health guarantee” that promises a replacement dog if the buyer ships to her the carcass of a bulldog that dies from poor health.

“Did you do that?” Spivey asked.

“Are you kidding?” an angry Diliberto replied. “You can’t ship a dead dog, by the way.”

Read the rest here on KnoxNews.Com

Other puppy buyers complained about odd delivery methods, and Price’s even odder instructions to them.

Norred told jurors Thursday that he grew suspicious of the deal when the dog arrived at the agreed-upon delivery site in the lap of a man, sans a cage or collar or anything else.

“I’m not an idiot, but something wasn’t right,” Norred said. “They handed me the dog like this (turning up the palms of his hands and reaching out his arms).”

When Norred asked how he was supposed to transport the dog, the woman delivering the dog “said use a seat belt.”

“I tried. I did,” Norred said as jurors and courtroom spectators began laughing. “The dog was looking at me like, ‘OK, you are an idiot.’ I drove home, holding the dog, praying.”

What wasn’t quite as funny was the scene that greeted Norred after his pup ate its first meal.

As soon as he arrived home, he dished out food for the scrawny pooch and left it to dine alone. When he returned, he found an empty food bowl and a dangerously bloated canine.

“I’ve had the dog an hour and I’ve killed him,” Norred recalled of his reaction.

Other victims tell even more heart breaking stories.

“How did it come to you?” Assistant U.S. Attorney Nancy Harr asked.

“Smelly,” Snyder replied. “It wasn’t the dog on the (Web site).”

“How was it different?” Harr asked.

“It was a different color,” Snyder answered. “This dog had one eye. The puppy we ordered had two eyes.”

The dog died from medical maladies months later.

You can read the rest here.

The trial is ongoing.

More news on Gina Price and Rebel Ridge

Some good on going news coverage of the Gina Price (Rebel Ridge Bulldogs and French Bulldogs) trial.

This story is from back in early June – it’s good to see that the judge is treating this case seriously. We’ve all gotten used to the courts treating anything to do with animals as a sort of ‘waste of court time’. Looks like U.S. District Magistrate Judge Dennis Inman doesn’t share that attitude.

From KnoxNews.Com

An accused peddler of diseased pooches got a warning from a federal magistrate judge Tuesday: Stop yanking his chain.

“You’re jerking me around, Ms. Price,” U.S. District Magistrate Judge Dennis Inman told Gina De’Lynn Price.

Price is under federal indictment on charges she bought diseased dogs from Russia and the Baltic states and passed them off as purebred bulldogs sired at her Rebel Ridge Kennels facility in Sullivan County, selling the dogs to unsuspecting customers throughout the United States and Canada.

Court records allege that many of the dogs, which sold for as much as $3,000 each, died from those undisclosed maladies.

Read the rest here.

Looks like Gina Price’s now ex husband got fed up with both Gina, and the dogs. He gives some background on how Gina went from selling home bred Bulldogs and French Bulldogs, to brokering cheap, sickly imports.

From KnoxNews.Com

Adam Price was summoned to the witness stand by Assistant U.S. Attorney Nancy Harr in Harr’s bid to prove allegations that Gina Price went from selling purebred bulldogs sired at her Rebel Ridge Kennels to peddling diseased pooches imported from Russia and the Baltic states.

Harr contends Price gave into greed, realizing she could buy imported canines for a few hundred bucks and then resell them via the Internet to unsuspecting customers nationwide and in Canada for thousands of dollars.

Adam Price even alludes to being distressed at the condition the puppies were in when they arrived at the airport –

“He started out trying to help his wife in the puppy-selling business but grew tired of it rather quickly, he said.

I refused to do a Web site because all my time would be spent updating it,” he said.

He picked up imported puppies from an Atlanta airport but quit after a few runs.

“Most of the time they were pretty messy,” he said of the puppies.

Read the rest here.

A testament to the seriousness with which this trial is being handled comes in the form of the pages of FBI testimony. Gina Price’s emails and other correspondence were monitored for months, leaving a paper trail of sick puppies and fraudulent transactions.

From KnoxNews.Com

Gina De’Lynn Price sold English and French bulldog puppies over the Internet to at least 234 people, according to an FBI agent who testified Monday afternoon on the opening day of her trial.

Price is accused of importing sick bulldog puppies from Eastern Europe and selling them as healthy ones that she raised through her Blountville-based business, Rebel Ridge Kennels, and its Web site, http://www.rebelridgekennels.com.

Special Agent David Campbell’s testimony outlined how Gina Price was well aware that many of the Bulldog and French Bulldog puppies she was importing for re sale were unhealthy, and many were arriving sick with Parvo.

He said Price routinely purchased her animals from three suppliers and complained to the sellers that many of the dogs suffered from parvo – an incurable and often fatal disease that attacks a dog’s intestinal lining – when they arrived in the U.S.

Campbell said Price paid about $500 for each dog, which according to her indictment she then sold for between $1,200 and $2,800. The indictment also claims the dogs suffered from other serious conditions like hip dysplasia and heart murmurs.

Price was also clearly and intentionally leading buyers to believe that they were buying ‘home bred’ Bulldog and French Bulldogs, bred by her at Rebel Ridge, rather than cheaply imported pups. She was also aware that many of the pups weren’t even purebred.

Price is standing trial this week on charges she tricked hundreds of people into believing they were buying purebred English and French bulldog puppies sired at her Rebel Ridge Kennels facility in Sullivan County when instead she was buying diseased dogs imported from puppy mills in Russia and the Baltic states.

…a slew of e-mail authored by Price that suggested she was well aware the puppies she was buying from overseas at a discount were diseased and, sometimes, not even purebred.

“Do you think I cannot tell they’re not full-blooded?” Price complained in one e-mail to a Russian puppy mill operator.

Read the rest here.

In the final story I have to recount, Gina Price adds the ultimate insult to the injury she has done to both the puppies, and the people who purchased them from her, when she compares herself to a humanitarian for ‘rescuing’ the pups from Eastern Europe.

Again, from KnoxNews.Com

The way this upper East Tennessee woman saw it, she wasn’t profiteering from the diseased pooches imported from Russia and the Baltic states.

She was giving the canines a shot at a better life, Gina De’Lynn Price wrote in an e-mail introduced as evidence against her in U.S. District Court on Monday.

“We take these puppies for the almighty dollar, knowing very well ahead of time that they will more than likely come in with some kind of problem that will need medical attention,” Price wrote. “Look at how many illegal (immigrants) come here half dead.”

Really, Gina? Did you bother mentioning that fact – the fact that you ‘knew ahead of time that they would need medical attention’ to your puppy buyers? And did you really just compare the puppies that you traumatized with illegal immigrants who come here seeking a better life?

The last time I checked, Eastern European puppies weren’t willingly tearing themselves away from their mothers at six weeks, and then cramming themselves six deep into crates for 30 hour transatlantic flights.

You can read the mind boggling rest of the story here.

I’ll be doing my best to keep on top of the trial coverage as it comes in, and would welcome hearing from anyone victimized by Gina Price and Rebel Ridge.

Breed Popularity, Email Woes & Puppy Photos

The AKC just released their annual registration figures for 2007. The list contains all of the usual popular breeds, with one exception – for the first time since 1935, the Bulldog has entered the top ten most popular breeds list. Bulldogs are most popular in Los Angeles, where they are second only to Labs.

This popularity has made Bulldogs one of the most commonly used dog breeds in wire transfer (or ‘phantom puppy’) scams – this is the scam where ‘breeders’ offer cheap or free puppies, with the prospective owner just paying for the shipping. Fees are to be paid by wire transfer, and once the scammer has collected fees from a handful of people, they disappear, leaving the victims with no puppy, and out the shipping fees they’ve wired. You can learn more about phantom puppy scams here –

http://www.akc.org/news/index.cfm?article_id=3220

http://www.scambusters.org/puppyscams.html

French Bulldogs have exploded in popularity, more so this year than any other. Many of us remember when Frenchies were so little known as to be almost a rare breed – this year, San Francisco and Los Angeles include the French Bulldog in their Top 10 lists.

The increase in popularity of Frenchies is staggering in such a short period of time – they’ve increased +404%, second only to Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, at +406%. This means we can look forward to more puppy mills pumping Frenchies into pet stores, more backyard breeders tossing untested dogs together to make quick buck puppies, and more cheap imports flooding the market and swamping rescue.

We can only hope that this surge in popularity is the crescendo, and that Frenchies can now slip quietly back into obscurity, becoming once again the dog most people assume is a Boston, a deformed eared pug, or a Pot Bellied pig on a leash.

Email Woes

I’ve been going through my semi-semi annual bout of frantic filing, desk re-organizing, correspondence answering and cord sorting out (where the heck do all of those electrical cords and chargers come from that end up buried in my desk drawers? Are they multiplying on their own?). This has all put me rather behind on my email answering, especially since everyone and their brother seems to have decided to contact me about Mae.

If you’ve emailed me, be patient – I should get caught up by Friday.

Puppy Photos

2197472603_3406bcf2b8.jpgSome new photos of my dapper little brindle man, Dexter. I tried to take some proper body shots, but he’s still at the ‘stop, you’re freaking me out’ stage of table stacking, and shots taken of him on the table show a cowering wreck who looks nothing like the pup I see standing on the floor, at ease. There are a few body shots in here, but in the best one Penelope decided to turn her head and block out Dexter’s. So, if you can ignore the fact that he’s headless, you get a pretty good look at his body.

All of the photos are here —
http://flickr.com/photos/frenchbulldogs/sets/72157603728391634/

2192134837_9c5e8193d1.jpgSolo is rapidly developing into the world’s cutest puppy.

Don’t believe me? Check out this photo. Super cute, yes? Almost…. eerily cute?

Yup, it’s true – he has super powers. Eerie, evil, super cute puppy powers. Be afraid.

All the rest of the pix are here –
http://flickr.com/photos/frenchbulldogs/sets/72157603710340910/

Thursday Thirteen – 13 Things My Dogs Have Eaten

This week, my Thursday Thirteen list is a ‘top ten plus 3’ of things that the dogs in my life have eaten. Needless to say, mundane items like food and cookies aren’t included.

1.

Eaten: The solid oak, two hundred year old step off my farmhouse door.
Eater: Murfee, my (English) Mastiff

Notes: The courtyard outside the back door of my farmhouse was cobblestoned brick, which grew nicely warmed by the sun. Murfee would lie there for hours, surveying the yard, barking at passing clouds and foolish cyclists, and contentedly chewing on the door step. Six inches of solid oak had survived two hundred years of history, but 200 pounds of Mastiff proved to be too much for it.

2.

Eaten: my bank deposit
Eater: Jake, Doberman

Notes: Jakey, like all Dobies, was an agile jumper. I thought I’d secured the living room pretty well, but he jumped up onto my partner’s desk, and tore into the canvas sack with my store’s bank deposit. Three hundred plus dollars in cash, assorted credit card slips and a few checks all ended up in Jake’s stomach. Some of the cash was recoverable. Don’t ask.

3.

Eaten: an almost brand new Ferragamo pump in black satin
Eater: Tessa, Hammer and siblings

Notes: I’m not a shoe fanatic, or least not overly so, and I’d normally never pay more than $150 for a pair of shoes (unless they were really good riding boots). The black satin pumps were a gift, and I do admit I liked them enough to ignore my misgivings about wearing shoes that cost more than my entire outfit combined. Unfortunately, I left them inside their rather lovely box on a chair in the living room, which would have been fine if Tessa and the rest of her ten week old siblings hadn’t knocked over the baby gate and gotten into the room. Much crying and wailing on this one, but not quite as much as there was for…

4.

Eaten: Custom ordered, embroidered ‘French Bulldogs Rule’ pillow
Eater: Tessa, Hammer and Siblings

Notes: Destroyed in the same foray that nabbed them the shoes. They had a busy afternoon.

5.

Eaten: Christmas tree ornaments made out of flour and water paste, assorted candy canes
Eaters: no proof, but I assume that Tara (Tessa’s mom), Daisy the Bulldog and Murfee the Mastiff all helped in equal measure

Notes: they were polite and careful thieves, and only ate the ornaments and candy canes that were on the back of the tree.

6.

Eaten: Drop n’ Flop Pet Bed, giant sized
Eater: Murfee, mastiff

Notes: Drop n’ Flops are great pet beds. They’re water proof, they conform to the shape of your pet, they’re outdoor safe and the dogs love them. Unfortunately, they’re stuffed with the same stuff modern day bean bag chairs are stuffed with – teeny, tiny styrofoam beads, like itsy bitsy versions of the ones used for shipping goods. Picture a sack big enough to comfortably cradle a 200+ pound mastiff, stuffed full of those tiny little beads. Now picture it torn open, with the beads blowing everywhere. On a windy day. We found beads for months, everyplace. We found them blocks away…

7.

Eaten: wooden handles on brand new, leather La-Z-Boy recliner and sofa
Eater: not sure, but clues point to Delilah, Bunny and possibly Tula

Notes: Sean has wanted leather La-Z-Boy furniture forever. We never considered, however, the ramifications of such temptingly shaped chunks of wood, at such a perfect height. They’re now coated with about three bottles worth of bitter apple, thus rendering the action of simultaneously reclining the furniture and eating a sandwich a very bad idea.

8.

Eaten: Every single wooden coffee table I have ever owned
Eater: Every single puppy I have ever had, and a few
very bad adults

Notes: At my house, pups graduate to the family room by about six weeks. They split their time between the play pen, and being on the floor with the other dogs. Of course we try to never, ever let them loose without supervision, but accidents happen, and they tend to happen to my coffee tables. I swear to God, the next one I buy will be wrought iron. Or just a big chunk of rock, whatever.

9.

Eaten: the corners on every plastic dog crate we have
Eater: mostly Tessa

Notes: Tessa is a really good dog. Once she’d reached maturity, Tessa never had an accident in the house, and she never chewed on shoes or furniture – except for plastic dog crates. Plastic crates are Tessa’s crack cocaine. She craves them like some dogs crave Tennis balls. Thanks to Tessa, every plastic crate I own looks moth eaten.

10.

Eaten: drywall
Eater: Skye the Mastiff

Notes: Skye was a really good girl, unlike her predecessor, who never met a piece of wood she wouldn’t happily destroy. Skye loved her kongs and her nylabones, and left the rest of the house alone, until the day she decided that the wall behind ‘her’ futon needed a window. Since she didn’t have opposable thumbs, she simply chewed a hole in the drywall. The outer brick wall, however, defeated her.

11.

Eaten: wainscoting and baseboards
Eater: Murfee

Notes: Like Skye, Murfee preferred to eat what she could most easily reach – in this case, the wainscoting and baseboards behind her dog bed in the family room. It was an outdated look anyways…

12.

Eaten: an entire frozen turkey
Eater: Lizard, honorary dog

Notes: Lizard was a big, ugly, one eyed, one eared, muzzle scarred, broken tailed dump cat who lived with me as a child (notice that I don’t say I ‘owned’ Lizard. This is not for peta-ish reasons of political correctness, but rather because no one could ever conceive of owning an entity like Lizard). Lizard jumped into a flat bed we’d unloaded at the local dump, and came home with us, after which no mouse within ten miles would dare to come near our house, and the resident dogs quaked in fear of catching Lizard’s attention. He once road all the way to end of our driveway, perched claws deep in the back of my brother’s screeching, frantic Doberman. One day, I watched Lizard drag an entire frozen chicken across the room, after he’d stolen it off of the counter top. He growled and hissed the entire length of the room, refusing to let go of the bird, no matter that it outweighed him by a good three pounds. Lizard seemed to consider it a challenge. He managed to get the turkey out of the porch door, and that was the last we saw of him for a few days. I can neither confirm nor deny that I held the door open for him so he could get the chicken outside.

13.

Eaten: Barbie dolls (but just the heads, for the most part)
Eater: Murfee, Mastiff

Notes: I’ll just re-print the story I wrote for Murfee’s memorial page, since it sums the entire incident up:

murfee1.jpgThroughout most of her life, Murfee radiated a calm sense of dignity. She could be playful when it suited her, but for the most part she truly fit the description “Grandeur and Good Nature”. What few people knew was that, underneath that sophisticated demeanor, there lay the heart of a wonderfully weird dog.

For one thing, she had a Barbie fetish. I have lost count of the number of decapitated Barbie corpses we found floating around the house.The mystery of where the heads went was solved one day in our back yard, and remains one of our fondest memories of the dog my ex-husband still calls “the Natural Disaster”.

We saw Murf galloping wildly around the back yard, whipping her head from side to side. Every so often, she’d stop and roll around on the grass, gazing dolefully at her rear end. When she got closer, we saw she had something attached to her butt – we thought it was a burr, or a clump of thistle grass. As she raced past us, we saw that it was a half digested Barbie head, dangling from her rear by just the hair and swaying eerily in the breeze. Spooky, to say the least. As she ran around the yard, Barbie head trailing behind her, my husband and I debated whether or not we should try to catch her and detach the grisly remnant of her snack. We were both laughing too hard to actually do anything about it.

We hope there are Barbie heads in heaven, too. Preferably hairless.