Funeral director Patrick Vereb is facing multiple felony charges, accused of improperly disposing of thousands of dogs and cats after owners had paid for pet burials or cremations.
Vereb, 70, of Pittsburgh’s Hazelwood neighborhood owns and operates funeral homes in Hazelwood and Harrison and Eternity Pet Memorial, which provides funerals, burials and cremations for pets.
Vereb is charged with the theft of almost $660,000 from customers who paid for pet cremations, burials, returns of ashes and other services between 2021 and 2024, according to state Attorney General Dave Sunday’s office.
Vereb is accused of taking money for cremations but instead disposing of the animal remains in landfills and giving customers ashes that weren’t from their pets, according to authorities.
In a video addressing the investigation, Sunday called Vereb’s conduct “abhorrent.” The Attorney General’s Office has identified more than 6,500 victims.
Investigators spoke with unnamed employees who claimed Vereb told staff no pets weighing under 60 pounds were to be taken to the crematorium and that he would take the small pets to a different crematorium, according to a criminal complaint filed in the case.
Vereb is accused of writing what authorities called daily lists of animals’ names and transport dates to the crematorium. Employees became suspicious of Vereb after noticing only some animals on the list had tag numbers while no animals under 30 pounds had tag numbers from the crematorium, the complaint said.
One employee began comparing Vereb’s handwritten list to a spreadsheet and realized he was transporting more numbers of animals than they were listing for cremation, according to the complaint. Vereb was charging for cremations that didn’t happen and providing ashes to vets and pet owners for animals that were not actually cremated, the complaint said.
Large dogs that were supposed to be “common burials” also were cremated, according to the complaint.
Vereb had employees mark the dogs’ names with a circle, and the crematorium later confirmed with investigators they returned the ashes belonging to circled names to Eternity Pet Memorial, investigators said.
Vereb was able to redistribute those ashes to pet owners under the guise that they were receiving their pet’s ashes because he altered the lists, the complaint said.
Vereb admitted to investigators in February that pet owners were not always getting their specific pet’s ashes back, according to the complaint, which also detailed how he told investigators that, if he didn’t have ashes for a pet, he gave the owners ashes from another animal to “make them feel good for the day if nothing else,” according to the complaint.
He told investigators he would use “leftover” ashes of other pets to pass off as those of the pets that were not cremated, and also would use the ashes of other pets if the animals had not yet been processed, according to the complaint.
Vereb told investigators he did this because it took too long for the crematorium to return ashes, according to the complaint.
Vereb also told investigators he hadn’t been using the pet cemeteries he owned for a while and was instead dumping animals in a landfill, according to the the complaint.
Vereb told authorities he lied to owners, telling them their animals were buried in the cemetery, according to the complaint.
Investigators received invoices from the landfill Vereb used. The complaint said the invoices noted “animal carcasses” as the type of waste being dumped and that they were all signed by Vereb. About 490 animals were taken to the landfill, according to the complaint.
In a July interview with TribLive, Vereb said providing after-life care for pets had become a growing part of his business.
“They call us crying, and they’re devastated,” he said at the time. “No matter if it’s a small cat or it’s a 220-pound Irish wolfhound, they still have a dead family member, and it’s the same devastating effect.”
He said helping people through a loss is what brings joy in a business that deals with families going through the worst times of their lives.
“Each individual family has that need for support, and I get that great joy of being able to help them with that need,” Vereb said during the interview.
A representative from the office of Louis Emmi, Vereb’s attorney, denied a request for comment Monday. Vereb’s personal and office voicemail boxes were full when a TribLive reporter attempted to reach him. Nobody answered the door at the home’s Hazelwood location when a TribLive reporter knocked.
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Vereb’s charges include felony counts of theft by deception, receiving stolen property and deceptive business practices. Vereb was arraigned Monday afternoon and released awaiting a preliminary hearing on May 9 in District Judge James J. Hanley Jr.’s Greenfield courtroom.
The Attorney General’s Office created a website at attorneygeneral.gov/epm where victims can provide their contact information, share victim impact statements and receive updates on the criminal case.
“Considering the number of Pennsylvanians who were impacted by the scheme, it would be impossible to provide timely updates to those victims as the case progresses,” Sunday said in a video.