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

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.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/04/29/pittsburgh-vereb-funeral-home-pet-cremation/