KDKA Investigations
By Tory Wegerski, Meghan Schiller
/ CBS Pittsburgh
A funeral home director with offices in Pittsburgh and Natrona Heights is accused of defrauding thousands of pet owners over years, taking their money to give their pets dignified burials and cremations but instead dumping their bodies and giving them back ashes belonging to something else.
Patrick Vereb of Vereb Funeral Homes and Eternity Pet Memorial is chargedwith eight counts of deceptive or fraudulent business practices, in addition to other felonies.
The attorney general's office says investigators believe there are more than 6,500 victims who paid either their veterinarians or Vereb directly to have their pets cremated or buried. Instead, prosecutors say Vereb took the bodies of smaller pets to a landfill and only cremated larger animals. They say he then divided up those cremains and gave them back to the owners and told them it was their pet's ashes alone.
Bodies left in trash bags raise red flags
When Tiffany Mantzouridis decided to become a funeral director, she knew she wanted to help guide people through their grief.
In February 2024, after she graduated from the Pittsburgh Institute of Mortuary Science, she landed an internship at Vereb Funeral Home, run by licensed funeral director Patrick Vereb.
In addition to helping arrange funerals for people's human loved ones, she says Vereb told her she would help his pet funeral and cremation business called Eternity Pet Memorial.
"And he would tell us that we were to take care of these animals and do the arrangements," said Mantzouridis.
But she says things seemed wrong right away.
"He would get pets in, and they wouldn't go in the freezers," said Mantzouridis.
Pictures Mantzouridis gave to KDKA Investigates from what she claims is inside the Vereb Funeral Home show black trash bags piled on top of chest freezers.
"They would be sitting on top of the freezers in the garage, and we would pick them up, and there would be flies on them, and there would be blood everywhere and puddles," said Mantzouridis.
KDKA-TV consulted with another pet crematory owner in southwestern Pennsylvania who said it's important to get a deceased pet into a freezer within a short time of its death, saying there are physical effects on the body if that doesn't happen.
Records allegedly show only some pets were cremated
In addition, Mantzouridis says she would enter every pet's information into a spreadsheet for it to be logged and taken to a crematory with the ashes to be returned to its owner. But she says she started noticing discrepancies.
"And then when I pulled the spreadsheet up, I noticed that there was a very alarming amount of pets that didn't have crematory numbers," said Mantzouridis.
She says every customer who came in with a deceased pet would be logged into a spreadsheet with the services the person had paid for, but often she said there was no crematory number given, even when the person had paid for cremation.
Mantzouridis claims at Vereb Funeral Home, there were separate handwritten lists of the pets that were actually being taken to the crematory.
"There were about 75 or so that were sent to the crematory, according to the spreadsheet, but the list for the crematory to go on the truck to actually go to the crematory, [showed] there was only about 15," said Mantzouridis.
She provided KDKA Investigates with copies of the spreadsheets, along with photos of the lists of pets she says were taken to the crematory. She says the only pets on handwritten lists with tag numbers were the larger ones weighing over 55 pounds.
"And since the crematory charges per pet, he would take the ones that were supposed to be getting buried and would take the larger pets to the crematory, pay one fee for one pet to get burned that was bigger, and then divide it up into a bunch of smaller bags," said Mantzouridis.
She says she found corresponding invoices from the crematory noting services only for the larger animals but notes the crematory charges per pet.
"And that just further confirmed it that there was something very bad going on," said Mantzouridis.
Owners may have been getting a different pet's ashes
She believes the ashes Vereb was giving back to many pet owners were not actually their pets.
"He would take the ashes back from the crematory, and they come back in a big bag with plastic bags with twist ties on them that have the metal tag twisted onto them. And then, for some unknown reason, would take that bag into his apartment, close the door, mess around with the ashes, and they would all come back and zip lock baggies with no tags," said Mantzouridis.
The other local crematory owner KDKA-TV talked to said an animal's ashes should always be associated with an ID number. That owner showed the number tracking system they use for each pet.
KDKA-TV also spoke with another pet owner whose deceased cat was cremated through an unrelated funeral home. That pet owner said that her cat's ashes came with a certificate showing a crematory ID number.
Woman worries about what became of her cat
Dawn Elder is a friend of Mantzouridis and says she grew concerned about what may have happened to her own cat, Ava. She asked Mantzouridis to check on the master spreadsheet.
Mantzouridis says she found Elder's information and Ava's name but did not find a cremation number.
"And I was devastated," said Elder.
Elder says she checked inside the photo urn and found ashes in a Ziploc bag, but no crematory tag.
"So, I don't know who or what remains I have," said Elder. "And it makes me really sad and it's very disturbing that someone could do this. It's disgusting."
Who were the victims?
Vereb contracted with about 20 vet offices across Allegheny, Armstrong, Washington and Westmoreland counties. The attorney general's office has created a websitefor people to reach out to investigators to try to find out if their pet was one of the ones impacted by this. The website is also for victims to get updates on the case as it works its way through the courts.
According to the office's website, the following vets and businesses were impacted: Affordable Care, All About Pets, Always Compassionate, Imperial Animal Hospital, Kapr Funeral Home, Kiski Valley Animal Clinic, K-Vet, Loyalhanna Animal Hospital, Meadowlands, Plum Animal Hospital, River Valley, Dr. Mary Ann Bender, Pet Haven Pet Cemetery, Frankie's Friends, Sable Kennels, Little Creek Farm, Golden Mile Animal Clinic, Greengate Animal Clinic, Salem Animal Hospital and Monongahela Animal Hospital.
The attorney general's office told Vereb to stop calling these vets, because KDKA-TV heard from multiple sources that he was calling and trying to do damage control once word of KDKA-TV's reporting came out.
Pet funerals have few regulations
A state board does regulate funeral directors and Mantzouridis tells KDKA Investigates she reported her allegations, however, through this investigation, KDKA-TV learned there are very few regulations surrounding pet funerals in Pennsylvania.
KDKA-TV reached out to the licensing board about whether there have been complaints or investigations involving Vereb. In 1992, he was convicted of two counts of filing false claims to Medicare for ambulance services. The funeral board later suspended his license for six years due to those fraud convictions.
The attorney general talked to several former employees of Eternity Pet Memorial during its investigation. The two big takeaways: Vereb would allegedly cremate big dogs and use those ashes to represent several animals.
Hardly any small dogs under 30 pounds were sent to the crematory. Just 29 of them were cremated between 2001 and 2024. But records showed that thousands of animals under 30 pounds were brought to Eternity Pet Memorial over that time frame.
