Survivors : Sale of Animals to Labs Probed as Complaints Surface

Amid a chorus of barking at a city animal shelter in North Hollywood, animal activist Nina Culver went straight for the cages with red-plastic signs that read: “FOR ADOPTION.”

She waved her hand past a caged row of bobbing black noses and said, “We want them all.”

The 21 dogs, 15 cats and one rabbit put up for adoption Tuesday morning at the East Valley Animal Shelter included some that were released by medical research facilities.

Others were relinquished by a Sun Valley kennel operator who is suspected by Los Angeles animal control officials of misleading pet owners into giving up their animals, some of which were then sold to laboratories.

“This is a great resolution for the animals that are survivors, but what about the others that were killed?” Culver asked.

A kennel owner, Culver wound up adopting 17 of the dogs and 11 of the cats on behalf of a group called Last Chance for Animals. Other animal activists and people simply seeking a furry pet claimed the remaining animals.

The situation surfaced in late January when the Last Chance group told authorities that a man was misleading people who advertised in newspapers seeking new homes for their pets. The man told the pet owners various stories about a ranch or a spacious backyard that would be a good place for a pet, but he actually turned over the animals to Budget Boarding and Comfy Kennel in Sun Valley, Animal Control Officer Robert Pena said.

The kennels’ owner, Barbara Ruggiero, 25, and an associate, Frederick Spero, 42, both of Sylmar, are federally licensed to sell animals to research facilities. They sold 31 dogs to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, 29 cats to the Veterans Administration Hospital in Sepulveda and 18 dogs to Loma Linda University since last fall, Pena said.

The medical labs did not know it, Pena said, but some of the dogs and cats they bought actually had been unwittingly given away. It is unknown how many of the 78 animals were pets, but all of them died except six dogs at Cedars-Sinai and eight cats at the VA hospital, he said. Those animals were in the group adopted on Tuesday.

Animal control officials have asked the Los Angeles city attorney’s office to investigate allegations that Ruggiero and the man who responded to the advertisements illegally misled pet owners by telling them their animals would go to a good home when the intention was to sell them for research, said Gary Olsen, supervisor of the East Valley Animal Shelter.

Ralf Jacobsen, 25, of Van Nuys, who is suspected of responding to the newspaper advertisements, “has acknowledged that he was working in cooperation with (Ruggiero),” Pena said.

Similar allegations are being investigated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which may seek to suspend the federal license Spero and Ruggiero hold under the business name “Biosphere,” said Henry Stratton, the USDA’s senior investigator in Sacramento.

In addition, “It appears they have falsified their records as to where they obtained these animals,” Stratton said of Biosphere.

Hugh Siegman, an attorney for Ruggiero and Spero, said Jacobsen “was working on his own.”

“If it is true that the addresses and names are false,” he said of the alleged falsification of records, “it’s because those are the names and addresses that were provided by Ralf Jacobsen. My clients had no knowledge of what it was he was doing out there.”

Several of the pets adopted Tuesday by Culver were already on their way to foster homes found by the Last Chance group. Some will stay temporarily at Doberman Rescue, her own kennel in Sun Valley, until permanent homes can be found.