Puppy farming gang raked in £850,000 selling sick and dying dogs
Puppy farmers who sold sick and dying dogs and even kept dead spaniels in a freezer have been jailed.
The gang made £850,000 and advertised dogs as ‘bred at home’ despite being sourced from puppy farms in Swindon and Wales.
Police seized nine puppies kept in a shed at a property in Essex, one of which died after contracting the fatal parvovirus in the squalid conditions.
Two miles away the bodies of two adult spaniels, six cocker spaniel puppies and two dead spaniel puppies were found stuffed in a freezer.
Stacey Hayward, 41, Kelly Bennett, 44, and Ricky Bennett, 42, were jailed for a total of 11 years at Basildon Crown Court.
Around 500 puppies were advertised between December 2018 and March 2020 on Gumtree, Preloved and Pets4Homes.
Hayward’s licence to sell puppies was revoked four years ago after the dogs kept falling ill, alerting the RSPCA to the scam.
Mobile phone records showed the group used different names and numbers on adverts to avoid suspicion, but bank statements revealed many payments with ‘puppy’ as the reference.
Hayward and Kelly Bennett were the two who sourced the dogs from puppy farms and advertised them.
Meanwhile Ricky Bennett gathered the cash which he put into the bank account belonging to a fourth member, Steven Foster, 42, whose sentencing was adjourned to November.
One heartbroken family revealed their puppy, bought from the gang for £750, died only one week after bringing him home.
Their cavalier King Charles spaniel puppy, called Joey, was in a veterinary hospital on a drip with suspected distemper and pneumonia, which left them with a £2,000 bill.
Tracey Bridgeman said: ‘He was having fits and then, just a week after we collected him, he had two cardiac arrests and died.
‘We’d only had him a short time but we’d already grown so attached. We visited him every day at the hospital and we’d hoped he would pull through.
‘We were all utterly heartbroken when he died.’
Each of the trio entered guilty pleas, two for fraud and one to acquiring criminal property.
Kelly Bennett also pleaded guilty to two offences under the Animal Welfare Act, and was sentenced to 49 months in prison.
Ricky Bennett admitted one offence under the Animal Welfare Act and was handed a 36-month jail sentence, while Hayward was sentenced to 47 months in prison.
All three received a 10-year ban on owning animals.
Inspector Vikki Dawe, from the RSPCA’s Special Operations Unit, said: ‘The heartbreaking reality of puppy farming is that the welfare of the puppies comes second to making money.
‘The sums of money involved are just eye-watering, and it’s another reminder of how unscrupulous this trade can be and how dangerous poor breeding and trading practices are for dogs, pups and unsuspecting consumers.
‘For anyone looking to buy a puppy, rather than adopt – we urge them to do their research, know the signs of an unscrupulous breeder and use tools such as the puppy contract to avoid becoming another victim of the puppy trade.’
Nearly all of the dogs seized from the puppy farming gang have since been rehomed.
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