Pet memorial service: helping victims of alleged widespread fraud deal with loss

Mark Petros of Herminie thought it was odd the way Harrison funeral director Patrick Vereb handled his dog, Bear, in late December after Vereb was contacted to cremate the family’s pet, with the understanding they would receive the remains.

“I carried the dog out and placed it in his van,” but Vereb took the dog and tossed it elsewhere in the vehicle, Petros said. Petros recounted the encounter Saturday at a pet memorial service at St. Clair Park in Greensburg. It was sponsored by Top Dog Therapy, a nonprofit at the Westmoreland Mall in Hempfield.

The event was intended to help the victims of the fraud allegedly perpetrated by Vereb on hundreds of pet owners, said Rodney Little, founder of Top Dog Therapy. Vereb is accused of improperly handling the remains of people’s pets.

About 125 people attended, many of whom brought their dogs and sported blue Top Dog Therapy K-9 Bereavement Team T-shirts.

Vereb, 70, of Hazelwood is accused by the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office of defrauding hundreds of customers of about $660,000 from 2021 to 2024. The AG accuses Vereb of taking their money for pet cremations without properly disposing of the remains. In some cases, it says, the pets’ bodies were dumped in landfills and in other instances, the remains of one pet were mingled with other remains.

Vereb awaits trial next month in Allegheny County Court on felony counts of theft, receiving stolen property and nine counts of deceptive business practices.

Vereb owns funeral homes in Hazelwood and Harrison and Eternity Pet Memorial.

Jill Petros, Mark’s wife, said they did get remains in a small sandwich bag in January from Vereb that purportedly were from their dog, Bear.

What they have come to realize since Vereb’s arrest in April is that their dog’s remains likely were mingled with the remains of other people’s pets, but there was no way of determining that. At that time, Vereb took their dog’s remains all the way to the Lehigh Valley for the cremation, Jill Petros said.

“He told us, ‘We’re going to take care of your baby,’ ” Jill Petros said.

Petros said they had used Vereb’s cremation services after the death of two other dogs and a cat since 2018. In all, she said they paid Vereb close to $2,000.

Owners of pets that died, including those who were alleged victims of fraud, had the opportunity to sign a 30-foot-long roll of white paper with messages of remembrances and love to their pet. Kristy Walter, a Greensburg-based licensed art therapist, organized the mural signing,

“It’s a way for them to share their loved one with us,” said Walter, a volunteer with Top Dog Therapy.

Walter said she plans to take photos of the messages with her phone, then post them for those who signed to see their message.

The memorial service also honored Tiffany Mantzouridis, 33, of Penn Township as the whistleblower who alerted authorities to alleged discrepancies in Vereb’s records for the pet cremations and the tags that each cremated pet was to receive from the crematory.

Mantzouridis said she discovered during her internship last year that more cremations were listed in the funeral home records than there were tag numbers, Mantzouridis said.

There were no records for cremated pets under 30 pounds, she said.

“I watched him dump pets in a dump truck,” Mantzouridis said. “It was extremely important to me … to report it to authorities.”

This story is updated with the correct spelling of Kristy Walter’s name.