The Binge Cases: Denise Didn't Come Home - Puppy Kingpin | 3. Hobo K9

Episode Date: June 23, 2022

Authorities learn of unusual “rescue puppies” starting to turn up in Chicago and begin an investigation. Soon, they are on the trail of the secretive businesswoman responsible. A Neon Hum Media and Sony Music Entertainment production. Unlock all episodes of Smoke Screen, ad-free right now by subscribing to The Binge. Plus, get binge access to brand new stories dropping on the first of every month — that’s all episodes, all at once, all ad-free. Just click ‘Subscribe’ on the top of the Smoke Screen show page on Apple Podcasts or visit GetTheBinge.com to get access wherever you get your podcasts. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As a kid growing up in Chicago, there was one horror movie I was too scared to watch. It was called Candyman. It was about this supernatural killer who would attack his victims if they said his name five times into a bathroom mirror. But did you know that the movie Candyman was partly inspired by an actual murder? I was struck by both how spooky it was, but also how outrageous it was. Listen to Candyman, the true story behind the bathroom mirror murder, wherever you get your podcasts. The animal shelter Sybil Sukup runs is the largest in this rural part of Iowa.

They nurse animals back to health, take in strays, and help them find new homes. There are days when Sybil is a cross between 911 and an information hotline. I get calls often. People Google Humane Society Iowa, and they get my name, even though there's several humane societies here. Iowa is already an agricultural state. In her part, besides some lakes, it's a sea of farmland. Sybil told me it's not just the perfect place to grow some corn. It's also a prime location for puppy mills. She knows of one breeder who regularly has four to six hundred dogs on hand,

and they aren't the only one. You know, we're surrounded up here. Sybil says the customers are often buying the dog online and don't plan to visit the breeder. But they still want to be good consumers, so they Google shelters near the breeders and find Sybil. They call here and they want to know, do I know if this particular place is a puppy mill? Because I don't want to support a puppy mill. And they'll give me the name of the place. Then Sybil usually looks up inspections of the breeder online. And I always ask, how many dogs do you think is a reasonable number for a person that's

in that business to take care of? And a lot of times they might answer, oh, I don't know, four, six. Well, during the last inspection, this particular breeder had 185 adult dogs. And they always hear like the gasp, the audible, you know, are you serious? Sybil then talks them through the dog's living conditions on the inspection report. Sometimes everything's good. Other times, the reports can show the cages aren't cleaned, there's not enough food or water,

or the dogs only seem to get a vet checkup if there's an emergency. And, you know, I think a lot of the times people are appalled, like, oh, I had no idea, and thank you so much. But there are a couple times where, okay, well, thanks for your information. And then Sybil says they likely continue with their purchase anyway. Taking these calls is not actually part of her job. It's not something she has to do,

but something she's called to do. Most days, for her actual job, she's got plenty of work facilitating adoptions and talking to people who decide to surrender their dog to the shelter. Sybil is so busy that she'd welcome any help to the area. That's why, at first, she was excited when she heard about a new rescue. It had opened in Britt, Iowa, a town only about 35 miles from Sybil. Somebody mentioned to me that, hey, have you heard of this new dog rescue in Britt? Like, oh no, you know, but welcome aboard. We need more rescues in the area, you know? And I'm thinking, oh, it's like maybe a new breed-specific rescue or an animal shelter or something. And I went down to the Secretary of State's page and saw like the

licensing registration. I instantly recognized the names as the people that are associated with Jax. Jax is, of course, Jax puppies. The names associated with the new rescue were the J and K in Jax, Jola Nothi and Kimberly Dolphin. They were tough business people who didn't operate in the public eye. She knew that Jolynn's family, which used to run a breeding business, had been accused of mistreating animals.

They were not the type of people she thought would open a dog rescue. She wondered, were Jolynn and Kimberly really going to start taking in strays? At that time, I wasn't sure, like, why would they have started this? After all, Jack's Puppies was in the business of buying puppies from breeders to resell to pet stores. Some of those breeders, Sybil doesn't even think should be in business. She thought something didn't make sense and decided she'd drive by. I just always want to believe the best in people.

Like, people want to help animals. But that's not the case. That's just not the truth. From Neon Hub Media and Sony Music Entertainment, I'm Alex Schumann, and this is Smokescreen, Puppy Kingpin, an investigation into the mastermind trafficking puppies nationwide and the scheme to hide the truth. Sybil was on her way home from visiting friends.

She was passing by Britt, Iowa, where JoLynn had her new rescue. So she figured she'd pop by. Britt's a small town. Their main street is only four or five blocks long. The new rescue said it was right downtown. It went by the name Hobo Canine. Hobo, as in the old-fashioned term for migrant workers, the kind depicted riding train cars and taking odd jobs, then the letter K and the number nine, hobo canine. And Brit is known as like the, there's a big hobo celebration there every year where like people that are self-proclaimed hobos that like ride the rails, you know, and live a unique lifestyle. They come and have a huge

celebration in Brit for some reason. I'm sure there's a whole history there. She's totally serious. It's called the National Hobo Convention. Every August, Britt shuts down all of Main Street for the celebration, and people who consider themselves hobos show up each year, showing off some of their trade skills and sharing stories of living on the road. And so it was kind of like, you know, a play on their little community that sharing stories of living on the road.

And so it was kind of like, you know, a play on their little community that they called it Hobo Canine. Sybil stops at Hobo Canine's address on Main Street. There's a bar, a restaurant, but the address she finds for the rescue looked empty. But I'm like, OK, well, this is not a dog. Like, I'm listening through the door like, hello, hello. Are there any dogs in there? And I thought, well, if I knock on the door. Like, hello? Hello? Are there any dogs in there? And I thought, well, if I knock on the door, for sure, you know, any dogs would start barking at me.

Nothing. I mean, there's no dogs there. I knew instantly that this is a front. This is not legit. No dogs inside. No people either. Hobo K-9 was unlike any other rescue Sybil had ever seen. But besides knocking on the door, there wasn't much she could do. Sybil headed home and got back to running her own shelter. But animal rights advocates in the state talked,

and word was getting out about this odd new rescue. I'm running a shelter here, and my focus is animal adoption and animal rescue. Puppy mills, like I said, pet project. But for someone like Mindy, and there's lots of other people out there. That's Mindy Callison, who keeps binders on notorious breeders. This is their sole focus in their organization, and they're making headway, and they're making tracks. At around the same time Sybil was wondering about Hobo Canine, Mindy was spending her nights tracking puppies online. Mindy started the nonprofit Bailing Out Bingey.

So I always say that our research sets us apart from everyone else. To my core, I'm basically a nerdy librarian. She spent a lot of her spare time trying to track puppies that crossed state lines, seeing who buys from which breeders. She'd read the paperwork while half-watching Netflix. One day, she noticed a pattern. We started seeing a very clear switch where these stores were buying from Jack's Puppies in Britt, Iowa, which is a very small town in Iowa.

All of a sudden, now they're buying from a new rescue in Iowa from Brit. Huh. So, Mindy noticed that stores that used to buy puppies from Jax are now getting puppies from Hobo Canine. Both were sending puppies from Brit, Iowa. What a coincidence. All of these puppies are eight weeks old. They're either designer dogs or purebred. And now they're showing up in the same stores that Jack's puppies were showing up in. And what's the significance of eight weeks? So eight weeks is the youngest age. Legally, the USDA allows you to transport animals for sale. The average shelter or rescue in the United States doesn't get to choose which dogs or cats end up in their care.

They accept strays and abandoned pets. They're often mutts, not purebred, and can come from anywhere. They rescue dogs from homelessness and give them shelter. That's why these places are called rescues and shelters. Mindy could see on the paperwork that this rescue managed to ship hundreds of purebred puppies that were all around the same age. The paperwork Mindy is reading are those certificates of veterinary inspection I mentioned in earlier episodes.

She calls them CVIs. It was so funny to me. I'll never, ever get over it. But as I'm looking through these documents, I look very closely at them. I look at the breeds, the microchips, the birthdays. I noticed that the signature at the bottom of the CVI said, And JoLynn is the owner of Jack's Puppies.

JoLynn was signing the CVIs for both her puppy brokerage and the dog rescue. When I met Mindy to talk about what she found, she opened a binder and showed me one of these CVIs. So I'm going to pull up the first hobo canine CVI first because I just really couldn't believe it. I want to take a second to highlight the name of the forms Mindy is about to show me. They're called Certificates of Veterinary Inspection. So both JoLynn and Yvette have to sign.

On this CVI, we can see the microchip number, the breed of dog. These documents are supposed to be proof Yvette looked at the puppies. Well, Mindy noticed sometimes the same vet was signing off on puppies for Hobo Canine that was signing off on puppies for Jax. More proof, as Mindy saw it, that JoLynn and Kimberly's for-profit business and rescue weren't separate operations. So why were they shipping puppies through a dog rescue? Mindy thought she knew. So in 2014, Chicago became the first major city to pass a humane ordinance that would affect current puppy selling stores.

The city of Chicago banned pet stores from selling puppies from commercial breeders. This is the same law I mentioned in the first episode that would have ended JoLynn's business with pet stores in Chicago. Here's the thing, though. Under the ordinance that passed in 2014, pet stores could keep selling dogs if they came from a rescue. This was it. Mindy had found evidence that JoLynn was using hobo canine to go around the new law.

So not only is she signing her own CVIs of puppies going to stores, say, in Dallas, Texas, those are commercially bred puppies being sold. Now she's signing off on fake rescue puppies going into Chicago where it's illegal to sell commercially bred dogs. But they're coming from the same place. Mindy realized hobo canine was a fake rescue. A kind of front. After Mindy's discovery, I talked with an assistant attorney general named Andrew Siederdahl about what JoLynn was accused of doing. He told me a simple way to understand this is to think of the puppies as if they're dirty money. The pet stores and JoLynn can't sell the puppies in Chicago if they come

from a breeder. So they have to make it look like the puppies come from somewhere else. You know, when you think of money laundering, you might think of Walter White, who, you know, he needs to clean his money, and so he starts a bunch of car washes. This is the assistant AG. He thought of the show Breaking Bad, where the main character is a drug kingpin named Walter White. He needs a way to make it look like his money comes from a legal business. He's actually making meth, but the money that he's making from that

goes to the car wash, so it comes out clean, you know, so he can make it legal. That's essentially, in my view, what is sort of happening here. The puppy is not supposed to be being sold, but it's coming out clean through these sham non-profits. So was Jolin Nothi the Walter White of puppies? Was that an actual question? I'm asking out loud. But I did wonder, why wouldn't JoLynn just stop selling puppies to Chicago after the ban? Why not focus her business somewhere else? Maybe the dwindling number of pet stores means there's nowhere left to grow her business. The only way to really know is to ask her. I did reach out, but it'd take a while for her to respond.

So for now, let's get back to Mindy. She believed she found evidence JoLynn was breaking the law. So Mindy filed complaints with the Iowa Attorney General, Illinois Attorney General, and the USDA, alleging that JoLynn was using fake rescues to get around the law. She thought the people walking into those pet stores were being misled, not just about whether the puppy they bought was from a rescue or a puppy mill. You see, the other thing the CVI shows

is how many puppies a veterinarian claims they examine. Well, Jolynn's vet would sign off on three to 400 dogs in a single day. The vet is like assembly line, looking at these animals over and over and over again. Mindy thinks consumers have no idea that a vet barely looked at their dog and certainly didn't have time to diagnose it with an issue. And so the pet store will tell the customers, our vet has already seen the puppy and signed off and it's healthy, when in all reality, a real vet exam has not been done. Mindy feels like customers assume that blood work and other tests get run on a puppy.

That's not always the case. Not every state requires it. But even if a vet is only required to visually check a dog, it's gotta be tough to look all that closely at hundreds of dogs a day. I've reached out to Jolynn's vet, Dr. Leslie Lancaster, Mindy was waiting for a response too. She had filed complaints about hobo canine with authorities. And then it's a waiting game. You sit and you wait. And during that time, as I was getting more research, because when I found the first CVI, I wanted to know more. So then I started filing specific requests on hobo canine and where their animals were going and where they were getting them from. Mindy was still hunting for

evidence when she heard from the Chicago Tribune. Two reporters there had been talking with a Chicago group called the Puppy Mill Project. They'd already noticed at least three pet stores managed to keep selling purebred puppies after the ban went into effect. Mindy told the reporters what she knew, and a huge expose was published in May 2018. They exposed Hobo Canine and another fake rescue out of Missouri. According to their reporting, puppies from these supposed rescues were only showing up in Chicago, where they had the ban. Nowhere else.

But even after that, I mean, it was all over the news. We tried to use that as like a, here's what we need to do to stop the problem. And it still fell on deaf ears. But Mindy was actually wrong about that. The Chicago Tribune story had caught the attention of that assistant attorney general you heard earlier. He thought this could be fraud. We knew that obviously something was very fishy here based on what we saw. That's next.

So it was very exciting. It was, you know, one of my first bigger cases to start on. Andrew Siederdahl works in the Consumer Protection Division of the Iowa Attorney General's Office. He's literally rolled up his sleeves to talk me through his investigation. We're sitting at a long table in this windowless conference room. Andrew's a charming guy with dark hair and a little stubble. I don't tend to pay attention to what happens in Chicago, but someone sent that article to our office and said, oh, this is interesting.

And so it landed on my desk. A month or two after he saw the Chicago Tribune story, Andrew said their office started an investigation. Unlike Mindy or the Chicago Tribune, Andrew had the power to subpoena information. In this case, a subpoena is a court order demanding that Joe Lynn turn over evidence. That meant Andrew could dig deeper than the publicly available information Mindy and the Chicago Tribune had. And so the first subpoena was pretty limited. We just wanted to get some basic information to see if this is checking out, to see if this, you know, is there more to this? There are piles and piles of papers on the

conference table where we're sitting. They're all documents he'd subpoenaed while investigating JoLynn. He had started with some easy questions. You know, what is the mission of Hobo Canine Rescue, for example? Here's how Hobo Canine responded. Quote, our mission is to help unwanted or undesirable canines and or felines find their forever homes. We will work with breeders and other pet professional members in rehoming any animal, flawed, unwanted, or not needed in their breeding programs or homes. If that was Hobo Canine's mission, why were they moving so many in-demand, purebred puppies?

Hundreds of pure designer puppy dogs are being sent to areas where they're supposed to be sourced from rescues, not from brokers and puppy mills or commercial breeders, however you would like to describe them. The paperwork showed highly sought-after puppies that were very expensive and purebred. There were so many things that raised suspicion, Andrew needed a minute. There are so many red flags with how Hobo K9 was operating. It's sort of hard to recall all of them. I'll try. One of the red flags Andrew found

was that Hobo Canine was paying for what are called pedigrees. A pedigree is a document that shows a dog's lineage or family tree. It's a way to prove they're a purebred dog. That the dog you own, like a poodle, comes from a long line of other poodles. Okay, so that is absurd.

No rescues do that. No one cares about pedigrees. Because a pedigree verifies a dog's family tree, it makes the puppies more valuable. Andrew thought it was suspicious that a rescue would want to prove a puppy's breed at all, and that they'd spend this money on something that had zero benefit for the dogs.

The fact that a nonprofit rescue that is claiming to benefit animals is spending money and resources on a pedigree that you would see in a for-profit industry was obviously concerning and a red flag. But there were more. Andrew kept digging. He subpoenaed Jack's Puppies' emails, bank accounts, and records from businesses they often worked with.

Jack's Puppies, as far as we could tell from the records, was taking in lots and lots of dogs from all across the country, many states that have purported puppy mill problems, and many actors that many criticize. A brand new term would be born to describe what JoLynn appeared to be doing. What they would do, it appeared, is that they would simply, you know, on paper, instead of the dog being brokered through the for-profit Jack's Puppies, they would launder the puppy through the what we allege was a sham non-profit.

Puppy laundering. An old kind of fraud with a new spin. And the sham non-profit Andrew is talking about here is Hobo Canine. One lawyer I talked to even compared people who sell puppies to drug dealers. I mean, it's like selling drugs to people. I mean, it's except there's no risk and you're not going to go to jail because nobody prosecutes it. But it's like this product that, you know, your customer base can't resist. At the time, I thought that was extreme, but it might actually be a good way to understand what is happening. Local governments are banning the sale of purebred puppies

to try to cut off customer demand that supports puppy mills. They want to prevent consumers from buying puppies with health issues or supporting their inhumane treatment. Some consumers, though, still want puppies, even if lawmakers no longer think they should be sold. If the prohibition of alcohol in the 1920s taught us anything, it's that Americans want what they want. Sybil Sukup talked to me about this when we were at her shelter. She gets that some people just want a

puppy. You know, they just are seeing this cute little puppy in a pet store, I totally get the lure. I mean, a puppy is adorable. Like, who can resist? But if you only knew, if you only knew how the parents lived and how their lives are confined and in hell, you know, you wouldn't want to continue this, you know, by buying their puppies. The evidence seemed clear, though. The puppies showing up in Chicago pet stores were not rescued. Andrew was about six months into his investigation when something happened

that he couldn't believe. And the investigation took a surprising turn. I don't think that they felt they were going to be held accountable. In December 2018, Andrew Siederdahl was in the middle of his investigation into Hobo Canine, a supposed nonprofit that evidence suggested existed to serve a for-profit business, Jack's Puppies, and to skirt the ban of commercially bred dogs at Chicago pet stores. Hobo Canine Rescue and Jack's was clearly aware that we were onto them. We were investigating them. We had subpoenaed them already. All of those subpoenas were kind of hard to miss. The Attorney General's office had started their investigation in June of that year,

when suddenly, six months in, they find evidence of an entirely separate and new nonprofit. This one was called Rescue Pets Iowa. The only person listed on the state paperwork for Rescue Pets Iowa was a guy named Russell Kirk. He lived in southern Iowa, but Andrew saw another name on the CVIs. On the certificates of veterinary inspection for Rescue Pets Iowa Corp., there were a few where Jolin Nothi signed them, even though she's not on paper as a principal or an officer of that nonprofit. So clearly, she's involved. The galling part of this finding to Andrew was not simply that Jolin's name appeared surreptitiously on paperwork for an entirely new nonprofit. That was bad enough. But the real kicker was the timing.

The paperwork suggested that, in the middle of being investigated by the Attorney General's office, Jolin seemed to have opened another fake rescue. But this one was sending puppies to California. Rescue Pets Iowa appeared on paper just one month before California became the first state to enact a ban of all commercially bred dogs. Up until that point, similar bans had only been enacted locally, or in cities such as Chicago.

The statewide ban took effect in California on New Year's Day 2019. My perception is that they were setting up a new infrastructure that they could use that we wouldn't necessarily know about otherwise had we not stumbled upon it. Russell Kirk was the only person listed on Rescue Pets Iowa's documentation. He would turn out to be the brother of Jolin's boyfriend. I find that a lot of people in this part of the dog industry are related. And I don't mean they're associates, like they work together.

I mean related. As we'll get to, court records show almost every key part of Jolin's enterprise is operated by a family member or close family friend. Now, this looked like not only one, but two rescues being used to trick consumers. Again, bad enough on its own. But Andrew could not get over how brazenly Jolynn appeared to be acting in the middle of being investigated. I mean, that is just, I'm sorry, I don't think I've ever had that happen. You know, when the state attorney general is asking questions, typically the smart thing to

do is to cooperate, to address the concerns, and not to basically goad us into suing them, which is, in my view, kind of what they did, because they left us no choice. But before they made any official decisions, Andrews subpoenaed information from this new rescue, Rescue Pets Iowa. Part of his request included all these emails between Russell Kirk and JoLynn. Russell, as you'll recall, is her boyfriend's brother. I want to share these emails with you, but also not make you listen to me read all of them. So we've asked a couple of people from the same region as JoLynn and Russell to read what they wrote. The first one is from JoLynn. Hi, Russ. These are the puppies this week that we could use some help placing. If you can contact your source and let me know ASAP what and how many

you can help with, I'd appreciate it. Thanks. Then below that message in the email is a list of more than 80 dogs. Each one is listed by their breed and then whether they are male or female. The list included second-generation golden doodles, soft-coated Wheaton terriers, shih tzus, cavapoos, and a miniature schnauzer. All of them listed as if they were purebreds. Russell responded via email a couple hours later. I'm able to find homes for them all. Send them all to me. These emails are chummy and littered with exclamation points.

JoLynn wrote in another email on January 20th, Hey Russ, this week we have about 60 puppies we could use help placing. Can you and your partners do anything? Let us know ASAP. Thanks. Oh, and I have attached the list. And there again, a list of multi-poos, labs, and Alaskan Malamutes. We were able to place them all out this week, so you can send the entire list. Thanks.

Whew. Thanks. I will send them down. She responds as if she was worried that they might not be able to find placements for these purebred rescues. And then the language they used in the emails often was vague. JoLynn referencing these mysterious sources and Russell acknowledging these unknown contacts who could take in each and every one of these puppies. Based on the time codes of the emails, Russell was able to check with these sources pretty quickly. He often responded within a few hours. All of this was part of the evidence Andrew collected and is now part of the public record. So of course, Mindy's looked at it. So when you're looking at those emails and it's like, Russ I've got 74 dogs that need rescued can you help and then Russ goes

sure thing that's not how rescue works I can tell you I've helped rescue animals I've helped transport dogs the questions always are okay you have 74 dogs that need a home what size are they what breed are they like a rescue can't just take 74 dogs. You don't have enough foster space. You don't have enough kennels. You don't know if they're friendly. No questions were asked. Like Andrew, Mindy thinks the connection between Rescue Pets Iowa and Jolene is clear. You see that Jolene, now it's boyfriend's brother, now owns a fake rescue.

But his name isn't on any of the CVIs. What Mindy is saying is that if this guy really started this rescue, his fingerprints would be all over it. Instead, JoLynn's name appears in his place. Besides the emails, Andrew was also able to subpoena financial records. These are the kinds of documents Mindy, reporters, and other animal rights groups couldn't have legally accessed on their own. In all those documents, Andrew found that

large amounts of money made by Hobo Canine and Rescue Pets Iowa would get transferred to Jack's puppies. These are two charities, and money was being exchanged between the for-profit entity and the nonprofit entity. To him, these nonprofits seemed awfully focused on profit. Kimberly Dolphin, JoLynn's business partner, was signing off on the transfers for both organizations. And we have the checks

from their bank account where Kimberly Dolphin wrote, you know, checks upwards of $93,000 from Hobo Canine Rescue to Jaxx. Okay, from the nonprofit to the for-profit, treasure of both. I mean, nothing on the memo line, just 93 grand. He told me that in 2017, they transferred more than a quarter million dollars between Hobo Canine and the for-profit Jack's Puppies. This was just one year from one nonprofit.

Their own records showed Hobo Canine did more than $700,000 in business in two years. But when they filed their tax return for the nonprofit, they claimed to be doing less than $50,000 in business. Why would someone do that? I get why people tell the government they make far less than they actually do. But why $50,000? Like on the nose? If it's under $50,000, you can file what's called a postcard.

You don't have to report as much to the IRS. If you're over 50 grand in gross receipts, you have to fill out a lot more paperwork. You have to explain yourself a lot more. Here again, they found another loophole. To Andrew, it was a sign that they knew they were fudging the numbers. The person who I understood filed that paperwork was Kimberly Dolphin, the treasurer of Jax and Hobo,

who clearly knows how much money is being passed through these entities. It's a large amount. You're supposed to report the gross receipt for your nonprofit. To be fair, my understanding is that they did file an amended return after we started investigating them. The evidence was just piling up. For Andrew and other employees at the Attorney General, JoLynn appeared to be using her charity status to break laws in another state. People going into these Chicago and California pet stores were under the impression the puppies came from a rescue. If they have the information, they know where the dog came from,

where it actually came from, where it actually came from, then they can make that assessment. Yeah. And in this case, you thought that people were not being given that information. No, I mean, and how could they? I mean, I as a, you know, an assistant attorney general have subpoena power where I can go out and to the best, you know, the best of my ability, sort of get all this information, sort hundreds if not thousands of documents, and put all this together over the span of several months. But of course, a regular customer couldn't do those things. In March of 2019, the Iowa Attorney General sued Hobo Canine,

Rescue Pets Iowa, JoLynn, Jack's Puppies, and three other people connected to these operations. They claimed HoboK9, by itself, sold almost 1,300 puppies in four different states over the course of two years. That's part of our case of why it's a deceptive and unfair practice in our view, because no consumer is going to know where that dog came from. And in our view, it's deceptive to claim it's a rescue dog when it's just been brokered.

It's not been rescued from anything. It's being sold at high prices, just like any other dog normally would. As part of his case, Andrew asked Sybil to write out what she saw that day she stopped to visit Hobo Canine's offices. The day she stopped and didn't hear any barking. And Sybil had no problem signing an affidavit. And that's why people like me exist, because so long as people are intent on hurting animals, I'm intent on helping them. The lawsuit asked a judge to force both non-profits to close and pay $40,000 per violation. So say if there were 20 violations,

that could be $800,000. And soon, Andrew would land on yet another discovery. Customers did not just appear to be getting tricked in Chicago and California. It was happening all across the country. This was a full-blown national scheme. That's next time on Smokescreen Puppy Kingpin. I don't want to get myself into trouble here,

but when you start reading about the things that they did, it's kind of scary. Smokescreen Puppy Kingpin is a production of Neon Hum Media. It is reported, hosted, and written by me, Alex Schumann. Lead producer is Natalie Rinn. Our editor is Catherine St. Louis. Chloe Chobol is our associate producer. Managing producer is Samantha Allison. Executive producer at Neon Hum is Jonathan Hirsch. Fact-checking by Sarah Ivry. Asha Ivanovich composed the theme song and music heard throughout this series. Additional tracks by Epidemic Sound and Blue Dot Sessions. Sound design and mixing by Hans Dale Shee.

Special thanks to Amy Jensen, Eric Jensen, Odelia Rubin, Kate Mishkin, Crystal Genesis, Muna Danish, and Joanna Clay.