Some good on going news coverage of the Gina Price (Rebel Ridge Bulldogs and French Bulldogs) trial.
This story is from back in early June – it’s good to see that the judge is treating this case seriously. We’ve all gotten used to the courts treating anything to do with animals as a sort of ‘waste of court time’. Looks like U.S. District Magistrate Judge Dennis Inman doesn’t share that attitude.
From KnoxNews.Com –
An accused peddler of diseased pooches got a warning from a federal magistrate judge Tuesday: Stop yanking his chain.
“You’re jerking me around, Ms. Price,” U.S. District Magistrate Judge Dennis Inman told Gina De’Lynn Price.
Price is under federal indictment on charges she bought diseased dogs from Russia and the Baltic states and passed them off as purebred bulldogs sired at her Rebel Ridge Kennels facility in Sullivan County, selling the dogs to unsuspecting customers throughout the United States and Canada.
Court records allege that many of the dogs, which sold for as much as $3,000 each, died from those undisclosed maladies.
Read the rest here.
Looks like Gina Price’s now ex husband got fed up with both Gina, and the dogs. He gives some background on how Gina went from selling home bred Bulldogs and French Bulldogs, to brokering cheap, sickly imports.
From KnoxNews.Com –
Adam Price was summoned to the witness stand by Assistant U.S. Attorney Nancy Harr in Harr’s bid to prove allegations that Gina Price went from selling purebred bulldogs sired at her Rebel Ridge Kennels to peddling diseased pooches imported from Russia and the Baltic states.
Harr contends Price gave into greed, realizing she could buy imported canines for a few hundred bucks and then resell them via the Internet to unsuspecting customers nationwide and in Canada for thousands of dollars.
Adam Price even alludes to being distressed at the condition the puppies were in when they arrived at the airport –
“He started out trying to help his wife in the puppy-selling business but grew tired of it rather quickly, he said.
I refused to do a Web site because all my time would be spent updating it,” he said.
He picked up imported puppies from an Atlanta airport but quit after a few runs.
“Most of the time they were pretty messy,” he said of the puppies.
Read the rest here.
A testament to the seriousness with which this trial is being handled comes in the form of the pages of FBI testimony. Gina Price’s emails and other correspondence were monitored for months, leaving a paper trail of sick puppies and fraudulent transactions.
From KnoxNews.Com –
Gina De’Lynn Price sold English and French bulldog puppies over the Internet to at least 234 people, according to an FBI agent who testified Monday afternoon on the opening day of her trial.
Price is accused of importing sick bulldog puppies from Eastern Europe and selling them as healthy ones that she raised through her Blountville-based business, Rebel Ridge Kennels, and its Web site, http://www.rebelridgekennels.com.
Special Agent David Campbell’s testimony outlined how Gina Price was well aware that many of the Bulldog and French Bulldog puppies she was importing for re sale were unhealthy, and many were arriving sick with Parvo.
He said Price routinely purchased her animals from three suppliers and complained to the sellers that many of the dogs suffered from parvo – an incurable and often fatal disease that attacks a dog’s intestinal lining – when they arrived in the U.S.
Campbell said Price paid about $500 for each dog, which according to her indictment she then sold for between $1,200 and $2,800. The indictment also claims the dogs suffered from other serious conditions like hip dysplasia and heart murmurs.
Price was also clearly and intentionally leading buyers to believe that they were buying ‘home bred’ Bulldog and French Bulldogs, bred by her at Rebel Ridge, rather than cheaply imported pups. She was also aware that many of the pups weren’t even purebred.
Price is standing trial this week on charges she tricked hundreds of people into believing they were buying purebred English and French bulldog puppies sired at her Rebel Ridge Kennels facility in Sullivan County when instead she was buying diseased dogs imported from puppy mills in Russia and the Baltic states.
…
…a slew of e-mail authored by Price that suggested she was well aware the puppies she was buying from overseas at a discount were diseased and, sometimes, not even purebred.
“Do you think I cannot tell they’re not full-blooded?” Price complained in one e-mail to a Russian puppy mill operator.
Read the rest here.
In the final story I have to recount, Gina Price adds the ultimate insult to the injury she has done to both the puppies, and the people who purchased them from her, when she compares herself to a humanitarian for ‘rescuing’ the pups from Eastern Europe.
Again, from KnoxNews.Com –
The way this upper East Tennessee woman saw it, she wasn’t profiteering from the diseased pooches imported from Russia and the Baltic states.
She was giving the canines a shot at a better life, Gina De’Lynn Price wrote in an e-mail introduced as evidence against her in U.S. District Court on Monday.
“We take these puppies for the almighty dollar, knowing very well ahead of time that they will more than likely come in with some kind of problem that will need medical attention,” Price wrote. “Look at how many illegal (immigrants) come here half dead.”
Really, Gina? Did you bother mentioning that fact – the fact that you ‘knew ahead of time that they would need medical attention’ to your puppy buyers? And did you really just compare the puppies that you traumatized with illegal immigrants who come here seeking a better life?
The last time I checked, Eastern European puppies weren’t willingly tearing themselves away from their mothers at six weeks, and then cramming themselves six deep into crates for 30 hour transatlantic flights.
You can read the mind boggling rest of the story here.
I’ll be doing my best to keep on top of the trial coverage as it comes in, and would welcome hearing from anyone victimized by Gina Price and Rebel Ridge.
