A pet cremation service is scamming customers, victims allege

On a Monday evening in early March, Robert Balog and a friend drove an hour and a half from Van Nuys to Oxnard to meet an elusive man in a Best Buy parking lot.

The man, Anthony Nuñez Jr., 35, of Oxnard, got out of an older model red Ford Ranger and handed Balog a thick black bag. Inside were the decomposing remains of Balog’s beloved pet, an American short-haired tabby cat named Stewie.

Balog drove Stewie home, rolling down the windows to lessen the smell that was beginning to fill the car. He was just grateful to have it back, he said.

Nuñez and his partner, Nejyredth Valasquez, run We Care Pet Cremations, which offers pet recovery and cremation and ashes return in Los Angeles, Ventura, San Bernardino, Kern and Orange counties. Nuñez and Valasquez spend their days driving to collect deceased animals, customers said.

“We Care Pet Cremations only offers true private cremations in a new state-of-the-art machine that features separate chambers with separate doors,” the company claims on its website. “Our mission is to provide affordable, personalized, detailed and dignified private cremation for your loved one.”

But We Care does not have a state-of-the-art crematorium; she takes the animals to other companies’ facilities to be cremated, according to the owner of one of those companies. And after picking up the animals, they often don’t return the cremated remains, several customers said.

Several people who spoke to the Times had nearly identical experiences with the company: Nuñez or Valasquez would pick up their pet at any time of the day, collect payment through Zelle and promise to return with the ashes in two to three weeks.

Then, as weeks and months passed, Nuñez and Valesquez stopped responding to customers. They kept the money and, in most cases, blocked their clients’ calls.

Balog shows off his Stewie tattoo. He says the cremation service he used for Stewie took his payment, then ghosted him for weeks.

(Carlin Stiehl/For Time)

“I feel like I got scammed on the worst day of my life,” Balog said in an interview. “At best it’s a horrible business that’s way beyond them, just picking up animals and not being able to process them. At worst, they are scammers.

Balog, 44, raised Stewie with his friend Tory, who declined to share his last name for fear of retribution from We Care. Tory and Balog were able to recover Stewie’s rotting carcass after harassing We Care with calls and texts from different numbers and leaving several negative reviews online.

Tory also made a public video on Instagram detailing the ordeal and posted it to cat rescue groups on Facebook. Online posts caught We Care’s attention, Tory said, and the company agreed to meet in the Best Buy parking lot. Stewie had not been cremated when Balog came to pick him up, although Nuñez claimed cremation had been carried out.

Looking back, Tory said she should have suspected We Care wasn’t legitimate. “There were some really strange things, but I just thought maybe I was being hypercritical,” she said. Nuñez picked up Stewie in a “random car” despite advertising a black car service, and accepted payment of $560 only through Zelle – a mechanism that does not allow users to stop payments or get easily refunds.

“We are both grieving, grieving and upset. Stewie is like my first child,” she said. But over time, she realized the seriousness of the situation in which she found herself.

“Their communication when you start talking to them is very consistent and responsive,” she said. “The second you pay them, they don’t respond or take a long time to respond. I just had a weird feeling.

Tory confirmed her fears when she found several reviews online detailing similar horror stories. “If you love your pet, don’t call this place,” one reviewer wrote on Google a month ago. “They are good at first, but once they raise money and your loved one, YOU WILL NOT HEAR FROM THEM. …YOU WILL NEVER SEE YOUR PET AGAIN!!!”

Nuñez agreed to an interview with the Times and scheduled a phone call via text message. At the start of the call, he said he had to reschedule the call until the next day. The next day, calls and text messages to his number were blocked.

Tory has helped other pet owners collect their pets’ ashes. She messaged Yelp users who left negative reviews and asked them to contact We Care with different phone numbers and to call and text incessantly to get their attention.

After constantly contacting We Care about her cat, which had been rescued the month before, Gabrielle Real, 23, of Hollywood, finally got an idea of ​​what Nuñez and Valasquez were doing with the bodies.

They told Real that her chocolate Siamese cat Hela was at a Long Beach crematorium called Furrever Friends. The owner of Furrever Friends, who declined to be identified for this article for fear of being inundated with calls from We Care clients, confirmed that she has a contract with We Care to perform third-party cremations.

Balog with his cat Khaleesi.

(Carlin Stiehl/For Time)

She has since ended the contract, she said, and We Care has collected the ashes of all the animals it hired her to cremate.

According to multiple sources, We Care dropped off 50 to 80 dead animals at Furrever Friends without any contact information for the animals’ owners.

Real shared the name Furrever Friends with Tory, who told pet owners she was in contact with that their pets’ ashes might be there. The owner of Furrever Friends began receiving distressed phone calls from We Care clients and was able to find their pets’ ashes at her facility.

Real picked up her cremated pet from Furrever Friends a little over a month after hiring We Care. She never got her $309 back.

The owner of Furrever Friends, who runs a legitimate pet cremation business, said pet owners should do proper research before choosing a business to recover and care for their deceased loved one.

Customers interviewed by the Times said they paid We Care for keepsakes as well as their pets’ ashes, and received none. For example, Jacqueline Alonso, 36, said she paid $227 for her package, which was supposed to include a mold of Spot’s paw print, her chihuahua and another keepsake.

She chose We Care, she said, because the cremation service she used for her last pet was unavailable, and We Care offered pet pickup 24/7. 7.

“By the time your pet dies, your head is everywhere,” she said. “They put Spot in the trunk and took him away.”

She wouldn’t have gotten her pet’s ashes without Tory, she said, who told her Spot might be at Furrever Friends. She picked up Spot’s ashes in Long Beach six weeks after We Care picked them up.

During those six weeks, We Care gave her several excuses, including travel and family emergencies. “They play ping-pong with you and nothing gets done,” Alonso said. “What they do is disgusting, and they still have the nerve to lie to your face.”

Alonso, who lives in Huntington Park, never received his memorabilia or his money. But she said the most important thing was finding Spot’s ashes at Furrever Friends. “My sweet little boy was there,” she said.

Stewie was never sent to Furrever Friends, Tory said. She believes Nuñez and Valasquez have a refrigeration facility in Oxnard where they keep the bodies. “They pocket the money and keep the animals,” Tory said. “Do they know what kind of emotional distress and trauma they cause in people?

Tory assumed the worst when she stopped hearing from We Care: that they had dumped her pet in a dumpster or on the side of the road somewhere.

The Times contacted We Care from a number other than the one Nuñez apparently blocked, to seek approval. He responded quickly to organize the collection of the animals. The company now also operates under a new name, Honorable Animal Aftercare, according to Tory, who saw that name on his invoice.

“They don’t stop,” said Tory, who is considering his next steps. “I just don’t want this to happen to anyone else.”