A disgraced police officer has been jailed along with her boyfriend for selling sick and dying kittens in a £280,000 scam.
According to The Times:
Amy Byrne, 40, a former British Transport Police (BTP) officer, and her partner, Harry Angell, 31, bought kittens for as little as £50 and sold them on for more than £1,500.
Many customers found that their new pets were malnourished, ill and covered in their own urine or faeces.
The couple used at least 33 different fake names in their adverts. Byrne lied to buyers that she was a vet and that the kittens had been wormed and microchipped.
Health certificates she provided also turned out to be fake.
The couple pleaded guilty at Woolwich crown court on May 5 to charges of fraud and breaches of the Animal Welfare Act.
Angell was jailed for three years and four months while Byrne was jailed for three years and eight months. The couple were also disqualified from owning pets with no appeal for 10 years.
Hazel Stevens, an RSPCA prosecutor, gave six examples where kittens died soon after being purchased. She said: “There were human and animal victims in this. Humans were at risk of getting illnesses from the cat. Children who were excited about a new member of the family including one child who made a card to thank Amy Byrne, only to see them die days later.”
One victim, who bought a male kitten for her autistic son, found out shortly after Byrne dropped it off that the pet was female, underweight and had diarrhoea stuck in her fur. The animal died a short time later.
Another victim said: “Having recently lost a cat, we were so looking forward to giving a home to a new kitten. We instantly fell in love with Elsa who was so sleepy and cuddly when we got her.
“For the two precious weeks we had her in our lives she became part of our family. We were just devastated to watch her slowly go downhill, monitoring her eating so little, trying to rid her of the worms she arrived with and taking her to the vet for numerous checks and tests.
“She spent her last two days in the animal hospital with them trying everything to make her better, but she gave up the fight and we began our grieving for little Elsa.”
When the owners got back in contact with Byrne and Angell after the sale they were often ignored.
After a string of complaints to trading standards, the RSPCA and the police a search was carried out at the couple’s home in Bexleyheath, southeast London, on August 26, 2021. Seventeen kittens were found on the premises and a vet judged that six of them were suffering.
