A PET owner said he was targeted while grieving the loss of his beloved cat, costing him hundreds.
Robert Balog and a friend drove from Van Nuys, California to Oxnard for a bizarre meeting to get back a prized possession.
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The duo met 35-year-old Anthony Nuñez Jr. in a Best Buy parking lot so he could return the remains of Balog’s pet short-hair American tabby cat, Stewie.
Balog drove the decaying remains home, thankful he got them back from Nuñez and his partner Nejyredth Valasquez.
Valasquez and Nuñez run We Care Pet Cremations, a business that picks up and cremates pets and returns the ashes to their owners.
Customers say the couple drives around for hours, looking for dead animals to cremate.
“We Care Pet Cremations only offers true private cremations in a state-of-the-art new machine that has separate chambers with separate doors,” the business says on its website.
“It is our mission to provide an affordable, personalized, detailed, and dignified private cremation for your loved one.”
But customers were dismayed to learn that the company didn’t have a “state-of-the-art” crematorium.
Instead, We Care employees took animals to the facilities of other businesses to be cremated, the owner of one of these companies told the Los Angeles Times.
Several customers have come forward claiming that Nuñez or Valasquez would pick up their pet and accept payment through Zelle with the promise of returning the ashes between two to three weeks.
However, as time passed, the couple would stop replying to the customers and allegedly would keep the money.
“I feel like I got scammed on the worst day of my life,” Balog told the Los Angeles Times.
“In the very-best-case scenario, they’re a horrible business that’s in way over their head, just picking up animals and not being able to process them. Worst-case scenario, they’re scammers.”
Balog and his friend, Tory, who didn’t give her last name, got Stewie’s remains after constantly reaching out to We Care through calls and texts from different numbers and leaving several negative reviews.
Tory also made a video on Instagram calling out the company and sharing her story on several cat rescue groups on Facebook.
She said strange things about the company should have set off more red flags.
“There were some really odd things, but I just thought maybe I was being hypercritical,” she said such as Nuñez picking up Stewie in a random car despite advertising a black car service.
We Care also only accepted payment – which in Balog and Tory’s case was $560 – through Zelle.
However, Tory believes Nuñez and Valaquez never sent Stewie to be cremated and kept him in a refrigerated facility in Oxnard.
“They’re pocketing the money and they’re storing the pets,” Tory said.
“We’re both distressed, we’re mourning and we’re upset. Stewie is like my first child.
“Their communication when you start talking to them is very consistent and responsive. Then the second you pay them, they don’t respond or they take a long time to respond.
“I just had a weird feeling.”
Her fears were confirmed after finding several reviews with similar stories.
“If you love your pet don’t call this place,” read one review on Google.
We’re both distressed, we’re mourning and we’re upset. Stewie is like my first child.
Tory
“They will be helpful until they receive payment and then they will ignore your calls. It’s been over a month and I still haven’t received my pet’s ashes,” someone else commented on the company’s Facebook page.
“Make a report with the police so they can investigate, they are scamming people,” another person commented.
Plus, an entire Reddit thread was dedicated to raising awareness of We Care’s unethical ways.
Multiple sources told The Los Angeles Times that We Care dropped off 50 to 80 pet remains to Furrever Friends, a legitimate pet cremation business.
The U.S. Sun has reached out to We Care Pet Cremations for comment.
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