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Inset: Patrick Vereb (Vereb Funeral Home). Background: Vereb Funeral Home in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (Google Maps).
A Pennsylvania funeral home director allegedly bilked some 6,500 people out of more than $650,000 by promising to cremate their cats and dogs, but instead dumping the animal carcasses in a landfill and giving the pet owners fake ashes.
Patrick Vereb, 70, is charged with several felony counts, including theft by deception, receiving stolen property and deceptive business practices, Attorney General Dave Sunday announced. Vereb, the owner of Vereb Funeral Home and Eternity Pet Memorial in the Pittsburgh area, told pet owners he would cremate their dog or cat and return the ashes in an urn for a fee. But instead of actually cremating the animals, he would dump the carcasses in a landfill and give the ashes of an unknown animal to the customers, Sunday said.
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“From 2021 and 2024, Mr. Vereb neglected his duty of care by deliberately and repeatedly betraying his customers who wanted a dignified service for their beloved dog or cat,” Sunday said in a prerecorded video.
Sunday noted that the customers paid Vereb a “significant amount of money” for those services. The case is so extensive that the AG’s office created a website and email address to update victims on the status of their cases.
“As a pet owner myself, I can’t imagine the heartbreak in learning that you were affected by a crime like this,” Sunday stated, adding that he found the case “disturbing.”
According to local CBS affiliate KDKA, the case broke open thanks to an intern-turned-whistleblower. Tiffany Mantzouridis earned an internship at the funeral home after graduating from mortuary school in February 2024. In addition to helping with human funerals, she told the TV station Verb also had her handle the cremations for the dogs and cats.
However, Mantzouridis noticed something was off.
“He would get pets in, and they wouldn’t go in the freezers,” she said, adding that it is important to freeze the carcasses to preserve them.
She also said the spreadsheet that kept track of the cremations was inaccurate.
“And then when I pulled the spreadsheet up, I noticed that there was a very alarming amount of pets that didn’t have crematory numbers,” she said.
Mantzouridis concluded, “There was something very bad going on.” She claimed Vereb would send the bigger pets to the crematory but not the smaller ones. He would then allegedly mix the ashes all together and give them to the owners as if it were only their pet.
Vereb was taken into custody Monday and released on his own recognizance. His next court date is scheduled for May 9.
According to the funeral home’s website, Vereb became a licensed funeral director at the age of 21. He boasts “there are over 20,000 pet’s portraits” on PetMemorialPittsburgh.com.
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