On December 7, 2011 the TODAY SHOW had a segment about the largest ON-LINE puppy seller and what a scam it is.

The name was http://purebredbreeders.com/ The guy that owns this company is Jasen Holberg. He has 800 WEB SITES and sells $20,000,000.00 a year in puppies (all according to the Today Show)

He is being sued in a class action law suite by people who bought sick puppies.

This guy buys from puppy mills and charges huge amounts of money for poor quality puppies.

To begin with it is amazing to me that people can be so naive as to look at this guys web site and think they are buying a quality puppy for $2500.00. I know a thing or two about GSD's - I looked at the photos of the dogs he was selling. Many don't even look like they are pure bred GSD'S.

The TODAY SHOW had a video of the guys office. Its a huge building with NO SIGNS. He runs a phone bank of people who are trained to BS people about what they buy. Pretty amazing.

Lets hope the small law suit turns into something bigger than this and the guy is shut down. Of course scum like this have a way of climbing out of one toilet and poking their head up out of another.

The website is still up and selling puppies for exhorbitant rates including so-called designer breeds (aka Mutts).

I had a client at an animal hospital I worked at get an English Bulldog puppy from here. He was $3,600, no pedigree (they were going to send it to him, not sure if they ever did), not-microchipped (they had told the owner the puppy was already chipped), had a decent upper respiratory infection, and a cherry eye.

Ta da!

I should note that this was just a few months ago, so the business is alive and well.

It really sucks that folks all over the country are having to fight BSL and con men like this guy are still raking it in instead of dealing with the legal system themselves.

 Quote: Ed Frawley

.... Lets hope the small law suit turns into something bigger than this and the guy is shut down. Of course scum like this have a way of climbing out of one toilet and poking their head up out of another.

http://purebred-breeders-com-reviews.measuredup.com/9211480/Reviews/Consumer-Complaint-1

http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/South-Florida-a-haven-for-online-puppy-call-centers-118551519.html

http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/11/22/41642.htm

http://buypuppiesdirect-com-reviews.measuredup.com/Complaint-Ringleaders-of-puppymills-133

http://www.miaminewtimes.com/related/to/Jason+Halberg/

There's so much ..... this is a small sampling.

Sadly what all this shows is that Barnum was correct.

Everyone of the people that purchased from this online broker could have gotten a quality pup from a local, responsible breeder or a rescue group. They would even have been better off going to a local BYB where they could at least SEE the dogs before purchasing.

Unfortunately the people I know are an older couple who really just have no idea about dogs and think this dog came from a breeder. They see no relation between the health problems and the puppy mill (I don't think they know what a puppy mill is), and they likely never will.

I was just in Florida to visit my father, walked into a shop that had puppies in human cribs. All were > $2500, all cross bred.

OMG

I saw that they had ACDs and a friend of mine sent an inquiry on one of the ACD puppies. They got a typical act fast "lots of people are interested in Reno (puppy)" email. She called and asked for the pedigree (as they had CH parents). They would not give the pedigree but sent a picture of the sire and dam. I recognized the dam and went to the owner's website. The kicker for me was that "Reno" was listed on the owner's puppyfind.com page for 1200.00 and the purebreddogbreeder.com had him listed at 2400.00.

What a crock.