Gwinnett nonprofit deals with check fraud and animal abuse cases

A local nonprofit that helps animals said criminals tried to steal tens of thousands of dollars from them.

This is just one worry Planned PEThood is dealing with. They are also investigating an animal abuse case.

“Someone took one of our checks, we suspect, through the Postal service and actually made their own fake checks, using our information. It has our address label and things like that on it,” said Lauren Frost with Planned PEThood.

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Frost said in the last few weeks, the nonprofit has been dealing with check fraud. Someone wrote at least ten fraudulent checks totaling $59,000.

“We started seeing checks rolling through our bank account ranging anywhere from $5,000 to $13,000, all within a 24-hour window. They were all fraudulent,” Frost said.

Frost said things had been an administrative nightmare.

“We are still dealing with it right now. We have an entire spreadsheet of all our vendors. We are having to go one by one by one, changing banking accounts, filling out forms, and verifying things.”

If that was not enough, they are now dealing with a case of animal abuse. The organization says someone threw out the window four kittens right here at this intersection. They were just four days old.

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Now, they are taking care of them.

Frost showed Channel 2 Action News photos of the kittens. They are now in an incubator. They are looking for the person who did this.

“My suspicion would be that someone probably had a cat that had kittens. They did not realize that it was pregnant. They did not want to deal with it. They took the kittens and did a horrible, horrible thing.”

But that is not it.

They are also looking into someone dropping off a dog with Parvo at a house nearby.

“They have footage of a car pulling up, backing up, and then shortly after a dog appeared and it was running after the car.”

Police are looking into the check fraud and kitten cases. As for the scam, the bank has refunded the money and filed a fraud claim with authorities. Police are looking into both cases.

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