VAN NUYS : Woman Gets Year in Jail for Cat-Selling Scheme
A Northridge woman who blamed her troubles on an identical cousin who police say does not exist was sentenced Wednesday to one year in jail for selling alley cats as pedigreed felines.
Jaie Brashar, 47, was convicted of cruelty to animals and bilking dozens of pet lovers. She was ordered not to own or sell cats during a five-year probationary period.
A Van Nuys Superior Court jury found Brashar guilty in January of 11 charges after seeing videotapes showing filthy conditions and sickly cats at her apartment.
Brashar was arrested in February, 1992, after numerous people who answered newspaper ads for pedigreed kittens complained to authorities. Animal control officers said they seized 34 cats from Brashar’s apartment, most of them sick and underfed. A cat-breeding expert testified that the kittens Brashar sold for as much as $500 each were not pedigreed and that paperwork documenting the animals’ breeding was bogus.
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