By Kathryn Knight Couple who make Cruella de Vil look kind-hearted

They bought sick and dying kittens cheaply online – then sold them to besotted families for up to £1,500 in a callous £300,000 scam. Here their distraught victims tell their stories

When ten-year-old Bryn Stutley learned he was to become the proud owner of a new kitten, he was so excited that he wrote a card to the breeder to express his gratitude and happiness.

‘Thank you so much for our new kitten. We will love him and spoil him for ever,’ he wrote.

Bryn, who is autistic, had been left griefstricken by the death of his previous, muchloved cat. his mother, Yolanda, had saved for months to splash out on a £900 male pedigree Maine coon kitten in a bid to cheer him up.

‘Bryn missed our old cat so much,’ she recalls. ‘he had even taught him sign language to communicate with him. We were both really looking forward to the new arrival.’

Yolanda, 45, bought the kitten — whom they named Lokie — from a seller called ‘Semeena’, who assured the family that he was microchipped, vaccinated and would come with all the right paperwork.

Yet when Semeena arrived at Yolanda’s hampshire home in May 2021, something felt wrong immediately. Claiming that she had ‘forgotten’ the paperwork and would have to post it to Yolanda later, Semeena hastily deposited the kitten into Bryn’s arms and lingered just long enough for Yolanda to make a bank transfer before departing as quickly as she had arrived.

Moments later, Yolanda discovered the kitten was, in fact, female, emaciated, smelled badly and had soiled herself.

Dismayed and upset, she took the little kitten to the vet, who informed Yolanda that she was severely malnourished and had a possible gut infection.

Despite antibiotics, the kitten died three days later. Bryn was devastated.

Semeena, meanwhile, was not responding to telephone calls — but then Semeena was not even her real name. It was one of the many aliases used by Amy Byrne, a 30-year-old former police officer-turned-modern-day Cruella de Vil, from Bexleyheath in South-east London, who, alongside her boyfriend, harry Angell, 31, was jailed earlier this month for fraud and a series of animal welfare offences.

Woolwich Crown Court heard how, in a scam worth nearly £300,000, the duo — using up to 33 different names — sold dozens of kittens to buyers who paid up to £1,500 for what they believed to be pedigree breeds, only to discover their new pets were malnourished, unwell and, in some instances, covered in their own urine and faeces.

Some had worms, others had conjunctivitis, and many died within days of being delivered. One kitten even had a broken tail which Byrne told the buyer was a ‘kink’ from birth.

Messages on the couple’s ‘burner’ phones (which allow anonymity and digital privacy) revealed their modus operandi was to buy cheap kittens online and then sell them on at a vast profit.

Despite frequently claiming to be a veterinary nurse, Byrne actually worked for the British Transport Police, joining in 2015 — the year she also started her trade in animals — in a civilian capacity, before becoming a uniformed officer in 2017. neither she, nor Angell, had any veterinary qualifications at all.

When RSPCA officers raided their semi-detached home, they found 17 kittens on the premises, many of which were living in the back garden. A vet judged that six of the cats were in severe pain and one died shortly after being rescued.

An investigation carried out by RSPCA inspectors Kirsten Ormerod and Vikki Dawe subsequently discovered 175 expired and current adverts — posted by the couple over a period of just one year — on a number of websites including Pets4homes, Gumtree and FreeAds.

They had also set up their own website called Cat Cuddles — in fact, the name of an unrelated and legitimately registered cat rehoming charity — via which they advertised their cruel trade.

Prospective purchasers were asked to show them ID. The couple would then take copies of these documents and use them as aliases to advertise other kittens.

Many of their victims were left out of pocket and devastated, among them mother-of-three Yolanda, a private cleaner, who simply wanted a companion for her son.

The moment ‘Semeena’ arrived in her white Mercedes, Yolanda was suspicious. ‘her boyfriend was in the car, and she had two cats with her.

Once she’d overseen the bank transfer she couldn’t get away fast enough,’ she told the Mail.

Sensing something wasn’t right, Yolanda took a picture of the woman’s number plate as she left. Months later, that picture subsequently helped police trace Byrne to her home address.

Two weeks after Byrne delivered the kitten to Yolanda’s house, she arrived at the home of yet another victim: Janina Tetnowski, 47, a PA from Cambridgeshire.

Janina had bought a ragdoll kitten from Byrne — now calling herself ‘Beth’ — as a present for her two youngest children, who had pestered her for years to have a cat.

‘Work commitments meant that for a long time it didn’t seem fair, but finally we were in a position to give a cat a good home,’ she says.

She had chosen the ragdoll breed as they are better suited to living indoors, and the one offered for sale by Beth for £700 looked perfect: a nine-week-old, chocolate-and-creamcoloured beauty.

‘I wanted to go and see it first, but Beth said she was going away and it would be easier logistically if she delivered it,’ she recalls.

Yet when Beth and her boyfriend (in reality Byrne and Angell) delivered the kitten — named Phasma — she was in a sorry state.

‘She was weak, emaciated, she smelled bad and her fur was sticky,’ Janina recalls. ‘She was not remotely as advertised, but I knew I couldn’t send her away.

‘More than anything, I felt she needed our love and I didn’t want to send a message to my son that she wasn’t pretty enough.’

Janina handed over £700 cash and, in return, was given birth, vaccination and vet certificates — all of which would prove to be fake.

The next day, Janina took Phasma to the vet. ‘She was so weak she couldn’t even lick herself clean,’ she recalls. ‘The vet told me she was malnourished and needed worming, and put her on antibiotics.’

Initially, Phasma seemed to rally. But within days her condition had deteriorated and Janina had to take her to the emergency vet.

‘They put her on a drip, which costs a fortune, but at that point it was anything to keep her alive,’ she says. ‘She was such a sweet little thing.’

Once again she rallied enough to go home the next day. But that night, eight days after Janina got her, Phasma fell into a coma.

‘Again, we rushed to the vet, but there was nothing they could do, and she had to be put to sleep,’ Janina says. ‘My children were devastated.’

Like many other victims, Janina tried to contact ‘Beth’, only for her messages to go unanswered.

‘I couldn’t believe someone could behave this way,’ she says. ‘I just

‘Pedigree’ cats were emaciated and in pain

wanted to understand what had happened to Phasma.’

After undertaking some internet sleuthing, Janina discovered another buyer who, like her, had bought a ragdoll kitten, but from someone called ‘Shannon’ — the name Janina recalled Beth signing on her receipt, which had puzzled her at the time — which had also died. Realising that Shannon and Beth were the same person, the duo called the police and RSPCA.

It was one of a mounting number of calls made to the RSPCA by the summer of 2021. Among those who had made a complaint was Niki Graske, 46, chief operating officer for a military charity, who after corresponding with ‘Beth’, arranged to collect what she believed to be two Maine coon kittens — one black, one tabby — paying £1,350 by bank transfer to Angell’s bank account.

Only a day later, however, Nikki noticed that the black kitten seemed unwell. ‘I took them both to the vet, who advised the kittens were very small for nine weeks and one wasn’t a male as advertised,’ she says.

Yet when she tried to communicate with Byrne and Angell, her messages also went unanswered.

Within a couple of days, Niki noticed that the tabby she had named Phoenix was riddled with tapeworm, and the black kitten, Elsa, had diarrhoea and wasn’t eating very much.

She took Elsa to the vet where she died two days later, leaving Niki and her partner devastated.

‘We instantly fell in love with Elsa, who was so sleepy and cuddly when we got her,’ she says. ‘For the two precious weeks we had her in our lives, she actually became part of our family.’

It was little comfort to the couple, after contacting the RSPCA, to learn that they were not alone. ‘We were horrified to hear that other families had been in a similar position to us,’ she says.

Happily, Byrne and Angell’s scam was shortly to be toppled.

In August 2021, following a string of complaints to Trading Standards officers, the RSPCA and the police, a warrant was issued, enabling officers to enter and search the couple’s home.

During the raid, officers found Byrne and Angell at the property — a ground-floor flat, with an unkempt garden. Along with the 17 kittens, they discovered two juvenile squirrels and a pygmy hedgehog.

The search was not without drama: Woolwich Crown Court was told that Angell jumped out of the window and attempted to dispose of his phone in a neighbour’s front garden, while Byrne had tried to eliminate any damning correspondence on her own phone by starting a factory reset.

It was not enough to hide incriminating evidence of an operation that investigators learned dated back to 2015, and from which police believe the duo conservatively stood to gain £280,000.

Finally, on May 5, the couple pleaded guilty to three charges of fraud and breaches of the Animal Welfare Act. By then, Byrne had been fired from the British Transport Police for gross misconduct after two cannabis plants, a bag of

‘She was so weak she couldn’t lick herself clean’

cannabis, a half-smoked joint and cannabis seeds had been found at her home in June 2021.

Angell was given a prison sentence of three years and four months, while Byrne was jailed for three years and eight months.

The couple were also disqualified from owning pets for life, with no appeal permitted for ten years.

For RSPCA inspector Kirsten Ormerod, their incarceration, the result of months of painstaking work, was a relief.

After Byrne and Angell’s sentencing she said: ‘I am incredibly grateful to the brave witnesses who helped us build this case,’ she told the Mail.

‘Welcoming a pet into their homes should have been a positive experience, but for many it resulted in large vet bills to try and save their new, poorly kitten, and for some, having them die within hours before their eyes — which will have been a devastating experience.’

Those Byrne and Angell so thoughtlessly duped remain bewildered by how anyone could treat an animal the way they did.

‘Although Phasma did not live long, I can only hope that during her last days she felt more love and care than she had ever received in her life before then,’ says Janina.

For Yolanda, the betrayal of human trust is just as hard to swallow. ‘I find it absolutely disgusting that they could use animals to manipulate people,’ she says. ‘And all because of money.’