The following is a verbatim replica of news coverage of the AKC in the Philadelphia Inquirer on April 25,1997. This copyrighted material is reprinted with permission from the Philadelphia Inquirer and may not be further reproduced without express permission from the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Friday, April 25, 1997

Dog registry focus

of federal probe

New York State authorities also are investigating

possible fraud at the American Kennel Club

By Karl Stark

INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

The American Kennel Club, long regarded as the guarantor of purebred dogs in the United States is under investigation by federal and New York State authorities for possible fraud in its highly touted registry.

Buyers typically pay top dollar for AKC registered dogs on the assumption that they are buying purebreds. But critics, including former AKC employees, have long contended that the papers certifying pedigrees often are doctored by breeders and that the kennel club has been lax in correcting the record. The kennel club earned $35 million last year -- 76 percent of its income -- from the registration fees from more than 1.3

million dogs.

The AKC, which is based in New York, recently acknowledged that it was the target of two probes and said both were "without merit."

In an April 10 memo to the AKC's 526 delegates nationwide, President Alfred L. Cheauré said the AKC "has received a request for certain records from the U.S. Attorney's Office in New York," adding that he did not know "the complete nature, scope, or status of this inquiry."

In an earlier memo to AKC delegates, dated March 14, Cheauré wrote that the New York Attorney General's Office also had requested information.

Cheauré said in his memos that the AKC would cooperate with both agencies, and concluded by saying that "AKC is proud of the integrity of its Stud Book."

Mitchell Speed, a spokesman for the U.S. Postal Inspection Service in New York confirmed that the postal inspectors had been investigating the AKC for about a year and had recently joined forces with the U.S. Attorney's Office of the Southern District in Manhattan. The Postal Inspection Service has jurisdiction over the AKC registry because the papers documenting lineage typically are sent by mail.

Spokesmen for both the U.S. Attorney and the New York Attorney General declined to discuss the probe.

In December 1995 The Inquirer published a story in which six former inspectors for the AKC said that the registry was largely a sham and that the club rarely removed dogs from the rolls even when investigators found widespread violations.