Dog trainer jailed over 'duff sniffer dogs'
A dog trainer was sentenced to six and a half years in prison today for providing defective bomb-sniffing dogs to the US government after the September 11 attacks and lying about their credentials.
Russell Lee Ebersole, convicted in June on 27 counts of fraud, insisted his dogs were competent and blamed his conviction on jealous competitors.
“I believe in my employees. I believe in my dogs. They are heroes,” Ebersole said at sentencing.
Ebersole’s Detector Dogs Against Drugs and Explosives, of Stephenson, Virginia, provided bomb-sniffing dogs to several federal agencies in the months after the attacks. The agencies paid Ebersole $700,000 (€631,000) from September 2001 to May 2002.
Ebersole’s contracts were cancelled after his dogs failed independent tests on five different occasions.
On one test, dogs were unable to detect 50lbs of dynamite and nearly 15lbs of C-4 plastic explosives hidden at the Federal Reserve parking garage in Washington.
“There is something sickeningly wrong about a man who would steal from FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) when that agency was stretched to the limit coordinating relief efforts after the terror attacks," prosecutor Thomas McQuillan said.
US District Judge Leonie Brinkema imposed the maximum sentence.
