Steffen Baldwin. (Beth Clifton collage)
Bond of $200,000 set for “The hot dog man,” allegedly caught hot dogging a few times too often
MARYSVILLE, Ohio––Bond of $200,000 was set on August 5, 2020 for high-profile pit bull advocate Steffen Baldwin by Judge Mark O’Connor of the Common Pleas Court in Union County, Ohio.
Arrested on July 23, 2020 in Acton, California, Baldwin was extradited to Ohio to face a 42-count criminal indictment, accessible at https://www.facebook.com/pawprotectorsrescue/photos/rpp.181324838630169/3089596421136315/?type=3&theater.
Rising rapidly to prominence after becoming executive director of the Union County Humane Society in August 2008, Baldwin has often been featured at public events, in publications, and on the web sites of pro-pit bull organizations including Austin Pets Alive, the Best Friends Animal Society, Los Angeles Animal Services, and Maddie’s Fund.
Steffen Baldwin. (Facebook photo)
Ran failed tattoo shop & grant writing business
After leaving the Union County Humane Society in 2013, Baldwin with considerable fanfare formed the Animal Cruelty Task Force of Ohio, but the organization fizzled and was stripped of IRS 501(c)(3) charitable nonprofit status in 2017 after three consecutive years of failing to file annual financial reports.
Baldwin later admitted in a LinkedIn posting that the Animal Cruelty Task Force of Ohio was not “my first business idea or my first business venture for that matter. A few years earlier I was the co-owner of an unsuccessful tattoo shop, Lions & Lambs in Marysville, and a few years before that I started an unsuccessful grant writing business, Baldwin Consulting Solutions. Both failed miserably.”
Steffen Baldwin and Luke Westerman.
(Facebook photo)
Partnered with securities fraud suspect
Baldwin and Jeffery Luke Westerman meanwhile co-founded the political action committee Ohioans Against Breed Discrimination in 2015.
Westerman left Ohio in 2018 to become executive director of the Humane Society of El Paso, Texas, but left that position three days after television station KFOX 14 on January 3, 2019 reported his indictment by an Ohio grand jury on 19 felony counts of securities law violations and theft.
Franklin County prosecutor Ron O’Brien told media that Westerman had between 2010 and 2018 allegedly “solicited over $700,000 from 10 Ohio citizens for investment purposes, later misrepresented the status of the purported investments in false account statements, and used some funds for personal purposes rather than the expressed investment purpose. Cash withdrawals and use for personal expenses from investment funds exceeded $300,000.”
Westerman has not yet gone to trial, his original trial dates in February and March 2020 having been indefinitely postponed due to requirements of social distancing imposed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
(Facebook photo)
“Killed at least eight dogs”
In the interim, wrote Marysville Journal-Tribune reporter Mac Cordell, “The Union County Grand Jury has indicted Steffen Evan Baldwin, also known as Steffen Finkelstein, 39,” who is now “charged with engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity, bribery, 15 counts of telecommunications fraud, 13 cases of cruelty to animals, six counts of tampering with records, two counts of grand theft, two counts of falsification, and one count each of grand theft of a firearm and impersonation of a peace officer.
“Included in the court documents,” Cordell mentioned, “is the allegation that Baldwin ‘did negligently, needlessly kill’ at least eight dogs,” all of them believed to be pit bulls whom Baldwin had contracted to train and rehome.
One of those pit bulls, named in the indictments, was Remi, rehomed to Angelo and Litsa Kargakos, of Hubbard, Ohio, in May 2016, despite having been identified as a “dangerous dog” according to Ohio law by the Trumbull County pound.
(Facebook photo)
“Yard accident”
“When we pulled Remi, he had some pretty severe guarding issues,” Angelo and Litsa Kargakos acknowledged in subsequent Facebook postings. “We rehabilitated Remi in our home for four months and invested thousands of dollars in him. We reached the point that he needed to go somewhere with a broader network of possible adopters. We gave Steffen $1,000 to polish Remi up and find him his forever home.”
Instead, Remi disappeared. Baldwin in April 2017 claimed via Facebook that Remi had been euthanized after killing another pit bull, named Zack, in a “yard accident.”
Paperwork issued by the Rascal Animal Hospital, of Dublin, Ohio, confirmed that Baldwin brought Remi for euthanasia on December 28, 2016.
Angelo and Litsa Kargakos publicized the case, bringing forward testimony from others who described having had similar experiences with Baldwin.
(Beth Clifton collage)
“Total exceeds number of indictments”
“I am not sure we are ever going to know the total number of animals he killed,” Union County prosecutor Dave Phillips told Cordell. “I certainly think the total exceeds the number of indictments.”
Summarized Cordell, “Phillips said investigators began looking into Baldwin,” who shortly thereafter relocated to southern California.
“In California,” Cordell continued, “Baldwin started Save Them Dog Training, which focused on reactive dogs with bite histories. He also helped found Underdog Alliance to advocate for dogs with severe behavioral problems.
“Phillips said Baldwin would allegedly tell people he was taking dogs in to rescue or adopt them.”
(Beth Clifton collage)
Stole a handgun?
Explained Phillips, “Then he would raise money for the dogs – for their care, for their adoption, for their training – but had allegedly euthanized them,” demonstrating what Phillips called “a pattern of lying to people to raise money. The allegations,” Phillips said, “indicate the money he raised for the animals, even after they were euthanized, were used for his personal expenses,” including gifts for his girlfriend and entertainment at strip clubs.
Stipulated Cordell, “The indictments indicate Baldwin took funds from a variety of animal shelters, organizations, and individuals throughout the state and nation. The indictments also allege Baldwin lied on his resume to get his position in Union County, and that he lied on court documents. Also included in the indictment is the allegation that he stole a handgun from an animal rescue task force.
“Phillips said local investigators worked with police in California,” Cordell finished. “He said that when it was time to serve the indictment and arrest Baldwin, police in California invited Baldwin to conduct an animal training for the department. When Baldwin arrived, U.S. Marshals arrested him.
Sharon Logan. (Facebook photo)
“False narrative & agenda”
“If convicted on all counts,” Cordell noted, “Baldwin could face more than 81 years in prison.”
In actuality, sentencing on the multiple charges would normally be concurrent, not consecutive. Typically defendants in animal cruelty and fraud cases are sentenced on only one or two counts for which they are convicted, with further sentencing suspended on condition of good behavior while serving whatever sentences they receive immediately.
Charged Sharon Logan of Paw Protectors Rescue, in Orange County, California, who helped Angelo and Litsa Kargakos to pursue their case against Baldwin, “This is a perfect example of those in the no-kill movement pushing a false narrative and agenda, and of no-kill gone horribly wrong and awry!”
Earlier, on February 6, 2019, Logan posted a list of three incidents allegedly involving Baldwin and pit bulls he trained, distilled from information that Baldwin himself posted to social media. In one of those incidents, a trainer visiting Baldwin from England was allegedly mauled by a pit bull named Goober, “had to be hospitalized for three days, suffered a broken leg and needs extensive plastic surgery.”
Also, Baldwin allegedly “rescued” a pit bull named Travis from Orange County Animal Services, who had bitten two other dogs and two humans, and was found dead three weeks later; and a pit bull brought to Baldwin for training by a rescue in Long Beach, California, “lost his tail in a fight with another while in Steffen’s care.”
“Crickets” & the “Hot Dog Man”
Logan noted “Crickets [silence] from some of his most diehard supporters of the last two years,” naming the Best Friends Animal Society, Austin Pets Alive founder Eileen Jefferson, Pima Animal Care director Kristen Auerbach, and Los Angeles Animal Services general manager Brenda Barnette.
Logan also mentioned Saskia Boisot of the No Kill Shelter Alliance, and the pit bull advocacy organizations Live Love Animal Rescue, Blockhead Brigade, IPitttytheBull, I Stand With My Pack, and Pitty Pawfessors Humane Education.
Additionally worthy of mention would be the pit bull advocates who have since November 2017 helped Baldwin to promote Belle & the Hot Dog Man, an illustrated book for children promoting the adoption of former fighting dogs.
Jacqueline Bedsaul Johnson & husband.
Bosco
Baldwin managed to establish a reputation for himself as a purported expert trainer and handler of pit bulls despite having apparently been integrally involved in the high-profile failed attempted rehabilitation of a pit bull named Bosco by then 61-year-old Best Friends Animal Society employee Jacqueline Bedsaul Johnson in 2017.
According to Johnson in an April 4, 2017 posting to Facebook, Bosco “was found running at large in November [2016] and taken to Animal Control,” apparently in Toledo, Ohio.
“Lucas County Pit Crew pulled him,” Johnson continued, “and he went into a foster home. He was adopted days before Christmas,” but “bit his adopter,” and was returned to a foster home after completing quarantine.
“Ohio declared him a dangerous dog because of the bite,” Johnson admitted, “so he was moved to an out of state foster home. He was driven across the country to our home in Arizona.”
On December 4, 2017, Bosco turned on Johnson.
“Both her arms were broken, [her] wrist [was] shattered and [she] nearly lost a finger,” which was reattached, Johnson’s daughter Adria recounted in a GoFundMe appeal on her mother’s behalf.
(See What pit bull advocates don’t learn from their own maulings.)
Steffen Baldwin. (Facebook photo)
Philosophy degree from West Point?
Baldwin’s credentials in many respects, not just as a nonprofit administrator and dog expert, have been called into question since 2014 by the Ohio-based pit bull victim advocacy blog Scorched Earth.
“Begin by taking a look at the resume that Mr. Baldwin, also known as Steffen Evan Finkelstein, posted on LinkedIn,” Scorched Earth advised. “Start at the bottom with education.”
Baldwin claimed to have attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point from 1999 to 2001, earning a bachelor’s degree in philosophy, but the dates of when Baldwin claims to have attended West Point conflict with those of his active duty stint in the U.S. Army, from July 1998 to December 2001.
After discharge, according to the LinkedIn entry, Baldwin held a series of YMCA jobs from June 2002 through August 2005, became development manager for a drug treatment facility, and then was executive director for the Victor Valley Community Hospital Foundation, identified by Scorched Earth as “a community hospital [in southern California] that went bankrupt in 2010.”
Bradley Lane Croft. (Beth Clifton collage)
Haisley & Croft
Baldwin and Westerman are only the latest of many high-profile pit bull advocates to face charges recently in somewhat comparable cases.
Animal Rescue Corps founder and former Humane Society of the U.S. director of investigations Scotlund Haisley, 51, of Montgomery County Maryland, was on September 13, 2019 sentenced to serve to 46 months in prison for robbing and attempting to rob a Washington D.C. Subway sandwich shop, on two separate occasions in January 2019.
(See Haisley gets four years for robbery, domestic violence charges pending.)
Merritt, Teddy, & Beth Clifton
Bradley Lane Croft, 48, whom the pit bull advocacy organization Animal Farm Foundation funded from 2013 to 2017 to prepare pit bulls for police work, was on December 18, 2019 ordered to forfeit more than $1 million in assets to the federal government, following his conviction on eight counts of wire fraud, four counts of aggravated identity theft, two counts of money laundering and two counts of making a false tax return.
(See Convicted of G.I. Bill fraud: trainer who prepped pit bulls for police work.)
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Adria Johnson should have been charged with animal cruelty and a subject in this article. It’s not acceptable to blow a dog’s head off hours after the attack. Bosco’s deterioration was mishandled for months and crickets on his manner of death. He should have been humanely euthanized.
Exactly what became of Bosco, and how long after he nearly killed owner/rescuer Jacqueline Bedsaul Johnson, is unclear. Blogged Johnson herself on December 2, 2019, nearly two years after the attack, “Bosco had to be killed that night while I was being ambulanced to a hospital an hour and a half away. He didn’t get the dignity of a calm and supported, peaceful euthanasia. Instead he endured the trauma of his own emotions and behaviors and died in a state of reactivity and violence.” To be remembered is that the attack occurred at night, in Fredonia, Arizona, only seven miles from the Best Friends Animal Society headquarters in Kanab, Utah, but more than 20 miles from the nearest private practice veterinarian. Capturing and transporting Bosco, still in “the trauma of his own emotions and behaviors,” to an unfamiliar place to be euthanized by unfamiliar people, would undoubtedly have been more stressful for him, and certainly more dangerous for whoever had to handle him, than simply shooting him in his own back yard. “Bosco’s deterioration,” meanwhile, is a pit bull advocacy fiction. Bosco was already a highly reactive and extremely dangerous dog, even by pit bull standards, when first impounded in Lucas County, Ohio, and already was designated an officially dangerous dog, with bite history, long before the Lucas County Pit Crew transferred him to Johnson.
This whole article is stupid. There’s been such a man hunt for this poor guy for years. I’ve met him multiple times, have given rescue dogs to him and he’s the most caring and trustworthy person. Which is hard to come by in rescue. Give him a break. When you work with dangerous dogs, of course people are going to be bit and digs are going to need to be put down. Focus your energy somewhere else. This guy is a saint in my eyes.
The purported “saint” in question is facing 39 felony charges, brought as result of complaints to law enforcement by multiple people in multiple states.
And not all of them are about animals. It looks like this guy is a sociopath.
You’re right, a minority of them about about animals. None of it sounds overly incriminating to me – there have been many times when if I could physically have taken and then withheld a firearm from someone in a tense situation – which rescue work often is – I absolutely would have done so. “Theft of a firearm” sounds like it probably shouldn’t have been been criminal. Dogs die when you’re doing rescue work, and people get bit. The hope is that not ALL of the dogs die, and this guy managed that for many years. Every news article about this situation is slanted with anti-bully breed rhetoric and uses language so inflammatory it’s not even clear what ACTUALLY happened in any of the incidents recounted.
Devon, above, is at liberty to read the complete 42-count indictment for himself, at the link ANIMALS 24-7 posted: https://www.facebook.com/pawprotectorsrescue/photos/rpp.181324838630169/3089596421136315/?type=3&theater.
He is a pos and I hope he gets 81 years in prison.
Steffin Baldwin was invited and came to 2 different Humane Societies on 2 separate occassions and spoke (free of charge) to help staff and volunteers work with Pitbulls in the shelter. He had good training tips and showed us hands on positive training techniques. We saw genuine care and professional conduct. I am shocked to hear the allegations. I hope they are not true, and or their are explanations. I am not an attorney, but I do recall hearing in America people are innocent until proven guilty. More will be revealed, and if Steffin is proven guilty in a court of law, then I will accept the charges as facts. For those celebrating his downfall, a strike against any animal rescuer makes all of us look bad. It hurts the animals we try to help. Guilty or innocent, this is a sad occurence.
Many pretend rescues out there. In the horse industry even more of them …
Comparable cases??? Robbing a Subway shop and identity theft has exactly zilch to with this and is in no way similar. Trying to shame pit bull advocates by including stories that are in no way related is shameful and is totally grasping at straws. Pit bull advocates are human….and include the good, the bad, and the ugly. I’m sure if you search, you’ll find poodle advocates that went to jail for something also!
Armed robbery and theft by fraud are, in the eyes and letter of the law, closely related offenses, differentiated by the methods used but not in the outcome.
ANIMALS 24-7 has reported about poodle advocates involved in animal hoarding and pet theft cases, but we are unaware of any who have been charged with either armed robbery or fraud to the extent alleged in the Steffen Baldwin case.
Comparable in that these pit bull rescue scam artists always have a side hustle. Even Tia Torres wanted to open a brothel and a invest in a pot farm. When her “Pit Bulls & Parolees” husband was busted and rightfully returned to the clinker, it’s because he had stolen vehicles on the property and there were myriad types of drugs locked in their safe, only one of which was prescription.
Heidi Lueders had drugs and a history of violence. Westerman and Croft were committing financial fraud (as were they all) and Croft had a history of violence. Haisley had drugs. Dig in to ANY pit bull-related rescue organization and you will find a history of lies and relationships with criminals.
These dogs are lethal and preferred for mafia, organized crime and gambling activities. It is not an area where mistakes should be tolerated at all. If you care about the dogs, you would agree.
What a blatant pack of crap. You assert that ALL advocates are tied tio criminals and illegal activities. Here is a fact for you. A child is 15 times more likely to be killed by their parents than by a dog. As per the CDC.
What makes me most angry is that if the charges are true them a another POS is using innocents to line their pockets.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17065657/#:~:text=Findings%20suggest%20that%20the%20ownership,assessing%20risk%20for%20child%20endangerment.
J Interpers Violence
. 2006 Dec;21(12):1616-34. doi: 10.1177/0886260506294241.
Ownership of high-risk (“vicious”) dogs as a marker for deviant behaviors: implications for risk assessment
Jaclyn E Barnes 1, Barbara W Boat, Frank W Putnam, Harold F Dates, Andrew R Mahlman
PMID: 17065657 DOI: 10.1177/0886260506294241
Abstract
This study examined the association between ownership of high-risk (“vicious”) dogs and the presence of deviant behaviors in the owners as indicated by court convictions. We also explored whether two characteristics of dog ownership (abiding licensing laws and choice of breed) could be useful areas of inquiry when assessing risk status in settings where children are present. Our matched sample consisted of 355 owners of either licensed or cited dogs that represented high or low-risk breeds. Categories of criminal convictions examined were aggressive crimes, drugs, alcohol, domestic violence, crimes involving children, firearm convictions, and major and minor traffic citations. Owners of cited high-risk (“vicious”) dogs had significantly more criminal convictions than owners of licensed low-risk dogs. Findings suggest that the ownership of a high-risk (“vicious”) dog can be a significant marker for general deviance and should be an element considered when assessing risk for child endangerment.
Time to clean out Ohio ! Only one more to go
Your article is shamefully slanted and inflammatory in its language. If you simply stated the allegations, took statements from supports and the plaintiffs in the case, and stuck to the concerns for animals rather than injecting disdain for certain breeds and for rescues this article would be far better journalism.
Ann Marie, above, appears to be confusing journalism with stenography. Journalism consists not just of “who, what, where, when,” but also of the “why and how” of matters that provides context. The context in the Steffen Baldwin case includes that he was and is specifically an advocate for pit bulls. It also includes, as ANIMALS 24-7 details, that Steffen Baldwin is now facing 42 criminal charges because of the efforts of several leaders in the Los Angeles and Ohio rescue communities to bring him to justice.