The Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office is suing Wagmor Pets, the Studio City animal rescue organization once beloved by celebrities, alleging its owner bought dogs from puppy mills and passed them off to adopters as rescued animals. City prosecutors want more than $7 million in fines and are asking a court to bar the group, its owner and two related organizations from continuing what they call fraudulent business practices.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the lawsuit describes Wagmor as an illegal commercial enterprise disguised as a nonprofit animal rescue. City prosecutors allege that Melissa Bacelar, Wagmor’s chief executive and owner, bought and resold hundreds if not thousands of dogs purchased from breeders while charging customers adoption fees of up to $1,500. The lawsuit also alleges that some dogs sold by Wagmor had serious health problems and died within days or weeks of purchase.
Bacelar has pushed back hard. She disputed the accusations, calling the lawsuit a rehash of claims she says were already litigated and dismissed, and insisted she was simply trying to save dogs. She called the case a money grab and has denied buying dogs from breeders altogether.
A Trail Leading Back to a Missouri Auction
Court filings cited by the Los Angeles Times point to Missouri state veterinary documents that listed Wagmor as the final destination for dozens of dogs purchased at the Southwest Auction in Rocky Comfort, Missouri. Bacelar told the paper she never authorized any auction purchases herself and said she would take dogs from a rescue group that needed to place them, adding that she did not ask where the Missouri rescue group’s animals came from.
Dog auctions like the one in Missouri function as part of a commercial breeding pipeline, where breeders, including large-scale puppy mills, sell dogs much like livestock, often to pet stores, brokers or other breeders, according to Animals’ Angels. Rescue groups themselves have become some of the most active buyers at these sales, generating roughly a third to 40% of auction income, according to an auctioneer cited by a detailed legal discussion of dog auctions and retail rescue. That same source found that between 2009 and 2018, rescue and advocacy groups spent about $2.68 million purchasing 5,761 dogs at auction nationwide.
From Ellen’s Couch to a Courtroom
Wagmor’s rise to fame traces back to 2019, when Ellen DeGeneres and her wife adopted a chocolate-brown poodle named Mrs. Wallis Browning and DeGeneres told her audience the dog came from a wonderful rescue place. That spotlight helped Wagmor find pets for other celebrities, including Jennifer Aniston and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, and the organization soon touted 1,000 or more adoptions a year, the Los Angeles Times reported in an earlier piece on the rescue.
That fame has not insulated Wagmor from legal trouble. Customers had already sued Bacelar in 2024, alleging she bought dogs from breeders, misrepresented them as rescues and charged high adoption fees — the same core allegations now echoed in the city’s civil case. L.A. prosecutors further allege that Bacelar solicited donations using misleading appeals, pairing photographs of dogs unrelated to the animals actually described in her pitches.
A Regulatory Gap Rescues Have Long Exploited
Part of what makes the allegations against Wagmor possible, according to the Times’ earlier reporting, is that California generally does not require private rescue groups to obtain a license or register with municipal shelters, even as the state failed to regulate such groups while shelters overflowed. That gap persists even though Los Angeles shelters have faced grim numbers of their own: euthanasia rates in Los Angeles County shelters have run as high as 35%, and roughly 27,000 dogs were euthanized statewide in the year cited by the Shelter Animals Count database.
The scale of the broader puppy pipeline in Los Angeles has been documented elsewhere too. A 2017 search turned up 1,004 private and commercial puppy advertisements in the Los Angeles area, priced from $450 to $3,500, according to a report from CityWatch LA. The same report noted that Los Angeles Animal Services issued 2,260 dog breeder licenses in the year it examined, about 20.5% more than the 1,876 issued in 2021.
At the Southwest Auction itself, prices for individual dogs vary widely — most animals sold there went for between $200 and $600, though some German Shepherd puppies sold for as little as $1, per Animals’ Angels. Nationally, the largest auctions can generate as much as half a million dollars in a single sale, with prized individual dogs fetching nearly $10,000, according to the same discussion of dog auctions and retail rescue.
What the Law Requires
California’s AB-485 allows a public or private shelter to assess a discretionary fee, not exceeding its standard adoption fee, for animals adopted by new owners or released to nonprofit rescue or adoption organizations, according to the bill text published by the California Legislative Information website. Separately, AB-506 requires pet dealers to disclose specified information when selling a dog or cat, including the animal’s source and any records of known diseases or illnesses. A draft Los Angeles ordinance reviewed by the city’s Department of City Planning states that any facility offering animals for adoption or sale must operate under a pet-shop permit issued by the department.
The city’s lawsuit against Wagmor, Bacelar and the two other organizations she controls remains pending, and the evidence reviewed does not establish how the case will ultimately be resolved. For now, the fight pits a rescue once celebrated on a celebrity’s talk show against a city determined to prove its adoption fees masked a very different kind of business.
