Apex man convicted of running service-dog scam in Wake County
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Mark Mathis pleaded guilty to 50 counts of obtaining property by false pretense.
- His company charged families up to $17,000 for untrained and sick service dogs.
- He must pay $353,000 restitution and is banned from training or selling dogs.
An Apex man who once ran a nonprofit training service dogs admitted Friday he defrauded the families he claimed to help.
Mark Christopher Mathis, 52, pleaded guilty to 50 counts of obtaining property by false pretense in Wake County Superior Court, according to a news release from Attorney General Jeff Jackson. Mathis owned Ry-Con Service Dogs, which purported to train service dogs for families “with medical or developmental needs,” the release said.
The scheme dated back to at least July 2013, according to the indictments. Mathis would charge families as much as almost $17,000 for dogs he claimed to specially train to work with their family members, but the dogs would arrive with little to no training, court documents state.
Mathis used Briard dogs, a breed he described in a 2016 ABC11 interview as “fiercely loyal” and capable of feeling and showing deep emotion. Prosecutors challenged that depiction, with Jackson writing in the release that they were “unsuited for service work due to their wariness of strangers, aggression, and difficulty with other animals.”
Dozens of families had to send their dogs back or rehome them after they behaved aggressively, including biting other pets and family members, according to court documents. A Canadian client’s daughter died by suicide five weeks after they gave up the dog they had bought from Mathis, the Associated Press reported in 2019.
“Many [of the dogs] were not housebroken, some were underweight, and several had other health problems,” the release said. “A dog trainer that Mathis hired quit on the first day after witnessing the dogs’ condition and lack of training.”
Ry-Con reportedly specialized in serving families with autistic children, but also claimed expertise in “PTSD, anxiety, sleep issues [and] panic attacks,” the nonprofit’s Yelp page shows.
The Department of Justice’s Consumer Protection Division received more than 50 complaints about Mathis, and he was indicted on the first 42 charges in February 2020, court records show. Mathis was indicted on another eight charges in March 2021.
As part of his plea agreement, Mathis must pay $353,000 in restitution to 50 families who bought a service dog from Ry-Con and is prohibited from training or selling service animals, Jackson said in the release. It’s not clear if he faces any time in prison as a result; records from his sentencing had not been uploaded online as of Friday evening.
