A Virginia man who tortured cats in order to obtain fraudulent social media donations received the state’s largest penalty for animal abuse after Internet sleuths as far as France led investigators to him.
Rodney Travis Jr, 27, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to animal abuse and computer fraud charges in Henrico County Circuit Court after beating about 20 cats, according to Courthouse News. His plea agreement will require him to spend 15 years in prison.
Travis would upload the videos on social media platforms, including Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, while pretending that the pets had cancer.
Travis would then solicit donations, according to the outlet. He used three Henrico hotels to take footage of the cats.
Henrico Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Dylan McAuley said Travis ‘was only caught because a series of people around the world, as far as France, the UK, Arizona, California [and] Florida, recorded it, tracked him, and made sure we knew what was going on.’
McAuley said that it only took about a day to arrest Travis once the citizen investigators got the news to law enforcement.
Travis had raised more than $400,000 carrying out the vile scam since 2023, according to prosecutors.
The videos he posted online of the tortured cats included captions like, ‘I don’t want to lose my best friend’ and ‘she’s all I have,’ the outlet added.