Attorneys representing a Humboldt County animal rescuer are asking California Attorney General Rob Bonta to take civil action against Miranda’s Rescue following an investigation that uncovered the remains of at least 138 dogs on the rescue’s property.
The Aug. 25 request from Advancing Law for Animals, filed on behalf of animal rescuer Jennifer Raymond, asks the California Attorney General’s Office to seek the involuntary dissolution of Miranda’s Rescue and the appointment of a receiver to take custody of animals remaining at the property and preserve the nonprofit’s assets.
The request comes as the Humboldt County Sheriff's Office continues to investigate allegations of felony animal abuse, animal cruelty, fraud and conspiracy involving the rescue
and its owner and operator, Shannon Miranda.
The sheriff's office said in June that its investigation began on April 22 after it received what it described as credible information about the allegations. Investigators served a search warrant at Miranda's Rescue in Fortuna on May 1 and later obtained a second warrant that authorized excavation of the property.
During the June 23 search, investigators recovered 117 intact canine remains from two excavation sites at Miranda's Rescue, along with 21 canine skulls, hundreds of bones and several loose microchips. Many of the dogs appeared to have died from gunshot wounds, according to the sheriff's office. X-rays showed bullet fragments in 70 of the animals examined.
The sheriff's office has said the investigation remains active and that no criminal charges have been filed.
Raymond raises questions about Miranda's Rescue
Raymond's attorneys, Ryan Gordon and Vanessa Shakib of Redondo Beach-based Advancing Law for Animals, said in the request to the attorney general's office that Raymond founded and operated two spay/neuter clinics in Humboldt County, has been a neighbor of Miranda's and has known him since 2003. They said she has since witnessed what she describes as multiple unethical and illegal business practices involving Miranda and his rescue.
In 2004, Raymond learned that Miranda was slaughtering rescue pigs on his property, according to the filing. When confronted, Miranda said his brother had accidentally killed the pigs without permission.
Raymond’s attorneys also said she knew people who had paid Miranda to rescue cats but later learned that the cats had effectively been released without adequate care or food.
In September 2023, a local rescuer contacted Raymond after transferring three dogs to Miranda's Rescue. The rescuer had paid for the dogs' spay and neuter procedures and vaccinations and given Miranda a $500 fee per dog through his personal Zelle account, according to the filing. When the rescuer later tried to check on the dogs, Miranda allegedly denied knowing the rescuer or the dogs and became aggressive when she pressed him for information.
Those experiences, combined with the number of dogs Raymond knew had been transferred to the rescue and complaints from other rescuers, prompted her to conduct her own investigation, according to the filing.
Raymond spent more than a year gathering evidence, including submitting California Public Records Act requests to animal shelters across California to determine how many dogs had been transferred to Miranda's Rescue.
Those records showed that more than 2,100 dogs were transferred to the rescue from public shelters statewide between 2020 and 2025, including 761 dogs in 2024 and 626 in 2025. The attorneys said a law enforcement investigation has since documented that the rescue took in 918 additional dogs between January 2025 and April 2026.
Raymond's attorneys said she was particularly concerned by the volume of animals moving through the rescue and the fees charged for their intake. The fees generally ranged from $400 to $1,500 per animal, with at least one instance potentially reaching $5,000, according to the filing.
Miranda's Rescue represented that animals transferred to the facility in exchange for those fees would either be adopted or remain at the sanctuary for the rest of their lives, according to the attorneys.
Because the numbers did not make sense to her, Raymond began monitoring activity on the rescue's property using motion-activated trail cameras placed near a shared fence line, the filing states.
On April 26, one of those cameras recorded Miranda using a tractor to bury what the footage showed were animal carcasses concealed under a load of straw in a large pit on the property, according to the filing.
That night, Raymond and a colleague exhumed eight deceased dogs that cameras had captured Miranda burying in the pit. The dogs had apparent gunshot wounds to the head, and two were puppies, according to the filing. Raymond scanned the dogs for microchips and identified seven of the eight, tracing them to out-of-county animal shelters that had transferred them to Miranda's Rescue.
One of the dogs was Zora. According to the filing, Miranda allegedly texted a shelter employee a photograph of her just days before her death, indicating that Zora had been adopted.
Raymond reported the findings to the sheriff's office, which subsequently seized the remains and served the first of two search warrants at the property. The second warrant, served June 23, authorized excavation of burial sites and resulted in the recovery of additional remains.
Attorneys seek state action against rescue
In their request to the attorney general's office, Raymond's attorneys allege that Miranda's Rescue has operated as a “no-kill rescue, adoption and sanctuary facility” while accepting placement fees, donations and other funds for animals it agreed to care for since at least 2001.
The proposed civil complaint accompanying the request alleges that shelters and private individuals paid Miranda fees ranging from about $500 to $5,000 per animal. It alleges that public shelters in at least Alameda, Contra Costa, Del Norte, Mendocino, Monterey, Napa, Sacramento, San Joaquin, Santa Clara and Solano counties, as well as the cities of Ferndale, Fortuna and Rio Dell and out-of-state shelters, paid the fees.
Shakib, co-founder and co-director of Advancing Law for Animals and an attorney for Raymond, said the organization also launched a petition campaign urging the public to contact Bonta and ask him to take action.
The filing says approximately 40 dogs and an unknown number of cats, equines and birds remain at Miranda's Rescue.
"It defies common sense that after law enforcement discovered a mass graveyard, dozens of animals remain under Mr. Miranda’s control," Shakib said. "Forty dogs should not have to wait for the criminal process to run its course before someone protects them."
The request asks the attorney general to seek Miranda's removal as an officer, director and trustee of any California charitable corporation and to bar him from serving in those positions in the future. It also asks the office to seek an accounting of the rescue's finances and the intake and disposition of its animals.
The proposed complaint lists eight causes of action, including involuntary dissolution, breach of fiduciary duty, breach of charitable trust, deceptive and misleading solicitations, unfair and fraudulent business practices, self-dealing and private inurement, unjust enrichment and failure to maintain adequate books and records.
The complaint also asks the Humboldt County Superior Court to dissolve Miranda's Rescue and appoint a receiver to oversee the organization.
The California Attorney General's Office did not respond to a request for comment.
The Humboldt County Sheriff's Office previously said it was working with the California Attorney General's Office, the FBI, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Office of Inspector General, the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California in its investigation of Miranda's Rescue.
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Miranda’s Rescue whistleblower asks AG to remove dogs still at rescue
