Submitted photos / Jim Conroy, Campbell Police Department
An ad for Steffen Baldwin’s Animal Cruelty Task Force of Ohio nonprofit organization shows him with a dog that looks similar to Remi — the dog whose euthanization in Baldwin’s care led to the investigation that brought him down. Baldwin’s 15.5-year sentence is the longest for an animal abuse case in Ohio history.
CAMPBELL — Remi the pit bull had a designation for being dangerous, but he was not nearly as big a threat as the man who killed him.
However, Remi and his family would get the last word thanks to the persistence of a Campell police officer.
Steffen Baldwin had Ohio and the world convinced that he was a professional dog trainer and nonprofit operator, with prospective TV deals from big-name studios. He took in donations and dogs from as far away as the United Kingdom, Africa and Australia. Celebrities and average joes alike defended him aggressively on social media.
In the end, he lied to them all and killed at least 36 dogs — with others still unaccounted for — and spent the donations on himself. Now he will spend 15.5 years behind bars.
Baldwin was convicted on Jan. 2, 2025 — about a year after prosecutors finished presenting evidence to Union County Common Pleas Court Judge Daniel Hogan — and Hogan sentenced him March 11.
It Is the most severe penalty for animal abuse in the state’s history, and it started from the tenacity of Remi’s owners — Campbell residents Litsa and Angelo Kargakos — and the investigative efforts of Campbell Police Department patrolman-turned-detective, Jim Conroy.
“He’d snowed everybody. It was all a con, it was all a sham. None of what the public saw was ever real, none of what the public believed or what he was putting on social media was ever true,” Conroy said. “He’d even lie when there was just no reason to lie, when the truth would have served the same purpose.”
Baldwin ran his own rescue operation, Animal Cruelty Task Force of Ohio, in Marysville, Union County, from January 2014 to May 2017. He was executive director, president and humane agent. Conroy said after it closed, Baldwin continued collecting the automatic credit card payments from donors for four more months.
He said the organization had a board in name only, which met six times in 42 months, and nothing was approved at those meetings.
For all of 2015, Baldwin also was the humane agent at the Union County Humane Society, earning a full-time salary of $40,000 per year.
“They said he never showed up, only worked about 15 hours a week,” Conroy said.
Conroy said Baldwin also impersonated a police officer, carrying a gun and badge, with no police training and no permit (prior to the passage of Ohio’s constitutional carry law).
“That’s how he fooled the veterinarians — they trusted him because he was a humane agent, and they thought they had no reason to question him,” Conroy said.
That charge was a misdemeanor, however, and was dropped because of the state’s statute of limitations. Union County prosecutors did convict him, however, on grand theft for buying the gun with money he stole from the charity.
In all, Baldwin was convicted on 32 of 39 felony counts brought against him, including all of the charges related to Remi. He was convicted of bribery, multiple telecommunications fraud charges, grand theft of a firearm, four counts of tampering with records, two straight counts of grand theft, multiple counts of animal cruelty and one count of engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity.
Union County Prosecutors Melissa Chase and Courtland Perry said two additional counts of tampering and five animal cruelty counts could not pass the judge’s scrutiny.
“Certain dogs we just didn’t have a great amount of evidence for. Steffan didn’t keep records much, and unfortunately some of the dogs just disappeared, and we didn’t have any way to prove where they were,” Chase said.
IT BEGAN WITH ONE DOG
Years before U.S. marshals tracked down and arrested Baldwin in Los Angeles (he fled Ohio after learning he was under investigation, taking the gun and many dogs with him), Litsa and Angelo Kargakos wanted help for their troubled dog, Remi, a pit bull breed with a “dangerous dog” designation.
Litsa Kargakos could not be reached for comment for this article. Conroy said she told him she’s done talking about the case.
“They thought they were doing the best thing for the dog they loved deeply and the dog lost his life, and they have the guilt from feeling like they put him in that position,” he said. “That’s why she can’t talk about it. It destroyed her.”
They knew of Baldwin’s reputation and asked him for help rehabilitating Remi. This is where the bribery charge comes in, Chase said.
Baldwin showed up to their home in 2016, wearing his humane officer uniform, carrying a gun and badge. He told them that he could not only correct Remi’s behavior, but he could get Remi’s dangerous dog designation removed, and it would cost them only $1,000.
In Ohio, the designation must be contested in court by the owner. Chase said Baldwin misled the Kargakoses, leading them to believe he could use his clout to circumvent the process, and solicited a steep payment in exchange.
Still, the couple wanted to see Remi rehabilitated and let Baldwin take him for training. On Dec. 28, 2016, Baldwin had Remi euthanized. The Kargakoses would not know this for months.
During that time, though, they pressed Baldwin for answers on Remi’s progress. He always had excuses, Conroy said.
The woman who was fostering Remi was not on social media, he said. Then she was angry with him for some reason and would not return his calls, Baldwin told them.
As Litsa’s frustration and suspicion grew, she began pressing Baldwin for answers on social media, and was aggressively — even viciously — shouted down and attacked by his followers, Conroy said.
“Litsa is a very smart, and very tenacious individual, and she just would not accept his answers,” Conroy said. “He had other people challenge him before that and they got squashed by his followers on Facebook. They’d destroy you if you said anything negative about him.”
After months of pressing him, on April 12, 2017, they got Baldwin to meet with them at IHOP in Boardman, with attorneys present. That is when he conceded that he had put Remi down. Baldwin told the Kargakoses that Remi had been in a fight with another dog and because of his dangerous dog designation and the severe injuries he sustained, Remi had to be euthanized.
Michelle Gonzalez Mosca is the veterinarian who euthanized Remi at her clinic in Dublin, Ohio. She had worked with Baldwin since 2014, after meeting him at a conference in Columbus when they both gave presentations on animal cruelty.
Gonzalez said there was no evidence that Remi had been in a fight. She only euthanized him because Baldwin said he had a designation and that he had bitten another dog, which was sufficient reason under Ohio law for Gonzalez to comply.
“Months later, I was informed somebody was on Facebook looking for answers, I started reading it, and I realized that Remi had somebody he could have gone back to, that he didn’t need to be euthanized,” she said.
Gonzalez reached out and let Litsa know who she was and what role she had played.
Despite the difficult conversation, a friendship has emerged between them. Soon, Litsa will join Gonzalez for a special series about the case on Gonzalez’s podcast, Animal Welfare Junction.
Gonzalez said that even before Remi, she had backed off her collaboration with Baldwin to a great extent because he had raised their suspicions.
“We had stopped working with him before that, or doing less, because we were concerned he was stealing from the nonprofit and committing fraud, and we started inquiring with an accountant to look at his financials, and create a data file to share with authorities,” she said. “At that point I had no idea he was killing animals, but after Remi, we started doubting his intentions.”
Over a two-year span, Gonzalez’s clinic euthanized roughly a dozen dogs for Baldwin. She testified at his trial and submitted all the documentation she could for Conroy and Union County prosecutors.
“They looked through our financials and our medical records, and they saw that we were doing everything correctly and Baldwin had just taken advantage of us,” she said.
Baldwin also took advantage of them in other ways.
“We have a nonprofit called Rascal Charities, and the estimated amount he owed us, according to the court records, was $37,000,” Gonzalez said. “I also donated time, supplies, staffing and we were unable to recover any of that, and I think that probably came out to another $10,000 to $15,000. He used to tell people I donated over $100,000 so he was aware we were out of funds by helping him.”
Gonzalez said she is satisfied with the sentence Baldwin received, although it will never compensate for the financial and emotional losses sustained by his victims.
“At least he can be responsible for the damage he caused to everyone,” she said. “Because of Remi, we were able to find all the horrible things he was doing. Because of Remi, he was held responsible for his actions.”
SLEEPLESS NIGHTS
It was after the IHOP meeting that the Kargakoses reached out to Conroy, not even realizing at first that he was a police officer in their own community.
“At first, I thought this was just going to be a case on Remi,” he said.
But Litsa Kargakos presented him with roughly 3,000 pages worth of social media messages, posts and other interactions with Baldwin.
In those pages, Conroy said he found evidence of two other dogs dead and others missing.
“I went to Litsa and said this is bigger, and it’s worth pursuing,” he said.
He knew it would be difficult to get much in the way of punishment, because animal cruelty cases do not usually receive much legal enforcement.
“The criminal justice system is not kind to animals and animal abuse cases,” Conroy said. “Which is really backwards because the people who hurt animals are dangerous people.”
Conroy said he told the Kargakoses to expect the case to be pleaded down, and that Baldwin would then be able to lie about it and make more excuses. But they went forward anyway.
He also had to wait for the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation and Identification to take on the case and agree to process the evidence Conroy collected. Investigator Dave Hornyak was assigned to the case.
“He was very helpful, and I was lucky BCI assigned him to the case,” Conroy said.
With BCI on board, Conroy could investigate anywhere in Ohio.
And he did.
For 47 months, Conroy said he spent every day looking into the case, never taking a day off and working most of it at home, off the clock, 50 to 60 hours per week.
He said he would work until midnight, and then think of something else at 1 a.m.. He cannot estimate the hours of sleep he lost — both from working on it and from what the investigation revealed.
The evidence he compiled included 130,280 pages from Facebook posts, comprising 441,849 Facebook messages. He said he usually read 1,000 messages per day.
He interviewed 135 witnesses. He amassed 30 GB of emails, texts, pictures, Microsoft Word documents, Excel documents and voicemails. His evidence also included thousands of pages of miscellaneous other documents for search warrants and items provided by witnesses.
Conroy wrote 27 police reports totaling more than 2,000 pages and spent countless hours organizing and categorizing information.
The case involved more than 60 subpoenas, including those needed to access Baldwin’s Twitter, Instagram and Facebook accounts.
He collected thousands of pages of documents from seven veterinary hospitals in Ohio,
thousands more regarding Baldwin’s financial statements for three years, including personal and business — both profit and nonprofit.
“We also got the Paypal records, and finances from Top of Ohio shelter because he was stealing from them. His theft put them out of business,” Conroy said.
Baldwin worked for the charity for roughly two years. He left after they began questioning him about suspected theft. In the end, the amount he took from the charity was too much of a financial hit for them to survive. Top of Ohio closed just months after Baldwin left.
Baldwin kept no receipts, so Conroy called every company where he made credit card purchases (using the credit card for his nonprofit) and obtained copies of the receipts for 42 months to see what was purchased.
“That’s how we got the grand theft charges,” Conroy said. “And 95% of what he bought was for himself. Going to strip clubs, bars, going on dates.”
He said Baldwin took out $20,000 in cash withdrawals, paid for all of his utilities, rent, cellphone, laptops and more than $3,000 in electronics purchases, such as TVs, app subscriptions and more than $1,000 worth of video games. He made $16,000 in gas purchases, paying for plane tickets, hotels and gifts. On one girlfriend, he spent $3,300. All of it was charged to the animal rescue he ran.
He also made his child support payments with donation money.
“He funded his entire life with donations,” Conroy said.
“So, I took it to Union County, and we had no idea what to expect,” Conroy said. “I put together a slide show for those prosecutors, and at that point, (Union County District Attorney) Dave Philips said to keep investigating him.”
Conroy was not the only one who did not know what to expect.
“When we first got the case, the initial reaction was ‘good God. There’s a lot of documents,” Chase said. “I don’t think we had any idea what we were getting into, with the depth of his investigation and the timeline of it.”
“I got onto it in 2023, and I know it was very overwhelming at first and took a lot of time to parse things out,” Perry said.
Under the guise of asking him to give a presentation to LA County and federal law enforcement, U.S. marshals arrested Baldwin on July 24, 2020, and brought him back to Union County.
The bench trial that began in January 2024 lasted three weeks. It took so long to go to trial because of the pandemic and multiple other delays.
The state introduced 293 exhibits and called more than 55 witnesses, including several experts from multiple government agencies. Chase said some of them had to inspect all the documents Conroy provided and help prosecutors understand it in layman’s terms, laying it out similarly for the court.
Another witness was Poland Township veterinarian Jennifer Falvey, who runs Dogsmartz Unleashed, a dog behavior consulting operation on Western Reserve Road.
Falvey consulted with the Kargakoses on helping Remi when they first took him in.
“When Litsa and Angelo obtained custody of Remi, I evaluated him to determine what we needed to do to help his behavior issues,” she said. “I had direct knowledge of Remi and his behavior.”
But Falvey also had testified as an expert witness in court before, so prosecutors asked her to review the files they had about other dogs in the case.
“There was a clear lack of training in general,” she said. “The common behavioral modification needed among the type of dogs he was taking in just wasn’t there; there was no evidence of rehabilitation.”
Falvey said the more she looked at the files, the more Baldwin was exposed in her eyes as a fraud.
“Many of his decisions about how these dogs were handled were completely irresponsible, neglectful and showed a lack of understanding of behavior and behavioral modification.
Nothing was done to execute these plans.”
She said Baldwin also undermined himself.
“He made contradictory statements of the dogs’ progress, and he would contradict himself in different statements to different individuals,” she said. “But also, if rehabilitation was happening, some of these things he was describing should not have been happening.’
Ultimately, Falvey said it comes down to one glaring reality: “His management set these dogs up to fail.”
After evidence was presented, then began 10 months of filing closing arguments, and a last-ditch effort motion by the defense to allow the entry of additional evidence.
On Jan. 2, 2025, Hogan issued his ruling. On March 11, he passed sentence and victims, including the Kargakoses, read impact statements.
“They remembered the dogs; they were still upset about the dogs; and they were passionate about their feelings for the dogs,” Chase said.
“They also spoke about the effect of his actions on the dog rescue community,” she said. “He changed how shelters and rescues did business, and the reason was because they didn’t feel they could trust people anymore and that’s one of the tragedies of this situation.”
MUCH MORE TO THE STORY
The case prosecuted in Union County dealt only with the dogs from Ohio. During his investigation, Conroy uncovered evidence of dogs killed and missing in California. That evidence has been turned over to Los Angeles County prosecutors, but Conroy does not expect them to act on it. He suspects Baldwin’s Ohio sentence will leave them satisfied that justice is served, knowing that he’s unlikely to receive anything so severe in California. The justice system there serves animals little better than Ohio’s usually does, he said.
Conroy remembers almost every story of every dog he investigated, and some stick with him.
There was the panhandler’s dog in Columbus, for example. The man was stranded from out of state, homeless, and had only his dog at his side.
Baldwin put the man’s story on social media and hosted an online fundraiser. He put the man up in a hotel (though that was donated so he didn’t have to pay for it).
The fundraiser raised more than $1,700.
“He gave the guy $300, convinced the guy to donate another $300 to help support another dog he adopted from a different homeless guy,” Conroy said. “And then he euthanized that other homeless guy’s dog and lied about it. Told people the dog was alive.”
They believed it until Conroy called some of them 18 months later. Some people didn’t know for four or five years.
Baldwin kept $1,400 of the $1,700 raised for the panhandler and his canine companion.
“The totality and depth of his evil may never be completely known or understood,” Conroy said.
Baldwin took 10 Ohio dogs out to California and killed two, despite signing a contract that he’d return them before he euthanized them.
“This guy was a star in Mahoning County. They loved him, but he killed two from the Mahoning County dog pound that they didn’t know about,” he said. Another famous local dog barely survived Baldwin.
Andi was a feral dog known to wander the streets of Youngstown. Nobody could catch Andi for years. But once she was caught, Baldwin offered to rehabilitate her.
In his care, she was injured in a dogfight, received no vet care, and he took her with him to California, where she just roamed alone in a fenced-in yard.
“After his arrest, she went to a professional trainer in Southern California, Cheri Wulff Lucas, and within two days Andi was following her commands,” Conroy said.
Once taken to the vet, Andi was found to have a UTI, ear infections, and countless other untreated medical conditions.
She was treated and has been living a happy life since.
“He didn’t want people to know he couldn’t train her,” Conroy said. “He would have euthanized her, too, if so many people weren’t asking about her all the time.”
Conroy said there are 36 dogs whose unnecessary deaths can be proven, but many more just vanished.
“The trial only brought out 10 to 15% of what he did. They only did the minimum that would get him convicted, or we’d have been there over a year.”
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