Coon cat breeder sentenced

AUBURN — A Durham coon cat breeder, found guilty in July of defrauding customers, was sentenced Tuesday to 3 1/2 years in prison with all but 13 months suspended.

The Superior Court also ordered Roland Berry to undergo counseling, pay his former customers restitution of up to $5,000 and promise not to sell cats any more as part of a four-year conditional probation period.

During the four-day trial, the prosecution presented 20 witnesses — people who had bought cats after seeing national ads placed by Berry for registered cats.

The witnesses told the court that they had either paid for kittens they never received or bought kittens that were falsely portrayed as having been registered.

Testifying in his own defense, the 39-year-old Berry told the jury he had bought several Maine coon cats that he thought were registered or could be registered and began to breed them in 1987. He said he sold the kittens as registered Maine coons with the intent of eventually passing the proper registration papers on to his customers.

Defense attorney Jane Andrews portrayed her client as a “confused, ignorant, abysmal businessman,” who did not understand the registration process.

But the prosecution said the conduct had gone on too long, noting that some of the customers Berry bilked had been waiting three years for their registration papers.