GUILDERLAND — The state has filed a lawsuit against the company and the owners of The Pet Zone stores; one of the chain pet stores is located in Guilderland’s Crossgates Mall.

“Our store is still open but that’s all I can say about the situation,” said an employee of the Guilderland store on Wednesday afternoon who would give his name only as Sam.

Emailed questions were not answered before press time.

The suit was announced earlier in the day by Barbara Underwood, New York’s acting attorney general, in a press release from her office. The suit names the Bell Pet Company LLC, and its owners, Theodore and Sheila Bell, and alleges that their stores have sold many puppies to consumers without first having the dogs examined by a veterinarian as required by law.

The suit also alleges fraud, claiming the company failed to notify consumers when the puppies they purchase received necessary presale medical treatment, and it alleges The Pet Zone violated the Pet Lemon Law by not providing timely reimbursement for veterinarian expenses consumers incurred after purchasing a sick dog from the stores.

Following an investigation by the Attorney General’s office, Supreme Court Justice James P. McClusky issued a temporary restraining order on Wednesday, prohibiting The Pet Zone from obtaining any new dogs for sale and placing additional oversight on the sale of puppies currently in their stores while the lawsuit is pending.

Evidence, the release said, included sworn statements from a former store manager and four former store employees, sworn statements from 10 consumers, and several inspection reports citing violations. The stores will be permitted to sell the puppies already in their stores. However, the stores must give the court and the attorney general’s office sworn statements and documentation attesting under penalty of contempt that the puppies sold were properly examined and medications were properly disclosed to the consumers.

Additionally, Underwood is seeking to permanently bar The Pet Zone and its owners from ever operating a business that sells live animals in New York, as well as to obtain restitution for aggrieved consumers and significant penalties.

The release says that the investigation unfolded this way:

In July 2017 after hearing complaints from the public, the attorney general’s office issued a cease-and-desist letter to The Pet Zone, demanding that the stores stop violating the Pet Lemon Law. When pet dealers sell a pet that a veterinarian certifies was “unfit for sale” within 14 days of the purchase, the consumer is entitled to a refund, reimbursement for reasonable veterinarian expenses up to the cost of the pet, or a replacement animal. The law requires dealers to provide the refund or reimbursement within 10 business days of receiving the certification.

Further investigation revealed the additional and worse illegal and deceptive conduct claimed in the suit, including these allegations.

— The Pet Zone sold dozens, if not hundreds, of puppies to consumers without first having them examined by a veterinarian and certified as fit for sale, as required by law;

— When puppies exhibited signs of illness while in the store, employees routinely administered controlled antibiotics to them without first consulting with a veterinarian. Later, when the store veterinarian made a routine visit, the employees would conceal from the veterinarian that the puppy had been medicated;

— To avoid detection by its store veterinarians and New York State regulators, The Pet Zone routinely falsified and destroyed documentation that showed when a puppy was sold without an examination or when a puppy had received non-prescribed medication;

— Although state law requires pet dealers to provide a full history of medical treatments that a puppy has received before the time of sale, The Pet Zone specifically instructed its employees not to disclose to consumers when the puppy they were purchasing had received medication or other treatment for illness;

— After selling a puppy that was thereafter certified as “unfit” for sale by the consumers’ veterinarian, The Pet Zone effectively denied customers their rights under the Pet Lemon Law to reimbursement of veterinarian bills by allegedly deceiving them about their options and forcing them to file warranty claims with a third-party vendor. Although the Pet Lemon Law requires the pet dealer to reimburse those costs within 10 days, consumers often never received reimbursement or received it from the warranty company many months later;

— In an effort to increase sales, The Pet Zone at times financed puppy sales through two companies known as WAGS Lending and Nextep Funding. Consumers who used these financing companies were given multiple types of documentation showing their ownership or “parentage” of the puppy they purchased.

However, The Pet Zone employees allegedly failed to adequately inform consumers that these financing agreements were actually styled as “leases,” and therefore the customer would not actually own their family pet until payment of the full contract plus additional undisclosed fees, which usually totaled more than twice the original cash purchase-price of the puppy. Many consumers who financed their purchase also paid an additional fee that cash and credit customers did not pay for the warranty used by The Pet Zone to circumvent the Pet Lemon Law; and

— The Pet Zone also allegedly engaged in several deceptive business practices to raise the cost of the sale to consumers. The stores forced consumers to pay $99.95 supposedly for enrollment in a “PetKey” system that purportedly includes the puppy’s health and microchip information.

However, employees were specifically told not to include medication other than routine vaccinations and dewormer to this pet health history, depriving the consumer of the value of the product, which they could not decline.

Additionally, at times consumers were charged the wrong amount for the product and it was misidentified on documentation as an “AKC Protection Bundle,” falsely leading consumers to believe that their puppies were registered with the American Kennel Club.

The Crossgates Pet Zone was in the news in October when a West Highland terrier puppy was stolen from the store, and later returned unharmed.