Top exec at ASPCA inhumanely fired after sounding alarm about dangerous fraud at animal rights group: suit

The ASPCA’s chief financial officer was inhumanely canned while out for his daughter’s wedding — after he tried to blow the whistle on the prominent animal rights group’s allegedly shady financial practices, a new lawsuit claims.Gordon Lavalette — who served as the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals’ CFO starting in 2021 — claims the longtime non-profit dished out hundreds of millions in “illegal” no-bid contracts and ignored him flagging “dangerous violations” of animal safety law, according to his suit.The ASPCA “preferred to violate the law as well as overspend millions of dollars with friendly vendors than to competitively bid those contracts and use the savings to help animals,” claims the papers filed last week in New Jersey state court.But when Lavalette tried to steer away from executive welfare and back towards animal issues, the ASPCA “acted in concert and aided one another to destroy (him) and to deliberately sabotage his good name, his reputation, his employment and his career,” the suit states.Lavalette, 61, said he had “glowing performance evaluations and high-level praise,” with the CEO once expressing he wished him to stay with the ASPCA for another decade.That all changed in 2024 when Lavalette claims he got a look at fundraising-related contracts, and discovered “reckless squandering of donor-contributed funds,” the suit states.The organization had blown at least $340 million in donor dollars on no-bid vendor contracts since 2016 — “an alarming amount,” Lavalette claimed, according to an email filed with the suit.The number is just under the ASPCA’s entire annual revenue for 2023, tax forms show.“The abandonment of competitive bidding led to (the ASPCA’s) annual squandering of tens of millions of donated dollars,” the suit claims — adding that it likely violated New York and New Jersey state laws governing non-profits.The ASPCA told The Post that his claims are “baseles...