Celebrity Perth vet banned after fabricating debt, posing as lawyer

Perth celebrity vet Peter Ricci, who featured on the TV series Bondi Vet: Coast to Coast, has had his registration cancelled after he was found to have engaged in professional misconduct by posing as a lawyer, fabricating a debt, and distributing a media statement with false allegations of animal cruelty and identity theft.

Last week, WA’s State Administrative Tribunal cancelled Ricci’s registration and ordered him to pay $10,000 in costs after a series of bizarre and threatening emails he sent to a club secretary were brought to light.

Ricci, who worked at the Animal Hospital at Murdoch University and at Perth Zoo, was selected out of hundreds of applicants to be the next Bondi Vet along with three others when Chris Brown stepped down from the popular reality television show in 2017.

But now he faces at least six months out of work after complaints were made about him to the body responsible for regulating veterinary medicine in WA.

Those complaints were substantiated by the tribunal, which found Ricci and the woman knew each other through a Perth club, the details of which were suppressed along with the woman’s identity in published tribunal documents.

According to those documents, an argument had broken out between the pair that led to Ricci sending the woman a cease and desist letter in February 2024 telling her to stop all “harassing, bullying and defamatory activities and collusions with others to harass, bully or defame against and towards me”.

The letter stated that the woman’s actions had caused him to suffer medically, psychologically and professionally.

Months later, he created a fake email address purporting to be from a practising WA lawyer and in May 2024, he sent the same woman another cease and desist letter from that account, pretending the lawyer was representing him.

The email stated that if the woman did not comply with a list of demands, she would be charged the lawyer’s legal fees at a rate of $340 an hour.

The woman asked for the lawyer’s contact details but a further email from Ricci – pretending to be the lawyer – declined.

The woman then contacted the lawyer, who told her Ricci was not his client and he had not corresponded with her at all. The woman wrote back to the email address and said she had taken the matter to the police.

According to the tribunal documents, a few days later Ricci emailed her again, still pretending to be the lawyer, and told the woman she had made “unfounded and damaging allegations” that might lead to “severe consequences, including potential legal action, restraining orders and claims for d