FBI convicts scammers in mortuary business as others bilk the bereaved

WASHINGTON - GHN News - "It’s a morbid tale involving phony death certificates, staged funerals
with paid actors, and coffins buried with no bodies, but in the end,
it’s just a financial fraud scheme like thousands of others we
investigate every year. "

With that introduction, the FBI tells the story

of scams that are involved in defrauding companies that underwrite the
costs of funeral expenses and caring for the dead and bereaved
families.

In this case this August Jean Crump, who was a mortuary employee, was
convicted in federal court, joining three other women who had been
involved in a scam to bilk insurance companies.  They had filed $1.2
million in phony life insurance policy claims to do it.  All were found
guilty, with Crump's conviction recently.

The women didn't just perpetrate fraud on insurance companies but
several financial services companies that are used by funeral homes and
mortuaries to help pay for funeral expenses in exchange for getting some
of the insurance by way of reimbursements.

The scheme involved one of the women purchasing a life insurance person
for someone, then naming a fake "nephew" or "niece" as a beneficiary.
Then the individual insured would supposedly die unexpectedly, false
documents were created along with a death certificate and bills sent out
for payment or reimbursement.

The
bills were often very inflated with one company that paid a mortuary
nearly $30,000 and another about $16,000 according to FBI reports.

The
schemers didn't stop with just the basic mortuary costs but went further
and billed for coffins, headstones and burial costs, then ended up
actually burying empty coffins in order to disguise what they had been
doing.  Sometimes they would find people to stand in as fake mourners.

The women involved
in this particular scheme were able to defraud insurance and financial
companies because they were well experienced in the mortuary business
and knew about the kind of documents to file so that everything looked
legitimate.

That's when the FBI became involved, and the result was the arrest and
conviction of the fraudsters involved, ending with Crump's conviction
recently.

Negligence in the mortuary business has been related in a number of stories recently.  A legal firm filing a class action on behalf of 50 claimants describes

several decomposing bodies were found in a storage facility belonging
to Abbey Chapel of the Redwoods Mortuary, owned by Anthony
Villeggiante.  The lawsuit charges that there was negligence in the care
of the bodies and that cremation did not occur within a reasonable
time.  Furthermore, there was an accusation made by the Rohnert Park
officials in the area that corpses had not been properly refrigerated.

The business in
death and dying remains one of those areas where people try to make
money while preying upon the concerns of those parties of interest in
what are ordinarily sad events.

Law enforcement agencies tell us it happens much too often.