Former funeral home owner bagged in sting
Mary Music ~ Appalachian News Express ~ 2/3/2007
KY - A former Pikeville funeral home owner has been stealing money for several years and acting as a funeral director without a license, officials say. Former Justice Funeral Home owner Richard D. Justice (listed elsewhere as Richard A. Justice) was arrested yesterday after an extensive investigation by Walter B. H. Petot, a special investigator with the state office of insurance fraud.
He faces 12 felony counts of violating the Funeral Trust Act, six counts of felony fraudulent insurance acts, one count of felony theft and one count of acting as a funeral director without a license between 2004 and 2006. The alleged insurance fraud spanned between 2002 and 2006.
According to the warrants filed in the case Friday afternoon, Justice, 43 (most other stories report him as 53 at the time), of Hickory Lane in Pikeville, took approximately $94,000 for pre-paid burial trust funds or insurance from Linda Fields, Earsil Charles, Dessie M. Charles, Phea Sue Little, Eloise Coleman, Doshie Bartley, Robert Gene Ford, Edna Goof, Joan Jacques, Elster Ray Hawkins, Nona B. Bartley, Betty Joe Adams, Katie Bailey and the Good Shepherd Community Nursing Center, where he is accused of not refunding an overpayment for the funeral expenses of Katie Bailey. Justice did not purchase burial insurance with money given to him by local families and he didn't place pre-paid burial expense money into trust funds, as required by law, the warrants claim.
Justice closed the funeral home on South Mayo Trail in November. When word of the alleged improprieties surfaced in December, Justice denied the allegations, claiming that employees at the Justice Funeral Home embezzled the money. The money was there, he said at that time, and it was “secured” and “protected.”
“That means that I ain't going to get my money back, don't it?” asked Dessie Charles, when she learned of the arrest yesterday. “We worked very hard to get that money and we trusted him like we trusted his dad. His dad was a good person. We dealt with him back in the 1950s, so we figured he'd follow in his dad's footsteps. He took advantage of elderly people, and that's a lot of years we had to work for that.”
Charles and her husband Earsil Charles, of Biggs Branch, checked on their pre-paid burial expense account at the Justice Funeral Home after they read articles written about the investigation in the News-Express and found out there was a problem.
Charles, 70, said it was natural for her and her husband, 77, to open a pre-paid burial fund through the Justice Funeral Home because the company handled the funerals for two of their children in the 1950s and several other family members throughout the years. The opened the fund in 2003 with $15,000.
Charles claims that her sister, a Michigan native, is also making inquiries into her pre-paid burial fund, which was opened in 1999. Justice's father, Perry A. Justice, opened the funeral home several decades ago. After he died, Justice and his brother, Gary Justice, took over the business. When problems arose between the siblings, Gary Justice purchased the J.W. Call Funeral Home in Pikeville.
Justice Funeral Home held its last funeral in October 2006. The business is now under new leadership and has been renamed as the Pikeville Funeral Home.
Doshie Bartley, 71, of Powell's Creek, said she wrote a check for more than $15,000 and gave it to Justice in August 2004, thinking she was doing a positive thing for her and her husband, William Ray Bartley, but when it was time to withdraw the money, she said nothing was there.
Justice Funeral Home handled the burial arrangements last year for Bartley's husband of 50 years, but she said the financial agreement she had with the funeral home “worried me to death.” Bartley wanted to transfer the remaining funds in her burial insurance contract to another funeral home in Pikeville. The director there, she said, informed her that no money was available when he went to pick up the contract.
Each individual warrant filed Friday says that Justice may give $100,000 bail to be released from the Pike County Detention Center.
The Floyd County Times (Pike funeral director charged with 19 counts, 2/7/07 - also archived @ Newsbank) further reported that Justice denied the allegations, claimed funeral home employees embezzled the money, and that, if convicted, he faced up to 20 years in prison, a fine of up to $10,000 for each count (or twice the amount of gain), or both. The Lexington Herald-Leader (Funeral home owner faces charges on prepaid arrangements, 2/3/07 @ Newsbank) specified that KOI spokeswoman Ronda Sloan also noted a misdemeanor charge in addition to the 19 felonies, and that the Justice Funeral Home reopened as Pikeville Funeral Home in January after being purchased by Paul Burchell, owner of Salyersville's Magoffin County Funeral Home.
