COVENTRY, Conn. (WFSB) – The I-Team has learned a local funeral homeowner, accused of stealing pre-paid funeral funds from several clients, may have dozens of more victims.
Philip Pietras, the owner of Pietras Funeral Home in Coventry, Burke-Fortin Funeral Home in Vernon, Bassinger & Dowd Funeral Home in East Windsor and Tolland Memorial Funeral Home, was arrested in April for taking money meant for pre-paid funerals and using it instead to gamble.
After his arrest, other funeral directors in the area says dozens of people have called them, asking for help, after losing thousands of dollars.
If you ever pre-paid for a funeral with Philip Pietras, you might want to call police.
“This magnitude is a lot greater than what the state initially knew about in this first investigation, so we’ve been working with the Vernon Police Department and the police departments in the other towns, and there’s actually almost 80 cases of people that have called in who are missing money,” says Frank Carmon of Carmon Community Funeral Homes.
He and his brother Tim Carmon have been working with potential victims since news broke of Pietras’ arrest.
“We’ve worked with 11 individuals over the past probably 3 or 4 weeks, and two of them have had funds fully intact, what they expected. Five had nothing. Their funds did not exist, and no funds had ever been deposited. Then we had three where some funds were deposited and some funds weren’t,” says Tim Carmon.
The 11 customers combined had prepaid $70,000 but only $19,000 is still available. That’s on top of the $80,000 that police arrested Pietras for, saying he stole the money from 8 clients under DSS and DDS care.
Under CT law, once a client pre-pays the funeral home, the funeral home had ten days to deposit the full payment into a trust account and the money accrues interest over time.
“I mean the consumer needs to know that whenever you prepay or pay for anything, you should get a receipt. You should then make sure that the money is going to a third party,” says Frank Carmon.
Carmon says you should then be receiving a financial statement annually, either from the insurance company or the bank.
Pietras’ license is suspended, he had a chance to argue for reinstatement today during a Department of Public Health Board of Embalmers hearing, but asked for a continuance.
His funeral homes can still operate.
“Unfortunately, yes. So that’s why we are trying to persuade the board to take further action today, because someone unknowingly could send money, say they want to open a prepaid funeral account for a family member, or even for themselves if they don’t know what’s been going on, they’re still allowed to take those funds and deposit them,” says Frank Carmon.
“We’re encouraging the board, encouraging the state to go in, seize records and and do a full audit so that we know the full extent of the mismanagement of funds and then we can come up with a plan, work with the state in order to do that,” says Carmon.
We reached out to Pietras for comment but have not heard back. The Board of Embalmers will meet again on July 1st to further discuss what actions to take.
TIPS FROM THE CT FUNERAL DIRECTORS ASSOCIATION:
The Connecticut Funeral Directors Association recommends that consumers take the following steps to make sure their prepaid funds are properly deposited and managed:
- Carefully read the contract presented to you by the funeral director (you can review it with your attorney, if you have any concerns).
- In the contract, note the name/company of the escrow agent, and keep the contract in a safe place.An escrow agent is an independent third party in charge of holding the assets, documents, and/or money in escrow until the contractual condition is fulfilled in the terms and conditions established by the parties in the escrow agreement. It might be an individual professional or an entity.
- Several weeks after you have signed the contract and presented your check, you will be receiving a confirmation statement from the escrow agent, verifying its deposit. If you do not receive a statement from the escrow agent within one month, inform your funeral home and contact the escrow agent directly.
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