Former Uniontown funeral home owner allegedly scammed elderly customers

A former Uniontown funeral home owner bilked elderly customers out of $284,393 in pre-paid funeral expenses, prosecutors alleged Monday.

Stephen E. Kezmarsky III, 50, who owned now-bankrupt Stephen E. Kezmarsky Funeral Home in Uniontown, is charged with 88 criminal counts, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro and Fayette County District Attorney Rich Bower announced jointly.

Kezmarsky is charged with 84 felonies and four misdemeanors for allegedly scamming 51 elderly customers. He is accused of taking money paid for future funeral expenses and putting it in his own bank accounts. Such expenses are required by law to be placed in an escrow account.

The investigation is ongoing, Shapiro said.

Shapiro noted that state and county investigators have learned that Kezmarsky spent the money not only to support his now-bankrupt funeral business, “but he spent it at restaurants, at gas stations, airfare ... even on liquor.”

“Many of these victims are on fixed incomes, and their money was stolen by the very funeral director they placed their trust in,” Shapiro said.

John Knapp, 94, of Bitner, North Union Township, said he was bilked out of $20,600 he paid Kezmarsky in 2015 when he pre-arranged his wife's funeral. When his wife, Elizabeth, died before Thanksgiving 2017, Knapp had to pay $13,000 to another funeral home for her burial, he said.

“It's not right,” Knapp said.

Knapp said he thought it was important to appear at the attorney general's press conference Monday announcing the charges.

“I'm glad someone is doing something about it. Unfortunately, there were a lot of other victims besides me,” he said.

Fayette County District Attorney Richard Bower said prosecutors believe the evidence shows Kezmarksy “preyed on the elderly.”

Authorities said Kezmarsky's funeral home on South Pennsylvania Avenue closed in April after filing for bankruptcy and that he went to work for another local funeral home.

“Since 1996, I have been working diligently to serve the families that have called upon us,” the Herald-Standard newspaper reported Kezmarsky said in a statement. “We have fallen on hard times, and there are inevitably going to be changes to the way we do business.”

At-need and pre-need funeral arrangements would be honored, Kezmarsky said in the statement.

In December, the Uniontown newspaper reported that a trustee in a bankruptcy case accused Kezmarsky of keeping nearly $50,000 collected for funerals between October 2016 and March 2017.

Kathleen Ryan, executive director of the Pennsylvania Funeral Directors Association, said the organization had received up to four complaints about Kezmarsky in the last six months and had forwarded them to Shapiro's office.

The complaints by the survivors were that “deaths had occurred and there was no money. They couldn't find the money,” Ryan said.

Pre-paid funeral expenses, which cover everything from funeral home services to obituaries, usually are kept with a financial institution until the time of death, she explained.

The funeral home is paid once the death certificate is submitted to the financial institution.

“If the money doesn't get there at the time of the pre-arrangement, there's no money to pay out. In this case, the money never got to the bank or insurance company,” Ryan said.

Two other victims who attended the press conference, Ron Gergeley, 72, and his wife, Linda, 69, of Hopwood, said they lost $16,600 to Kezmarsky. They made two payments for pre-paid funeral expenses in 2016 and first suspected something was amiss “when he asked us to write the checks to him instead of the insurance company.”

The Gergeleys contacted authorities after they heard about the bankruptcy last year.

“We trusted him,” Ron Gergeley said.

Shapiro and Bower suggested three tips that consumers should follow before pre-planning a funeral.

• Make sure the funeral home director provides an itemized cost statement for all services including advance payments for venders, such as obituaries for newspapers;

• When making any advance payment or prepayment, ask in writing where the prepayment will be deposited and held in escrow, and

• Ask for references and check them.

Both Bower and Shapiro said they believe there are more victims. Potential victims can call Shapiro's insurance fraud section at (412) 880-0129 or Bower's office at (724) 430-1245.

Paul Peirce and Stephen Huba are Tribune-Review staff writers. Peirce can be reached at 724-850-2860, ppeirce@tribweb.com or via Twitter @ppeirce_trib and Huba at 724-850-1280, shuba@tribweb.com or via Twitter @shuba_trib.