Fancy Real Estate & Pepper Spray Florals | 4M #241

Welcome to the two-hundred-and-forty-first edition of Morticians’ Monday Morning Mashup, 4M #241, where we’ll serve up bite-sized, easily-digestible nuggets of the deathcare news you need to crush conversations in the week ahead. Bon appetit!

End of the enterprise

Former Michigan funeral director Terry Kaufman has been sentenced to 7 to 20 years in state prison after pleading no contest to 39 charges, including conducting a criminal enterprise and embezzlement, for stealing $1.1 million in preneed funds from 204 victims over a decade.

A Pre-Need Program You Don’t Have to Manage Alone

Building a successful pre-need program takes more than intention.

It takes people, systems, and consistent execution.

Treasured Memories provides a complete, managed approach:

• Counselor recruitment, hiring, and training
• Educational programs like PreNeed University
• Community outreach and Lunch & Learns
• Aftercare support and ongoing family engagement
• Direct mail marketing and contact management tools

All designed to help you:

• Expand your reach in the community
• Increase market share
• Build a reliable pipeline of future business

This isn’t just a service offering.

It’s a structured, supported path to long-term growth.

We need a niches.com

Scoff if you must, but deep down, don’t you secretly wish your deathcare establishment was cool enough to be featured in a bougie magazine like Town and Country? Well, a recent featured article just called out a few cemeteries — yes, they’re the huge, well-known ones, but still … They’re cemeteries! In a fancy schmancy magazine! Anyway, most of the article is about mausoleums of the rich and famous, and honestly, it reads like a high-end real estate story. Here’s a quote from the architect who created the new $12,000-and-up-per-niche Gower Mausoleum at LA’s Hollywood Forever cemetery:  “We have sea breezes, and you can see the Hollywood sign,” he says. “It has one of the best views in the city.”

Southern funerals

Speaking of misappropriated deathcare funds … Lawmakers in Connecticut have created a $1 million fund to provide financial relief to victims of former funeral director Philip Pietras. Pietras faces larceny, ’s been a slow news week in deathcare (that’s usually a good thing) … so, here’s an eerily accurate video about how we do funerals down here in Alabama. You’re welcome in advance. 😉