Two Southern California women have been charged with staging sham funerals to collect life insurance payments and other money totaling an estimated $1 million. Hawthorne phlebotomist Faye Schilling, 60, and Los Angeles mortuary worker Jean Crump, 66, were arrested Wednesday on a federal grand jury indictment. The indictment said the two women bought insurance policies, waited for them to mature, then held bogus burials or cremations and arranged for phony death certificates.
“The level of deception is shocking,” said Anthony Montero, a special assistant to the U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles.
Montero said the “dead” were likely fictitious people, but said identities of real people may have been stolen.
In one funeral at a Long Beach mortuary, authorities alleged that the women loaded a casket with various items to simulate the weight of a corpse they called “Jim Davis.” They purchased a plot in a Compton graveyard, had a funeral and had the casket buried.
Fearing the body-less coffin would be discovered in an investigation, the women then had the coffin exhumed and filed false paperwork with the county saying the remains had been cremated and scattered at sea, the indictment said.
Both women were released after posting $10,000 bail. They are scheduled to be arraigned April 23.
Reached Wednesday night by the Los Angeles Times, Schilling said, “That’s a lie,” in response to the indictment. “That’s not my line of work, that’s not something I do.” She declined to comment further.
Phone numbers listed under Crump’s name were disconnected, and an attorney could not be reached.
In addition to the life insurance claims, which included a $250,000 policy, prosecutors said the women secured payments from financing companies to pay for inflated funeral costs.
The indictment said Crump offered one doctor $50,000 to lie on medical records to support the cause of death listed on a phony death certificate.
Two other women, Lydia Eileen Pearce, 37, owner of a mortuary in Long Beach, and Barbara Lynn, 54, a notary from Los Angeles, previously pleaded guilty in the alleged scam, said Montero, and he believed that more arrests were likely.
Montero said federal agents became involved after people approached to join the scam reported it to authorities.
Article By: AP, Courtesy of Foxnews.com
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