Over the years we, unfortunately, have had to share many stories relating to funeral scandals, scams, embezzling and even corpse abuse. But this is the first time we have ever received a press release statement from a company involved in a scam openly admitting to the scam committed by an employe ahead of us posting about it and offering a statement on how they handled the issue. We applaud the Foundation Partners for their courage and openness.
The following statement was emailed to us last week by Foundation Partners President and CEO Brad Rex:
In mid‐January 2014, we received an allegation that one of our former T.J. McGowan Sons
Funeral Home employees had been requesting and receiving personal payments directly from
customers for services conducted by the business. Immediately upon learning of this matter,
we launched a comprehensive internal investigation to uncover the facts and, after completing
our investigation, we proactively engaged the New York State Police and the Department of
Health Bureau of Funeral Directing to turn over all evidence and facts that were uncovered.
Given the nature of the potential charges, the complaint and investigation were kept private
until now.
On September 3, 2014, the New York State Police arrested Donald Cranston, former manager of
T.J. McGowan, on charges of Grand Larceny in the Second Degree and Falsifying Business
Records in the First Degree (https://www.nyspnews.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=40428).
It is important to note that we believe all services were provided to customers as promised in
the agreements made with T.J. McGowan Sons. This was a fraud perpetuated against the
Company. Additionally, no PreNeed accounts were impacted in any way by this fraud. We
have and will continue to fully cooperate with the authorities.
For more than 135 years, T.J. McGowan Sons has been creating healing experiences, caring for
families, and creating meaningful ceremonies to honor the lives and memories of our loved
ones. We value highly the trust of our customers, and expect all of our employees to meet and
exceed the highest ethical standards. As a result of our investigation, we have added further
rigor to our internal oversight procedures to help avoid similar circumstances in the future.
