The Parkville couple didn't want to burden their children.
A retired sheet metal worker and his stay-at-home wife, Thomas and Dolores Amig, walked into Stella Funeral Home in Baltimore last year and agreed to shell out more than $7,000 to cover Dolores' future funeral. Owner Paul Stella demanded full payment and, to the Amigs' surprise, came to their home the next day to pick up the trust fund check.
With the news this week that the state suspended Stella's operating license and the FBI raided his offices as part of a fraud investigation, the couple in their 70s don't know whether their money has been stolen.
Federal authorities are talking to possible victims, and bank officials have promised to help.
In court papers, federal agents said they believe that up to 140 people might have had their prepaid funeral accounts - once worth more than $550,000 - improperly emptied by Stella and his employees. The allegations mirror multimillion-dollar schemes recently uncovered in several states where funeral home and cemetery owners have been accused of raiding customer accounts for their own gain.
"I was happy about it," Dolores Amig said of paying her funeral in advance at Stella's. "And now, gosh, I don't know about this. What kind of friend is he?"
The state Board of Morticians, which suspended Stella's license in November, is now pushing for new customer protections in the wake of the FBI investigation. Licensed funeral directors and morticians, for example, would have to present a notarized letter or death certificate before removing any funds from a prepaid account under the proposed regulations.
In Maryland, so-called "pre-need" customers at Stella's said in interviews that they spent this week calling the FBI and the Madison Bohemian Savings bank, where their prepaid accounts were, but got little information about their individual accounts.
Bank President Lawrence Williams tried to assuage concerns this week, declaring that "no customer of the Bank will incur any loss."
But his prepared statement also raised questions about which financial institution would be responsible for recouping any money. According to court papers, Stella is accused of secretly depositing his customers' refund checks from the closed Madison Bohemian accounts into Bank of America accounts, a point that Williams' statement highlighted.
