Mortuary Worker Convicted of Faking Funerals With Mannequin and Cow Parts [KTLA-TV, Los Angeles]

Feb. 28--LOS ANGELES -- A mortuary worker convicted of staging fake funerals to defraud insurers out of nearly $1 million faces up to 20 years in prison when she is sentenced in May.

Jean Crump, 69, was found guilty last week of federal mail and wire fraud charges stemming from a scam in which she and others purchased insurance policies for non-existent people, killed them off on paper and then staged their funerals.

Her alleged conspirator, Faye Shilling, 61, of Hawthorne, pleaded guilty to a pair of wire fraud counts in 2010.

According to a federal grand jury indictment, Shilling and Crump, collected almost $1 million from insurance and lending companies by purchasing policies for non-existent people, killing them off on paper and then staging their funerals.

Crump and Shilling, a nurse phlebotomist, worked at a now-defunct Long Beach mortuary.

They allegedly filled caskets with various materials to make it appear they contained actual corpses.

After the funerals, the women and 2 other associates allegedly filed bogus documents with the county saying the remains had been cremated and scattered at sea, prosecutors said.

The insurance policies were worth $50,000 to $450,000, and the women collected on some as large as $250,000, officials said.

After insurers started investigating, Shilling and her cohorts exhumed the coffin, filled it with a mannequin and cow parts and cremated it.

Two other women, Lydia Eileen Pearce, 37, owner of a mortuary in , and Barbara Lynn, 54, a notary from Los Angeles, previously pleaded guilty in the alleged scam.

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