Former Uniontown funeral home owner accused of scamming elderly customers

Jan. 22--A former Uniontown funeral home owner bilked elderly customers out of $284,393 in pre-paid funeral expenses, prosecutors alleged Monday.

Stephen E. Kezmarsky III, who owned Stephen E. Kezmarsky Funeral Home in Uniontown before it closed last year, is charged with 88 criminal counts, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro and Fayette County District Attorney Rich Bower announced jointly.

Kezmarsky is charged with 84 felonies and four misdemeanors for allegedly scamming more than 50 elderly customers. He is accused of taking money paid for future funeral expenses and putting it in his own bank accounts. Such expenses are required by law to be placed in an escrow account.

He was ordered to the county jail by District Judge Michael Metros after failing to post $500,000 bond.

The investigation is ongoing.

One of the customers, John Knapp, 94, of Bitner, North Union Township, said he was bilked out of $20,600 he paid Kezmarsky in 2015 when he prearranged his wife's funeral. When his wife died before Thanksgiving 2017, Knapp had to pay $13,000 to another funeral home for her burial, he said.

Knapp said he thought it was important to appear at the attorney general's press conference Monday announcing the charges.

"It's not right," he said.

The Herald-Standard reported that Kezmarsky's funeral home on South Pennsylvania Avenue closed in April and that he went to work for another local funeral home.

"Since 1996, I have been working diligently to serve the families that have called upon us," the Uniontown newspaper reported Kezmarsky said in a statement. "We have fallen on hard times, and there are inevitably going to be changes to the way we do business."

At-need and pre-need funeral arrangements would be honored, Kezmarsky said in the statement.

In December, the Uniontown newspaper reported that a trustee in a bankruptcy case accused Kezmarsky of keeping nearly $50,000 collected for funerals between October 2016 and March 2017.

Kathleen Ryan, executive director of the Pennsylvania Funeral Directors Association, said the organization had received up to four complaints about Kezmarsky in the last six months and had forwarded them to Shapiro's office.

The complaints by the survivors were that "deaths had occurred and there was no money. They couldn't find the money," Ryan said.

Pre-paid funeral expenses, which cover everything from funeral home services to obituaries, usually are kept with a financial institution until the time of death, she explained.

The funeral home is paid once the death certificate is submitted to the financial institution.

"If the money doesn't get there at the time of the pre-arrangement, there's no money to pay out. In this case, the money never got to the bank or insurance company," Ryan said.

Paul Peirce and Stephen Huba are Tribune-Review staff writers. Peirce can be reached at 724-850-2860, [email protected] or via Twitter @ppeirce_trib and Huba at 724-850-1280, [email protected] or via Twitter @shuba_trib.

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