Posted on: Friday, February 22, 2002

Mortuary suspected of casket scam

By David Briscoe
Associated Press

HILO, Hawai'i — Authorities seized hundreds of business records from a funeral home to investigate whether corpses were buried in body bags after customers paid for caskets, officials said yesterday.

The state said it received at least three reports that Memorial Mortuary did not bury corpses in their caskets.

The funeral home owner, Robert R. Diego, 59, denied the allegations.

"We have never removed any bodies from caskets," said his attorney, Brenda Carreira, at Diego's office late yesterday.

Carreira said the funeral home responded to state authorities last year when the allegations were first raised, but the state never replied until Wednesday when the raid was conducted.

The investigation is ongoing, said Chris Young, a deputy attorney general.

"Nothing has been exhumed at this point," he said.

The state plans to analyze the mortuary's records, seized Wednesday, to determine whether any graves warrant "non-intrusive" scans.

Only after all scans have been done, and after investigators determine a burial was not done according to contract will a grave be exhumed, and only with consent from the family, the state said.

In recent weeks, investigators from the Army's Central Identification Laboratory-Hawaii, based at Hickam Air Force Base, used metal detectors to scan about 25 graves, according to investigators.

Donald Wong, a chief investigator in the attorney general's office, said he believed a tip from a former employee sparked the investigation.

"The allegation is he may have sold a coffin to many different individuals," Wong said.

The attorney general's office was flooded with phone calls yesterday from people seeking assurance that their loved ones were properly buried.

Last week, the discovery of bodies discarded near a Georgia crematory placed businesses involved in funerals and burials under scrutiny nationwide.

The Hawai'i investigation began last year, Wong said.

State records show that the mortuary's license to perform funeral and embalming services expired in 1995, and that warning letters were sent in 1997 and 1999.

The agency that issues licenses referred questions to the state's regulated industries complaints office. Calls to that office went unanswered after business hours.