Heffner warns about funeral scammers targeting grieving families: 'They're pathetic'

When John Markle’s father Charles died on May 27, he went to the Heffner Funeral Chapel and Crematory to make arrangements for the funeral.

He had dealt with the funeral home before. He lost his mother Sandra five years ago, and his sister Kimi had followed two years later, and Heffner’s handled the arrangements. The funeral home was like family, John said.

John met with the funeral director on May 28 and his father’s obituary was published the following Thursday, June 1. That day, John had some business to attend to at home – he's retired and now lives in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia – and was on the road when his phone rang.

The caller – who didn’t volunteer his name – told John he was a representative of the Heffner funeral home. John was suspicious. The caller said he was reviewing the contract and that while they were drawing it up, he had forgotten to add a charge for something called “casket and urn insurance.”

The caller explained that the insurance covers anything that may happen to the casket or urn in transit to the cemetery and any injuries that mourners may incur while attending the service.

“It just didn’t seem right. I have buried three people in the last five years,” he said, and he’d never heard of such a thing – probably because it doesn’t exist, funeral directors said.

The caller told John he was at the bank processing the payment and needed John’s credit card information to complete the task. John recalled, “As soon as he said that, it threw up red flags.”

John told the caller he’d have to call Liam Tomsic, the funeral director who had made his father’s arrangements. He called, and Liam told him it was a scam.

John thought so.

Fifteen minutes later, his phone rang again.

It was the scammer.

'It's disgusting'

The scammers who prey on bereaved families have been around for a while, but Ernie Heffner, who owns the funeral home, believes it was the first time one of his clients had been targeted.

“They’re pathetic,” Heffner said of the scammers. “People out to go after grieving families and seniors is unconscionable.”

Tomsic said, “Quite frankly, it’s disgusting to take advantage of people at the worst time in their lives.”

Heffner heard about the scam from some of his fellow funeral home directors and had been warning clients about it. It has been reported in a number of states, from Georgia to West Virginia to Louisiana to Missouri to California. One woman in Georgia was taken for $1,200 by a scammer who told her she owed the money for “insurance.”

Heffner placed a warning on his funeral home’s website and its Facebook page. The funeral directors who work at the home also warn families about the scam when they meet with them to make arrangements, something that bothers Heffner. Funeral directors deal with the next of kin as they are grieving, and the job includes comforting family members as they grieve. Having to inject a warning about how they may be scammed in that very personal and intimate moment is disturbing to him.

“All we can do is warn people,” Heffner said.

'He'd have been furious'

Charles Markle worked for more than 30 years as a lineman for Met-Ed. He received a commendation from the company some years back for saving a co-worker's life after the man had been struck on the side of his head by a large pully that wrested free from the side of a cable truck.

He was a gentle man, his son said. He was also “very strong and very powerful.” The kids in his neighborhood – he lived in York’s Fireside development for almost six decades before his death at age 85 – called him “The Jolly Green Giant” - Met-Ed linemen wore green uniforms when he worked there. Everyone else – friends and family – called him Pappy, his son said.

He loved hunting and fishing. He had a place on the backwater in Rehoboth and loved fishing in the bay and in the ocean. He hunted deer on South Mountain.

He was a practical joker, and among his favorites was something called “Elderbridge hunting,” a prank he would play on kids when the family went camping with other families. How it worked was he would tell the kids that they were going Elderbridge hunting in the night and set them out in a field with a bag and flashlight to catch the imaginary creatures. While they stood in the field, one of the other parents would run through the woods costumed as a ghost to scare the bejesus out of the kids.

His father always tried to help people, his son said, and it bothered him when people were taken advantage of. He would have been more than upset that mourning families were being targeted by con artists.

“He’d have been furious,” John Markle said. “I was furious. I’m a carbon copy of my father, just a smaller version.”

Like his father, John is speaking out because he wants to help others. “I don’t want anybody else to have this happen to them. A lot of people are trusting and in time of grief, they can easily believe something was forgotten. It’s my civic duty to help somebody out. It’s something dad would do.”

'I hope you burn in hell'

Fifteen minutes after the first call, John and his wife Debera had stopped to get something to eat on their way home. Debera had gone into the restaurant to pick up their order when the phone rang. The screen of his cell phone identified the caller as Heffner’s funeral home.

It wasn’t Tomsic. It was the scammer, who had “spoofed” Heffner’s phone number, a technique that scammers use to highjack phones.

The scammer told John that he had checked with the funeral director and he approved the billing.

John told the scammer he had also spoken to the funeral director and “I know it’s a scam.”

Before the scammer could hang up, John told him, “I hope you burn in hell.”

Columnist/reporter Mike Argento has been a York Daily Record staffer since 1982. Reach him at mike@ydr.com.

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This article originally appeared on York Daily Record: Grieving families in Pa. targeted by scammers in 'disgusting' con