Little oversight for industry critics call rife with abuse

Kim Curtis

Friday, Aug. 13, 1999 | 4:40 a.m.

SAN FRANCISCO - Cindy Briggs got a letter a month after her father died, certifying that his ashes had been scattered five miles off the coast of Monterey Bay. He had always been superstitious about people walking over his grave.

The reality proved much worse than his fears.

His ashes were discovered among several thousand boxes of cremated remains - many unmarked - stashed in two warehouses by a pilot who had told families the ashes had been scattered.

"Somebody you love dies, you think you took care of everything and now everything's thrown back in your face so carelessly," Mrs. Briggs said.

The "cremains" case was one of the more notorious frauds ever discovered in California's $462 million funeral industry, where only four state inspectors oversee 810 funeral homes, 212 private cemeteries and 170 crematories.

Consumer advocates say the state needs to improve oversight, noting that - with an average price tag of $4,300 - a funeral is one of the more costly purchases a family makes. Even diligent shoppers are vulnerable when they're grieving; they often have little time to compare prices or desire to complain when things go wrong.

"It's kind of a morbid thing to fight about I guess," said Patrick Wallace of the San Francisco Bay area's Better Business Bureau, which received just five complaints about the funeral industry last year. "Maybe they just accept it as it is and walk away from it."

An Associated Press review found that there have been 31 license revocations, suspensions and probations issued by the state Department of Consumer Affairs since 1996, when it took over monitoring the industry. In one case, a chain of San Francisco Bay area funeral homes had its licenses revoked for not refrigerating bodies and allowing them to decompose, abandoning bodies in vans parked outside and delivering cremated remains to the wrong families in six instances.

The DCA issued more than 1000 citations for lesser violations during the same period, with fines ranging from $100 to $30,000 with an average of about $500. The agency would not elaborate on the violations.

Critics say the department, which acts as a clearinghouse for complaints, isn't doing an adequate job monitoring the funeral industry. There are only four full-time inspectors with a small support staff, and there is no consolidated database to keep track of what happens to complaints.

For example, DCA statistics show that 631 complaints were filed against the industry in fiscal year 1997-98, but the agency cannot say how many of those were investigated, how many were dismissed or how many were acted on, according to DCA spokeswoman Nancy Hardaker. The records are a mix of paper and computer files, making a search difficult.

However, a consumer can call the DCA about a particular funeral home or cemetery and get a history of any complaints filed or disciplinary actions taken against the business, said Program Chief G.V. Ayers.

People can learn the status of funeral homes or morticians' licenses at the DCA's Cemetery and Funeral Program Web site, but the site doesn't give details of any disciplinary actions taken against them.

The four inspectors are charged with going to all 170 crematories annually, investigating consumer complaints and mediating the nearly 65 percent of complaints they decide not to probe.

In the first five months of 1999, one inspector reported visiting 310 funeral homes, an average of about 2 1/2 inspections a day, not including travel time.

"You can't inspect anybody that quickly," said Dan Rohling, a mortician who inspected crematories in 1995 for a state oversight board that was later dissolved.

"That's way too many even for funeral homes. I'm not sure that he's doing anyone any good. He's certainly not doing the state their due nor is he protecting the public. It's crazy."

Inspectors can cite a business on the spot or, for more serious infractions, report it to the DCA's Ayers. He takes it to the state Attorney General's office, which handles the legal paperwork, and asks a judge to temporarily shut down the suspect facility during an investigation.

A business owner may agree to certain stipulations or can demand a hearing, and the decision to suspend or revoke a license or place someone on probation also is made at the hearing.

But it's still difficult for consumers to get information, said Rohling, the state inspector who discovered unidentified ashes, mass graves and reused caskets during his tenure.

"Everything's behind closed doors. You have no public forum. It makes it very difficult for consumers to know what you're doing. They've closed the doors on the public and my first question is why," he said.

Jon Golinger of the California Public Interest Research Group, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group, blames "industry pressure and bureaucratic foot-dragging."

"There are very few eyes watching the funeral industry and it's very difficult for regular people to decide who's doing a good job and who's ripping people off," Golinger said.

The DCA began overseeing the industry after complaints about a state board led to its dissolution. The board, which had two consumer seats, was accused of being unproductive and too closely tied to industry lobbyists.

Now, oversight is handled by the Cemetery and Funeral Program - a branch of the massive DCA, which oversees everything from auto mechanics to doctors. The $2.2 million program is funded by industry licensing and regulatory fees. There are no consumers or industry members on staff.

"They've succeeded in gutting the little oversight that was there before," Golinger said. "All we have now is a program with a staff that's only going to do as much as they need to ... and they've done less to curb abuse in the industry."

"We're trying to do the very best that we can with the staffing and budgeting that has been allocated to us," countered Ayers, who said their priority is to investigate "the big things."

"We seek to try to include people in the process," he said. "We intend to have public meetings, answer our phone calls and letters, and take consumer complaints very seriously."

One common complaint involves prepaid funerals, an increasingly popular option that can give people a false sense of security, according to the American Association for Retired Persons, which advocates preplanning, not prepaying.

Many elderly people pay thousands of dollars in advance for their funerals in hopes of sparing their families the expense. But families often are stuck paying extra expenses when it comes time for the funeral that was presumably pre-paid.

One family filed a complaint after a Whittier mortuary said they had to buy one of their coffins, with the cheapest option a $1,795 bronze casket, because they had changed their policy since the contract had been signed.

"They had lied to us," said Mike Bosse, who double-checked the Rose Hills Mortuary contract which stated that they did "not restrict ... the survivors from purchasing funeral merchandise or services in the open market."

Then, the mortuary repeated the demand when another relative died 45 days later, Bosse said.

Same contract, same provisions, same hassle, said Bosse, who eventually was allowed to buy $1,000 caskets for his in-laws elsewhere after making repeated phone calls, writing letters and insisting the funeral home honor the contract. Bosse filed a complaint.

But a DCA investigation determined there had been no wrongdoing and that the contract's language was "ambiguous." Rose Hills representatives refused to comment.

Bosse said he was told he couldn't have a copy of the board's investigation of his complaint because such findings were "confidential."

"More than anything, people need to know which funeral homes are on the up and up even if that means which have been slapped on the wrist or paid a fine or whatever," Golinger said.

In the cremains case, pilot Allan Vieira of Discovery Bay had contracts with more than 200 Northern California mortuaries despite his invalid pilot's license. He shot himself to death shortly after the fraud was discovered in June 1997 and none of the mortuaries ever was disciplined by the state. Several lawsuits are pending.

"There such things as standards of care and being able to sleep well at night," Rohling, of the dissolved state board, said. "The whole reason for being there is to help people. This is a tough time for people. If you don't do it honestly, how can you sleep at night?"

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