National Prearranged Services: a $450 million prepaid funeral Ponzi scheme
National Prearranged Services Inc., based in Clayton, Missouri, sold prepaid funeral contracts in several states, telling customers their money would be held safely in trust. Instead, over more than 15 years, company officers used the money for personal enrichment and to cover the funerals of customers who had paid years earlier, a federal judge called it "an enormous Ponzi scheme." NPS collapsed in 2008, having taken more than $450 million from over 97,000 customers across 16 states. Six people, including the company's owner, his son, and its former chief financial officer, were sentenced in November 2013 to prison terms of 18 months to 10 years, and ordered to pay a combined $445.5 million in restitution.
- Year
- 2013
- Where
- United States
- Outcome
- Sentenced
- Reported loss
- $450.0 million
- Victims
- 97,000
- Schemes
- Prepaid funeral scams
- Last reviewed
- 2026-10-06
The facts, as recorded
- National Prearranged Services Inc. (NPS), based in Clayton, Missouri, sold prearranged funeral contracts, funded through an affiliated company, Lincoln Memorial Life Insurance, to customers in more than 16 states, beginning as early as 1992.
- Federal prosecutors said that while NPS told customers their prepayments would be held safely in trust, the money was instead used for the personal enrichment of company officers and others, with new contracts covering the costs of funerals that were supposed to be paid from existing trust funds.
- NPS collapsed in 2008. US District Judge Jean Hamilton, at sentencing, called it 'an enormous Ponzi scheme' carried out for 'over 15 years.'
- Company owner James 'Doug' Cassity, 67, was sentenced to nine years and seven months in prison; his son, Brent Cassity, 46, received five years; former chief financial officer Randall K. Sutton, 68, received seven years.
- Company lawyer Howard Wittner, 76, was sentenced to three years; longtime employee Sharon Nekol Province, 69, was sentenced to 18 months.
- Former investment adviser David Wulf, 61, the only defendant to go to trial rather than plead guilty, was convicted on 18 counts including bank fraud, wire fraud and conspiracy, and was sentenced to 10 years, the maximum urged by prosecutors.
- Judge Hamilton ordered the Cassitys, Sutton, Wulf and Province to pay restitution of $435 million; Wittner was separately ordered to repay $10.5 million.
- More than 97,000 customers were affected; prosecutors and reporting at the time described the prospect of significant repayment to victims as remote, with a related civil suit still pending.
- Sybil Smith, IRS Criminal Investigation special agent in charge: "Honest and law-abiding citizens are fed up with the likes of those who use deceit and fraud to line their pockets with other people's money."
Why this case matters
This is the largest and longest-running prepaid funeral fraud documented on this page, and the one that most clearly shows the Ponzi dynamic other, smaller cases only hint at: new customers’ payments did not just fail to reach a trust, they were actively used to pay for the funerals of customers who had already paid years before, keeping the business looking solvent for over 15 years.
How the trust requirement was supposed to work, and didn’t
Missouri’s own prepaid funeral law, Chapter 436, required at least 80 percent of each payment to be deposited into trust before NPS’s collapse prompted reform efforts. NPS’s contracts were structured as trust-funded, through an affiliated life insurer, Lincoln Memorial Life Insurance, rather than the insurance-funded model most other states use. Federal prosecutors said that structure was not followed in practice: the trust was treated as a source of cash for current obligations and personal spending, not a sealed account left untouched for decades.
Six defendants, six different roles
The sentences handed down in November 2013 reflected each defendant’s specific role: the Cassitys as the family running the company, Sutton as the executive managing the money, Wittner as the lawyer who admitted lying to insurance regulators to conceal the source of funds used to acquire a malpractice insurer, Province as a longtime employee without a high school diploma who was installed as a company president late in the scheme, and Wulf, an outside investment adviser who went to trial rather than plead guilty and received the longest sentence of the group after being convicted on all 18 counts.
The money that was not there
Judge Hamilton ordered a combined $445.5 million in restitution across the six defendants, a figure that closely tracked the scale of the fraud itself. Reporting at the time described the prospect of meaningful repayment to the more than 97,000 affected customers, funeral homes and insurers as remote, since the diverted money had already been spent rather than set aside.
The caveat
All six defendants named in this case have been convicted, by guilty plea or at trial, and sentenced; this is a concluded criminal matter. A separate civil suit over the remaining losses was still pending at the time of the source cited here, and this page makes no claim about its outcome.
Sources
- National Prearranged Services Crooks Finally Get Prison Sentence. Connecting Directors (funeral industry trade press). Accessed 2026-10-06. Supports: All six defendants' names, ages, roles, charges and sentences, the $450 million-plus loss figure, the more than 97,000 victims, the $435 million and $10.5 million restitution orders, NPS's 2008 collapse, and the judge's and IRS special agent's quotes.
- Prepaid funeral scam fitting end to multistate fraud scheme. Patch. Accessed 2026-10-06. Supports: The more than 16 states affected, the approximately 97,000 victims, the over $450 million loss figure, and the scheme's 1992 start year.
- Missouri's Trusting War: SB1 vs. HB 853. DeathCareLaw.com (funeral and cemetery law trade publication). Accessed 2026-10-06. Supports: Missouri's Chapter 436 pre-reform requirement that at least 80 percent of each preneed payment go into trust, the legislative reform proposals that followed NPS's collapse, and the fact that NPS's contracts were trust-funded rather than insurance-funded, unlike most states.