$450M+taken from prepaid funeral customers over more than 15 years
A federal judge called National Prearranged Services 'an enormous Ponzi scheme,' run for over 15 years, that took more than $450 million from over 97,000 prepaid funeral customers across 16 states.
Six people, including the company's owner and its former chief financial officer, were sentenced in November 2013 to between 18 months and 10 years; a $435 million restitution order followed, but repayment to victims was called unlikely.
Source: Connecting Directors (funeral industry trade press). Read more: prepaid funeral scam · case file