Complaints surface at Florida cemetery managed by Memory Gardens owner
Published 6:00 am Sunday, August 24, 2014
- Close to a thousand people filled 2 courtrooms at the Cullman County Courthouse during a community meeting where information regarding Cullman Memory Gardens was disclosed to the public.
Complaints of financial mismanagement have surfaced at a Florida cemetery owned by the same people who control the bankrupt Cullman Memory Gardens in Cullman.
A local media outlet in Tampa, Florida, is reporting JGR Funeral Home has abruptly closed, after allowing those with pre-need services to continue paying payments just days before the shut down. The business website has since been taken down.
A public records search in Florda found the funeral home is owned by DeArbor1, LLC., which is registered to Judy DeSola — the same person responsible for the troubled DeArbor, LLC. in Alabama that has led Cullman Memory Gardens into bankruptcy and a court-ordered lockdown. The Florida LLC was filed in January 2013 and remains active.
The Florida Board of Funeral, Cemetery and Consumer Services also processed the company’s application for a funeral establishment license in March of 2013 under the name DeArbor1, LLC., doing business as JGR Funeral Services.
A person who answered the phone at the cemetery’s N. Armenia Avenue office this week in Tampa claimed the cemetery was closed, but had reopened under new owners. She would not reveal who allegedly bought the business.
At least one family claims to have lost thousands of dollars in Florida, and the cemetery’s operator Julio Gonzalez-Roel has previously pleaded guilty to grand theft in connection to a different funeral home in 2007, according to WFLA News.
“It just breaks my heart,” Juan Salgado told the Tampa-based NBC affiliate WFLA. “Now, we have to leave the bedside to deal with this, knowing that my father could die at any moment, and I might not be there.”
Similiar claims have been made in the past year about Cullman Memory Gardens, which was bought by DeArbor in 2009 following alleged mismanagement by the previous owner. DeArbor’s certificate to sell pre-need esrvices was suspended in 2013, after which the company went dark and complaints started mounting among those who had paid for pre-need services.
Cullman Memory Gardens cemetery and its owner DeArbor, LLC are in Chapter 11 bankruptcy and accused of “fraud, dishonesty, gross incompetence or gross mismanagement,” which has led the state to appoint a trustee to manage the ongoing bankruptcy proceedings.
According to court documents, Tuscaloosa-based DeArbor, LLC borrowed approximately $700,000 from World Business Lenders with plans to use those funds to shore up trusts that were too low to cover outstanding pre-need purchases.
But, according to bankruptcy filings by World Business Lenders’ legal counsel, those loan proceeds have since “vanished,” while the debtor and its affiliated representatives have ”no explanation” for the whereabouts or use of the funds. World Business Lenders accuses the company of “fraud, dishonesty, gross incompetence or gross mismanagement” in a 16-page motion requesting the appointment of a trustee.
Anthony Arboritanza, managing member of DeArbor, LLC., was reportedly removed from his position in April 2012, and Judy A. DeSola was designated as sole and managing member of DeArbor. But, the filing notes DeSola’s husband Salvatore reportedly has a power of attorney over Judy, giving him control of the company.
World Business Lenders argues DeArbor has “stripped the equity” from the properties and the business, and requested a court-appointed trustee be placed over the proceedings. The court agreed, and named Robert A. Morgan as the Chapter 11 trustee. Messages left for Morgan were not returned by deadline of this article.
A State of Alabama Department of Insurance investigation found that in January 2013 DeArbor failed to deposit $8,726 due for trusting on 13 pre-need contracts that had been paid in full at Cullman Memory Gardens. Similar situations were noted at a half dozen other DeArbor-owned properties.