Funeral director plans to plead guilty
A Smith Township funeral director plans to plead guilty to reduced charges and repay people whose money for prepaid funerals she allegedly commingled with funds in a personal account.
As part of an agreement, prosecutors plan to withdraw 51 felony counts against Lynn Taucher, 57 – who owns Taucher Funeral Home at the same address as her home on Erie Mine Road – and instead proceed with one misdemeanor count each of theft by failure to make required disposition of funds received and forgery.
Her attorney, Kevin Zinski, told Washington County Judge Michael J. Lucas during a pretrial conference Tuesday his client would transfer funds to repay the victims from her escrow account to his escrow.
Lucas set a plea hearing for 9:30 a.m. Nov. 21. It is unclear if he will sentence Taucher then or order a pre-sentencing investigation by the Adult Probation Office.
“It’s all funded,” Zinski said of the reimbursement money following the brief proceeding. “In fact, once this investigation started, she was able to get that money together to put it into escrow so that it was available for the victims.”
During Tuesday’s conference, Deputy Attorney General Courtney Butterfield called the arrangements the “cleanest way” to make the victims whole.
Zinski said he plans to ask for probation.
State prosecutors aren’t seeking jail time but haven’t outlined specifics of the sentence they’ll seek.
Charges originally filed by the attorney general’s office included more than 40 counts of theft by failure to make required disposition of funds and one each of forgery and insurance fraud, all felonies.
The case centered on allegations that Taucher collected $340,000 for prepaid funerals and commingled it with money in a personal account she allegedly used for gambling and business expenses, instead of placing it in separate account and reporting the money to the state as required between 2006 and 2016.