A Fentress County grand jury has indicted the owner of a Jamestown, Tennessee funeral home on 52 counts, after investigators said he filed fraudulent burial-insurance claims, took money from elderly clients and mishandled cremated remains.
Chadrick "Chad" Mundy, 37, who owns Mundy Funeral Home, was arrested Wednesday afternoon and booked into the Fentress County Jail on an $80,000 bond, according to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.
What investigators say they found
The TBI said its agents began looking into allegations against the funeral home in May, at the request of 8th Judicial District Attorney General Jared Effler, after complaints involving theft and fraud.
According to the TBI, agents found evidence that Mundy filed numerous fraudulent insurance claims tied to burial policies -- submitting death claims for people who were still alive so the insurer would pay out. One of those claims, the agency said, was filed for Mundy's own wife, who is living.
Investigators also said Mundy financially exploited elderly and vulnerable clients for personal gain, and mishandled cremated remains.
The 52 charges
The grand jury returned an indictment covering eight categories of offences: 15 counts of theft of property over $2,500; 12 counts of violating the Fraudulent Insurance Act; nine counts of financial exploitation of an elderly or vulnerable adult; five counts of theft of property over $1,000; four counts of theft of property under $1,000; four counts of abuse of a corpse; two counts of criminal simulation; and one count of issuing worthless checks.
An indictment is a formal accusation, not a finding of guilt. Mundy has not been convicted of any of the charges, and the case has not yet gone to trial.
His licenses were already suspended
The arrest was not the first action taken against the business this year. In August, the Tennessee Board of Funeral Directors and Embalmers summarily suspended the operating licenses for both Mundy and Mundy Funeral Home, saying the state had found he lacked proper financial documentation and had filed fraudulent life-insurance death claims for living people.
The board declared the business an immediate risk to the public's health, safety and welfare -- an unusually direct finding for a state licensing body, and one that came weeks before the criminal indictment.
A family business since 1964
Mundy Funeral Home sits on South Main Street in Jamestown, a town of a few thousand people in Fentress County on the Cumberland Plateau. The business has been owned and operated by the Mundy family since 1964, handling funerals and cremations for families across the surrounding communities.
That history is part of what makes the allegations land the way they have locally. The charges describe a business trusted with a community's dead and its burial policies -- and accuse its owner of turning both into a source of money.
The TBI said the investigation remains open.
