LOS ANGELES -- One of two women who staged fake funerals to defraud insurance companies out of nearly $1 million was sentenced Wednesday in Los Angeles to a two-year federal prison term and ordered to pay about $330,500 in restitution.
Faye Shilling, 61, of Hawthorne, pleaded guilty to a pair of wire fraud counts on the eve of trial last July before U.S. District Judge Dean D. Pregerson.
According to a federal grand jury indictment from last year, Shilling and co-defendant 67-year-old Jean Crump, collected almost $1 million from insurance and lending companies by purchasing policies for non-existent people, killing them off on paper and then staging their funerals.
Crump and Shilling, a nurse phlebotomist, worked at a now-defunct Long Beach mortuary.
They allegedly filled caskets with various materials to make it appear they contained actual corpses.
After the funerals, the women and 2 other associates allegedly filed bogus documents with the county saying the remains had been cremated and scattered at sea, prosecutors said.
The insurance policies were worth $50,000 to $450,000, and the women collected on some as large as $250,000, officials said.
After insurers started investigating, Shilling and her cohorts exhumed the coffin, filled it with a mannequin and cow parts and cremated it.
Crump was convicted by a Los Angeles federal jury of mail and wire fraud and is set to be sentenced by Pregerson on Feb. 7.
Two other women, Lydia Eileen Pearce, 37, owner of a mortuary in Long Beach, and Barbara Lynn, 54, a notary from Los Angeles, previously pleaded guilty in the alleged scam.
Faye Shilling, 61, of Hawthorne, pleaded guilty to a pair of wire fraud counts on the eve of trial last July before U.S. District Judge Dean D. Pregerson.
According to a federal grand jury indictment from last year, Shilling and co-defendant 67-year-old Jean Crump, collected almost $1 million from insurance and lending companies by purchasing policies for non-existent people, killing them off on paper and then staging their funerals.
Crump and Shilling, a nurse phlebotomist, worked at a now-defunct Long Beach mortuary.
They allegedly filled caskets with various materials to make it appear they contained actual corpses.
After the funerals, the women and 2 other associates allegedly filed bogus documents with the county saying the remains had been cremated and scattered at sea, prosecutors said.
The insurance policies were worth $50,000 to $450,000, and the women collected on some as large as $250,000, officials said.
After insurers started investigating, Shilling and her cohorts exhumed the coffin, filled it with a mannequin and cow parts and cremated it.
Crump was convicted by a Los Angeles federal jury of mail and wire fraud and is set to be sentenced by Pregerson on Feb. 7.
Two other women, Lydia Eileen Pearce, 37, owner of a mortuary in Long Beach, and Barbara Lynn, 54, a notary from Los Angeles, previously pleaded guilty in the alleged scam.
