A Northeast Philly woman prepaid for her husbands burial decades ago. When he died, she was asked to pay again.

Between a growing brood of grandchildren, a life full of travel, and a loving marriage that had endured for decades, Marlyn and Herbert Harris had plenty to live for around the turn of the millennium.

Those fortunes didn’t stop the Northeast Philadelphia couple from thinking about their mortality.

So in 2001, they preplanned their funeral arrangements, selecting their headstones and burial plots, and most importantly, paying for the package in full.

But now, Marlyn Harris is not only mourning the January 2024 death of her 95-year-old husband — she’s being asked to hand over hundreds of dollars for some of the same burial services she believed were paid for more than two decades ago.

Five years after Wertheimer Monuments became the subject of an Inquirer investigation for failing to deliver monuments to grieving customers, the embattled Upper Darby company and its owner, Larry Moskowitz, are again the recipients of consumer complaints, according to state prosecutors.

Ernest Petersen, president of the Pennsylvania Cemetery Cremation and Funeral Association, said that while situations like Harris’ are rare, they’re not unheard of in the funeral business, where monument companies are not subject to the same scrutiny as cemeteries and funeral homes.

Customers continued to complain about Wertheimer long after The Inquirer’s 2020 report; it was only last year that the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office announced consequences for the monument company’s unfavorable business practices.

While Harris was asked to pay twice, others have complained of intolerable wait times for their loved ones’ headstones, as well as poor communication from the company during their time of emotional hardship.

Meanwhile, disturbances with Wertheimer, founded in 1929 and one of Philadelphia’s last major monument institutions dedicated to the Jewish community, are a continuing source of pain for customers like Harris.

Nearing Herbert Harris’ yahrzeit— a death anniversary when in the Jewish tradition, Marlyn Harris should be unveiling his monument — the Korean War veteran’s grave remains unmarked.

“I light my candles every Friday night for the Sabbath and would always say, ‘Thank you God for letting me have a husband like I have,” Harris said. “Now I say, ‘God, please let him be resting in peace.’”

Surrounded by family photos in her Northeast Philadelphia apartment, Harris, 84, lights up when discussing her late husband, whose laid-back approach to life never faded even throughout a buttoned-up career as a tax agent, she said.

The pair married in 1965, traveled to exotic destinations based on suggestions from her husband’s beloved National Geographic, and shared three children and seven grandchildren.

Marlyn Harris still recounts the shock last March when she received a bill from Wertheimer requesting two additional checks totaling more than $900.

Not only did Harris owe Moskowitz $65 for an artists’ rendering of Herbert’s monument’s inscription, according to the new bill, but $850 to King David Cemetery in Bensalem for the foundation that would affix Herbert Harris’ monument to his burial site.

However, on her Wertheimer bill she retained from 2001, a stamp reading “PAID IN FULL” is pressed next to her payment of $1,635.

Lower down on the sheet reads: “Includes Foundation, Lettering, and Complete Installation on the Cemetery.”

Moskowitz, who purchased Wertheimer in 2018 and also owns Har Jehuda Cemetery in Upper Darby, suggested the monument company’s previous ownership was responsible for the confusion.

“They didn’t put the money away to deliver it in the future,” Moskowitz told The Inquirer.

Moskowitz added that because it wasn’t feasible to pay for the foundation cost out of pocket, he was asking Harris to make out the check to King David.

Harris’ arrangement was one of around 125 outstanding prepaid burial orders when Moskowitz bought the company.

The business owner said that while he understood he was taking on those liabilities at the time, he believed they would be spread out over decades. Instead, they came “all at once,” he said, in part contributing to recent customer delays.

Harris isn’t the only customer angered with Wertheimer.

Though Harris Silver’s father died in 2021, it would be one year and nine months before Moskowitz’s company procured a headstone, he said.

During eight of those months, according to Silver, he did not hear from Moskowitz despite repeated attempts at contact. (Moskowitz said he prefers to communicate with customers by email instead of over the phone.)

“He just keeps putting me off and putting me off,” Silver said, recalling his anxious desire to unveil his father’s grave before his father’s widow died.

Silver believes Wertheimer delivered his order only after he filed complaints with the Bucks County District Attorney’s Office and the Office of the Attorney General’s consumer complaint division.

Prosecutors acted last summer when Attorney General Michelle A. Henry’s office accused Wertheimer Monuments of failing to provide headstones to dozens of customers and to issue them refunds.

An August settlement between Henry’s office and Wertheimer requires Moskowitz to rectify those issues. It includes an order for Moskowitz to deliver future monuments within eight months of purchase, and another giving Moskowitz six months to fulfill 105 outstanding orders.

Moskowitz has until Feb. 17 to deliver, according to the settlement; should he fail, he could be asked to pay a penalty of $25,000 in addition to the $2,000 fine he’s already incurred.

“I’m gonna deliver all of these monuments, that’s my goal,” Moskowitz said of the backlog, which he also attributes to delays with the outdoor sandblasting company he contracts with that doesn’t operate in the winter weather.

“I don’t do what I do every day to see a bunch of unmarked graves and to see people waiting for what they bought,” said Moskowitz, adding that he believed he could produce around 32 monuments a month under optimal conditions.

Meanwhile, other consequences are racking up.

Suzanne Townsend, who oversees King David Cemetery, said Harris' complaint wasn’t an outlier at the Bensalem property, where at least two other families experienced similar pre-paid funding issues with Wertheimer, and others lengthy delays.

In Harris’ case, Townsend said that the cemetery had never received the foundation money from Wertheimer in 2001 that Moskowitz requested she now pay to the cemetery.

The multitude of complaints led Townsend to take extreme measures, banning Moskowitz from working with clients at the cemetery.

“He still has families with outstanding monuments that he’s never delivered for years,” Townsend said. “I can’t have him doing that to any more families here.”

Petersen, the Funeral Association president, estimates that around a third of those who arrange burial services do so years in advance as opposed to at the time of death.

Unlike monument companies, funeral homes and and cemeteries are required by state law to fund that money in a trust, either to eventually pay for the services or to issue a refund if a customer cancels their order.

But some organizations have abused their access to these large piles of cash, such as the Fayette County funeral home director the Attorney General’s Office charged in 2018 for stealing more than $284,393 in pre-need funeral funds from senior citizens.

Petersen said he had no knowledge that the situation at Wertheimer had been similar, though he likens the disturbances to a warning for those considering an advance payment.

“There are some consumer organizations that say, ‘Make your pre-arrangements,” Petersen said, “‘but don’t pre-fund.’”

Marlyn Harris felt a similar regret in the days before the anniversary of Herbert’s passing this week, though she remains determined to challenge the additional payment.

“I want him to be resting in peace,” Harris said, “and I feel I’m not honoring him.”