Bucks prosecutors probe a monument company, as customers pay thousands for gravestones that never arrive

After 94-year-old Robert Davis died last year of congestive heart and respiratory failure, his son Ted was determined to give his father a proper tribute.

Since October, Davis has paid more than $2,000 to Wertheimer Liberty Monuments, a company in Southampton, Bucks County, for a gravestone commemorating his father. But months have passed, as has his father’s yahrzeit, the anniversary of his death. And the Flourtown resident is still waiting — not just for the monument but for answers. His demand for a refund, he said, was met with silence.

“We feel like we let our father down,” Davis said. “He was an amazing father who, to his last dying breath, always was looking out for his children, and he’s there next to my mother without a stone. It’s disrespectful.”

Larry Moskowitz, owner of the monument company, blamed the delay and lack of communication on the pandemic and from switching last summer from a Philadelphia sandblasting company to one in Georgia.

But court records show the 63-year-old New Jersey resident and his wife, Christina, filed for bankruptcy earlier this year, listing nearly $800,000 in debts to creditors ranging from banks and credit cards to the IRS — and a granite company in Georgia.

And Davis’ complaint isn’t an outlier. At least four other Wertheimer customers have filed complaints with the Bucks County Department of Consumer Protection, and six have been lodged with the Bucks County District Attorney’s Office. Prosecutors there this week confirmed they have opened a criminal investigation into Moskowitz’s practices.

“We want anyone else who believes they’ve been victimized to contact us as soon as possible,” Bucks County Deputy District Attorney Marc Furber said.

Complaints against the monuments industry have been on the upswing in Pennsylvania. The state attorney general’s consumer affairs division says it logged 48 such complaints in 2018, 79 last year, and already 59 through mid-August of this year. Most have ended with some sort of mediated resolution or payment, but a handful each year remain unresolved.

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Joshua Slocum, executive director of the Funeral Consumers Alliance, a national consumer rights group, said the industry has always suffered from a lack of regulation.

“You’re disappointed if your cable provider doesn’t come out on the day that they promised to install some equipment, but it’s different with a marker or headstone,” he said. “People feel like the wound of the death is still open if they can’t put that closing cap on it.”

Southampton’s Wertheimer Liberty Monuments was established in 1928 by Wolf Wertheimer and his sons Herman, Manny, and Morris, and eventually taken over by Israel Resnick in May 1985. Resnick sold the business to Moskowitz in March 2018.

Since then, the Bucks County Department of Consumer Protection has fielded five complaints from Wertheimer customers, said director Michael Bannon. His office got a full refund for one customer, and four other cases are pending.

Like Davis, Michelle Sarnese of Montgomeryville paid close to $1,000 last winter for a marker for her father for which she’s still waiting. She said the Southampton monument company provided the stone for her grandfather in 2000, as well as other family members, and there were no problems in the past.

“I’ve started looking at Google reviews and Yelp, and now l see people talking about the problems, but back in November, there was nothing listed,” Sarnese said, noting this was well before the pandemic’s onset. “There was no way we could have foreseen that this might happen, and we had no reason to think that it would happen.”

Jewish tradition calls for a stone or monument to be crafted and placed on a grave, usually within one year of a person’s death. It is initially covered, and then at a ceremony called an unveiling, family and friends gather to say prayers and remember their loved one.

Linda Freimark’s father, Jerry, prepaid Wertheimer almost $2,000 for his monument six years before his July 2019 death. The Elkins Park resident said she spent three months after his death trying to finalize the details. After finally tracking down a salesperson in March, she was charged an additional $774 in lettering and other fees — but has yet to receive the stone.

“I should have had an unveiling by now,” she said, adding that she received one “measly letter” from the company, in which it blamed the delay on COVID-19. She has since been told she has to wait a few more months, and was given no indication of when Moskowitz would be in touch to finalize details for her planned unveiling of Oct. 13 — her father’s birthday.

In an Aug. 3 interview, Moskowitz blamed the poor communication on his busy schedule and salespeople who have since left his company.

“I get a lot of phone calls, and unfortunately, I have not returned a lot of calls on time,” he said. “I’ve been involved in setting monuments and decisions that have to be made outside of Wertheimer. I basically left it up to my salespeople to follow up with their sale; that’s their job, that’s why they get paid commission.”

He did not mention his bankruptcy proceeding or debts. Three days after that interview, he and his wife filed an updated list of creditors with federal bankruptcy court in Camden, listing $437,000 in assets — primarily in real estate — against $791,000 in debts. Most of what they owe, the filing says, is to banks, credit card companies, and department stores, but the list also includes debts to individuals, including $10,000 in back pay owed to Resnick, the former owner and salesperson.

Judge Jerrold N. Poslusny Jr. ordered the Moskowitzes to inform their creditors of their bankruptcy proceedings and gave the creditors two months to object to the bankruptcy plan.

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Moskowitz did not respond Thursday to The Inquirer’s request to discuss the looming investigations or bankruptcy. In the interview earlier this month, he acknowledged that he had denied refund requests, maintaining that “in most cases, the granite is already cut and ready to go.”

“Although they’re getting it late, they’re getting what they paid for,” he said. “This is not a lawn mower that you can bring back to a hardware store. This is a custom job, and we want to make good on what we promised.”

But both Sarnese and Martha Issod, who in May got a refund through the Bucks County Department of Consumer Protection for a nearly $1,000-marker she ordered last fall for her grandfather, said they are skeptical the work was ever completed.

“Unless I actually see the monuments with my own eyes, I don’t believe that they’ve even done the work at this point,” Sarnese said. “And now I have to go find somebody else, and I’m wondering if I can trust another company to actually deliver it. It’s very disappointing.”

Davis, the Flourtown resident, said Moskowitz told him in May his father’s stone was completed and just needed to be shipped. But in July, Moskowitz acknowledged the marker wasn’t ready. “You just can’t believe a thing he says,” Davis said. “It’s just amazing how low people will stoop, taking advantage of people when they’re really vulnerable.”

Bannon, the Bucks consumer protection official, said the profession needs more scrutiny.

“It’s a particularly painful subject for folks,” he said, because customers are often grieving and vulnerable. “And certainly businesses not staying in contact with their customers is a red flag and a big concern that needs to be looked at.”