Dobies Funeral Home
Complaint 17315 Details

My mother passed away on Tuesday, Aug 30, 2011 in a hospice in New Port Richey, Florida. She had a Designation of healthcare surrogate with the law firm Wollinka and Wollinka to carry out her requests in her living Will. My mother retained all documents pertaining to her death in a folder that was left to me, her daugther, regarding her burial, will, estate etc. Our family was told for many years that all expenses concerning her death were prepaid; any search of her public credit history with banking, utilities, and any area of finance will indicate her history of payment as exceptional. Her prepaid funeral arrangements were with Dobie Funeral Homes in Holiday consummated by their funeral director, Charles Brown, who is listed on google "Dobie Funderal Home" as the #2 contact. The week that my mother arrived at the hospice I telephoned Dobies Funeral Home to alert them of the pending and near term request for their services. I asked them to retrieve my mother's file. I did not hear back from Dobies Funeral Home until the morning after Dobies delivered my mother's body from the hospice to their New Port Richey location.
Mr. Dobie called me the next morning to inform me that there was no file on my mother and no prepaid services.I asked for an appointment that day as I had a document from Dobie Funeral Home agreed upon by Charles Brown and my mother that showed the services requested, the payment plan and even the dollar amount for the airfare flight back to New York for her eventual burial in Pine Lawn National cemetery in Farmingdale, Long Island, NY. My parents had made a similar arrangement with North Meadowland Funeral Home in New Port Richey in 1998 which was carried out when my father passed away on Novemeber 1, 1999.
When my nephew and I arrived at Dobies we were seated in a conference room where Mr. Dobies briefly introduced himself and left us with another director Mr. Patterson. He had a file on the table with my mother's name on it. At that time he said that Charles Brown was no longer with them and that the document I held was not a signed document and unless I had proof of payment from May 2, 20002 that my mother paid Dobies, there was nothing they could do.
I spent the remainder of the day going thru my mother's files to try and locate a check payable to either Charles Brown or Dobies Funeral Home in or around May 2002. I went to her bank, SunTrust Bank at 2123 US Highway 19 in Holiday, and the financial service representative was sympathetic and tried to help us in any way possible. Unfortunately, bank records are only required for seven years so any checks written prior to 2005 have been purged from the system.
At the time of our meeting, Dobies refused my request to check their accounts receivable journal for the years in question.
As a former Vice President of a member firm of the New York Stock Exchange, Inc. with a thirty- year career in finance on Wall Street, I believe there is fraud taking place at Dobies Funeral Home. I am uncertain as to whether my mother made the check payable to Charles Brown in 2002 and he simply deposited the funds for his personal use or if Dobies indeed received the funds and have abused their fiduciary responsibility to hold in trust the funds my mother allocated to Dobies for her preparation for burial.
The fact is clear to me that Mr. Dobie who owns five funeral homes in Pasco County is highly suspect to fraud and the scam of vulnerable elderly people in Pasco and the surrounding counties.
My mother's body has since been transfered to North Meadowlawn Funeral Home in New Port Richey, and I have no recourse considering the urgency of the matter but to pay another $3600 to have my mother's body prepared and
flown to Long Island to lay at rest with my father,a WWII veteran.
I would appreciate any assistance from the State of Florida to expose any fraud at Dobies Funeral Home and to protect future families from suffering such a devastating loss.
Sincerely,
Susan Yokoi