PURCELL — Local residents who prepaid for their funerals at the Yoakum-Damet funeral home came to a public meeting Friday hosted by the Oklahoma Insurance Department.
Almost 30 people showed up to relay their financial transactions with the funeral home to the insurance commissioner’s representatives.
Inspectors with the insurance department seized the financial records of Charles Michael Damet and his funeral home last week after he was arrested on drug-related charges.
The McClain County Sheriff’s Department had been watching the funeral home for about a year and concluded it was being used as a front for selling drugs.
Although the funeral home’s license to sell prepaid funeral trusts had been revoked in 2004, it was still accepting money for trusts, said Darren Ellingson, lawyer for the insurance department, at a funeral board meeting Wednesday.
The department is collecting information to build a case against the funeral home and its owner, said Marc Young, spokesperson for Insurance Commissioner Kim Holland.
The department needs people to come forward with claims, he said.
One man who came to the meeting Friday said he bought a prepaid burial policy in the 1960s.
C.M. Hederick said both his parents and his wife were buried by Yoakum Funeral Home in 1959, 1960 and 1983, before Damet took over.
Hederick said he does not expect to get his money back.
“I kind of wrote it off a long time ago,” he said.
It is too early to know how many people were affected, Young said, but the department hopes to turn over all its information to the district attorney’s office in a few weeks.
“What we’re hopeful for, is that those who did have funds, that the money would still be there,” he said.
Julianna Parker366-3550jparker@normantranscript.com
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State insurance department hosts meeting to answer questions about funeral home
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