A former director of a Walnut Ridge funeral home faces forgery and theft charges after police alleged he sold fake burial policies and stole money from the business.
Lawrence County sheriff’s deputies arrested Darrin “Pinky” Pinkston of Mammoth Spring after a lengthy investigation into transactions at the Cox-Fears Funeral Home over a 2½ -year period, Sheriff Jody Dotson said.
Pinkston is accused of taking $81,000 in checks and cash.
Pinkston was arrested at his home late Friday and was being held in the Lawrence County jail in Walnut Ridge. Dotson said he expects Pinkston will be in court for a bail hearing either today or later this week.
Pinkston had been the manager of the funeral home- then known as Higginbotham Funeral Home - from November 2009 until early 2012, said Regina Robertson, co-owner and manager of Cox-Fears. The new owners bought the downtown Walnut Ridge funeral home in April 2012.
Dotson said his department and members of the Arkansas State Police’s Criminal Investigation Division conducted an “extensive investigation” of the funeral home after the new owners began noticing bookkeeping problems.
“As we were going along, after we took over, we began noticing some discrepancies in pre-need funeral policies,” Robertson said. “We couldn’t find receipts. Some said they were given a discount if they paid cash.
“We kept looking and thought there was something not quite right,” she said. “We may never get tothe bottom of this.”
Dotson said investigators learned customers received up to $1,500 off the purchase price of funeral insurance if they paid for it with cash.
“As word got out, others started coming in saying they were concerned,” Robertson said. “It really could have been more astronomical of a loss than it was.”
She said Cox-Fears Funeral Home will honor all the fraudulent policies sold to its customers.
“It’s the right thing to do,” she said. “People are at the most fragile times of their lives when they’re learning about this [fraud].”
It’s the second time the funeral home has been involved in crime. In 2009, police arrested a maintenance man at Higginbotham Funeral Home over allegations he was making methamphetamine in the basement.
Dotson said Pinkston admitted to the theft under questioning Friday evening.
The funeral home, a downtown landmark next to the Lawrence County Courthouse on West Main Street and Southwest Fourth Street, was built in 1900. The Higginbotham family converted the building into a funeral home in the 1930s.
Robertson said the crimes have hurt the business’s reputation. The funeral home will move to a new building on U.S. 67B less than a mile from the existing location by May, she said.
“The confidence is gone,” she said. “But we’ve been working on this, and we’re coming back.”
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 03/25/2014