- Report: #148352
Complaint Review: Greater Miami Jewish Cemetery Assoc. A/k/a Mount Sinai Memorial Park Cemetery - Miami Florida
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Greater Miami Jewish Cemetery Assoc. A/k/a Mount Sinai Memorial Park Cemetery
1125 N. W. 137th St. (Opa-Locka Blvd) Miami, 33168 Florida, U.S.A.
Phone:
305-681-4432
Web:
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Greater Miami Jewish Cemetery Assoc. A/k/a Mount Sinai Memorial Park Cemetery ripoff Much more! Moved my Mother's Memorial Stone 3 times, now I can't find my Mother's Remains. This horror has been going on since Oct. 2003. In a few word this is Chapter 672-.02 Cemeteru Laws. Have a confession from Pres. of Board but Board says they have no Liability. I am still going up-hill fighting them & getting very ill. had Disinterment, Mito DNA, pictures, film & spent much. Miami Florida
I visited this Cemetery at least once a Month for the last 30 years. because my Mother & my Maternal Family are interred there. On Oct. 2003, at my Aunts Funeral, my Mother's Stone was missing, we eventually found it behind a tree, but the entire scene was unbelievable & would take many pages to describe. I went back 6 times in two weeks to make sure what I was seeing was real. I contacted Financial Services & after several calls back & forth Mr. Wheaton informed me this is an Exempt Cemetery & there is not much he can do, but after my calling again & again, he did me a favor and sent an inept Investigator to do a Probe & that told me I was right. That too is a long story. I contacted a Law Firm that signed me up right away & we kept close contact. Then I received a letter that they are putting my case away until I go thru a Disinterment. A horrible ordeal but I hired a PI to put it together for me & finally after this Cemetery put it off three times, the stress was unbearable, we had the Disinterment & what was found was more unbearable not only for me but for the PI. The pictures showed me it was absolutely not my Mother, just by the teeth, which were a Man's & other reasons. The Nuclear DNA wouldn't take, too much contamination, etc. So I had to go thru Mitochondrial DNA at great cost, also Contaminated with two unknowns & a small strain of mine, which the Lab said could have come from a Maternal Relative in the close area such as my Grandmother or my Aunt that was newly buried. The Lawyers closed my case because they said The State wouldn't work with them, so they said. I started calling Lawyers & the ones that would attempt to try a Cemetery case, wouldn't, after they also found it was an Exempt Cemetery. So I decided to take this situation in my own hands &made a study of Caskets, Cement Liners, Gravity, Implotions, etc. and started reading about what has been happening in Corrupt Cemeteries such as this, absolutely shocking & the scandal of SCI here in Florida & that hit me very hard, because I believe my Mothers Remains are no longer in this Cemetery. Where are the Ethics of these money grubbing people? They fill up these Cemeteries & then either Stack or remove Loved Ones. I got back to The State & bugged Diana Evans who is one of The Heads of Funeral & Cemeteries at Financial Services & she has been trying to give me some help in a limited way. The last Lawyer always told me to reach The Rabbinical Society of Greater Miami, which I did & when I told him what was going on, he didn't sound a bit surprised & just said he will speak to The Pres. of the Board..after a few days, he called me & told me to call Mr. Stauber, Pres. immediately, which I did. He was very appologetic & we talked & I asked him why he stood over the Disinterment when he knew this was not my Mother's Grave, he didn't answer & then he asked me what would make me happy & I replied "Finding my Mother's Remains" what he said, I didn't want to hear, but he said "That's impossible" he would have to dig up the entire lot. Again, he said what else would make me happy, couldn't even get the words "I don't know" out of my mouth. Then in his words "What should I bring to the table at the Board meeting." In a few days he called me back & said it rained the night before & they couldn't have a meeting. A month passed & I didn't hear from him, so I called him, he starting dragging his feet about a meeting so I told him as The Pres. he can call an emergency meeting. he said OK..didn't hear from him again & now I'm really upset & absolutely don't trust him or his Board, especially the one that was nasty to my PI & I when we called him to reason, just so not to go thru with the Disinterment. So now I'm raging & really don't know what to do. I purchased a phone tape recorder & called him & taped it all as he said the same as he did before & again "What should he bring to the table" I asked him, "If this was your Mother, what would you want?" He called me back the next evening & said they had their meeting, which I know was not so, but he said The Board said they were not LIBEL! He did sound almost tearful. Whether I did right or wrong, I'm more relieved that I taped these two conversations. And I was able to release some of my anger onto him. If Governor Bush's Office & State Attorney's Office couldn't or wouldn't help me, then who can I turn to. I don't know if they all think I woke up one morning & decided to bring this horrible grief & financial problems upon myself. The only thing this State says to me "Change The Laws" I can give you all the names of who I called from this State, that I voted for, that wouldn't help me, not even for the sake of other Families that may one day be in my position. As it turns out, just last week there was a story about a Ft. Lauderdale Cemetery & the story mirrored my situation to a tee. These so called Orthodox Cemeteries are over selling spaces & need room. A few weeks ago a Lawyer came to my mind, I was on his jury many years ago. We set an appointment to meet, we did & he had an Analyst with him & looked at everything I brought, he didn't handle these kinds of cases but he knows who does, the next day this Lawyer called me & gave me the name of this other Lawyer, I was dumbfounded, it was the Lawyer who signed my dismissal letter from the first Law Firm, before I could get to call, he called me, he said he didn't sign thatletter, they just used his name??? He is the Lawyer that supposidly broke the case at Menorah Gardens, SCI & my first Lawyers that he was with represented the Families. In 2003, when the State couldn't help me, I got off the phone & the NEWS was on & a man mentioned a Cemetery, I started watching it & heard what was going on, couldn't believe it, had no clue that these things happen, jotted down that Lawyers name & that how I found that Law Firm. So I've come full circle & now I'm waiting again to see if this Lawyer will help me. I should know by next week. I'm writing all this with the hopes that other families are not devistated as mine are. And the only advice I can give so far is if you see something at these Cemeteries that doesn't seem right, it is not your imagination, it's so! And the more Consumers stand up for their beliefs & Ethics, the sooner these Rip-Off Artist, Religious or not, get caught, the sooner these sickening problems will end. Forgot to mention, when I told The Head Rabbi that The Board said they had no Liability, he called the Pres. & called me back & said this will be the last call. They probably told him to mind his own business. I love Animals, so I can't call them that, they are beyond words, behind a cloak of Religion. Thank you for hearing me out & hope you are spunky enough to print this on your site, seems this CATAGORY is taboo with most People as I found. The entire story if told is so unbelievable & I have enough right now for a book of at least 25 Chapters & everyone around me is urging me to do so..which maybe so if I don't drop dead from a heart attack. Sincerely! S Will keep you posted!
Sondra
Aventura, Florida
U.S.A.
Click here to see Rip-off Reports filed where consumers say thank you Rip-off Report & badbusinessbureau.com, that we saved them money. Not included are the thousands of thank you e-mails we get every week.
Sondra
Aventura, Florida
U.S.A.
Click here to see Rip-off Reports filed where consumers say thank you Rip-off Report & badbusinessbureau.com, that we saved them money. Not included are the thousands of thank you e-mails we get every week.
1 Updates & Rebuttals
Helene
Elgin,Illinois,
U.S.A.
Was this Cemetery taken over by Service Corporation International? They are being sued in Texas too.
#2Consumer Comment
Fri, October 31, 2008
I heard that there was a big class action lawsuit brought by some people in Florida that was settled against Service Corporation International which is a MEGACORPORATION which is NOT owned by Jewish people and does NOT care about Orthodox or even know Orthodox from Reconstructionalist or even Reformed funeral traditions... We are beginning to have similar suits in Texas against them. I heard it on the TV cable news today--TXCN - Channel 8 on Time-Warner cable. I am sorry on the occasion of your loved one and hope that they may be remembered for the good they did in this life. And more recently, in South Texas, there were two Hispanic families and one Anglo family that had the SAME THING happen to them that you described --maybe worse. They filed suit ALLEGING that Service Corporation International employees doublesold the grave sites.buried the wrong people in the wrong graves and they had to hire lawyers and get court orders to have their loved ones's coffins dug to make sure that they really were buried there. Here is the story, you can read it for yourself. The TV Station showed a documents which purported to be altered records from SCI-- according to them. Since it has not come to trail yet, I do not know if it is authentic or not --just saying that it was shown on the TV news show. Yes, I DO believe you and here is why: Company sued for reselling same cemetery plot to different families By Joe Conger - KENS 5 Eyewitness News SAN ANTONIO,TEXAS In early October,2008 Petra Lopez cried openly while watching cemetery workers in Weslaco use a backhoe to look for some lost souls. One of them may be her mother, Petra Gutierrez, who should have been buried in the plot in 1997. "We all thought that Mama would rest in peace and nothing was gonna happen from now on," said Lopez. Now Lopez wonders if she's been praying over someone else's grave for the last 10 years. The Lopez family didn't think much of an extra body being buried in their mother's plot back in 1997, but now they've joined a lawsuit against Service Corporation International, Texas Funeral Services. "She called me back and tell me there was a body buried there in my space, but that I don't have to worry because they were gonna move it," Lopez said. The families accuse SCI of shuffling bodies and it may have gone undiscovered if it weren't for Noe Cavazos's routine of regularly visiting a relatives' grave several times a year over the last 30 years. "Every Memorial Day we take flags to all veterans in Highland Memorial Cemetery and I'd make sure Rudy (a military vet) got a flag every Memorial Day. I also visited with him on Veteran's Day and on Nov. 2, the Day of the Dead," said Cavazos. One day Cavazos went to visit his brother-in-law's grave and found Rudy Garza's grave marker missing. "I went to put a flag on it and there was no headstone. And I was sure that was his place," he said. According to Cavazos, cemetery officials told him he was confused. Cavazos searched the area and found Garza's grave marker behind the groundskeeper's shed. What Cavazos discovered was more than just a headstone, but a lot of dirt on SCI, which has three families mourning all over again. The Rogers family bought four burial plots at Highland Memorial Cemetery and have now learned one of them is already occupied. "I knew it was going to be bad, but it was even worse than I thought," said Evelyn Rogers. "It was really emotional standing there while the priest was blessing the ground again, knowing that that was one of our graves. It was a lot." Markers on the cement crypt being unearthed say it belongs to Garza and confirmed the World War II veteran had been buried in the wrong spot. The news of the mix-up prompted the Lopez family to have the original grave disinterred to find out if their relative buried ten years ago was still in the plot. "Well, I hope my mama will be resting (where they buried her)," Lopez said crying. The families say it was hard to piece together what happened, because of missing or altered SCI documents. A spokesperson for the company states a record-keeping error is the reason behind the same plots being sold a second time. "We're sorry. It was a double-sale. It was an error on our part in record-keeping. We have since instituted some extensive training to make sure it doesn't happen again," said Lisa Marshall, spokeswoman for SCI, Texas Funeral Services. According to the families' attorney, the shuffle occurred when the Lopez family bought plot No. 4 in 1976. A year later the same plot is sold again to the Garza family. Two decades later, when Lopez's mother dies in 1997, the cemetery moves Garza to a plot owned by the Rogers family to make room for Lopez's mother. "I just wish they had told us at the time," said Rogers. Since the late 1960's, SCI has been busy acquiring funeral homes and cemeteries. It's one of the biggest conglomerates around and has affiliations in San Antonio. The I-Team has learned that hundreds of victims in Florida claim their deceased loved-ones were missing or buried in the wrong places in SCI-owned cemeteries. In 2004, SCI settled a class-action lawsuit in Florida for $65 million. Now similar lawsuits are being filed in Texas. "All of our family members were there. So that was good enough reason to keep dad there," said Julie Ramirez. The Guerra family bought two plots for their parents in Mont Meta Memorial Park in San Benito,Texas. Unknown to the Marcos Guerra's daughters the plots already belonged to another family. Still, the SCI-owned cemetery buried their father only to move his body a foot and a half. to make room for another family's casket. The family found out when they Guerra's grave excavated. "We just couldn't believe it. That was supposed to be his final resting place," Ramirez. The Guerra family sued SCI and a jury awarded them $6.3 million. SCI is appealing the judgment. "Where you bury your father, your mother, whatever. You know, that's sacred and it's really sacred to anybody," said Guerra's other daughter, Grace Little. Attorneys say families are left spending thousands of dollars in court looking for justice. "One of the problems this industry has is it isn't regulated (just) like the businesses on Wall Street weren't regulated. We're having the same problem in the funeral business," said Richard Roth, an attorney for the Lopez, Cavazos and Rogers families. Cavazos is getting justice for his brother-in-law and had the combat veteran reburied in a state cemetery. "I just hope this doesn't happen to other families," said Cavazos. "They need to show respect. This doesn't happen in third-world countries."
