Cemetery owner to plead guilty to theft, fraud

A cemetery owner set to go on trial Monday has agreed to plead guilty to theft and securities fraud.

The plea
agreement signed in Marion Superior Court by Robert E. Nelms, 40, allows him to avoid prison and instead serve an eight-year
sentence through community corrections programs and two years of probation.

Nelms also could repay millions to
the raided trust accounts of Memory Gardens Management Corp., which is under the control of a court-appointed receiver.

Marion County prosecutors charged Nelms and his wife Deborah Johnson, 49, in January in a scheme that they said siphoned
away $24 million set aside to maintain the graves of people who had paid in advance for their funerals.

Prosecutors
dismissed all the charges against Johnson earlier this week after she agreed to testify against Nelms.

The couple
bought the Indianapolis-based cemetery and funeral home business for $27 million in December 2004.

Within days,
the couple allegedly drained all $24 million from their newly acquired company’s trust fund, which was supposed to be
used to maintain grave sites in numerous cemeteries.

Most of the money, about $13.7 million, was transferred to
repay a $13.5 million loan that Nelms used as a down-payment to buy the business.

Prosecutors said Nelms and several
others allegedly had been involved in similar cemetery trust fund schemes in Hawaii, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Iowa
and Tennessee. Only Indiana and Tennessee have filed charges, they said.