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By Root 549 0

Having to deal with my mother’s sudden death combined with five days of little to no sleep while at the hospital, we were all in emotional turmoil. At a time when compassion and understanding were most definitely needed, they found Mr. Sontheimer to be very arrogant, disrespectful and degrading. Mr. Sontheimer refused their repeated request and led them to believe that there was absolutely nothing he could do. Why would the insurance company and/or funeral home not allow you to purchase a different casket without voiding the rest of the benefits of the policy if it were not meant to be a scam of “Bait & Switch” or “Insurance Fraud.” What harm could it do? We are aware of at least one New Orleans funeral home that has allowed such changes.

Enclosed is a copy of the invoice for my mother’s funeral. As you can see, $7,916.84 is a far cry from the $218 he originally paid. There was no credit given for inflation, unless you want to consider the $82 difference in the amount paid and the face value. Do you honestly think that people would have purchased these policies if they would have known that they would be offered inferior merchandise or that all they would have been given was a $300 credit? They could have invested the original $218 in a regular savings account with a minimal interest rate and would have had several thousand dollars after 50 years. If you add the figures for the services originally offered in the policy and their respective costs today, from the Security Funeral Homes price lists and the invoice, the credit figure should have been more like $5,067.00.

My father bought these policies 50 years ago to protect himself and his family from having to face the high costs of funerals and possibly not having the funds to cover them. He did what he thought was right, he bought through an honest agent (his father) and from what he thought was a reputable and trustworthy company, Tharp-Sontheimer. In our extended family alone there are at least eight more of these policies yet to be used.

… Since the purchase of these policies in the ’40s, Tharp-Sontheimer was bought out by Delta Life Insurance, Security Industrial Insurance Company and most recently The Loewen Group for $180 million. It proves that there was and still is definitely a lot of unsuspecting people of Louisiana being swindled out of money. This is very upsetting. Just recently The Advocate and the Times-Picayune praised E. J. Ourso, who owned Security Industrial Insurance, for his $15 million donation to an LSU Business School to be named in his honor. In one article he was quoted as saying, “I’m not up here through ambition, drive and persistence—two things got me here: her (Marjory’s) fertility and compound interest.” The truth is he was running a scam: Selling preneed burial policies, collecting people’s nickels, dimes or quarters each week and, by his own admission, receiving interest on these monies, sometimes for as long as 50 years. When the time of “need” came there was usually some excuse or reason (usually involving the quality of the casket) which prevented the policy holder or his family from receiving the full benefits of the policy. All he did was pay the $300 or so and just pocketed all the interest.…

There was a recent suit between Tessier and Rabenhorst Funeral Home and Insurance where the appeals court ruled in favor of Tessier in a matter very similar to ours. There are also two other families I am aware of that are filing suits. Not everyone has the funds to file civil suits nor the stamina to follow through on their complaints when all they get are reply letters or people telling them that “it’s not my job.” Everyone keeps passing the “Buck.” Most of the complaints have fallen through the cracks of Louisiana politics. When is this going to stop? When are Louisiana politicians going to stop their crooked ways and stand up for the people of Louisiana?

I hope you will use your resources and do a thorough investigation into this matter. You might be surprised how widespread this problem is in Louisiana. It is going to take