CLEVELAND, Ohio (WOIO) – Losing a loved one is never easy but imagine being suddenly charged double or a funeral home refusing to give you your family member’s ashes. It’s a reality for some consumers across the country and here in Ohio.

The company claims to be a family-owned cremation service close to home. On their website, they say they’re located in Cleveland, Lorain, Rittman, and Medina but 19 Investigates discovered that the business is not located in Ohio at all.

Andrea Healy’s mom had been in hospice for about a month, and she knew her mother didn’t have much time left. So, she started searching online for local funeral homes.

“We decided we were looking for someplace closer that could get there faster in a time of need, and it stated Rittman on the Legacy website, so we assumed alright they’re close,” Healy said.

She called Legacy Cremation Services and agreed to pay $995 for her mom to be cremated. She even sent over the paperwork in advance. When her mother passed the next night, the company told her they had lost her paperwork.

“I asked them to verify what their address was, and they said that they were no longer in Rittman so from there I said where is my mother going from there and they said to Cleveland, and I said Cleveland? That’s not what I planned on Cleveland,” Healy said. “They told me the price was now double after my mom passed that in order for them to come pick her up, I’d have to prepay everything.”

Then they told Healy and her daughter Jennifer Farver, that they couldn’t pick her mother up until the next morning.

“We were starting to feel this breakdown in trust but also felt like we had very little options at this point because it was getting later in the evening by the time she had passed and we were going through our own steps of grieving,” Farver said.

The Medina family knew something wasn’t right.

“The girl didn’t seem to know the name of the facility where my mother was going to just that I’m meeting a guy on 117th Street in some alley somewhere as far as I was, I didn’t know where I was going and it just seemed pretty shady,” Healy recalled. “Then they said that my mother was being stored in a storage warehouse garage at that point, I said you’re storing my mother in a garage?”

Thankfully, they realized in time and went with another funeral home.

“I’m very grateful,” said Healy. “I just felt scammed right off the bat.”

Sue McConnell, with the Cleveland Better Business Bureau, said they’ve received several complaints about Legacy Cremation Services.

“The kinds of complaints we’re getting from consumers are very serious,” McConnell said. “The fact that they’re representing themselves as being local, that they are quoting one price, and when the services are completed, the price that they say you have to pay is much higher.”

One woman from Stow said the company’s owner would not release her brother’s remains unless she paid 495 dollars more than the original quote.

She wrote, “The company did a ‘bait and switch’ as well as held the cremains of my late brother’s body as ransom unless I paid what he demanded.”

“Oh, it just breaks my heart, it just makes my head spin,” said Healy. “I can’t believe that they would hold someone’s loved one’s ashes hostage like that.”

A 19 Investigation revealed that although Legacy’s website makes it look like they’re local, they’re not. Their last known location was in Colorado.

19 discovered the company collects payment upfront from grieving families and then subcontracts the cremation services to local businesses. Investigators say that’s led to a lot of problems including sudden hikes in prices, mix-ups, not providing death certificates, and in some cases holding family member’s remains until they pay a higher price.

In 2022 the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission sued Legacy Cremation Services and its owner AJ Damiano. The lawsuit was settled in 2023. The company was required to pay a penalty of $275,000 and to follow a strict set of rules.

“I mean how are they getting away with this?” Healy asked.

In 2023, the DOJ and FTC ordered Legacy and its owner Anthony “AJ” Damiano to disclose their physical location on their website, provide a price list online, and disclose upfront if their goods or services would be provided by a third-party company.

“Do you feel like the company misrepresented themselves?” 19 Investigator Kelly Kennedy asked Farver. “Do you feel like they made it seem like they were local, and they didn’t indicate that they were using any third parties?”

“Absolutely,” Farver said. “I had no idea third parties were involved at all. I think as soon as the address situation came up that was the first red flag. It didn’t sound like they had the information at their fingertips which started to set off some alarm bells.”

19 Investigates spoke with Rebecca Plett an attorney with the FTC.

“Legacy was misrepresenting their location to holding itself out to be a local funeral home when in reality it did not own or operate any funeral homes and then we also alleged that Legacy in some instances was withholding cremated remains from people as a way to get people to pay the higher prices that people previously didn’t know about so we alleged that that was unfair,” said Plett, Attorney with the Division of Marketing Practices in the Bureau of Consumer Protection at FTC.

“It says it’s a family-owned, close-to-home funeral home and there’s nothing about third parties on there. Is that going against the ruling?” Kennedy asked Plett.

“So, I can’t comment on their current conduct,” Plett said.

The funeral business was a family business for the Damianos. It started in South Florida with Joseph Damiano and his son AJ Damiano.

In 2002 Joseph was sued for illegally providing bodies for embalming classes at Lynn University in Florida without the family’s permission.

His son AJ was accused of fraud in Florida in 2001. AJ pleaded guilty to operating without a license and Florida banned him from the funeral business for a decade.

Then the family took their business online, setting up websites for Heritage Cremation Provider and Legacy Cremation Services.

“They need to be shut down; this needs to go nationwide,” said Healy.

I discovered Damiano Senior has since passed but his son is still running the business.

“That’s who I was speaking with that said their name was AJ,” Healy said.

This company has been fined in California and Oregon, and in Florida, Tennessee, and North Carolina, they’ve been banned from operating completely.

McConnell hopes some action will be taken against the company in Ohio.

“I mean, if this company is providing very poor service, and there are complaints that are racking up, and they have all these issues elsewhere, it certainly could be something that and law enforcement agencies should take a closer look at,” McConnell said.

Kennedy called Damiano.

The person who answered the phone claimed their name was John. He wouldn’t tell us his last name and became very defensive. He claimed all the accusations were false. Then he hung up the phone.

19 also reached out to the DOJ, they told us they could not comment on this matter.

If you believe you may have been a victim of this company – report it to the Federal Trade Commission, the Better Business Bureau, and the Ohio Attorney General’s Office.

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