Former mortuary owner gets 30-day sentence for bilking customers
STAR-ADVERTISER / OCT. 16
Claus Hansen former owner of Affordable Casket and Moanalua Morturary, talks with his attorney Howard Luke in this Oct. 16 photo.
STAR-ADVERTISER / OCT. 16
Claus Hansen former owner of Affordable Casket and Moanalua Morturary, talks with his attorney Howard Luke in this Oct. 16 photo.
The former owner of Affordable Casket and Moanalua Mortuary was sentenced to and began serving a 30-day jail term today for stealing state death benefits from customers.
The mortuary’s new owner has renamed the business Ballard Family Moanalua Mortuary.
The jail term is part of a four-year probation sentence to which Claus Z. Hansen agreed when he pleaded guilty in October to seven counts of theft. The other terms of his negotiated sentence with the state Attorney General require Hansen, 51, to perform 300 hours of community service, pay $50,000 into a state fund for crime victims, write letters of apology to all of his victims and finance a $2,466 escrow fund for victims the state has so far been unable to locate.
By the time he pleaded guilty Hansen had repaid most of the $91,866 in state death benefits he withheld from customers between April 2009 and May 2013.
The state offers survivors of people who were on Medicaid-funded state assistance programs up to $800 to help pay for burial, cremation or funeral services. Previously, under the state’s Funeral Payments Program, survivors applied for the benefit, the state paid the money to the vendors who provided the service and the vendors were supposed to reimburse the survivors.
Instead of reimbursing his customers, the state said Hansen instructed his employees not to contact the survivors when he received the money or to ignore them if the survivors asked for their refunds.
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Hansen was charged with withholding 129 reimbursements.
The state Department of Human Services, whose Med-Quest Division administers the Funeral Payments Program, has since changed program rules to allow the state to pay the death benefit directly to survivors.
18 responses to “Former mortuary owner gets 30-day sentence for bilking customers”
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I love Affordable Caskets comical commercials on Perry and Price every morning. Some people thought they were offensive, but I thought they were funny. Boo for withholding peopleʻs $800.
I cut my TV cable . Tired of watching so many ads all day long.
Ummm, Perry and Price is radio, not TV.
how low can any man get? geesh.
I wonder if his wife Diane Ako will be visiting him in prison.
I feel sorry for their little girl Olivia, whose activities are often chronicled in Diane’s Star-Advertiser blog “Small Talk.” With kids having online access these days, it’s quite possible Olivia’s schoolmates might learn about her daddy’s incarceration; so I hope she doesn’t get picked on or bullied. Brings to mind the Biblical admonition: The since of the fathers shall be visited upon their sons, unto the 7th generation. Today, with gender equality, that goes for daughters as well. Good luck Olivia. Will Mom take Olivia to visit Dad in jail? Maybe she’ll blog about it.
Kids are learning not to have any evidence laying around.
“With kids having online access these days, it’s quite possible Olivia’s schoolmates might learn about her daddy’s incarceration” Especially when you point it out with her name every time this is reported. What compels you to do that?
Maybe she can buy a casket for him in advance?
Gee, this sounds like the native Hawaiians and the OHA. The stuff intended for the native Hawaiian ends up the hands of the Hawaiians, as OHA. What’s wrong with people?
So who in the AG’s office did not want to go to trial with this guy and instead negotiated this slap on the wrist. So often I see cases where the accused is able to negotiate a similar “slap on the wrist” rather than have a government lawyer have to go to trial.
Is that a case of “court fright” of do they not teach lawyers about trials anymore? This send a message of “steal all you can and if you get caught just negotiate to pay back what you stole”. Shame.
agree, any other person, the books would have been thrown at him…..what money can buy……..
Part of his sentence should have been to change his company’s name to, Unaffordable Caskets and Mortuary?
One, why is our tax money paying for peoples funerals? Two, for those of you who say they needed it, why didn’t they miss it? A lot of fraud that is perpetrated, is done against government programs. Too much easy money with no over site.
Make A-R=S-E for the family. Diane should DUMP him and move on without the loser…Karma is a monster.
30 days? What a message being sent to other potential fraudsters! GO for it! It’s all good in Hawaii!
Thought it was a common practice to subrogate or assign the S.S. burial allownces or other benefits to the mortuary?? Including state burial allowances???
Maybe this POS will get shanked in the joint, & need his own company’s services!! HAHAHAHAHA!