Connecticut Funeral Director Allegedly Used Prepayments to Fund Gambling Trips
Posted on: October 2, 2025, 04:59h.
Last updated on: October 1, 2025, 02:14h.
- A Connecticut funeral home director is accused of stealing prepayment money to gamble
- The man accused lost his funeral home license earlier this year amid the allegations
In April, Connecticut State Police charged Philip Pietras, 51, with one first-degree felony count of larceny by embezzlement. The scope of the disgraced funeral director’s alleged crimes expanded greatly this week when law enforcement brought another 60 criminal counts against him.
Before an investigation into Pietras’ funeral homes began earlier this year, he owned and operated funeral parlors in Vernon, East Windsor, Coventry, and Tolland. Pietras was the proprietor of Pietras Family Funeral Homes and the Burke-Fortin Funeral Home in Vernon.
From at least 2014 until this year, state prosecutors allege that Pietras used clients’ money they deposited at his funeral homes for advance funeral and burial costs to fund his lifestyle, which included regular trips to casinos across the country.
The arrest warrant used on Tuesday to apprehend Pietras cited gambling trips to Foxwoods Resort Casino and Mohegan Sun, the two tribal casinos in Connecticut, along with trips to Atlantic City, where he stayed and gambled at the lavish Borgata. Prosecutors said he also patronized Harrah’s Atlantic City, MGM Springfield in Massachusetts, and Hard Rock Las Vegas before it closed in 2020.
On Wednesday, Superior Court Judge Alyce Alfano accepted a request from Pietras’ attorneys to have his bail lowered from $800K to $200K. Pietras later posted bail and has been released.
In successfully asking for the reduced bail, Pietras’ attorney said that, to the best of his knowledge, no client who had prepaid was denied service.
Prepayments Stolen
According to the arrest warrant affidavit, law enforcement began probing Pietras after an employee with a third-party company that assists funeral homes in managing and administering funeral contracts notified police about possible discrepancies at Pietras Family Funeral Homes’ Coventry location. Such third-party firms, commonly called preneed providers or funeral trust administrators, partner with local funeral homes to provide various programs, including trust funds, insurance policies, and escrow accounts.
The employee with the firm said they were conducting an assessment of client accounts when they discovered that a significant amount of money had been drawn from various Pietras Family Funeral Home accounts, with the named beneficiary remaining alive. The employee said several checks made by preplanners were also cleared, but the money didn’t go into the accounts held by the third party.
When questioned by police, the affidavit explained that Pietras blamed the financial discrepancies on “accounting problems,” checks being “filed improperly,” the COVID-19 pandemic, and “the frequency of how checks are received.”
Police say they interviewed more than 60 clients whose prepayment funeral accounts were withdrawn from. The warrant alleges that Pietras presumably stole from over 100 client accounts.
Gambling Habit
Police believe Pietras stole to fund a severe gambling habit. The Connecticut tribal casinos assisted in the probe, with Mohegan Sun disclosing that Pietras and his wife’s rewards cards showed they lost more than $1.2 million between January 2010 and November 2024.
Foxwoods didn’t disclose whether Pietras and his wife were up and down, but informed police that the couple bet more than $8 million during the 14 years.
Both casinos said the Pietras primarily played slot machines. They also gambled online via DraftKings and FanDuel, the respective iGaming partners of Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun.
Last Comments ( 2 )
What a bum! So these people paid for burial and he ripped them off. Wow low level. Had plenty of time to gamble, ever work for a living.
When an organized crime boss entices or coerces people into committing crimes so the boss can take a cut of the stolen funds for himself, it is called racketeering. However, when state gambling regulators permit casino operators to entice people into gambling addiction so they will generate more gambling tax revenues, knowing full well that many of those addicts will commit crimes to obtain the money with which they gamble, it is called "responsible gambling." Any questions?