Houston, Texas
A family from out of town needed a funeral director. They found Unique Green, operator of A Community Funeral Home on Wheeler Avenue in Houston's Third Ward. They paid her to handle funeral services for their deceased relative.
Then Green allegedly forged a will on the dead man's behalf.
The forged document, filed in Harris County months after the man died, stated that he left "my entire estate to my long-term partner and common law spouse, Unique M. Green, in recognition of her unwavering love, devotion and support." Green then took control of his nearly $2 million estate, including his home, cars, and investment accounts, according to a search warrant filed by investigators.
The man's family told investigators they had never heard of Green until they contacted her for funeral services.
Photos obtained by ABC13's 13 Investigates team show a person who appears to be Green and a crew of people outside the deceased man's home with a dumpster, cleaning it out after he died.
Green was arrested on July 21, 2026, and charged with theft, forgery, and tampering with a corpse. She had been detained during a police raid on her funeral home in November 2025 but was released without charges at the time. The raid happened during an active funeral service. Officers carried out boxes of cremains as evidence and were looking for financial records.
The case has a second layer. Harris County had awarded Green's funeral home a $716,000 contract for indigent burial services in 2019. County documents obtained by 13 Investigates show a pattern of complaints: bodies hauled in U-Haul trucks, at least three families accusing Green of holding bodies hostage, and billing disputes. The county terminated the contract within a year.
When 13 Investigates reached Green by phone earlier in 2026, she said she categorically denied any wrongdoing and was confident the full facts would demonstrate that she acted lawfully and appropriately at all times.
The deceased man's family has a case pending in probate court related to the will. Green sat for a deposition with the family's attorney but refused to answer questions, according to a transcript filed in Harris County.
Aiken, South Carolina
Cody Anderson owned the George Funeral Home in Aiken. He was 38 years old, well known in the community as the former owner of the historic Constantine House, and had run for the South Carolina House of Representatives in 2019.
During the pandemic, Anderson befriended an 88-year-old woman living at Shadow Oaks, an assisted living community. The woman had dementia.
Anderson's co-defendant, Thomas Allen Bateman, drove the victim to the funeral home. There, in the parking lot, she signed a will leaving her $20 million estate to Bateman. Three funeral home employees witnessed the signing.
Anderson was to be paid 5 percent of the estate, $1 million, to serve as the woman's personal representative.
The victim and her husband had previously designated their assets to friends and charitable organizations.
The investigation determined that the 88-year-old woman lacked the mental capacity to execute the will. The FBI Columbia Field Office and the South Carolina Attorney General's Office Vulnerable Adults and Medicaid Provider Fraud unit investigated the case together.
On September 17, 2025, U.S. District Judge Joseph F. Anderson Jr. sentenced Cody Anderson to 24 months in federal prison followed by three years of supervised release. Bateman received an identical sentence earlier in the year. There is no parole in the federal system.
The Same Playbook
These cases share a method that no federal regulation addresses.
A funeral home operator gains access to a deceased person's family at the most vulnerable moment of their lives. The family shares personal information: the deceased's full legal name, date of birth, Social Security number, financial accounts, property holdings. This information is handed over as part of arranging funeral services.
In both cases, the operator then used that position of trust to access or create estate documents.
In Houston, Green allegedly forged a will after the man was already dead. In Aiken, Anderson used his funeral home as the physical location where a dementia patient signed away $20 million. The funeral home parking lot became the execution site for a fraudulent will, witnessed by funeral home employees.
The Federal Trade Commission Funeral Rule, codified at 16 CFR Part 453, governs funeral transactions. It requires funeral providers to give customers a General Price List, to disclose embalming policies, and to obtain written permission before charging for embalming. It prohibits requiring a casket purchase for direct cremation.
The Rule says nothing about what funeral operators may do with the financial and personal information they collect during the intake process. It says nothing about funeral operators acting as witnesses to wills executed on their premises. It says nothing about funeral operators serving as personal representatives or executors of estates belonging to people whose funerals they arranged.
No state funeral board caught either case before families did.
What Information Changes Hands
A funeral planning intake form typically captures the deceased person's name, date of birth, date of death, cause of death, next of kin, Social Security number, and sometimes financial account information for insurance assignments or pre-need contract verification.
This is enough information to open accounts, file insurance claims, forge documents, and access property. A funeral director who handles the funeral for a deceased person with no local family, as in the Houston case, has access to a deceased person's home, personal effects, and financial documents before any probate process begins.
In the Houston case, Green had physical access to the deceased man's home. Photos show her crew removing belongings with a dumpster.
The Broader Pattern
The Headstone Fraud Monitor operated by Obitley has tracked 544 deathcare fraud cases since June 2026. A new category has emerged from the data: funeral operators who weaponize the funeral relationship itself to steal from the dead and their families.
This is distinct from traditional funeral fraud categories tracked in the Obitley fraud database:
- Preneed trust fraud (Philip Pietras, Connecticut, $794K from 179 families; Terry Kaufman, Michigan, sentenced to 7-20 years for embezzling preneed funds)
- Headstone and monument fraud (Gregory Stefan Jr., Pennsylvania, $1.5M from approximately 500 families; Jeffrey Phares, West Virginia, 4 cemeteries)
- Corpse abuse and body hoarding (Return to Nature Funeral Home, Colorado, 190 bodies)
- Cemetery theft (bronze vase thefts, plot reselling)
Estate theft is different. The operator does not steal prepaid funeral money or fail to deliver a headstone. The operator uses the funeral relationship to access the deceased's entire net worth.
What the FTC Funeral Rule Does Not Cover
The Funeral Rule covers pricing transparency for funeral goods and services. It was designed to prevent funeral homes from pressuring grieving families into buying expensive caskets and unnecessary services.
It was not designed to address what happens when a funeral operator crosses the line from handling funeral arrangements to handling the deceased person's estate.
The Rule defines a "funeral provider" as a person who sells or offers to sell funeral goods and funeral services to the public. It regulates the transaction between the funeral provider and the consumer paying for funeral services. It does not regulate what the funeral provider does with the consumer's personal and financial information after the transaction.
It does not prohibit funeral operators from witnessing wills on their premises.
It does not prohibit funeral operators from serving as executors or personal representatives for clients.
It does not require funeral homes to report when an employee accesses a deceased client's financial accounts or property.
It does not prohibit funeral operators from taking possession of a deceased person's home or personal effects beyond what is needed for the funeral.
Who Did Catch These Cases
Both cases were caught by families.
In Houston, the deceased man's family discovered the forged will through probate court filings. They had hired Green for a funeral and found out she had claimed to be his common law spouse.
In Aiken, the $20 million will surfaced through the estate administration process. The victim's prior estate plan, which directed assets to friends and charities, had been overridden by a will signed in a funeral home parking lot by a woman with dementia.
Neither the FTC, nor any state funeral board, nor any licensing authority flagged either case. The FBI investigated the Aiken case, but only after the family raised the alarm. Harris County constables and Houston police investigated the Green case, but only after the family reported the forged will.
This is the reactive enforcement problem. No government office routinely inspects funeral homes for financial interactions with client estates. No regulator asks whether a funeral operator witnessed a will or served as a personal representative for a deceased client. The system catches these cases only when a family member notices that something is wrong and reports it.
What the public sees is only there because someone reported it.
What Would Need to Change
Three regulatory changes would address the estate theft gap:
1. Prohibit funeral operators from witnessing wills executed on their premises. A funeral home is not a law office. Three funeral home employees witnessed the signing of a $20 million will in Aiken. If that prohibition existed, the signing would have required a different setting, and the vulnerability would have been reduced.
2. Prohibit funeral operators from serving as personal representatives or executors for clients whose funerals they arrange. In the Aiken case, Anderson was to receive $1 million for serving as personal representative of the estate he helped create. In the Houston case, Green claimed to be the deceased's common law spouse and sole beneficiary. A conflict-of-interest rule would have flagged both arrangements.
3. Require funeral homes to report financial interactions with deceased clients' estates. If a funeral operator accesses a client's bank accounts, files insurance claims beyond the funeral cost, or takes possession of a client's property beyond funeral effects, that action should trigger a disclosure requirement. The absence of any reporting mechanism is why these cases surface only when families discover them.
The Trust That Gets Violated
Families hire funeral directors at the worst moment of their lives. They hand over personal information, financial details, access to their loved one's body and belongings. They do this because the funeral director is the person they trust to handle the arrangements with dignity and competence.
The vast majority of funeral directors honor that trust. Independent funeral homes, many of them family-owned for generations, are the backbone of their communities. They are the first to be hurt when bad actors exploit the same position of trust they have built their reputations on.
But the regulatory system currently has no mechanism to distinguish between the funeral director who honors that trust and the one who weaponizes it. No license review asks whether an operator has a pattern of serving as a beneficiary or executor for clients. No inspection checks whether an operator has taken possession of client property beyond funeral effects. No complaint database tracks estate theft as a category distinct from general funeral fraud.
Two cases in two states. $22 million combined. Both caught by families, not by regulators.
The next case is already in the data. It just has not been reported yet.
*Sources: ABC13 Houston (KTRK), Mycah Hatfield and Sarah Rafique, "Third Ward funeral home operator faces theft, forgery charges months after raid," July 21, 2026. Click2Houston, "Houston funeral home owner accused of $2M theft, forgery, and fraudulent estate claims in new search warrant," July 2026. Houston Chronicle, "Third Ward funeral home operator accused of stealing dead man's $2.2M estate," July 2026. The Augusta Press, Susan McCord, "Aiken funeral home owner sentenced in will scheme," September 17, 2025. The State (Columbia, SC), "SC funeral home owner helped get elderly woman to redo will in effort to steal $20 million," 2025. Post and Courier, "State funeral board closes Aiken's George Funeral Home," 2025. U.S. Attorney's Office, District of South Carolina, sentencing statement, September 2025.*
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