After her mother died, leaving behind hefty funeral expenses, Dolly Baliko didn?t want to put her relatives through the same ordeal.
So, Baliko, 70, of Aberdeen, prepaid $6,000 in funeral funds to Paul Stella of Stella Funeral Home in Parkville.
Then the money vanished.
“He took my money and put it right in his pocket,” Baliko said Tuesday between tears in the hallway of U.S. District Court in Baltimore.
She was one of more than 175 victims of Stella, 43, whopleaded guilty to bank fraud arising from two schemes to steal more than $900,000 in prepaid funeral expenses.
Prosecutors said much of the money went to pay for Stella?s gambling habit.
Standing with a cane in her hand outside the courtroom, another victim, Catherine Insley, 85, of York, Pa., said she wants Stella seriously punished when he is sentenced Jan. 10.
“He owes me $8,400,” she says. “He embezzled all of it. I don?t want him to just get off. He did a terrible thing to the elderly.”
Stella refused to comment as he left the courtroom.
Maryland U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein called the case “an outrageous abuse of trust.”
“He stole from people who took steps to plan and pay for their own funerals,” Rosenstein said in a statement.
Stella owned and operated Paul Stella Funeral Home, at 7527 Harford Road, and allowed customers ? many of them senior citizens ? to pay funeral costs in advance, according to an indictment.
Each of these prepaid accounts garnered Stella from $500 to $7,500, and he agreed to deposit the prepaid funeral expenses in bank accounts and act as a trustee to preserve the money for the funerals, the indictment alleges.
But between June 2004 and December 2006, Stella forged documents and took money from these accounts to use for personal expenses such as gambling, prosecutors said.
Stella faces a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison and a $1 million fine.
He has agreed to repay the full amount of the victims? losses.
