GREENFIELD — The county prosecutor has decided not to pursue criminal charges against the owners of Greenfield Granite Inc.
Instead, the prosecutor has sent all the information the office has gathered on the case to the Indiana attorney general’s office, which already is pursuing a civil case against the company for bilking customers out of tens of thousands of dollars, Prosecutor Brent Eaton said.
Greenfield Granite is facing mounting legal troubles after a lawsuit was filed by Attorney General Curtis Hill seeking restitution for more than a dozen customers. The lawsuit was filed against the local monument company and its registered agent, Cynthia A. Heck, Pendleton, on Sept. 18.
The civil action accuses the company under the Indiana Deceptive Consumer Sales Act of taking customers’ money without providing gravestones they ordered.
Heck is the mother of Amie Strohl, who was running the business with her husband, James Strohl, until she died on Sept. 8.
Her death, which authorities said was of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, came on the same day she was to appear in small claims court to answer a complaint Greenfield Granite had not delivered a grave marker a customer had paid for months earlier.
“We want to do right by the people who have been harmed, but no one anticipated the owner’s passing during the course of the investigation,” Eaton said of the probe, which was ongoing well before Strohl’s death. “With her passing, it made any type of legal theory we were working with unattainable.”
At the time of Amie Strohl’s death, investigators with the Greenfield Police Department were not sure if any crimes had been committed. They spent weeks investigating.
Eight civil cases are currently pending against the business and are making their way through the county courts. In each case, customers are seeking restitution, claiming they paid hundreds to thousands of dollars for grave markers for their loved ones that never were delivered. Three of the cases are set for trial in Hancock County Superior Court 2, on Tuesday, Nov. 10.
During their investigation, officials with GPD took complaints from more than 70 customers. However, the lead detective on the case, Nichole Gilbert, said GPD and Eaton’s office finally determined they didn’t have enough evidence to pursue criminal charges.
“We did feel that people had been wronged, and we wanted to make it right, but the offenses are civil and not criminal,” Gilbert said.
Eaton credited GPD for getting the state involved with the case. He said GPD — especially Gilbert and Capt. Michael Schwamberger — worked hard fielding dozens of complaints and laying out the civil violations that have become the foundation of the attorney general’s action.
The state’s lawsuit offers a detailed breakdown of some customers’ complaints. It lists 16 families who said the company failed to provide memorial monuments after receiving full or partial payment. The suit said the business has been engaging in deceptive practices since July 2018.
Gilbert has estimated customers suffered a total of over $100,000 in monetary losses.
Lauren Houck, assistant deputy director of communications for the attorney general’s office, said it filed an amended complaint on Oct. 19, adding additional consumers.
“That amended complaint indicated that it included, but was not limited to the named consumers,” Houck said in an email to the Daily Reporter.
To date, the company has not responded to the initial complaint or the amended complaint, but the deadline to do so has not passed. James Strohl, Amie’s husband, filed for bankruptcy on Oct. 20 and identified Greenfield Granite in his bankruptcy petition, according to records.
