YONKERS: A Yonkers funeral director should not be allowed to use bankruptcy to get out of paying a $585,000 debt, an insurance company claims, because he embezzled from a former employer by performing off-the-books funeral services.

National Union Fire Insurance Company of Pittsburgh sued Douglas A. Familia on May 11 in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in White Plains.

Familia had assisted former funeral director Donald Cranston of Haverstraw in performing unauthorized funeral services, according to the complaint, at T.J. McGowan Sons Funeral Home in Garnerville. They did not record the services or contracts, but kept the payments.
T.J. McGowan Sons discovered the diversions in 2013, and National Union, its insurer, paid a claim for $685,000….