Myndi Martin, one of the former owners of Grandview Memorial Park cemetery in Ravenna Township, pleaded guilty this afternoon to 41 felonies and misdemeanors in Portage County Common Pleas Court.

She was sentenced to four and a half years in prison to run current to the four-and-a-half-year prison term she is currently serving at the Ohio Reformatory for Women in Marysville for thefts committed at Fairview Memorial Park, a Delaware County, Ohio, cemetery. She was ordered to pay $140,000 in restitution.

Over the better part of a decade, Myndi Martin and her husband, Theodore Martin, sold "pre-need" contracts including caskets, headstones and other burial merchandise to their customers, then allegedly failed to provide most of the merchandise. They also allegedly forged or faked cemetery records to cover up the alleged crimes, according to Vigluicci, the Portage County Sheriff’s Office and the Ohio Department of Commerce, all of whom investigated the claims.

By court order, Ravenna Township recently took over ownership and upkeep of Grandview, located at 5400 Lakewood Road. The township is not required to honor the pre-need contracts, but plot owners retain the rights to their burial spots, Township Trustees said.

Vigluicci said it remains unlikely that the Martins’ alleged victims will see full restitution of their lost money, as the couple owes the IRS more than $100,000 in back taxes and have multiple other creditors including Ohio state agencies and plaintiffs in numerous civil cases.

The couple also told a Delaware County judge they spent most of the proceeds from sales at Grandview and Fairview to bolster a third cemetery they owned in York County, Pa. Authorities there are continuing to investigate the operation of that cemetery, Suburban Memorial Gardens.

Theodore Martin, 54, is scheduled to appear in Portage County Common Pleas Court at 1 p.m. Feb. 9. Currently serving a one-year and one-day term in federal prison for tax evasion, he also recently was sentenced to five years in prison for swindling customers o Fairview Memorial Park.