RAVENNA — Stone-faced, handcuffed and shackled in a Portage County courtroom Friday, Arminda "Myndi" Martin said nothing in her own defense after admitting to nearly a decade worth of thefts from customers of the Ravenna Township cemetery she used to own.
The only times she spoke were to occasionally respond to retired Common Pleas Judge John Enlow’s questions — and to say "guilty" a total of 41 times to felony and misdemeanor charges for crimes she committed as far back as 2009.
Her victims, however, finally got their chance to confront a woman authorities say conspired with her husband for nearly 10 years to steal thousands of dollars from people making final arrangements for future burial at the once-privately owned Grandview Memorial Park on Lakewood Road in Ravenna Township. After a series of court decisions, Ravenna Township now owns and operates the cemetery.
Enlow sentenced Martin, 47, to four-and-a-half years in state prison. Running consecutive to an identical prison sentence she is serving for similar crimes committed at Fairview Memorial Park in Delaware County, Martin's crimes will put her behind bars for up to the next nine years.
Defense attorney Neil Agarwal presented no evidence on his client's behalf. Martin has already served one year and one day in a federal prison for tax evasion for failing to pay more than $130,000 to the IRS in 2011.
In the Grandview case, Martin also admitted tampering with records, faking financial reports and failing to provide paperwork to the Ohio Department of Commerce.
Martin also admitted she and her husband, Theodore "Ted" Martin, stole from more than 40 victims, all customers of Grandview who had plots there or purchased so-called "pre-need" contracts that the couple never delivered on.
The couple owes the IRS and the state of Ohio more than $130,000 in back taxes. Assistant Portage County Prosecutor Tom Buchanan told the 20 victims who showed up Friday in court that what few assets the Martins have left now belong to the IRS.
Despite Enlow's order that the Martins pay their Portage County victims $140,000 restitution for their crimes, Buchanan said "there is no money."
"There is no money to get back," Buchanan told the victims. The value of Grandview also is diminished because it is a working cemetery on unbuildable land that any prospective owner would have to continue to operate, Prosecutor Victor Vigluicci has said.
The Martins "harmed untold numbers of victims," and there is "no exact number" of victims or monetary losses, he said. Best estimates by probation officials put the number at 40 victims owed an average of $3,500 each, for a total of $140,000.
While some victims lost $1,200 or $1,300, Buchanan said one family lost $20,000. While some victims will retain their rights to cemetery plots they purchased, the caskets, vaults, headstones, benches and other memorial items they purchased "don't exist," he said.
VICTIMS SPEAK
Seven victims of the Martins’ thefts outlined before Enlow just what they lost over the years to the couple’s greed and mismanagement of the cemetery:
• Brooke Linton's son Leo died in 2015, only 17 months old, she said in court. She recalled the Martins promising her a plot and a headstone in Grandview “within a couple months” of his death.
"We never got it," Linton recalled, pausing to wipe away tears.
Linton said she purchased a cross to mark her son's grave so she could visit. But the Martins’ poor record-keeping and mismanagement only left her deeper in grief, she said.
"That cross has been moved multiple times," Linton told Enlow. "I've been told they don't even know exactly where he's buried."
The couple’s misdeeds cost Linton not only money but "time to grieve," she told the judge.
"I should be able to go see my son," she said.
• Greeting her former friend with a cheery “Hi, Myndi, remember me?” victim Betty Smith looked directly at the defendant as she delivered her impact statement.
Smith said Martin smiled and chatted with her every time she made payments on her father's future burial plot.
"Little does he know, we got to pay for it while you went on your cruises and gambling," Smith said accusingly. "You enjoy your jail cell. I really do feel sorry for you."
• Victim Linda Sweet said she doesn't know if her mother, who died in 2009, "is where she's supposed to be" at Grandview. She said the Martins moved her mother's grave twice.
"She's gonna die one day, too," Sweet said, pointing at Myndi Martin. "How would she like to be thrown here, there and everywhere? I hope she and her husband suffer for the rest of their lives.”
• Steve Korpita's daughter's grave marker disappeared after the Martins took him to a shed on the property and showed it to him, he told Enlow.
"Nobody can find it," he said.
His family, which includes a child with cerebral palsy and another he said is "mentally challenged," signed up for pre-need arrangements years ago "just in case," Korpita said.
"We invested in a casket, markers, openings and closings," none of which the family will now receive, he told the judge.
"I'm glad she pleaded guilty to so many charges. I thank her for that,” he said.
• James Sanders said he paid off two plots in Grandview in 1999, one for him and his wife.
Their money now is gone "without any explanation of why," he told Enlow.
Sanders now is 85, and his wife is 81, he said, and "there's no telling when we'll need a plot.”
• Kathy Laurence said after learning they wouldn’t receive a grave marker they paid for, she and her father made their own markers for her mother’s grave "so we would know where she would be at.
"For what they done, I have no mercy,” she told the judge.
TED MARTIN'S CASE
Also facing dozens of felony and misdemeanor charges for his role in the thefts and mismanagement of the cemetery, Ted Martin will learn his fate at 1 p.m. Friday, in Judge Laurie Pittman's courtroom, prosecutors said.
He currently is serving a one-year term in federal prison for tax evasion, which will be followed by a five-year prison term handed down in December by a Delaware County judge.
The couple told Judge Everett Krueger they spent the money stolen from Grandview and Fairview customers at casinos, on some personal items and on a third cemetery they own, Suburban Memorial Gardens in York County, Pa.
Authorities in Pennsylvania are continuing to investigate the Martins, and have not responded to requests for comment.
Reporter Dave O'Brien can be reached at 330-298-1128, dobrien@recordpub.com or @daveobrien_RC.
