Petersburg mortician’s license reinstated years after mishandling several funerals and a bank fraud conviction

All the details in our Health Safety stories come from publicly available Final Orders, Consent Orders, Orders of Suspension and other documents from the Virginia Department of Health Professionals. For more information, see the Editor’s note below the story.

Petersburg mortician and former Virginia state delegate Fenton Lee Bland Jr was issued a license to practice as a funeral service licensee in 1986. He was first written up by the Virginia Board of Funeral Directors and Embalmers in October 2000, for events that occurred in September 1998.

Bland had been the owner and manager of a funeral home in Richmond, when he failed to provide the family of the deceased with a copy of an itemized statement of funeral goods and services, failed to provide the family with the private viewing that he’d promised them, and failed to properly prepare the deceased’s remains so that they were presentable for public viewing at the open-casket funeral, among other allegations.

The Virginia Board of Funeral Directors and Embalmers ordered that Bland’s funeral home undergo an unannounced records audit including the review of a t least 20 randomly selected client files, but allowed him to continue operating.

Bland was written up again in March 2005 for “mishandling multiple funerals, including failure to provide price lists, forging of a client’s signature, delayed filing of death certificates, mishandling of preneed contracts and funds, mishandling of remains, and unauthorized embalming,” in addition to several additional allegations of improprieties.

In one case, Bland had provided an inaccurate cause of death to the wife of the deceased, told a member of his staff to forge the wife’s signature on an official document so that funds from the deceased’s insurance policy could be used to pay the funeral home and filed the certificate of death for the deceased several days late. In another case, Bland failed to give the cremated remains and death certificate of another deceased person to their family,  and filed their certificate of death with the Bureau of Vital Records and Statistics several months late. This delay prevented the family from being able to access the deceased’s survivor benefits and life insurance policy. Several additional allegations of improprieties were listed in the 2005 order from the Virginia Board of Funeral Directors and Embalmers, including ten cases in which Bland filed late death certificates. This time, Bland surrendered his license to practice as a funeral service licensee in Virginia.

Shortly after Bland surrendered his license, he was convicted of conspiracy to commit bank fraud in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, sentenced to 26 months in prison and ordered to pay $1.2 million in restitution to two banks. He applied to get his license reinstated a few years later, but was rejected by the board in 2011 due to this conviction.

Bland applied for reinstatement again in 2013. This time, the board ordered that his license be reinstated upon his passage of the Virginia State Board Examination for funeral service licensees, with the condition that he be placed on probation for at least three years.

Bland passed the exam in 2016 and his license was reinstated, on probation, in April 2016. The probation prevented Bland from selling or taking part in the sale of any preneed contracts or acting as the manager of record at any funeral establishment. Bland was also required to submit quarterly reports to the board on the status of his court-ordered restitution payments, to provide a copy of the board’s 2013 order to his future employers, and to “be of good behavior.”

In 2020, the board denied a request by Bland to be released from his probation due to findings that he failed to make all court-ordered restitution payments in a timely manner and that he failed to file any self-reports to the board after March 2019, as was required by the terms of his probation. Bland remained under indefinite probation, but was allowed to keep his license.

In October 2022, the board once again denied a petition by Bland to be released from his probation. Bland petitioned for a release from his probation through his lawyer a third time in November 2023. This time, Bland provided documentation demonstrating that he had been making his restitution payments as required by the court.

The Virginia Board of Funeral Directors and Embalmers approved his petition and released Bland from his probation in July 2024, granting him a full and unrestricted license.

“Mr. Bland demonstrated that he was safe and competent to return to unrestricted practice as a funeral service licensee,” stated the order from the board.

*

To file a formal complaint against a health professional, click here .  For links to the public information informing this story, see below.

Want to know if your doctors, other medical professionals or local pharmacies have been investigated? Check out the license lookup.

EDITOR’S NOTE: When citizens are a danger to the public safety, law enforcement arrests them and charges them with crimes; they have the opportunity to face a jury of their peers; if convicted, they serve time and/or probation that can often ensnare them in the system for years.

When a medical professional is an alleged danger to the public safety, the Virginia Department of Health Professionals handles all facets of the inquiry, including the investigation and penalties. And sometimes, even when a medical professional is found liable of doing harm to patients, they may face a reprimand, pay a fine and continue to practice, without missing a day of work and with little chance for the public to see what they’ve done.

The Health Safety stories in this series tell the facts of cases where medical professionals  endanger our public health safety. They also bring you into the world of the medical board’s consent orders and public final orders, so you can see exactly how the VDHP’s self-policing system works.

LINKS TO DOCUMENTS REFERENCED ABOVE:

Board of Funeral DirectingLicense Number: 0502860051Name: Fenton Bland

Documents associated with the most recent case may not yet be available for viewing.

This article originally appeared on The Progress-Index: Petersburg mortician’s license reinstated years after mishandling several funerals and a bank fraud conviction