The Hulmeville funeral director who stole hundreds of thousands in prepaid funeral costs from more than 50 clients could serve close to two decades in state prison.

David Wayne Faust, 54, of Walnut Street, was ordered Thursday to spend nine to 18 years behind bars followed by nine years of probation in a sentence well outside the aggravated range of sentencing guidelines.

“You are the most manipulative human being I think I have ever met,” said Judge Diane E. Gibbons. “There is nobody you dealt with in the last 20 years that you did not victimize.”

After an investigation sparked by the discovery of forged doctors’ signatures on death certificates, Bucks County Detectives charged Faust last year with stealing some $300,000 from clients over 17 years. The money, paid to him by clients who prearranged for funeral services through Faust Funeral Home, was supposed to be held in escrow until a funeral was to be performed.

But as his victims found, the money entrusted to Faust all went missing.

“I wanted to prepare for my funeral so it might be a little easier for my children when I die,” wrote one victim, a 95-year-old cancer patient who said she chose Faust because of his business’s good reputation.

Faust pleaded guilty in June to counts related to the thefts and forgery of signatures and public documents, as well as to charges he stole $129,000 from the U.S. Social Security Administration by lying on paperwork as a means of receiving disability payments.

His sentencing was twice delayed, first in August and again in September, as he insisted he could sell off assets to pay his $433,282 restitution. Those assets were found to be hopelessly encumbered, despite Faust’s assurances, and so he came to court Thursday offering his victims only apologies.

“I totally let you down,” he said, sobbing. “You did not deserve what I did to you.”

Asked by Judge Gibbons what became of the money he stole, Faust hesitated to respond before saying he did not know. He added he assumes he used it to pay bills.

Gibbons, however, suggested he was “living the high life” instead while his victims struggled to bury their loved ones.

“My parents are not wealthy people. This whole situation has put a strain on our family,” said victim Cheryl Chamberlain.

Together with her father, she said, she cashed in an insurance policy and drained savings to prepay for funerals for her Korean War veteran father and severely ill mother. The family lost $15,800 to Faust.

Faust agreed with his defense attorney Steve Jones, who characterized the criminal conduct as a result of “laziness and abysmal business practices.”

According to Faust, those practices involved the use of money from new clients to cover the costs of prearranged funerals when he had already spent the money.

“I wasn’t trying to steal from anybody,” he said.

But in the case of a woman who died out of state, there was no money to bring her home – or to transfer to a funeral home in Maryland – despite her prepayments to Faust, said Deputy District Attorney Marc J. Furber.

“The consequences of his actions have happened and they will continue to happen,” Furber said.

Attempting to explain his crimes, Faust pointed to spiraling health and an addiction to prescription pills which, in the wake of a 2006 injury, he claimed rendered him a different person, unable to think and reason as clearly as he could before.

Furber countered, noting the crimes were not only “calculated and sophisticated,” but that they predate his injury by seven years.

“This was someone who knew exactly what he was doing as he was doing it,” Furber said.

To date, Faust’s victims have received about $45,000 in restitution through the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s Victim Compensation Assistance Program. The program, described as the state’s “payer of last resort,” is limited in the amount it can provide to victims.

Bucks County Detectives were assisted in their investigation by the Social Security Administration Office of Inspector General and the Network Of Victim Assistance.

Contact: Marc J. Furber, 215.348.6339, mjfurber@buckscounty.org