The Big R.I.P.-Off

Proving guilt in a fraud case can be difficult enough when your clients are alive, kicking, and willing to talk to law enforcement agents.

But even though the fraud victims in a recent case of bait-and-switch are dead and buried, prosecutors in the western German town of Wilhelmshaven appear to have an open-and-(nailed)-shut case on their hands.

An ex-employee of a funeral home near the Dutch border has accused his boss of pulling off a recycling operation that even Greenpeace would oppose.

Plain pine boxes

The undertaker, who owns five funeral homes, was accused of selling his clients expensive coffins for their funeral -- then switching them into cheap board boxes before cremation.

In Germany, bodies are normally burned without the mourners present, but in the same finely crafted casket seen at the funeral.

The employee alleges that for the past two years, his boss has been selling top-of-the-line caskets that he then saved and sold again. And again, and again, and again.

But his ill-gained returns seem likely to go up in smoke. Inquiries so far showed that only plain pine boxes had been cremated with the bodies.