A federal grand jury in Columbia, South Carolina, on Tuesday handed up three additional indictments against prominent Aiken businessmen Cody Lee Anderson, 37, and Thomas Allen Bateman Jr., 50, charging them with bank fraud and bank fraud conspiracy.
According to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of South Carolina, Anderson and Bateman face up to 30 years in prison and are scheduled to make their initial court appearances to be arraigned on July 31.
According to the indictment, Anderson and Bateman induced an elderly woman to bequeath her entire estate to Bateman, naming Anderson as her personal representative in her will, even though authorities noted that at the time she lacked the mental capacity to make conscious and voluntary decisions about her own estate.
North Augusta man killed in crash: Coroner releases name of North Augusta man killed in Aiken County crash
The lawsuit that exposed the alleged plan
A lawsuit was filed in 2022 on behalf of the estate of 88-year-old Mary Margaret Wenzel Crandall, alleging that Anderson, Bateman & George Funeral Homes attempted to defraud her of more than $8 million in her estate when she was planning her husband’s funeral in 2012. Anderson is the owner of George Funeral Homes, and Bateman is its former president.
According to the lawsuit, Crandall, who was diagnosed with dementia in 2018, was persuaded to draw up a new will in 2020, naming Anderson as personal representative and Bateman as sole heir to his estate.
According to court documents, the lawsuit alleges that Anderson and Bateman prepared an illegal will within a year of her appointment, forced her to sign it, isolated her from friends and family and prevented her from accessing her assets.
Court documents also allege Anderson tried to vacate and sell Crandall’s home before her death.
According to court documents, Crandall’s certified public accountant, Wanda Scott, and Ray Massey, who drafted Crandall’s 2001 will, filed a lawsuit in 2022 after her death, after which the court found the 2020 will was illegal.
The original 2001 will has been reinstated, and its beneficiaries include the Augusta Genealogical Society, the Crandall Family Association, the Heritage Center Museum, Our Lady of the Valley Roman Catholic Church, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the South Carolina Nature Conservancy and the Hotchkiss School.
In a 2022 interview with the Aiken Standard, the man’s lawyer, John Hart, said Bateman was “doing what he thought was the thing he should do as a Christian.”
This article originally appeared in the Augusta Chronicle: Prominent Aiken businessman charged with bank fraud