Board revokes license it gave back to ex-Logan funeral director, now out of prison

SALT LAKE CITY — In a reversal of a November decision, the state Funeral Service Board on Friday revoked a probationary funeral director's license it had granted for Lonnie Nyman after a representative of the Utah Attorney General's Office brought concerns that misleading information had been given to the board.

Nyman was released from the Utah State Prison in March after being sentenced in 2019 on charges across multiple cases, admitting to defrauding clients out of hundreds of thousands of dollars as a funeral director, sending an explicit image of himself to a minor, deleting evidence, encouraging the boy to lie to investigators, and using bad checks to get out of jail following his arrest.

In a November meeting with the board, Nyman told members, "All of the charges will be dropped to class C misdemeanors, and some of them dropped completely, probably within the next two months."

Court documents, however, indicate that his charges are to be stepped down two severity levels as part of plea agreements should he successfully complete parole. Some third-degree felony convictions could be reduced to class C misdemeanors, but his second-degree felony convictions would be reduced to class A misdemeanors.

Nyman called his crimes "an unfortunate situation. I took full accountability, full responsibility and did everything that I needed to do in that situation," but he claimed "there was a lot of politics involved in that."

The board in November granted the man a probationary funeral director's license with a five-year probationary period with various reporting and supervision requirements.

But Friday, assistant attorney general Steve Oler and Tracy Taylor, a bureau manager for the Utah Division of Professional Licensing, approached the board to express concerns.

Oler said he "saw a lot of flags popping up" and "the things that were presented to the board were, in my view, not 100% accurate," before walking members through each case.

"I just got really concerned that Mr. Nyman is not taking responsibility for really, anything that he's done," said Oler, a former prosecutor, calling Nyman's minimizations "a pretty drastic failure to accept responsibility."

Taylor said she has "serious concerns as it relates to the practice of the profession and the history that's coming in." She felt the wounds are too raw. "We're not talking about issues that were 10 years ago. We're talking about a few years, and less than a year when it comes to how long it has been since Mr. Nyman has been paroled into the community."

'Major witch hunt'

Nyman defended himself vigorously. "Prosecutors can say whatever they want to say in a courtroom. There's no accountability on their end. ... I know that their job and their position is to make us look absolutely horrible."

The former funeral director claimed that he did not actually agree to the plea agreements he had signed, and was promised changes that never happened. He said there "were some major errors in the charges that were put in there," and argued that the cases were only prosecuted due to pressure from someone in Cache County with political clout and his competitors.

"There's a major witch hunt in the middle of this that I'm not getting in the middle of," he said. "There's some politics involved in this as well, and there was a lot of inaccuracies posted."

Nyman claimed that he did take responsibility for his crimes but protected the minor, "who lied about his age and lied about other things in the case" from legal consequences.

"I know we're not on trial here, but I almost feel like I'm on trial again," he said.

While Nyman claims he was "promised by the prosecution, by the state, that if I pled to these agreements and pled to these charges, I would have immediate release from prison," but that didn't happen.

'Their money is gone'

When Oler went through the docket, he said the judge did not follow the recommendations of the plea agreements after Adult Parole and Probation wrote a pre-sentencing report concerned that Nyman was not taking accountability for the crimes. "As a prosecutor, I can tell you that's rare," Oler said. "Usually judges follow these things, but they looked at Mr. Nyman and said, 'I cannot give you probation when you won't take responsibility for these things.'"

"I know that there were some wrongs done," Nyman said. "I didn't make some good choices. I agreed to that. I admit to that. I was on some apps that I shouldn't have been on. But there's also a big story behind that, which I'm not going to go into as well."

"I take full responsibility. I messed up. I put some money where it shouldn't have been held and done. Never once did I steal or try to deceive anybody," Nyman said.

But Oler argued "there was a lot of money that was entrusted to his care, and now it's gone. So whether you call that stealing or something else, that's what happened. There are a whole bunch of clients that have not been made whole. Their money is gone."

In court hearings, victims testified of concerns that money paid to Nyman Funeral Home, where he was president and funeral director, for pre-paid funeral expenses was used for personal expenses instead of being placed into a trust and held until it was needed.

Court records show over 60 parties were owed restitution in the fraud case.

Nyman has been working in St. George at a mortuary since his release. The owner and funeral director, Jody Spilsbury-Snow, told the board "hiring Lonnie was the best decision I ever made. Lonnie is the funeral director every owner wants."

She said she was "extremely hesitant" at first to hire him, but said he was "very forthcoming" with his past, and several references "all came back with rave comments and positivity."

"I am an awesome, awesome funeral director," Nyman said. "I could have had a ton of people here to vouch for that due to the timing, shortness of it all, that I wasn't able to get that in." He said he received letters while in prison from former clients saying "it was a travesty of how all the charges took place."

Board chair Robert Larkin admitted that he has " a slight understanding of everything that's going on," and appreciated all parties "trying to bring a light to this situation."

After a closed door discussion, the board voted to deny Nyman's application, to be reevaluated in six months, when the board will "reanalyze things."

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