The legal woes keep coming for one-time Wabaunsee County coroner Shawn Parcells.
The US Attorney’s Office has now indicted Parcells on 10 counts of wire fraud, alleging he ran his autopsy-for-hire business on fraudulent claims — notably that an autopsy report would be provided by a pathologist when no pathologist was even part of the autopsy process in most cases. Parcells worked as a pathologist’s assistant with Jackson County, Missouri, from 1996 to 2003 but was never a physician or pathologist in his career.
The indictment says Parcells got fees from at least 375 clients at $3,000 per case plus expenses — a total of more than $1 million — but failed to offer a completed report in most cases.
If convicted, Parcells faces a penalty of up to 20 years in federal prison along with fines of up to $250,000 per count.
Parcells was already in legal trouble with the Kansas Attorney General’s Office, which expanded a civil lawsuit against him just two weeks ago. That lawsuit alleges Parcells failed to complete autopsies in Wabaunsee County in accordance to Kansas law and without supervision as ordered by a state court.
Besides that, Parcells still faces three felony theft counts and three misdemeanor desecration counts in Wabaunsee county after alleged incidents in 2014 and 2015.
