Family Opened Their Dad’s Coffin at His Own Wake and Found Someone They Had Never Seen Before

They came to say goodbye. They opened the coffin and found a stranger.

Jose Daniel Diaz Felipe, known as Danielito, passed away at 84. His family showed up to his wake at R.G. Ortiz Funeral Home in Washington Heights and lifted the lid of his casket.

The man inside had hair. Danielito was bald. The man was much taller. Danielito was five feet three.

“We open the coffin and find another man. And they were trying for hours to convince us he was our father,” his son Jose Luis Diaz told NBC New York.

The Home Said It Was a Similar Name

The funeral home’s explanation was that another person with a similar name had come in the same week.

When the family pushed for answers, the story shifted. The home said he might have been cremated, but could not confirm it. As of the time of reporting, the family still did not know if the remains they were pointed to were actually their father’s.

That is not a clerical error. That is a family in grief being told their father might be gone in a way they never agreed to, by people who cannot verify their own work.

This Is Not the First Time

Here is what every outlet covered in four paragraphs and then stopped.

In March 2018, four families showed up for wakes at R.G. Ortiz on the same night. All four ended in chaos. Wrong bodies, wrong clothes, one staff member who collapsed from stress and was taken away by ambulance.

In 2024, a family’s loved one was supposed to be sent to Guatemala. A 96-year-old woman was shipped there instead. The other family found out by watching a TikTok funeral livestream.

NBC New York confirmed the NYC Department of Consumer and Worker Protection sued R.G. Ortiz after nearly 50 complaints since 2019. They settled for $600,000 to clients and $100,000 in civil penalties. Then kept operating. Eight locations, still open.

This pattern of families left with no real answers keeps showing up.

It is the same thing that happened in the Tampa case where a woman was found dead inside a burned home while authorities scrambled to understand what happened. The institution moves on. The family does not.

Why Nobody Is Stopping It

A 2025 audit by the New York State Comptroller found that some funeral directors admitted they do not always label or identify bodies in their care.

Over 23,000 death certificates were issued by unregistered funeral directors. More than 2,500 bodies were disposed of before deaths were even officially registered.

R.G. Ortiz primarily serves Spanish-speaking immigrant families in upper Manhattan and the Bronx. People who are grieving, under financial pressure, trusting a familiar name. That trust was broken repeatedly, and the system built to protect them never stepped in.

It follows the same logic as when an elderly couple was found dead in their Bermuda Dunes home after the wife sent thousands to someone she believed was Tom Selleck. Vulnerable people, a trusted name, and a failure no one caught in time.

For anyone who follows stories at the intersection of negligence and community impact, there is a WhatsApp channel that tracks cases like this as they develop. Useful if you do not want to wait for the news cycle.

The Mountainair case, where paramedics themselves felt sick responding to a home where two people were found dead, is another example of what happens when oversight breaks down entirely. These are not flukes. They are what a failed system looks like up close.

The city collected over $700,000 from R.G. Ortiz. The home is still taking families.

Key Takeaways

• Danielito’s family found a different man in his casket, someone who looked nothing like their father
• The funeral home cannot confirm where Danielito’s actual remains are
• R.G. Ortiz has faced nearly 50 complaints since 2019 and settled for $700,000 in penalties
• A 2025 state audit found funeral directors admitting they do not always identify bodies in their care
• Over 23,000 NYC death certificates were issued by unregistered funeral directors

At what point does a pattern like this stop being a licensing issue and start being something worse? Drop your take in the comments.

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Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. All details are based on publicly available reports at the time of publication.