South Carolina funeral home owner arrested on Grand Traverse County warrant

Robert Ian Nelms was taken into custody in Spartanburg County, South Carolina, on a fugitive from justice warrant tied to Grand Traverse County, Michigan, and deputies said he will be extradited back to Michigan to face a first-degree criminal sexual conduct charge.

The Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office said the arrest happened Friday, May 23, 2026. Deputies confirmed the warrant during the arrest, and public reporting says the Michigan case stems from an alleged incident that occurred while Nelms lived in Michigan. No additional details about the allegation have been released.

Nelms is identified in local reporting as the co-owner and CEO of Cremation Society of South Carolina, which operates in Greenville and Seneca. The arrest puts a South Carolina funeral-industry figure back into a Michigan criminal case that carries the state’s most serious CSC charge.

Under Michigan law, a person is guilty of first-degree criminal sexual conduct if he or she engages in sexual penetration with another person and certain listed circumstances exist. That charge is handled as a felony in Michigan courts, and Nelms is expected to be returned to the state so the Grand Traverse County case can move forward through the extradition process and then court proceedings.

The arrest also revives attention on Nelms’s long legal history in the death-care industry. Public reporting has linked him to a major cemetery fraud and embezzlement case involving millions of dollars, and he previously served less than three years in community corrections in a case tied to cemetery trust funds in Indiana and Michigan.

For Grand Traverse County, the immediate public-safety question centers on the pending criminal case, not on any broad threat to the community. The warrant involves an alleged offense tied to Nelms’s time in Michigan, and the next steps are likely to unfold after he is transferred back from South Carolina and brought before Michigan authorities.