N.Y. Funeral Homes Plead Guilty to Body Part Theft

Grave robbing, unlawful dissection and forging death certificates are among the charges being brought against seven men. They stole body parts from funeral homes and opened graves to steal body parts to sell the body parts for transplants. Some of the people who's body parts were stolen by them would have been ineligible to be used as a transplant, so they forged death certificates to be able to make the sale. So, apparently now some transplant recipients may have been implanted with "tainted" body part.



Very disturbing to say the least, and one of the suspects is a doctor!

It's bad enough defiling a grave and stealing parts of a body, but then to sell the body parts to be sold as a transplant and changing the death certificate to hide the true age of the "donor" and changing the cause of death so that the body part would be bought! Sick!

This just shows they didn't have any cares at all about what might happen to the person who might receive the part as an implant and the problems this "tainted" body part might cause the recipient. I sure hope they don't go easy on this bunch, who knows how many lives they have harmed in their "get rich quick and easy" scheme.

I covered this when they first were suspected that they were selling body parts, however I do not recall any mention of robbing graves. Also the article does not mention specifically what the charges are. All the story says is they were arrested on undisclosed charges. Is there a supporting link that confirms what is stated as to the specific charges with information confirming graves were in fact robbed???

Frankly that portion of the story makes no sense, because it is my understanding that organs and skin tissue etc., have to be taken within hours, but I could be wrong.

Here's some of the charges from the original article being brought against them.

At least four funeral homes stole human body parts from thousands of corpses to sell for use in transplants in a scheme in which seven funeral directors have pleaded guilty,

Mastromarino and the three others were previously indicted in February on charges including conspiracy, unlawful dissection and forgery.

The plot's suspected ringleader, Michael Mastromarino, a former New Jersey oral surgeon who ran a Fort Lee, New Jersey, company that sold human tissue for medical implants, pleaded not guilty on Wednesday along with three others to new charges in the case, including body stealing and opening graves.