Spanish police announced on Monday that they had arrested the owners of a funeral parlor in Valencia on suspicion of selling corpses to university research departments for 1,200 euros each.
The university plans to dispose of the four suspects, two owners and two employees, by incinerating the bodies after investigation or disposing of the dismembered parts in separate coffins scheduled for cremation. We also cooperated.
Most of the bodies were people without family members.
Police said the suspects “obtained bodies from hospitals and nursing homes and forged documents in order to later sell them to universities for research at 1,200 yen ($1,300) each.”
It added that the suspects had sold the bodies of at least 11 people.
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In some cases, the university was even billed for the cost of cremations that never took place.
“A university was charged 5,040 euros for incinerating 11 bodies after research, but this amount was not included in the invoices of any of the city’s crematoriums,” police said.
Police discovered that two funeral home employees used false documents to remove bodies from hospital morgues and then brought them to university researchers without burial. First, an investigation was started.
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The body belonged to a man and was to be buried in his hometown, paid for by the local council, but was sold for research without anyone’s consent.
Police said the suspects were “looking for people who had died without living relatives, preferably foreigners.”
In another case, the suspects allegedly persuaded an elderly man with mental disabilities to agree to donate his body to science.
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“The donor form said to send the body to a specific medical facility, but it ended up being taken to another medical facility, where they paid more money,” police said in a statement.
The suspects are charged with fraud and forging documents.
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