The owners of a Valencia funeral home arrested for trafficking corpses and selling them to hospitals

Gema Peñalosa Madrid

Madrid

Updated Monday, January 29, 2024-10:23

The National Police have dismantled a group in Valencia that was dedicated to illegally removing corpses from

hospitals and nursing homes

and then selling them to universities. The detainees made sure that they were foreigners, and without family, so that they would not be claimed. In one operation, they collected more than 5,000 euros.

Those responsible for a funeral home were the ones who devised the plot, which has been operating for several months, and involved two of their workers. They were the ones who, according to investigations, were in charge of falsifying the papers for the

Civil Registry

.

Those arrested falsified documentation to be able to remove the bodies from hospitals and residences and later sell them to universities for study for 1,200 euros per body.

They invoiced 5,040 euros to a university for carrying out

11 cremations of bodies

, once studied, which were not reflected in the invoices issued by any of the incinerators operating in the city.

The investigation

began at the beginning of 2023

after the agents learned that the body of a deceased person had been irregularly removed from the morgue of a hospital by a funeral home, for which

falsifications had been made in the record book

, as well as also in the documentation provided to the Civil Registry.

After numerous investigations, investigators verified how

two funeral home workers

, after falsifying documents, had taken possession of a body that was in the hospital morgue and had transferred it to a university for study instead of burying it.

The deceased should have been buried in his town of residence in a charity funeral paid for by the town council of that town, however he was sold for study for almost 1,200 euros, without any family member or friend having given consent.

Continuing with the investigation, the agents located another case with the same modus operandi, this time the

deceased was admitted to a nursing home

and apparently, it would have been the man himself, three days before his death, who had supposedly authorized the donation of his body.

In this case, the researchers were able to verify that the man's mental abilities were impaired

shortly before he died,

as he suffered from severe cognitive impairment, which would not have allowed him to understand what the donation entailed.

Furthermore, said donation was signed so that the body would be sent to a certain medical school, and it was finally taken to another, which paid more money for it. To do so, they managed to get healthcare personnel to sign the change of destination of the body by deception.

Irregularities in cremations

Those investigated were looking for deceased people who

did not have relatives, preferably foreigners

, or who had had precarious living conditions in life to carry out the irregularities, since this way they ensured that no follow-up was done on said donations by a family member, thus seeking greater impunity.

On the other hand, and continuing with the investigations, the agents found out that there had also been irregularities in the cremations of the bodies that had supposedly been donated to science.

Apparently, once the universities had completed the studies, they had to pay for the cremations, with the funeral home itself taking care of them.

After several efforts, the agents found out that the funeral company had invoiced a university 5,040 euros for 11 cremations, which were not reflected in the invoices issued by any of the incinerators operating in Valencia.

It seems that those investigated took advantage of the dissection and dismemberment of the bodies to

place them in the coffins of other deceased people

, carrying out the cremation of several corpses in a single incineration, saving on paying for them and at the same time billing them to the university, obtaining notable benefits with this practice.

Finally, the agents arrested those responsible for the investigated funeral home, as well as two workers as alleged perpetrators of a crime of fraud, in addition, two of them are also charged with a crime of document falsification.