"We, by law, had to grant [James Garzone] his license," said Basil Merenda, commissioner of the state Bureau of Professional and Occupational Affairs. Agnes Folger believes the body of her 81-year-old husband, [1/2]Megan Hess, owner of Donor Services, is pictured during an interview in Montrose, Colorado, U.S., May 23, 2016 in this still image from video. This is the cost to purchase a burial vault from the funeral home. When asked to describe the crime in a United States District Court in Grand Junction, Tuesday, Hess said, "I exceeded the scope of the consent and I'm trying to make an effort to make it right," reported The Daily Sentinel. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser. 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While the mostly poor families thought their loved ones were being cremated, the bodies were often left unrefrigerated for days, sometimes in alleys beside the funeral home, until a cutter arrived, authorities said. He said the state was investigating whether Louis and Gerald Garzone were still running their businesses without a license. One Philadelphia woman who believes she contracted hepatitis from a tainted body part is pursuing a civil suit. Although taking care of these funerals is a tremendous honor, the owner of McCafferty Funeral Home's real passion is to help all people from different backgrounds get . Updated: 7:04 PM MST January 5, 2023. In other instances, the topic of donation was raised by Hess or Koch, and specifically rejected by the families. Some even had rigor mortis, the grand jury said. A former Colorado funeral home owner pleaded guilty to secretly dissecting corpses and selling body parts without consent from mourning relatives. Mastromarino to plead guilty to just a few of the approximately Human Corpse Being Transported to Funeral Home Ejected from Van in Pileup on N.J. Freeway. corruption, body stealing and reckless endangerment. Get ready!!!! The three funeral-home directors - Louis Garzone, 65; his brother Gerald Garzone, 47; and James A. McCafferty Jr., 37 - were accused of plundering 244 cadavers between February 2004 and September 2005. PHILADELPHIA (AP) - April 4, 2008 A stout, ruddy-faced James McCafferty Jr. - the third of the Philadelphia funeral-home operators who participated in the sickening national scam to illegally sell body parts - was sentenced yesterday to 3 1/2 to 10 years in state prison. Ms. Hess altered lab reports so that they said that people had tested negative for diseases like H.I.V. Discovery Company. younger brother, Gerald Garzone, 47, of North Wales; and James The dispute will likely be left for Common Pleas Judge Glenn "Despite receiving $1,959 per child from Stevie Wonder, Louis Garzone filed a welfare claim for $750 for each," the grand jury said. Mastromarino then falsified paperwork to change the causes of death, the age of the deceased and their medical history, the grand jury said. A human head and spine sold for $850, while a full pelvis all the way to the toes priced out at $2,850. (Reuters) - A second Colorado woman pleaded guilty on Tuesday to defrauding relatives of the dead as part of a scheme in which a funeral home sold body parts without permission . Like Gore, Rathburn would also be convicted but in federal court of fraud for selling and transporting infected body parts. Legal Statement. Lee Cruceta, 35, of Monroe, N.Y., has admitted to being "He was victimized by the funeral directors. PHILADELPHIA (AP) - April 4, 2008 But prosecutors here are balking at any 2-for-1 deal. You have permission to edit this article. Megan Hess, who pleaded guilty to mail fraud, sold body parts without families consent in a business she operated with her mother, officials said. July 5 (Reuters) - A former Colorado funeral home owner pleaded guilty on Tuesday to a federal charge of defrauding relatives of the dead by dissecting their family members' corpses and selling the body parts without permission, a practice exposed in a 2018 Reuters investigative report. being cremated quickly, the bodies were often left unrefrigerated The department's position that Trump is not immune from suit was laid out in a filing before a federal appeals court. The woman, Megan Hess, 45, the principal figure in the scheme, was assisted by her mother, Shirley Koch, who is in her late 60s, prosecutors said. learned the true identities of only 48 of the 244 bodies, Abraham parts, Peruto said. Philadelphia on Friday, but defense lawyer Charles A. Peruto Jr. The district attorney also charged McCafferty and Louis and Gerald Garzone with defrauding a state welfare program that offers help to the poor for burial expenses. Add to cart More. All three men were jailed yesterday. A former Colorado funeral home owner pleaded guilty on Tuesday to a federal charge of defrauding relatives of the dead by dissecting their family members' corpses and selling the body parts . Tweet. Mastromarino has pleaded not guilty to the New York charges. A lawyer for Funeral directors Louis Garzone, 65, of Philadelphia, Gerald Garzone, 47, of North Wales, and James McCafferty, 37, of Philadelphia, were arrested Thursday on thousands of counts, ranging from running a corrupt organization to forgery and theft of body parts. Joe Amon / Denver Post via Getty Images file. Bronson to resolve. "Both Louis and Gerald continue to run their businesses, pretty much as they did before," the report said. Mastromarino is already facing charges in New York for allegedly Two funeral home operators in Colorado were sentenced Wednesday for illegally selling bodies and body parts without the families consent, the US Attorneys Office said. Mastromarino plans to surrender Tuesday and will fight the charges, his lawyer said. In 2003, the grand jury noted, an employee at a tissue- processing company described Mastromarino as "one of the leading procurers in the country," who was providing "a phenomenal amount of stuff. Hess had been scheduled to go on trial in three weeks along with her mother, Shirley Koch, who also previously pleaded not guilty. "Hess, and at times Koch, would meet with families seeking cremation services, and would offer to cremate the decedents' bodies and provide the remains back to the families," the DOJ added, stating that the funeral home "would charge $1,000 or more for cremations, but many never occurred.". This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. James E Fyfe Funeral Director. In a cruel twist, the mother-and-daughter team also repeatedly lied to grieving families about the status of their loved one's bodies or flat out ignored their wishes, said the DOJ. Subscribe to stay connected to Tucson. The parts could have been transplanted into as many as 13,000 patients, the Food and Drug Administration estimated. Mansion, Jen Shah's Assistant Stuart Smith Changes Plea to Guilty in Telemarketing Scheme Case, American Dentist Accused of Plotting Wife's Murder During Africa Hunting Trip. The defendants typically made up names for the donors and also forged family consent forms, the indictment said. Hundreds of patient lawsuits have been filed in federal court in New Jersey and state courts around the country. So far, authorities have learned the true identities of only 48 of the 244 bodies, Abraham said. Ms. Koch has pleaded not guilty, but she has a change of plea hearing scheduled for July 12. In 2009, Hess and her mother, Shirley Koch, launched a nonprofit donor services organization called Sunset Mesa Funeral Foundation, a body-broker service operating out of the funeral home doing business that would sell body parts to third parties mostly for surgical training and other educational purposes. Charges also were filed against Louis and Gerald Garzone's funeral homes and the crematorium, but not the McCafferty funeral home. "For them, nothing was beyond the pale - not stealing flesh and bones from the dead or lying to the bereaved, not forging and lying on thousands of documents, not putting the public's health at risk," the report said. with the body parts being transplanted in unsuspecting medical Parts are supposed to be harvested within 15 hours of death, but some of those in Philadelphia sat unrefrigerated for up to 100 hours. authorities said. The body-part industry has been booming, growing from 200,000 transplants in 1989 to 1,200,000 in 2003. DENVER - The United States Attorney's Office for the District of Colorado announced today that the operators of Sunset Mesa Funeral Home in Montrose, Colorado, were sentenced to federal prison for illegally selling body parts or entire bodies without the consent of the family of the deceased. They have four or five deaths a day. The Garzone brothers each own a funeral home and McCafferty was the director at a funeral home owned by his mother, the report said. processors," defense lawyer Mario Gallucci said Thursday. "I've yet to be shown a single shred of evidence that he knew what was going on," lawyer George Vomvolakis said. "No penalty is too harsh for these guys, for the just While the women sometimes received consent from families "to donate small tissue samples or tumors of their dead relatives," the New York Times reported that the pair supplied body parts for research even when families were never asked for their approval or rejected the request in advance. "They have four or five deaths a day. One of the "cutters" who removed body parts told the grand jury that he once saw a body in the alley, covered with a blue "Astroturf-like material," a sparrow perched on the head. Generally, a broker can sell a donated human body for about $3,000 to $5,000, though prices sometime . The group also lowered the donors' ages and changed their dates The funeral directors forged death certificates that said the funeral directors there have pleaded guilty, including one whose One A change of plea hearing for Koch, who initially pleaded not guilty, is scheduled for July 12 added the outlet. guilty. According to NBC News, Hess and her mother now face 135 years in prison each. Two morticians operating . According to a report from the DOJ at the time of the arrests, Hess and Koch's mail scheme included shipping "bodies and body parts that tested positive for, or belonging to people who had died from, infectious diseases, including Hepatitis B and C, and HIV, after certifying to buyers that the remains were disease-free. her fear. then sold to the tissue banks for dental implants, knee and hip In fact, the mother-daughter team had been illegally selling hundreds of corpses intended for cremation out of the family funeral home in Montrose, Colorado for almost a decade. Mastromarino often filled in phony information on death "This was not a coincidence," the grand jury said. Your effort and contribution in providing this feedback is much Heres how prosecutors said the scheme worked: From about 2010 to 2018 Ms. Hess was in charge of Donor Services, a nonprofit body broker service, and Sunset Mesa Funeral Directors, which offered to arrange cremations, funerals and burials in the small western Colorado city of Montrose. plea with New York prosecutors, he agreed to forfeit $4.68 million. They took remains without permission from 244 cadavers, an indictment says. Michael Mastromarino, a businessman and former dentist, ran the scheme with help from a team of "cutters" who stole the body parts, authorities said. Megan Hess, 45, admitted to a single count of mail fraud and aiding and abetting, the Department of Justice announced in a press release on Tuesday. Access unmatched financial data, news and content in a highly-customised workflow experience on desktop, web and mobile. was HIV-positive and suffered from hepatitis C and cancer. 7047 Germantown Ave, Philadelphia, PA 19119. In such circumstances, despite lacking any authorization, Koch and Hess recovered body parts from, or otherwise prepared entire bodies of hundreds of decedents for body broker services.. The grand jury found that the three men collected more than $183,000 from those families and $84,000 more from welfare. The group also lowered the donors' ages and changed their dates of death to make it appear the body parts were more fresh, authorities said. Seven 2023 FOX News Network, LLC. Mastromarino is already facing charges in New York for allegedly plundering 1,077 bodies, including those from Philadelphia. To maximize profits, Hess targeted poor and vulnerable families, struggling as they made arrangements in their relatives final days, according to court documents. Several funeral home operators in New York have also pleaded came home in one piece from the war. This is the only funeral home my family has ever used. fight the charges, his lawyer said. The grand jury said five Philadelphia and 41 Pennsylvania hospitals implanted parts that originated with Mastromarino's operation. All he was supposed to do was come and harvest the tissue and send the samples down to the processors," defense lawyer Mario Gallucci said Thursday. Second plea in U.S. funeral home scheme to sell body parts. The extent of any medical complications that resulted from the transplants remains unknown, she said. The most comprehensive solution to manage all your complex and ever-expanding tax and compliance needs. Despite surrendering their licenses, the two Garzone funeral homes have continued operating under the control of a third brother, James, who revived a dormant Pennsylvania funeral home director license. It was not immediately known if the three funeral directors had attorneys. Louis Garzone even ran this scheme, the grand jury said, in the case of five children killed in a 2005 fire in Tacony, a tragedy that drew an offer from the musician Stevie Wonder to pay for the funerals. Families of the dead had no idea the bodies were being ransacked. From 2017-2021 Matthews was a guest host for RUSH Limbaugh and had the honor of hosting the last show on Rush's EIB Network-including the final Open Line Friday. The cause was bone and brain cancer, said his attorney, Mario Gallucci. Find 1 listings related to Mccafferty Funeral Home in Ambler on YP.com. According to The New York Times, Hess now faces up to 20 years in jail for her body part scheme, which was run out of the Sunset Mesa Funeral Directors in Montrose. Three funeral directors sold 244 corpses for about $1,000 each to a New York businessman who trafficked in the resale of often-diseased body parts, a grand jury charged Thursday. Former workers told Reuters about questionable practices at the facility, including the dismembering of bodies without the knowledge or consent of families. The three men were paid $1,000 for each body by Biomedical Tissue Services of Fort Lee, N.J., the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office said. Prosecutors are calling for Hess, who had previously pleaded not guilty, to be sentenced to 12 to 15 years in prison. We hope these prison sentences will bring the victims family members some amount of peace as they move forward in the grieving process.. All rights reserved. Expand. Megan Hess who operated the Sunset Mesa funeral home in Montroseand a human body parts business called Donor Services from the same building admitted in federal court Tuesday to defrauding at least a dozen families who had paid to have their late loved ones cremated. Then amdk realised the luggage is overflowing with blood. Prior to the raid, the cost of purchasing an arm and shoulder was $600. plea there last month. He's not a flight risk," Kaufman said shortly after visiting his client last night. ", Some of the parts taken in Philadelphia came from people who had died of cancer, sepsis, HIV and hepatitis, the grand jury said. Nine-year-old Lyric Jones and her mother, Teran Christian, stand outside the courthouse in Grand Junction, Colorado, on Tuesday. McCafferty Funeral Home opened up in December of 1970 and has had the honor to handle many high profile funerals including longtime Philadelphia Phillies broadcaster Harry Kalas. In one such case, the donor was HIV-positive and suffered from hepatitis C and cancer. A Colorado funeral home operator accused of illegally selling body parts and giving clients fake ashes was sentenced to 20 years in prison Tuesday by a federal court judge. About 10,000 people received tissue supplied by BTS. In court documents, a former employee accused Hess of earning $40,000 by extracting and selling the gold teeth of some of the deceased, an allegation first revealed in the 2018 Reuters report. Selling organs such as hearts, kidneys and tendons for transplant is illegal in the United States. The Associated Press. About a month after the Reuters stories, the FBI raided the site and state regulators shuttered the funeral home and crematory. A human head and spine sold for $850, while a full pelvis all the way to the toes priced out at $2,850. to a former oral surgeon who allegedly collected the bones, tissue Mastromarino, 44, remains in New York custody after his guilty The funeral directors were in charge of getting consent. . Koch's change-of-plea hearing is set for July 12. Many families received ashes mixed with the remains of different cadavers, prosecutors said. CNNs Julie In and Hannah Rabinowitz contributed to this report. The family of actor Tom Sizemore is currently "deciding end of life matters" following an update from doctors, according to a statement receiv. Get up-to-the-minute news sent straight to your device. Mom Who Vanished While Celebrating St. Patrick's Day in 2018, Missouri Man Killed 4-Year-Old Girl by Beating, Dunking Her in Icy Pond as Part of 'Religious-Type Episode', Sherri Papini, Who Once Paid Off Credit Cards with Donations from Hoax, Now Owes $309,688 in Restitution, Socialite Mom Pleads Guilty to Secretly Filming Minors for 'Sexual Pleasure' in Her Conn. In 2022 Ken Matthews was ranked #70 of the 100 most important Talk Radio Show Hosts in America by the radio industry's TALKERS magazine. husband's body parts.". While the mostly poor families thought their loved ones were The three Philadelphia suspects were taken into custody and it was not immediately clear if they had attorneys. conspiracy, they said. A former employee accused her of earning$40,000 by extracting and selling the gold teeth of some of the deceased as part of the macabre scheme, according to court documents. funeral home allegedly removed parts from the body of the late woman who believes she contracted hepatitis from a tainted body The black-market sales went on from at least February 2004 through September 2005, prosecutors said. Hess and her mother, Shirley Koch, 66, were first arrested for "illegally selling body parts or entire bodies without the consent of the family of the deceased," by the U.S. Department of Justice in March 2020. Two family members and one friend of deceased people whose body parts were sold without permission by Hess spoke at the hearing. Those potentially dangerous body parts were sold and transplanted into thousands of patients. Instead of cremating the bodies, court records show, her body broker company harvested heads, spines, arms and legs and then sold them, mostly for surgical training and other educational purposes. Authorities said Mastromarino's company took bones and tissue from 1,077 bodies at funeral homes in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, making $3.8 million in illegal profits. ", The statement added that "These shipments would be through the mail or on commercial air flights in violation of Department of Transportation regulations regarding the transportation of hazardous materials.". In New York City, four men have been indicted for stealing body parts from a Brooklyn funeral home and selling them for transplant. A grand jury indictment charges that they were paid $1,000 per Hess, however, charged families to donate their bodies - $195, plus $300 more if relatives want cremated . Christian's grandfather was one of the victims at Sunset Mesa Funeral Home. transplant recipients suing tissue banks over the often-diseased All he was supposed to A subscription helps you access more of the local stories that keep you connected to the community. July 5, 2022. The Reuters series uncovered the actions of Sunset Mesa and Donor Services. Investigators found 112 cases in which the three men charged indigent clients for services - then billed welfare as well. Mastromarino claimed that none of the deceased died in a hospital, in order to explain why there were no medical records, according to the grand jury report. who lost his oral surgery license amid unrelated drug charges, and Michael Mastromarino, who operated the now-defunct Biomedical what was going on," lawyer George Vomvolakis said. The company sold the body parts to treat burns, replace broken bones and provide for other medical needs, the indictment said. The stolen bones, skin and tissue which are nearly impossible to trace from donor to recipient because of forged documents were transplanted in unsuspecting medical patients worldwide, the grand jury in Philadelphia found. Colorado funeral home owners sentenced to federal prison for selling body parts without families' permission Judge sentences Megan Hess to 20 years in prison and gives Shirley Koch a 15-year . Indicted on similar counts were Brooklyn residents Mastromarino, Gallagher scheduled Hess, who had previously pleaded not guilty, to be sentenced in January, with the prosecution calling for 12 to 15 years in prison.