A criminal organization linked to the sale of corpses , illegally removed from hospitals and residences for the elderly to resell them to universities for study purposes, at 1200 euros each, was wiped out in Valencia .
According to what the police reported in a note, the network set up by a funeral home ended up invoicing over 5,000 euros to a university to carry out 11 cremations of the bodies, once studied, not recorded in any of the receipts issued from the funeral agencies operating in the city.
The investigation began in early 2023 , after a complaint to the police that the body of a deceased patient had been irregularly collected from the hospital by the agency subsequently indicted, which had falsified the register of deaths and the documentation subsequently sent to the Civil Registry.
After a series of searches, investigators discovered how two workers from the funeral agency had removed the body from the mortuary to transfer it to a university, to which it had been sold for 1,200 euros , instead of burying it in the deceased's place of residence in municipal expenses.
The same modus operandi had been used for other deceased people, whom the organization was looking for mainly among elderly foreigners, who died in hospitals or in geriatric residences and without family members who could claim their bodies .
The investigation also revealed irregularities in the cremation of bodies which, once used for autopsies for study purposes, the universities returned to the funeral agency. According to the investigators, the workers introduced the remains into the coffins of other deceased, carrying out the cremation of multiple corpses in a single incineration, to save on costs which were instead charged and invoiced to the universities.
At the end of the operation, four people were arrested, one of whom had a criminal record, and reported for criminal association aimed at trafficking in corpses.
(Unioneonline/vl)
