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Illegal Transplants, Body Part Harvesting, Funeral Home Malpractice, Defective Bone and Tissue Grafts alleged by Biomedical Tissue Services and Biomedical Technologies
Michael Mastromarino, owner of Biomedical Tissue Services of Fort Lee, New Jersey, a biomedical supply house, along with three others including Brooklyn funeral home owner Joseph Nicelli, were recently charged with selling body parts for use in transplants in a scheme a district attorney called "something out of a cheap horror movie."
Mastromarino was an oral surgeon who went into the tissue business after losing his dentist license, prosecutors said. Nicelli was a partner in the business, according to prescutors. The other defendants were Lee Crucetta and Christopher Aldorasi.
Prosecutors said the defendants made millions of dollars obtaining bodies from funeral parlors in three states. According to Prosecutors, they allegedly forged death certificates and organ donor consent forms to make it look as if the bones, skin, tendons, heart valves and other tissue were legally removed. "I think we can agree that the conduct uncovered in this case is among the most ghastly imaginable," said Rose Gill Hearn, commissioner of the city Department of Investigation. "It was shockingly callous in its disregard for the sanctity of human remains."
The four men are accused of harvesting tissue from cadavers without legal consent and without proper screening for medical conditions that would make the tissue unsuitable for transplantation. Those allegations related to activity in New York City, most of it in a single Brooklyn funeral home owned by one of the men who was charged.
The bodies came from funeral homes in New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey that contracted with the Brooklyn funeral parlor for embalming. Prosecutors said more arrests were possible. Prosecutors said the defendants took organs from people who had not given consent or were too old or too sick to donate. The defendants allegedly forged consent forms and altered the death certificates to indicate the victims had been younger and healthier, authorities said.
X-rays and photos of recently exhumed cadavers show that where leg bones should have been, someone had inserted white plumbing plastic pipes. The pipes, which were the kind used for home plumbing projects available at any hardware store, were crudely reconnected to hip and ankle bones with screws before the legs were sewn back up.
According to authorities, Nicelli was paid up to $1,000 per body to deliver corpses to a secret operating room at his funeral parlor, where Mastromarino would remove body parts. Crucetta, a nurse, and Aldorasi allegedly helped Mastromarino.
Mastromarino harvested the tissue, skin, bones, veins and other material at the funeral homes and packaged them in sterile plastic bags and placed in coolers filled with ice. The coolers were sent by commercial airliner to New Jersey, where they were repackaged and deep-frozen at the company's facility, sources said. Material then was sold to five larger tissue processing concerns, which in turn provided specimens to hospitals, physicians and laboratories around the country. The corpses were then returned to unsuspecting funeral directors for burial.
This year, the Food and Drug Administration closed Biomedical Tissue Services, saying it had evidence the company failed to screen for contaminated tissue. The agency warned that patients who received the company's products could have been exposed to diseases, although the FDA insisted the risk was minimal.
Prosecutors said the defendants forged death certificates and organ-donor consent forms to make it appear the parts were taken legally. The defendants made millions of dollars from the scheme, prosecutors said. The FDA ordered the recall of all of Biomedical Tissue's products in October, saying concerns had been raised that the social-medical histories of some donors were inaccurate. Federal regulations require that a prospective donor's history be examined to ensure the donor doesn't have communicable diseases and that his or her body parts are medically useful.
In one case, authorities stated that records of a man who died of lung cancer in 2004 at age 95, were doctored to he was 85 and died of a heart attack.
The nine-month investigation into the ring centered on BioMedical Tissue Services and BioTissue Technologies, both headquartered in Fort Lee, N.J., authorities said.
The FDA recommended that, as a precaution, patients who had received material gathered by Biomedical Tissue be tested for viral hepatitis, syphilis and the viruses that cause AIDS.
If you suspect organ doner fraud or you are the recipient of an illegal transplant you should contact an attorney immediately. For a free case review, please fill out the form below. An attorney will review your form and may contact you to discuss your case.
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