A bizarre and shameful case involving an illegal body-parts sales scheme that has been making headlines for the past couple of years has made its way back into the courtroom more than once this year, the latest having been during the last week in April when a class action lawsuit representing hundreds of people who are alleging that their family members' body parts were taken and sold for medical use without their permission was filed in a proceeding that has also become a criminal case for several of those named in the suit. Families involved in the class action suit have claimed that the bodies of more than 1,000 people had been dismembered and that their bones, skin, heart valves, tendons, and other tissue had been sold to hospitals by the funeral homes representing the deceased and their grieving relatives via Biomedical Tissue Services, a business located in Fort Lee, New Jersey. It was also alleged that the body parts in question had been harvested and sold under unsanitary conditions and that patients on the receiving end ran the risk of becoming infected. The suit, filed in a Philadelphia court, charged that the funeral homes, their directors, and others involved in the scheme had played a role in a conspiracy that had ultimately inflicted intentional emotional distress upon the relatives and reaped millions for the perpetrators. The case was the same one that involved Masterpiece Theatre host Alistair Cooke, whose body parts were sold for medical transplants following his death in March 2004.
Named in the lawsuit are Michael Mastromarino, Christopher Aldorasi, Lee Cruceta, Kevin Vickers, Gerald Garzone, Louis Garzone (Gerald Garzone's brother), and James McCafferty. The lawsuit alleges that the aforementioned individuals made $3.8 million by selling body parts that they obtained in Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey. There were 1,007 bodies, to be precise, from which body parts were harvested and sold between February 2004 and September 2005. According to a grand jury report, the scheme was "ghoulish, greedy, dangerous and criminal."
According to the New York Times, Michael Mastromarino, 44, a dentist from New Jersey who had lost his license to practice, was the owner of the biomedical supply house and ran the corrupt multi-million dollar illegal enterprise that sold the pillaged body parts through his business. Mastromarino pled guilty to being the ringleader of the operation on Tuesday, March 18, 2008 in a Brooklyn court.
"Not only did he cut corners, but he cut limbs and legs and arms," said Assistant District Attorney Josh Hansheft. "He mutilated bodies for his profit and greed….We all respect the dead; in this case, nobody respected the dead."
Mastromarino and his cohorts were referred to as "modern-day body snatchers" in news media reports.
Among the charges that the contemporary grave robber pleaded guilty to were several counts of enterprise corruption, reckless endangerment and body stealing in exchange for 18 to 54 years in prison. He could have faced considerably more prison time had he chose to have gone to trial and been convicted on all of the counts of which he had been charged. His actual sentence will be determined on May 21, 2008.
