The owners of a funeral home and two employees were arrested in Valencia in Spain for trafficking bodies, sold for 1,200 euros to medical universities, police announced on Monday. These four men “falsified documents to remove the bodies from hospitals and retirement homes in order to later sell them to universities to be studied for 1,200 euros per corpse,” Spanish police said in a statement.
At least eleven corpses were allegedly sold illegally in this metropolis in the east of the country. The four suspects also made universities pay to help them dispose of remains already studied by cremating them or distributing them in pieces in the coffins of other people about to be cremated. They would have thus invoiced “5,040 euros to a university to carry out 11 cremations of bodies studied, which did not appear on any of the invoices issued by the city’s crematoriums”, adds the press release.
“Deceased people without family, preferably foreigners”
The investigation began in early 2023. The police then discovered that the two employees of this funeral home had falsified documents to sell a body stored in a hospital morgue to a university, instead of burying it. This deceased was to be buried at his place of residence as part of a funeral financed by the town hall. Its sale to the university for study purposes had not received anyone’s consent. According to police, the suspects were looking for “deceased people without family, preferably foreigners.”
In another case, they had obtained written authorization from an old man, no longer having all his intellectual capacities, to donate his body to science after his death. This donation “was signed so that the body would be sent to a medical school, but it was ultimately sent to another” which “paid more,” the police said.