Biomedical Tissue Services

NEW YORK - The mastermind of a scheme to plunder corpses from funeral homes in the Northeast and sell them for millions of dollars pleaded guilty yesterday in a deal that could send him to prison for more than five decades. Michael Mastromarino, a 44-year-old former oral surgeon, confessed to the judge that he carried out the scheme from 2001 to 2005. He will face 18 to 54 years and will have to forfeit $4.68 million. He pleaded guilty to 14 counts that include enterprise corruption, body stealing, and reckless endangerment.

NEW YORK - The mastermind of a scheme to plunder corpses from funeral homes in the Northeast and sell them for millions of dollars pleaded guilty yesterday in a deal that could send him to prison for more than five decades. Michael Mastromarino, a 44-year-old former oral surgeon, confessed to the judge that he carried out the scheme from 2001 to 2005. He will face 18 to 54 years and will have to forfeit $4.68 million. He pleaded guilty to 14 counts that include enterprise corruption, body stealing, and reckless endangerment.

NEW YORK -- Michael Bruno was an immigrant who worked hard and spoke his mind, then succumbed to kidney cancer two years ago at age 75. "Typical Italian cab driver," recalled his son, Vito. "He had an opinion about everything. " It's only after death that his story became ghoulish. Authorities believe his body and those of hundreds of other people -- including British broadcaster Alistair Cooke -- were carved up in the back rooms of several funeral parlors citywide to remove human bone, skin, and tendons without required permission from their families.

WASHINGTON -- Federal regulators say they have dramatically boosted inspections of companies that harvest cadaver body parts for transplant, acknowledging weaknesses in government oversight of the multibillion-dollar human tissue industry that last year was rocked by scandal. The US Food and Drug Administration said the inspections turned up no serious problems. But an internal task force report urges agency officials to set up a method for tracking body parts from cadaver to transplant patient -- a system that currently doesn't go that far. The targeted companies remove bones, tendons,...

NEW YORK -- The owner of a New Jersey biomedical firm made millions of dollars by stealing body parts from a Brooklyn funeral home and selling them for procedures done by doctors across the country, prosecutors said yesterday. Michael Mastromarino, the owner of Biomedical Tissue Services of Fort Lee, N.J., Joseph Micelli, a Brooklyn mortician, and two other men were awaiting arraignment on charges including enterprise corruption, body stealing, opening graves, unlawful dissection, and forgery, according to Josh Hanshaft, an assistant district attorney in Brooklyn.

WASHINGTON -- Federal regulators say they have dramatically boosted inspections of companies that harvest cadaver body parts for transplant, acknowledging weaknesses in government oversight of the multibillion-dollar human tissue industry that last year was rocked by scandal. The US Food and Drug Administration said the inspections turned up no serious problems. But an internal task force report urges agency officials to set up a method for tracking body parts from cadaver to transplant patient -- a system that currently doesn't go that far. The targeted...

NEW YORK -- The investigation of a scheme to plunder corpses for transplantable body parts has been broadened as prosecutors secured plea deals with seven funeral home directors who have agreed to cooperate. The unidentified directors secretly pleaded guilty to unspecified charges in the probe of what investigators say was a plot to harvest bone and tissue and sell it to biomedical supply companies, Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes said yesterday. The seven entered their pleas in closed courtrooms and their names were...

BURLINGTON, Vt. -- At least 40 Vermont patients have been implanted with human tissue from a New Jersey company charged with stealing and selling body parts. Fletcher Allen Health Care in Burlington has learned that 40 or more transplant patients received questionable tissue from Biomedical Tissue Services Inc. Patients at Northwest Medical Center in St. Albans may also have been implanted with the possibly contaminated body parts. Officials at Rutland Regional Medical Center said the hospital did not get tissue for transplants from BTS so none of its patients...

NEW YORK -- The investigation of a scheme to plunder corpses for transplantable body parts has been broadened as prosecutors secured plea deals with seven funeral home directors who have agreed to cooperate. The unidentified directors secretly pleaded guilty to unspecified charges in the probe of what investigators say was a plot to harvest bone and tissue and sell it to biomedical supply companies, Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes said yesterday. The seven entered their pleas in closed courtrooms and their names were withheld, but defense attorneys said that among those...

NEW YORK -- The owner of a New Jersey biomedical firm made millions of dollars by stealing body parts from a Brooklyn funeral home and selling them for procedures done by doctors across the country, prosecutors said yesterday. Michael Mastromarino, the owner of Biomedical Tissue Services of Fort Lee, N.J., Joseph Micelli, a Brooklyn mortician, and two other men were awaiting arraignment on charges including enterprise corruption, body stealing, opening graves, unlawful dissection, and forgery, according to Josh Hanshaft, an assistant district attorney in...

NEW YORK -- Michael Bruno was an immigrant who worked hard and spoke his mind, then succumbed to kidney cancer two years ago at age 75. "Typical Italian cab driver," recalled his son, Vito. "He had an opinion about everything. " It's only after death that his story became ghoulish. Authorities believe his body and those of hundreds of other people -- including British broadcaster Alistair Cooke -- were carved up in the back rooms of several funeral parlors citywide to remove human bone, skin, and tendons without required permission from their families.