Spanish gang ‘targeted dead foreigners to illegally sell their bodies for £1,000’

Four men have been arrested by Spanish police over a plot to illegally sell the bodies of dead foreigners to universities.

The group, who haven’t been named but are aged between 41 and 74, are alleged to have used fake documents to withdraw corpses from morgues and sell them to universities for research purposes.

They supposedly targeted people without relatives to prevent a loved one spotting any irregularities – and they would sell the corpses for £1,000 (1,200 Euro) per body.

National Police in Valencia, the Spanish east coast city where the arrests took place, explained: ‘The detainees allegedly falsified documentation to be able to withdraw the corpses from hospital and retirement homes and sell them to universities for research purposes.

‘The investigation began at the start of last year after officers were made aware a body had been irregularly removed from a hospital morgue.

‘Police investigators discovered two funeral parlour workers, after allegedly falsifying documentation, had transferred the body to a university instead of burying it.

‘The dead person should have been buried in a pauper’s grave in their birthplace.

‘Continuing with the investigation, officers discovered another case where the same modus operandi had been used.

‘This time the dead person was in a retirement home and it appeared he himself had consented to his own body being donated to science three days before he passed away.

‘But investigators were able to show he suffered a severe cognitive impairment which would have prevented him from understanding what he was agreeing to.

‘On top of that his body should have gone to a different medical faculty to the one it ended up at, where they paid more money for the corpse.’

Police say the universities that conducted the research had to pay for the cost of incinerations after they’d finished with the corpses which were carried out by the same funeral parlour at the centre of the body probe.

The unnamed undertakers allegedly carried out a single incineration they billed on the basis several had been done, filling coffins with body parts from different people to maximise profits.

A police spokesman added: ‘Investigators discovered the funeral parlour had billed one university £4,297 (5,040 Euro) for carrying out the incineration of 11 bodies, which didn’t appear in the invoices issued by any of the incinerators operating in Valencia.

‘It appears the suspects took advantage of the dissection and dismembering of the corpses to introduce the body parts in the coffins of other dead people, so several bodies were cremated in a single go.

‘That meant their profits were greatly enhanced.’

Two of the people arrested were managers at the funeral parlour and the other two workers. They face charges of fraud and forgery.

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