Arrest made in gruesome body-parts fraud
Albuquerque Police are trying to find out if an Albuquerque company that handles bodies donated for medical research tried to dump body parts in Kansas City.
BioCare’s owner, Paul Montaño, was arrested Wednesday night on three fraud charges…
Questions arose about Montano’s business after several body parts showed up in Kansas City, Kansas.
First a head and torso showed up at a facility called Stericycle, a company that incinerates medical waste, but not body parts. Then police stopped a shipment to the plant last week, containing 30 drums full of body parts. Six heads were in the shipment. The labels on the drums were from BioCare in Albuquerque…
Fraud charges would be filed if authorities believe the company lied to the families of people that donated their bodies to BioCare, according to police.
“The person, my loved one, that BioCare gave me in my urn, is that my loved one or not? Or did you give me someone else,” Police spokeswoman Nadine Hamby said.
The Kansas City coroner worries about that as well. He identified an arm Tuesday because it still had a tag on it with the name of an Albuquerque funeral home. The funeral home told the coroner it thought it cremated the man’s body after BioCare returned his remains in a box in September. The funeral home then gave the ashes back to the family.
The coroner in Kansas said Wednesday that the six heads are in good condition and he should be able to identify them through photos. Records from BioCare may speed the process along.
Montaño’s hustle was simple enough. He advertised free cremation if people donated bodies to scientific research.
He was paid for the research and in turn was supposed to have the remains cremated locally and ashes returned to the family.
At this point in time, it looks like he was just adding whatever was left from research to containers of medical waste shipped to Stericycle – and giving folks ashes from someone or something else.
