NEW YORK -- The mastermind behind a ghoulish scheme that involved stealing hundreds of corpses and selling the parts for millions of dollars will spend 18 to 54 years in prison.
Michael Mastromarino, a former oral surgeon who owned Biomedical Tissue Services, received the sentence today in state Supreme Court in Brooklyn.
Mastromarino has admitted running the macabre operation from 2001 to 2005. He pleaded guilty to charges of enterprise corruption, body stealing and reckless endangerment.
The bodies, including that of "Masterpiece Theatre" host Alistair Cooke, were carved up without permission and were not medically screened.
They were sold around the country for dental implants, knee and hip replacements, and other procedures.
About 10,000 people received tissue supplied by the company.
In 2005, KARE 11 News learned that dozens of Minnesotans, including nearly 200 at Abbott Northwestern Hospital alone, received tissue transplants that had not been properly screened for HIV, syphilis, or hepatitis.
But hospital officials said then the chances those recipients could become infected were slim, because a Medtronic subsidiary sterilized some of the bone tissue in question before it was surgically implanted.
(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
