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Colorado funeral home operator accused of stealing and selling body parts pleads guilty

A Colorado woman who operated a funeral home pleaded guilty to fraud this week after being accused of stealing and selling bodies and body parts, officials said.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Colorado confirmed in a statement Tuesday that Megan Hess, 45, pleaded guilty to one count of mail fraud and aiding and abetting. The charges come after she “devised and executed a scheme to steal the bodies or body parts of hundreds of victims, and then sold those remains to victims purchasing the remains for scientific, medical, or educational purposes,” according to the statement.

The body parts and bodies were sold without the consent of the deceased’s family, officials confirmed.

Hess, who also worked with her mother, Shirley Koch, “met with families seeking cremation services, offered to cremate the decedents’ bodies, and provided the remains to the families,” according to a Department of Justice bulletin. They also charged a minimum of $1,000 for “cremations that often did not occur.”

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Hess created a nonprofit organization in 2009 called Sunset Mesa Funeral Foundation, which did business as Donor Services and which officials called a “a body broker service.” Donor Services’ income primarily came from harvesting and marketing “purportedly donated human remains, such as heads, torsos, arms, legs, or entire human bodies,” according to an indictment in the case.

According to the indictment, records maintained by Hess and Koch contained forged signatures and claims that a donation was authorized, or no donor authorization at all.

Hess and Koch received hundreds of thousands of dollars for remains sold, according to the indictment.

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Officials added in the bulletin that, in some instances where families did agree to donate limited remains, Hess and Koch sold beyond what was authorized. They also delivered remains “to families with the representation that the (cremated remains) were that of the deceased when, frequently, that was not the case.”

They also shipped bodies and body parts of people who tested positive for infectious diseases, such as Hepatitis B and C and HIV, though they told buyers the people did not have diseases.

Hess, in U.S. District Court in Grand Junction, Colorado, on Tuesday, said, “I exceeded the scope of the consent and I’m trying to make an effort to make it right,” The Daily Sentinel reported.

“I’m taking responsibility,” she added.

The scheme began in 2010 and continued until 2018. Prosecutors have recommended a sentence of 12 to 15 years. She also had faced additional charges, but they were dropped as part of her plea.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Colorado: Woman accused of stealing, selling bodies from funeral home