WESLEY JOHNSON
The head of a body snatching ring responsible for stealing the bones of veteran broadcaster Alistair Cooke pled guilty yesterday after a deal with US prosecutors.
Medical supplies boss Michael Mastromarino netted millions of dollars for his role in the hacking up of hundreds of corpses before forging donor consent forms and selling the parts on for transplant.
Lawyers believe around 40 unsuspecting British patients received stolen bone graft material.
Mastromarino, 44, is expected to be sentenced to at least 18 years in prison in return for co-operating with authorities investigating the companies which bought the stolen tissue.
Some of the material taken illegally from mortuaries in the US was implanted into British patients who underwent orthopaedic surgery in the UK, medical regulators found. Wiltshire-based firm Plus Orthopedics bought tissue and bone from Regeneration Technologies in the US, and up to 82 units of affected bone graft material are known to have been implanted in patients across the UK.
Some 25 UK hospitals received the products, which came from Regeneration Technologies Inc (RTI) in the US. That company, in turn, was supplied by New Jersey-based Biomedical Tissue Services (BTS), headed by Mastromarino. Lawyers believe around 40 British patients have been affected, although only a handful are seeking legal action.
Law firm Irwin Mitchell is representing somewhere between five and 10 people hit by the scandal in the UK.
Katherine Allen, who specialises in personal injury at the firm, said the civil claims were still going on and could focus on several companies and individuals. "We are pursuing a number of defendants in the US and potentially the UK as well," she said.
Mastromarino and his criminal associates harvested more than 1000 bodies, including that of Mr Cooke, the long-running host of the BBC's Letter from America.
After the broadcaster died aged 95 in 2004, the ring stole his bones and sold them on for $11,000 (£5500). As part of the plea bargain, Mastromarino co-operated with prosecutors in a probe of several companies that bought the stolen body parts and then sold them to more than 20,000 transplant recipients throughout the US, Canada and Europe.
The transplants included bones, skin, arterial valves, ligaments and tendons.
The deal with prosecutors was agreed on January 11 during a five-hour session presided over by Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Albert Tomei.
Yesterday, Judge John Walsh heard Mastromarino and his associates raked in more than $4.6m (£2.3m) from the tissue harvesting operation.
He pled guilty to one count of enterprise corruption, nine counts of reckless endangerment in the first degree, and four counts of body stealing.
He will be sentenced to between 18 and 54 years in jail on May 21. Mr Cooke died of cancer at his home in New York in March 2004.
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