NEW YORK – Indictments of the alleged leaders of a lucrative stolen body parts ring are being prepared as a Brooklyn grand jury completes its investigation, the New York Daily News has learned.
Michael Mastromarino and his one-time partner, Joseph Nicelli, 49, of Staten Island, will face hundreds of counts of fraud, forgery, filing false documents and other charges, resulting from a nine-month probe by the Brooklyn district attorney’s office, sources told The News.
“Dr. Mastromarino recognizes that there may be an indictment as a result of the Brooklyn DA’s investigation,” said his attorney, Mario Gallucci. “He maintains his innocence and vows that at the conclusion, he will reestablish himself as a premier tissue procurement agent.”
Mastromarino, 44, a former dentist from Fort Lee, N.J., personally carved up many of the corpses, surgically removing bone and valuable tissue, including skin later sold in sheets, sources said.
As president of Biomedical Tissue Services Ltd., he trained assistants who worked as “cutters,” sources said.
The scheme allegedly involved paying funeral home directors and medical examiners $1,000 per corpse.
After the harvesting, corpses were generally sewn up with PVC plumbing pipe inserted where limbs had been removed, according to sources familiar with BTS procedures and exhumations conducted by the district attorney’s office.
Mastromarino’s business, which employed more than 20 workers, was originally headquartered in Brooklyn. It operated from late 2001 until last October.
Along with a Fort Lee headquarters, which had refrigeration facilities, Mastromarino’s company had offices in upstate Rochester, Philadelphia and Canada.
Mastromarino sold the body parts on the growing billion-dollar-a-year market for cadaver transplants – hawking skin and fatty tissue for burn victims and cosmetic procedures, bone for dental implants and orthopedic procedures, cardiac valves for patients with heart ailments, and tendons and ligaments for those with tears.
Mastromarino allegedly forged documents, manipulating and fabricating the cause of death, medical history and condition of the deceased so body parts could be sold.
Cancer and intravenous drug abuse were among the causes of death that he allegedly altered. Similarly, the age of many of the deceased also was lowered to avoid what are called “automatic ruleouts” in the transplant business, sources said.
Nicelli’s attorney, David Medina, declined to comment.
Mastromarino’s lawyer said his client did not forge documents or otherwise create phony paperwork on the deceased.
“As far as (Mastromarino) knows, he was given truthful documentation by funeral directors,” Gallucci said. “Mr. Mastromarino is just a passer of paper and tissue. He procures, he stores, he delivers.”
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(New York Daily News correspondent Kerry Burke contributed to this report.)
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(c) 2006, New York Daily News.
Visit the Daily News online at http://www.nydailynews.com/
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
AP-NY-02-19-06 1711EST
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