TE24 International Desk:
Former owners of a Colorado funeral home were convicted Tuesday (July 5) of a federal crime of mutilating a family member and selling body parts without permission to defraud one of the dead. I admit.
Not covered. Meganes, who ran a funeral hall called Sunset Mesa in the same building and a human parts business called Donor Services, filed a fraudulent complaint at a hearing before U.S. Judge Gordon Gallagher at Grand Junction in Colorado.
In January, Gallagher sentenced the prosecutor to 12 to 15 years in prison for Hess, who had previously been acquitted.
Hess, 45, admitted Tuesday that he cheated on at least 12 families seeking funeral services for his deceased relatives through a funeral home in the western city of Montrose. According to court records, the brokerage company collected his head, spine, arms and legs instead of cremating them and sold them primarily for surgical training and other educational purposes.
Hess was due to appear in court within three weeks with his mother, Shirley Koch, who has not been convicted before. The hearing of the coach’s application is scheduled for July 12.
Hess’s lawyer, Dan Schaefer, handed him a lenient sentence of nearly two years in prison after U.S. Assistant Attorney Jeremy Shaffin sentenced him. Hess has been out on bail since his arrest.
At the hearing, his hess told his judge to explain to him in his own language that he had committed the crime. Hess initially called the whole case a “legal farce.” At the request of his judge, Hess agreed with the prosecutor that he had cheated on the victim, but he refused to go into detail.
Hearing this, the two families and a friend of his deceased speak, Hess sells his body parts without permission. They told the judge that they welcomed the news that Hess was emotionally upset watching the episode and that he decided to plead guilty when he wanted to know more about what happened. Paddy fields.
According to a government court filing, in order to increase its sales, Hess targets poor and vulnerable families who have suffered since the last days of his relatives.
“Encounter with Hospice on the 4th … Unlock for Donors,” Hess wrote to potential buyers of body parts in 2014. “They’re killing four or five people a day. Getting ready !!!! … What would a full-fledged thorn deal be like … $ 950?”
It is illegal in the United States to sell organs such as heart, kidney and tendon for transplantation. However, as Hess did, the sale of body parts and organs for use in research and education is not regulated by the federal government. There are some state laws that govern.
According to the prosecutor, Mr. Hess charged his family with cremation up to $ 1,000 (S $ 1,405) and offered to burn others for free in exchange for his donation, the prosecutor said.
According to authorities, many families received ashes mixed with the remains of various bodies from trash cans and a concrete mixture instead of the ashes of a client’s relatives. 4,444 FBI agents discovered that Hess had forged dozens of body donation agreements.
In court documents, a former associate accused Hess of making $ 40,000 by extracting and selling some of his dead man’s gold teeth.
