Two men have been sentenced to federal prison for their roles in separate but similar cases of selling stolen human body parts, including one case that involved a Berks County man.
Matthew Lampi, 50, of East Bethel, Minn., was sentenced by U.S. Chief Judge Matthew W. Brann in Scranton to 15 months in prison for interstate transport of stolen human remains. Lampi previously pleaded guilty to the charge.
Lampi was also ordered to pay a $2,000 fine and $1,700 in restitution to the mother of a stillborn boy who's body was sold as part of the scheme.
Angelo Peyeyra, 39, of Wichita, Kansas, was sentenced by Brann to 18 months in prison for interstate transport of stolen human remains and body parts.
The two men were among several people federal authorities in 2023 charged as the result of a multiyear investigation into the nationwide trafficking of stolen human remains.
Lampi was one of several charged with being part of a nationwide network of people who bought and sold human remains stolen from Harvard Medical School and an Arkansas mortuary.
Among those indicted in that case was Joshua Taylor, 46, of West Lawn. The case against him is ongoing.
According to federal authorities:
From 2018 through 2022, Cedric Lodge, 56, of Goffstown, N.H., who managed the morgue for the Anatomical Gifts Program at Harvard Medical School in Boston, stole organs and other parts of cadavers donated for medical research and education before their scheduled cremations.
Lodge at times transported stolen remains from Boston to his residence in New Hampshire, where he and his wife, Denise Lodge, 64, sold the remains to others including Taylor.
Taylor and another charged in the ring, Katrina Maclean, 44, of Salem, Mass., resold the stolen body parts for profit, including to Jeremy L. Pauley, 42, of Susquehanna County.
Pauley, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy and interstate transportation of stolen property in September 2023, also purchased body parts and remains from Candace Chapman Scott of Little Rock, Ark., who stole them from a mortuary where she worked.
Pauley sold human remains he bought from Scott, including the remains of a stillborn boy, to Lampi. Lampi and Scott bought and sold stolen body parts and remains from each other over an extended period of time and exchanged over $100,000 in online payments.
Pereyra previously pleaded guilty to stealing human remains from a hospital in Kansas where he worked as a pathology assistant and selling them to a Pennsylvania man.
Between 2018 and 2022, Pereyra stole organs and portions of organs, including human hearts, brains, spleen, testicle, intestine, livers, amputated feet and toes. Some of the specimens he stole came from deceased individuals, others from living patients.
Pereyra also stole the corpses of miscarried and stillborn fetuses.
Pereyra sold the stolen remains and body parts to Andrew Ensanian of Montgomery, Lycoming County. He sent the items through the U.S. Postal Service.
The cases against Lampi and Pereyra were the result of a multiyear investigation into the nationwide trafficking of stolen human remains. Multiple defendants have been charged previously in the Middle District of Pennsylvania and Arkansas and several have pleaded guilty.
The cases were investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.