Fraud arrest made in body-parts case

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - Albuquerque Police are trying to find out if an Albuquerque company that handles bodies donated for medical research tried to dump body parts in Kansas City.

BioCare's owner, Paul Montaño, was arrested Wednesday night on three fraud charges.

Police used a search warrant to go into Montaño's Los Lunas home and his office.

“He has allowed us to be in his facility,” Albuquerque Police Officer Nadine Hamby said.

Montaño agreed to let police search the office building near Alameda and Louisiana. He also provided them with paperwork on the bodies the company handled that were donated for medical research.

Questions arose about Montano's business after several body parts showed up in Kansas City, Kansas.

First a head and torso showed up at a facility called Stericylce, a company that incinerates medical waste, but not body parts.

Then police stopped a shipment to the plant last week, containing 30 drums full of body parts. Six heads were in the shipment.

The labels on the drums were from BioCare in Albuquerque.

Police want BioCare's records to see if the bodies came from the company and if BioCare records claimed the bodies had already been returned to families.

Police are looking to see if sending the bodies to Kansas classifies as illegal dumping.

“Another crime that is being looked at is the possibility of fraud," Hamby said.

Fraud charges would be filed if authorities believe the company lied to the families of people that donated their bodies to BioCare, according to police.

“The person, my loved one, that BioCare gave me in my urn, is that my loved one or not? Or did you give me someone else,” Hamby said.

The Kansas City coroner worries about that as well. He identified an arm Tuesday because it still had a tag on it with the name of an Albuquerque funeral home.

The funeral home told the coroner it thought it cremated the man's body after BioCare returned his remains in a box in September. The funeral home then gave the ashes back to the family.

The coroner in Kansas said Wednesday that the six heads are in good condition and he should be able to identify them through photos. Records from BioCare may speed the process along.

The coroner said he does not think he will be able to identify a lot of the other body parts from the BioCare drums.