Table of Contents
- The Non-Transplant Tissue Bank Industry
- From Dentist to Drug Addict
- The Body Broker: Turning Cadavers into Cash
- Replacing Human Bone with Plumbing Pipes
- The 10,000 Victims of Tainted Transplants
- How the NYPD Caught the Dentist
- Michael Mastromarino’s Wife
- Karmic Justice: Death by Bone Cancer
| Summary |
| Former dentist Michael Mastromarino ran an illegal body-parts ring through Biomedical Tissue Services between 2001 and 2005. He bribed funeral homes for cadavers, stole and sold human tissue without consent, forged medical records, and even replaced bones with PVC pipes. The scandal affected over 10,000 transplant patients before he was arrested and sentenced to prison. |
Between 2001 and 2005, Michael Mastromarino ran a million-dollar butcher shop under the name Biomedical Tissue Services (BTS), turning the hallowed ground of the morgue into a high-profit assembly line.
A successful dentist who lost his license due to drug addiction, Dr Michael Mastromarino treated human remains like raw commodities. He gained access to a steady supply of bodies by bribing funeral directors with $1,000 per corpse.
Biomedical Tissue Services (BTS) became a high-volume, high-profit enterprise that raked in millions by selling stolen parts to unsuspecting hospitals worldwide, making Mastromarino the ultimate face of medical horror. His modern-day body snatching operation turned a successful dentist into a criminal mastermind.
The Non-Transplant Tissue Bank Industry
Biomedical Tissue Services operated under the mask of the Non-Transplant Tissue Bank industry (body broker industry). A Non-Transplant Tissue Bank is a specialized organization that recovers, processes, and distributes human tissues—primarily cadaveric tissue.
While the donation of organs such as hearts, lungs, and kidneys is strictly governed by federal law, the non-transplant tissue bank industry is not a highly regulated one. Bone is the most valuable commodity in this $8.45 billion industry, accounting for nearly 28% of the industry’s total revenue due to its widespread use in dental implants and spinal fusions.
Under the National Organ Transplant Act (NOTA), it is illegal to sell human organs for valuable consideration. However, companies like BTS are allowed to charge for the removal, transportation, processing, and storage of human tissue. They can process the body into medical products (bone powder, skin grafts, and heart valves) worth between $10,000 and $200,000 on the open market.
From Dentist to Drug Addict
As a dentist, he had a successful practice in the New York City area. Things were going quite well for him until he became addicted to painkillers in the early 2000s. The trouble started with his old injury. He started self-medicating with prescription painkillers to keep up with his 12-hour surgical shifts.
In July 2000, he was arrested in New Jersey for driving under the influence, possession of a controlled substance, Demerol and hypodermic needles. He tested positive for both cocaine and meperidine, proving he was performing complex oral surgeries while high on a cocktail of stimulants and painkillers. As a result, he ended up losing his medical license.
With a wife and family to support, Mastromarino used his medical training to open a new business, Biomedical Tissue Services (BTS). The supposed business dealt in donated body tissues and organs intended for use by those in need of transplants.
The Body Broker: Turning Cadavers into Cash
The problem with BTS was not that these body parts were being used, but that they were being used without permission from the families of the deceased. Choosing to donate your organs or other parts of your body after death is a noble act, but it is not something that every person wishes to do after they die.
Dismembering bodies as if they were in a butcher shop is what takes his business to a whole different level of true medical crime, with complete disrespect for the dead. Mastromarino’s operation was a masterclass in medical tissue trafficking.
Mastromarino and his co-conspirators in the business had obtained body parts from nearby funeral homes or partners in his business, masking themselves as funeral homes in order to obtain cadavers.
BTS would pay around $1,000 per stolen cadaver, dismember the bodies, take what they needed, and then return the bodies to be cremated or buried in a casket, without the families’ awareness or consent.
Mastromarino forged signatures and falsified documents to hospitals, clearing the body parts of any recorded blemishes that would otherwise deem the organs unfit for transplantation into a patient.
To satisfy hospital safety checks, he would make copies of the medical records and then change anything that indicated that the person was deemed unhealthy, initializing MM for the doctor’s approval.
He sometimes made up fake birthdays, social security numbers, and even names of doctors, claiming that they cleared the bodies to be used for transplants. Over the course of a few years, Mastromarino made millions of dollars selling body parts while no one questioned the validity of his documents or reports.
Replacing Human Bone with Plumbing Pipes
To prevent the physical structure of the corpse from collapsing after removing femurs, tibias, humeri, and other long bones or the spine, Mastromarino used to rebuild the skeleton using industrial PVC piping and plastic plumbing supplies.
It was a profound act of desecration that shocked even veteran forensic investigators. This sheer disrespect proved that BTS was running a calculated, cold-blooded operation that prioritized profit over the most basic tenets of human dignity, one of the most egregious medical ethics violations in history.
The 10,000 Victims of Tainted Transplants
The “Bone Snatcher” scandal became a global public health nightmare. Parts such as bones, tendons, spines, tissues, and others were butchered and sold worldwide, and more than 10,000 patients received transplants from the illegally obtained parts. Many patients received body parts infected with life-threatening diseases such as HIV/AIDS, syphilis, and cancer.
In late 2005, the FDA ordered a massive recall of all BTS-related products. Hospitals were notified to stop using the grafts immediately. BTS funneled around 25,000 products into the market.
How the NYPD Caught the Dentist
Soon, the New York Police Department and the Federal Food and Drug Administration began investigating BTS in 2004. According to a grand jury report issued by the state of Pennsylvania, the investigation began in November 2004, when a detective was looking into funeral home scandals involving the theft of money intended for prepaid funeral arrangements
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When the detective entered the funeral home in question, she immediately realized that one of the rooms did not look like it belonged; it looked more like an operating room. After reading through old documents, the detective realized that there was more going on in this funeral home than the holding and cremation of bodies.
Mastromarino and his various cutters were hit with a slew of charges ranging from stealing and dismembering a body to falsifying records. In 2008, Mastromarino accepted a plea and was sentenced to 18 to 54 years in prison.
Michael Mastromarino’s Wife
Michael Mastromarino’s wife, Barbra Mastromarino, claimed she was completely unaware of the true nature of Michael’s business. She knew he had lost his dental license, but she believed Biomedical Tissue Services was a legitimate, legal startup in the medical supply field.
However, she and her two sons faced intense public scrutiny. She eventually filed for divorce, seeking to distance herself and her children from the “Bone Snatcher” legacy.
Barbra co-authored a book titled The Body Snatcher’s Wife to share her side of the story.
Karmic Justice: Death by Bone Cancer
His health began to deteriorate while serving his 18-to-54-year sentence at the Arthur Kill Correctional Facility in Staten Island. He was diagnosed with metastatic bone cancer and liver cancer.
Bone cancer is excruciatingly painful because the tumors weaken the skeletal structure — the same skeletal structure Mastromarino had replaced with PVC pipes in his victims.
Ultimately, the news of Michael Mastromarino’s death in 2013 served as a grim final chapter for the man who had built an empire on the desecration of human bone.
