{"id":3334,"date":"2023-01-04T05:36:53","date_gmt":"2023-01-04T11:36:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=3334"},"modified":"2023-03-15T03:21:42","modified_gmt":"2023-03-15T08:21:42","slug":"former-colorado-funeral-home-owner-sentenced-to-20-yrs-for-selling-body-parts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=3334","title":{"rendered":"<strong>Former Colorado funeral home owner sentenced to 20 yrs for selling body parts<\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Megan Hess, owner of Donor Services, is pictured during an interview in Montrose, Colorado, U.S., May 23, 2016 in this still image from video. REUTERS\/Mike Wood<br \/>\nJan 3 (Reuters) &#8211; A former Colorado funeral home owner was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison on Tuesday for defrauding relatives of the dead by dissecting 560 corpses and selling body parts without permission.<br \/>\nMegan Hess, 46, pleaded guilty to fraud in July. She operated a funeral home, Sunset Mesa, and a body parts entity, Donor Services, from the same building in Montrose, Colorado. The 20-year term was the maximum allowed under law.<br \/>\n&#8220;Hess and Koch used their funeral home at times to essentially steal bodies and body parts using fraudulent and forged donor forms,&#8221; prosecutor Tim Neff said in a court filing. &#8220;Hess and Koch&#8217;s conduct caused immense emotional pain for the families and next of kin.&#8221;<br \/>\nThe federal case was triggered by a 2016-2018\u00a0Reuters investigative series\u00a0about the sale of body parts in the United States, a virtually unregulated industry. Former workers told Reuters that Hess and Koch conducted unauthorized dismemberments of bodies, and a few weeks after a\u00a02018 story\u00a0was published, the FBI raided the business.<br \/>\nIn their filing, prosecutors stressed the &#8220;macabre nature&#8221; of Hess&#8217; scheme and described it as one of the most significant body parts cases in recent U.S. history.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/world\/us\/former-colorado-funeral-home-owner-sentenced-20-yrs-selling-body-parts-2023-01-04\/\">Reuters<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Megan Hess, owner of Donor Services, is pictured during an interview in Montrose, Colorado, U.S., May 23, 2016 in this still image from video. REUTERS\/Mike Wood Jan 3 (Reuters) &#8211; A former Colorado funeral home owner was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison on Tuesday for defrauding relatives of the dead by dissecting 560 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":3335,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1301,3461,1359,3460,1358],"class_list":["post-3334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-colorado","tag-corpse","tag-former","tag-funeral-parlor","tag-owner"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3334"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7616,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3334\/revisions\/7616"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}