Biomedical Tissue Services (BTS) was a Fort Lee, New Jersey, human tissue recovery firm that was shut down by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)[1] on October 8, 2005,[2] after its president, Michael Mastromarino, and three other employees were charged with illegally harvesting human bones, organs, tissue and other cadaver parts from individuals awaiting cremation, for forging numerous consent forms, and for selling the illegally obtained body parts to medical companies without consent of their families.
[3] In late 2005, the New York City Police Department investigated Michael Mastromarino and his company BTS for allegedly selling stolen human body parts.
[4] The probe was first reported by the New York Daily News in October 2005, and led to a number of exhumations, including one of a Queens woman who had had many of her bones removed and replaced with PVC piping, which is a typical industry practice for cosmetic reconstruction of tissue donors.
The BTS scandal became international news after it was determined that the remains of the deceased broadcaster Alistair Cooke were among those that had been violated and sold in New York.
"[10] Michael Mastromarino,[11] the 42-year-old[12] former New Jersey–based oral surgeon and CEO and executive director of operations of BTS,[6] was convicted in February 2006, along with three employees of wrongdoing and sentenced to prison terms.
[16][17] Although a recent judicial ruling has increased the difficulty of patients in proving pain and suffering from receiving bad donor tissue in cases like these, Pfaff's lawsuit is still[when?]