MINNEAPOLIS — A Minnesota man accused of being involved in a nationwide network of people buying and selling stolen human remains pleaded guilty to charges earlier this week in a deal with federal prosecutors.
According to court documents filed Tuesday in Pennsylvania District Court, Mathew Lampi, of East Bethel, Minnesota, pleaded guilty to one count of interstate transport of stolen goods for his role in the scheme. The maximum sentence he faces is 10 years in prison.
The deal comes after Lampi was indicted along with former Harvard Medical School morgue manager Cedric Lodge, of New Hampshire, his wife, and two others for stealing body parts from the school's donated cadavers without the university's knowledge or permission, and subsequently, selling them off to buyers.
The charging documents claim that from 2018 to early 2023, Lodge took human body parts — including heads, brains, skin and bones — from the morgue to his home where he lived with his wife and would send them through the mail, or even allow buyers to come to the morgue and choose which body parts they'd want to purchase.
School officials said the bodies, donated to the school for education purposes, are typically cremated after use and the ashes returned to the donor's family.
During their investigation, prosecutors learned Lampi and another defendant had exchanged more than $100,000 with each other in online payments, buying and selling body parts between themselves over an "extended period of time."
According to authorities, the system was part of a nationwide network of people who bought and sold remains stolen from both the Harvard Medical School and a separate Arkansas mortuary.
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