Posted on 07/06/2022 9:48:04 AM PDT by Red Badger
GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. — A Colorado funeral home operator accused of illegally selling body parts and giving clients fake ashes has pleaded guilty to mail fraud in federal court.
The Daily Sentinel reports that Megan Hess faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison after entering the plea Tuesday in Grand Junction. Other charges against Hess will be dropped under a plea agreement, the Sentinel said.
Hess, 45, and her mother, Shirley Koch, operated the Sunset Mesa Funeral Home in Montrose. They were arrested in 2020 and charged with six counts of mail fraud and three counts of illegal transportation of hazardous materials.
A grand jury indictment said that from 2010 through 2018, Hess and Koch offered to cremate bodies and provide the remains to families at a cost of $1,000 or more, but many of the cremations never occurred.
Hess had created a nonprofit organization in 2009 called Sunset Mesa Funeral Foundation as a body-broker service doing business as Donor Services, authorities said.
On dozens of occasions, Hess and Koch transferred bodies or body parts to third parties for research without families’ knowledge, according to the U.S. Justice Department. The transfers were done through Sunset Mesa Funeral Foundation and Donor Services, authorities said.
Hess and Koch also shipped bodies and body parts that tested positive for, or belonged to people who died from, infectious diseases including Hepatitis B and C, and HIV, despite certifying to buyers that the remains were disease-free, authorities said.
Both Hess and Koch originally had pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Hess is tentatively set to be sentenced in January. A change of plea hearing for Koch is scheduled for July 12.
Prosecutors recommended a sentence for Hess of 12 to 15 years.
human chop shop...
She sits on a throne of lies!
I’ll bet this happens far more commonly in this industry than the average person would guess.
The funeral industry is still majority privately owned and largely unregulated. Many of the employees are family members, who are inclined to let a few ‘mistakes’ happen here and there. Some of those ‘mistakes’ can be quite lucrative if the owner is running low on decency.
“If Morgan Fairchild got hooked on steroids....”
You gotta cut the family in for at least 10%.
When my dad passed away we used his vet benefits to get a free cremation, urn and a space at the cemetery in Westwood. When we went to pick the urn up at the mortuary the guy there said that there had been a “mistake” and the ashes had been put in a more expensive redwood urn. After much hemming and hawing he agreed to reduce the price of the urn. But it still cost a couple hundred extra.
They rely on making “errors” and then wearing you down. Much like a car dealer.
I always wondered what mail fraud was.
The funeral industry is regulated to a degree, but this kind of criminal activity can be going on. I have seen several cases of this and Dr. Mengle has nothing on these despicable people. Kind of thing Dr. Fauci is probably doing on a much bigger scale.
While there are some decent people in the business, don’t forget they make their money off your misery and take advantage of you in the worst moment off your life and sell you artful you don’t need.
I was running a family trust, two family members died and wanted cremation, I had to deal with the local funeral home and knew the owner my whole life. I was charged $8000 each for cremation, and because the family wanted a viewing before cremation I was charged $1000 at each time for a casket rental to view the bodies, probably used the same one over an over. Never again will I do business with this place. They can take mu body to the Body Farm for research.
So that is the daughter and the other picture the mother. What a ghoulish pair, how do they even sleep at night knowing what they did. Evil comes in all shapes.
Those women are ghouls. I hope that at the end of their lives they are laid to rest in a prison graveyard with only their inmate id numbers to mark their graves.
The only thing the evil fear is getting caught out. When caught they will often make the greatest expressions of remorse and rehabilitation. All an act. Once the heat is off they go right back to the only thing they know, theft and fraud.
” mail fraud “ and it’s brother “wire fraud” are what the Feds use to charge people when they have no other evidence of criminality or it’s very weak....................
That looks so 80s......how old is she NOW?
Too good, just throw their bodies into the wild and let the animals naw on their entrails.
The British media is describing her as “bouffant-haired.”
She’ll look great in a chic orange jumpsuit.
Remember here in Jersey poor old Alistair Cook’s body was used the same way. He had bone cancer and I believe they were used in patients
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