Owner of medical research company charged with fraud

the owner of an albuquerque company-- that accepts and distributes body parts for research -- is now charged with fraud 31-year-old paul montano is charged with three counts -- after a shipment of body parts was sent from albuquerque to a kansas medical waste plant but the fraud charges aren t based on the mishandling of those bodies kayla anderson is live from biocare in northeast albuquerque to explain kayla there s no law on the books in new mexico to handle a case where a body is mistreated so i asked the d-a why fraud charges the answer is the families of the three bodies that have been id d so far don t know if they really have the ashes of the right person or a strangers this is a real unusual case any case that the law doesn t provide for such as this these circumstances is a very unusual case an unusual case-- with some unusual details according to the criminal complaint montano s company called biocare receives donated bodies he gives the organs to medical and research faciliities and the organs are later returned to biocare once those facilities are done with them the entire body is then cremated-- free of charge-- and the ashes are returned to the donor famiiles but investigators say that s clearly not what happened this week-- when a shipment of heads and torsos mistakenly ended up in kansas well they find out later that the cremation really isn t taking place or at least not with the whole body and so they re being defrauded according to the crimianl complaint-- montano denied dismembering any of the bodies but district attorney kari brandenburg says-- even if that were the case-- there s no law on new mexico books to charge him with a body in and of itself does not have any value it certainly does have a lot of value to the family members and the loved ones but objectively it s hard to define that with a value today the judge lowered montano s bond-- to fifty thousand cash or surety montano s lawyer says his company was non-profit and it s not likely he ll be able to post bond i talked to montano s lawyer outside the courtroom today we ll hear more from him at six meanwhile the d-a says montano could face more charges if other bodies are identified