A former mortuary worker in Arkansas pleaded guilty to transporting stolen body parts across state lines, federal prosecutors said Thursday.
Candace Chapman Scott, 37, of Little Rock, also pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit mail fraud, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Arkansas.
Scott sold 24 boxes of stolen body parts from medical school cadavers to a Pennsylvania man for almost $11,000, prosecutors said.
Scott, while she worked for a mortuary services provider, between October 2021 and July 2022, “Stole human body parts and fetal remains. Scott would then sell the stolen human body parts and fetal remains, arranging for them to be transported across a state line to the purchaser,” prosecutors said.
An attorney representing Scott declined comment Friday.
Scott was employed at Arkansas Central Mortuary Services, where she would transport, cremate and embalm remains. The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock has said that’s where the medical school sent remains of cadavers that had been donated for medical students to examine.
She was indicted in April 2023 and charged with six counts of wire fraud, four counts of mail fraud and two counts of interstate transportation of stolen property, prosecutors said.
Under the plea agreement, prosecutors dropped 10 other wire and mail charges against her.
She faces up to 10 years in prison on the transporting stolen property charge. The mail fraud charge carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison, prosecutors said.
Scott will be sentenced at a later date.
Scott was among several defendants charged in what prosecutors have called a nationwide scheme to steal and sell human body parts from the Arkansas mortuary and Harvard Medical School.
Three Massachusetts families accused Harvard Medical School of abandoning the donated bodies of their loved ones only to have them picked over “like trinkets at a flea market,” according to a class action lawsuit filed in June.