"Corpse Intended for Makeup Disappears"... Chinese Company Steals Over 4,000 Bodies for Transplant Materials

Forgery of Various Records Including Bereaved Family Signatures and Donation Forms

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A Chinese company that stole thousands of corpses to produce human transplant products has been caught.

Chinese lawyer Lee Seonghwa (易勝華) revealed online on the 8th documents related to corpse theft, insult, and mutilation cases prepared by the Taiyuan Public Security Bureau in Shanxi Province, central China, in May.

According to Chinese media Pengpai, Shanxi Aorui (奧瑞) Biomaterials Co., Ltd. illegally purchased corpses and parts of corpses from southern Sichuan Province, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, and eastern Shandong Province from January 2015 to July last year. The company is suspected of making human transplant material products from illegally obtained corpses and bones.

Chinese investigative authorities found that the company recorded a total operating income of 380 million yuan (approximately 73 billion KRW) from 2015 to 2023. They also seized about 18 tons of human skeletal materials and semi-finished products, and 35,077 finished products from the company.

Aorui’s CEO, Mr. Su (蘇), gained control over crematoriums at four funeral homes from 2017 to 2019 through subcontracting, equity purchases, and personnel dispatch. It was investigated that he then ordered crematorium staff to steal corpses.

Mr. Su testified to investigators that about 4,000 corpses provided to his company came from these four crematoriums. Su and other Aorui executives also instructed the forgery of various records such as family signatures and donation forms to conceal the source of transplant material raw materials.

The number of suspects who confessed to the crimes reached 75. This includes medical institution officials who sold hundreds of corpses to Su’s group, such as the Liver Disease Center of Qingdao University Affiliated Hospital in Shandong Province and the Department of Anatomy at Guilin Medical College (Medical University) in Guangxi Autonomous Region.

Corpses were reportedly traded at various prices ranging from 900 yuan (about 170,000 KRW) to 22,000 yuan (about 4.2 million KRW). Pengpai quoted a Taiyuan City prosecutor as saying, "The scope of this case is wide and remains unresolved."