 WARSAW, Poland (Reuters) - Polish police
have uncovered a grisly scam in which emergency medical workers are alleged
to have traded in human corpses and even poisoned patients to get cash
from undertakers, investigators say.
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- Police confirmed Wednesday a newspaper report which said
funeral parlors in the city of Lodz had paid up to $450 for notification
of death, and alleged that medical staff might have facilitated death to
collect the reward.
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- Poland's social security system allots about $976 for
funeral expenses after death, allowing undertakers to clear a profit even
after paying the alleged bribes.
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- ``Months of work by police has confirmed signs of unlawful
and inhumane acts by emergency first aid workers and funeral parlors,''
Lodz police spokesman Jaroslaw Berger said after the best-selling Gazeta
Wyborcza published a harrowing report.
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- A former chief of the city's ambulance service, Ryszard
Lewandowski, confirmed he was aware of sales of information about recently
deceased patients, but said claims of murder were false.
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- ``We were talking with lawyers about whether selling
information about death was a criminal activity. Perhaps it may only be
of interest to tax authorities who seek untaxed income,'' Lewandowski told
PAP news agency.
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- Gazeta's front-page article Wednesday, which sparked
a media outcry, said ambulances sometimes delayed arriving at a patient's
home and alleged that some victims had been injected with poison to cause
death.
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- Police are considering exhuming bodies of people who
died in ambulances to check for traces of poison.
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