HONG KONG, August 9. /TASS/. A criminal network has stolen around 4,000 corpses from crematoriums and medical labs in China to produce dental grafts from bones, the South China Morning Post reported, saying that the criminal ring had earned around 380 mln yuan (some $53 mln) on the illegal sales.

Police in Taiyuan in the province of Shanxi are investigating the case of mass stealing of human bodies to produce allogeneic bone grafts, the Hong Kong newspaper quoted Chinese criminal lawyer Yi Shenghua as saying. According to documents published by Yi, a company named Shanxi Aorui Biomaterials was illegally buying bodies and limbs from the provinces of Sichuan, Guangxi and Shandong.

He said the police had seized over 18 tons of bones and over 34,000 semi-finished and finished bone grafts. The company’s general manager surnamed Su confessed to stealing more than 4,000 bodies from crematoriums and medical laboratories, Yi’s sources told the newspaper. The liver center at Qingdao University Hospital in the province of Shandong, too, sold human bodies to the company.

As many as 75 other suspects have been detained as part of the probe.