Bungling New York City funeral home shipped woman’s body to wrong country: lawsuit

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Louise Thomas

Editor

A New York City funeral home that has come under fire by regulators for, among other things, losing bodies, presenting caskets for viewing with other people’s bodies inside, and giving decedents cremation urns that may or may not contain the ashes of their loved ones, now stands accused of mistakenly sending a woman’s corpse to the wrong country - where it sat mouldering for more than two weeks as the desperate family searched for answers.

When Queens resident Carmen Maldonado died on May 18 at the age of 96, her children arranged for a local funeral two days later, after which Maldonado’s body was to be promptly sent to Parque del Paz, Ecuador, in the South American country where she was born, for a second viewing and burial, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday in New York State court.

However, the lawsuit contends, funeral home R.G. Ortiz Inc. “carelessly” shipped her remains to the Central American nation of Guatemala, which sits some 1,400 miles from Ecuador, then attempted to conceal the outrageous foul-up from the family.

Maldonado’s body had not been properly prepared for transport when it arrived in Guatemala on May 26, almost a week later, and continued to decompose, the lawsuit states.

But the family had no idea things had gone so terribly awry, because R.G. Ortiz “failed to properly advise… the next-of kin of decedent of their error,” according to the suit.

Maldonado’s body was improperly sent to a funeral in Guatemala, where the family there realized they had received the wrong body, attorney Phil Rizzuto, who is representing Maldonado’s family, told The Independent.

He said Maldonado’s family only learned the truth on May 29, when they chanced upon a TikTok video from from a local Guatemalan journalist who was at the service and posted online about the tragic error. Aghast, the family confronted R.G. Ortiz, which at that point came clean about what had happened. Still, Maldonado’s body remained in Guatemala until June 10, some 15 days after her death, the lawsuit states.

By that time, the body was badly decomposed, but Maldonado’s family was forced to go ahead anyway with their mother’s final farewell, according to Rizzuto, who said the Maldonados said it looked like their mother’s skin was “melting off her body,” and that both of her hands had to be covered in plastic bags to prevent the skin from sloughing off the bones.

The family was left “horrified, saddened, sickened, dismayed.” Their right to have Maldonado’s remains “properly interred with dignity and respect was interfered with by [R.G. Ortiz],” the lawsuit goes on, causing the family “great mental pain, severe anguish, distress of mind, nervous shock, and the impairment of peace and happiness.”

“It is unconscionable how such egregious actions can take place,” Rizzuto said Wednesday, adding that “no amount of money” is enough to hold R.G. Ortiz accountable for its alleged foul-up. “... They did not even notify the family of what happened. I cannot begin to imagine what the family was feeling when they saw this on TikTok.”

It’s far from the first such accusation against R.G. Ortiz, which gets an “F” rating from the Better Business Bureau. Last year, the outfit was accused of accidentally sending a body to San Juan, Puerto Rico, instead of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, by which time the family was unable to give the deceased an open casket funeral due to “severe decomposition.”

Rizzuto said his firm has “at least 10” other cases pending against R.G. Ortiz, which also operates under the names McGonnell Funeral Home, Louis Tommaso Funeral Home, Parkchester Funeral Home, and Rivera Funeral Home.

R.G. Ortiz owner, Michael Ortiz, did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday. Messages sent to two attorneys who have previously represented R.G. Ortiz, which does not have a lawyer listed in court filings associated with the Maldonado family’s lawsuit, also went unanswered.

A raft of gruesome allegations have long dogged R.G. Ortiz, which operates eight locations throughout Manhattan, the Bronx and Brooklyn, with a primarily Spanish-speaking clientele.

In August, the New York City Department of Consumer and Worker Protection ordered R.G. Ortiz to pay $600,000 in restitution to “customers they exploited,” as well as $100,000 in civil penalties.

Mayor Eric Adams at the time called the allegations “appalling and unacceptable.”

The settlement came in response to a lawsuit the department filed that same month “for egregious violations of the city’s Consumer Protection Law, including refusing to provide information regarding the whereabouts of consumers’ loved ones’ remains, misrepresenting or concealing the prices of services offered, failing to provide services that consumers paid for – in part because they routinely presented remains in unacceptable conditions.”

At least five R.G. Ortiz clients reported the funeral home had kept information about the location or condition of remains they had entrusted to them, according to the DCWP suit.

“At a time when these consumers have experienced extensive heartbreak, R.G. Ortiz makes matters worse by not keeping track of the body, which has been given to the business for caretaking, safekeeping, and preparation for final farewells,” the lawsuit said.

One R.G. Ortiz customer said she asked for her husband’s body to be dressed in clothes she had provided, but arrived at the funeral to find his badly decayed remains “actually sitting inside a plastic bag for the viewing,” the lawsuit said.

Another customer showed up to find their loved one’s body “visibly decomposing” and emitting “a terrible smell,” according to the lawsuit, which highlights yet another case in which a customer’s deceased nephew was presented for viewing with “bugs flying all around.”

A third bereaved relative said that when she arrived for her grandson’s viewing, his remains “were leaking liquid, the wax on her grandson’s skin appeared to be melting, the body appeared to be in a state of decomposition, and one of her grandson’s eyes would not stay shut, constantly opening and moving throughout the viewing.”

Since 2018, the complaints have been steadily accumulating, according to the suit. R.G. Ortiz customers have allegedly been forced to do their own deceased loved ones’ hair and makeup. R.G. Ortiz funeral directors have caused coffins to be lowered into the ground before a ceremony could even take place, and R.G. Ortiz has forgotten to pick up at least one body at the medical examiner’s office, which caused it to be wrongly buried in the city’s potter’s field, requiring the woman’s daughter to endure the “complicated and traumatic process of having her mother’s body exhumed due to R.G. Ortiz’s failure.”

It has taken up to nine months for R.G. Ortiz to return a decedent’s ashes to grieving families, some of whom are not even certain they have received the proper remains, the suit stated. In one case, it said, a woman was told it would take seven to 10 days to get her sister’s ashes. A month later, she was told the remains had “just [been] sent out for cremation,” and that it would take another week for them to come back.

“However, the very next day, [the woman] received a call from R.G. Ortiz informing her that her sister’s ashes were somehow ready to be picked up,” the lawsuit alleges. “Because of this rapid turnaround, [she] believes that the ashes R.G. Ortiz gave her may not be those of her sister.” (In an email, a DCWP spokesperson shared a previous statement from Commissioner Vilda Vera Mayuga, who slammed R.G. Ortiz for “exploit[ing]... and prey[ing] on vulnerable New Yorkers.”)

Other complaints are slightly more prosaic, such as a July 2024 posting on the Better Business Bureau website that claims R.G. Ortiz “ill-advisedly shaved my grandfather’s mustache, despite clear instructions to preserve his appearance.”

Maldonado’s family says they have suffered “mental, psychological, [and] traumatic injuries, including great mental pain and suffering, [and] emotional distress from the trauma.” They are asking for an unspecified amount of money.

The case comes in the wake of one of the most egregious instances of funeral home malfeasance in recent memory, when the owners of Return to Nature, a Colorado mortuary, were accused of leaving more than 190 bodies to rot, and giving fake ashes to mourning families.

R.G. Ortiz has not yet filed a formal response to the allegations.