The Civil Guard found dead on Wednesday afternoon the former worker who had denounced the El Salvador funeral home in Valladolid for “coffin fraud”, as reported by EL ESPAÑOL de Castilla y León and this newspaper was able to confirm. The hypotheses regarding the investigation into the cause of death include a possible suicide.
It was the plaintiff who initiated the police investigation and the trial that is still pending trial. The worker tried to extort his boss, Ignacio Morchón Alonso, who died in October 2022, who initially reported him for blackmail after demanding compensation for participating for years in the exchange of coffins.
20 years of collecting evidence
The employee was eventually convicted but presented enough evidence to open an investigation with 26 notebooks, three binders containing 746 death certificates and obituaries, 14 rolls of photos containing 450 images, two envelopes containing 72 photos and negatives, three USB sticks containing 207 photographs and 44 videos. The man had documented every coffin change for 20 years, he had placed posters or obituaries on each body before putting it in the oven on an old lid or some pieces of wood, and he had even specified when these changes had not been made. for various reasons: from the dead person being a drug addict, until he was too big to move, or that the decomposition process itself had affected the coffin so that it could be sold to another family.
After several years of investigation, extended due to the complexity of the case, the investigating judge issued a judgment in February of this year. In total, 24 people are accused, including owners and workers who are on bail but with preventive seizures of real estate of the Castellana Funeral Agency and Parque El Salvador worth 4.9 million, an amount considered sufficient “to ensure the financial responsibilities that, in the long term, could be imposed”, without it being considered necessary to impose new obligations for the time being.
After four years of investigation, the case is entering its final phase. According to the prosecutor’s office, 5,973 bodies – 73.08% of the cremations – were removed from the coffins where they were going to be cremated and entered the crematorium on old wood or on the lids of old coffins. This practice brought the Morchón family, owners of the El Salvador funeral home, an illicit profit of 4,048,768.09 euros. The case was discovered when a former employee who had participated in the exchanges wanted to extort money from his former boss, Ignacio Morchón, and he reported him. Operation Ignis, in honor of the god of fire, began at that time, in 2017.
The entire scam the funeral home allegedly concocted was well-documented. Photos kept by the former worker show newborns, young children and adults being cremated with letters and personal items that their loved ones had placed in the coffins.
The police investigation lasted two years until enough evidence was gathered to break into one of the Salvadoran group’s funeral homes on January 31, 2019, as reported by elDiario.es, at the first light of dawn and while some families were watching over their dead.
The prosecution is seeking sanctions for forming a criminal organisation, belonging to a criminal organisation, prosecution of the offence of embezzlement, in competition with the prosecution of the offence of fraud; prosecution of offences against respect for the deceased, money laundering and prosecution of offences of counterfeiting in a commercial document.
The harshest sentences are requested against Ignacio Morchón’s widow, María del Rosario VL, and his children Ignacio, Laura and María del Rosario MV: 20 years in prison for each of them, as well as a ban on receiving benefits, direct or indirect, from funeral services for three decades and the payment of fines amounting to 12 million euros.
As for the rest of the workers, about twenty, the sentences vary between nine and two years in prison. Thus, the Public Ministry is requesting nine years in prison for four of the accused, six and a half for nine others, six for Justo MG, four years for another of the accused, five years of deprivation of liberty for four other employees and two years for another of the hypotheses involved.
In addition to the prosecution, there are about twenty private accusations, some of which adhere to the prosecution document which even includes a continuing crime against respect for the deceased, provided for and punished in articles 74 and 526 of the Penal Code (Whoever, failing to show due respect to the memory of the dead, violates tombs or graves, desecrates a corpse or its ashes or, with a spirit of outrage, destroys, alters or damages funeral urns, pantheons, tombstones or niches shall be punished with imprisonment. penalty of three to five months or fine of six to 10 months) in addition to compensation of 3,000 euros for each of the heirs.
