A Queens family filed a lawsuit this week against a funeral home, accusing it of sending their loved one’s body to the wrong country, according to court records.
The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday by Carlos Minchala and his siblings, says that the Rivera Funeral Home in Corona, N.Y., wrongly sent their mother, Carmen Maldonado, to Guatemala instead of Ecuador.
Ms. Maldonado, 96, died on May 18 in Queens. After a funeral service on May 22, her body was supposed to be sent to Ecuador for a second funeral and for burial, the lawsuit says.
But instead of being sent to Ecuador, the lawsuit says that Ms. Maldonado’s body was sent to Guatemala. Family members later learned that her body had been sent to the wrong country by watching a video they found on TikTok.
The video was a clip of a news report about a family in Guatemala that had received the remains of the wrong person. In the video, Leonor Valencia said she was expecting the remains of her husband, who had died in New York. Instead, Ms. Valencia said she had received the remains of Ms. Maldonado.
It was unclear how the body of Ms. Maldonado was sent to Guatemala. Ms. Valencia could not immediately be reached on Friday. It was not immediately clear where her husband’s body ended up.
Lawyers representing the Minchala family said on Friday that if the family had not discovered the video, they might not have known the whereabouts of Ms. Maldonado’s body.
“The funeral home never would have told the family they made the mistake if the family didn’t come forward,” said Philip Rizzuto, a lawyer representing the family.
Ms. Maldonado, a mother of nine and a grandmother of more than 30, wanted to be buried in her home country, Ecuador, where her husband had been buried, Mr. Rizzuto said.
Members of the Minchala family declined to be interviewed and referred questions to their lawyers.
An attempt to reach the owner of the funeral home was directed to a phone number that was not in service. A lawyer representing the funeral home did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
When the Minchala family initially confronted the Rivera Funeral Home about the whereabouts of Ms. Maldonado’s body, Mr. Rizzuto said, the funeral home denied that she had been sent to the wrong country.
“When they pushed them and showed them the video, they admitted that they made a mistake,” Mr. Rizzuto said. “They were just shocked, devastated.”
Ms. Maldonado’s body was in Guatemala from May 26 to June 10 before she was transported to Ecuador, according to the lawsuit.
According to two other lawsuits filed against Rivera Funeral Home, one in 2021 and another in 2022, Rivera Funeral Home is operated by R.G. Ortiz Funeral Homes, which also runs other funeral homes in New York City.
R.G. Ortiz Funeral Homes was sued in April by the New York City Department of Consumer and Worker Protection.
According to the lawsuit, R.G. Ortiz Funeral Homes exploited families who had lost family members by refusing to give them information about the bodies of their loved ones, misrepresenting prices and failing to provide services.
In some instances, the lawsuit states, funeral homes operated by R.G. Ortiz Funeral Homes lost or mixed up remains or accidentally disposed of human remains.
Vilda Vera Mayuga, commissioner of the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, said in a statement in April that R.G. Ortiz Funeral Homes left dozens of families in limbo waiting for the remains of their loved ones.
“Grieving the passing of a loved one can be the most challenging moment in our lives, and no one should be exploited by predatory business practices during such a vulnerable time,” she said.
The department announced in August that it had reached an agreement with R.G. Ortiz Funeral Homes. Under the agreement, R.G. Ortiz must pay more than $604,000 in restitution to customers who were exploited and pay $100,000 in civil penalties.
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