I lost my job as a chiropractor and started selling dead bodies to make ends meet… including to the US military

For around $5,000, Obteen Nassiri could get you a body.

Having built a nearly $2million business dealing in the buying and selling of dead bodies, the former chiropractor turned to the industry after his career dissolved due to fraud allegations. 

In search of a new job after losing his license in 2010, Mr Nassiri built Med Ed Labs, a company that bought bodies and sold them to organizations for medical training.

Within just a few years of launching his business, located in a Las Vegas strip mall sandwiched between a tattoo parlor and a psychic, Mr Nassiri had constructed a broad network of suppliers, including a prestigious Texas medical school and clients, including the US military.

But, like his former chiropractic career, Mr Nassiri’s job as a body broker was similarly mired by ethical violations and legal malpractice, including losing body parts and going against the wishes of a deceased’s loved ones.

Selling organs for transplants – hearts, kidneys, lungs – is illegal. But, there is no federal law that governs the sale of cadavers and body parts for educational or research purposes.

While working on a real human body is a crucial educational tool for an aspiring doctor, the general lack of regulation creates a prime breeding ground for bad actors. 

And for the tens of thousands of Americans who choose to donate their body to science, they could be unknowingly entering the shadowy commercial body trade, where their body could end up as a crash test dummy or the subject of a public dissection.

Obteen Nassiri built a broad network of corpse suppliers and clients like the U.S. military, while his body broker career was marred by ethical violations, legal malpractice, and incidents like failing to return body parts and shipping remains in dirty boxes

The strip mall pictured is where Mr Nassiri’s embattled body broker business Med Ed Labs was located. While the business went under last year, a new one has cropped up in its place under Mr Nassiri’s brother’s name

Mr Nassiri, originally from Iran, aspired to be a doctor like his father and began his career as a chiropractor in Las Vegas. But his career began to unravel in 2008. 

Allstate Insurance sued him for running a fraud scheme in which allegedly he submitted fake medical records and billed the company for the unnecessary treatments for over 150 people. 

He lost his chiropractic license when the state board found him guilty of 'fraud, misrepresentation, and deception as part of their regular business practices.’ 

Despite this, he continued to practice without a license, leading to threats of criminal charges unless he stopped. 

In 2015, a federal appeals panel upheld an $8.6million fraud judgment against him. 

Despite losing federal contracts, being sued by Allstate for insurance fraud, and receiving several warnings from regulators over his ethics breaches, Mr Nassiri maintains his innocence, according to an NBC News investigation.

Searching for a new career, he and his brother filed paperwork to start Med Ed Labs, registering it as a nonprofit (a designation it later lost from the IRS). 

Many of the bodies Mr Nassiri used at Med Ed Labs, some of which had been unclaimed, came from the University of North Texas Health Science Center, where  thousands of unclaimed bodies were used for scientific research, medical education, and profit through its Willed Body Program.

The school charged Med Ed standard rates – $600 for a head; $300 for a pair of feet; $500 for a set of arms; and $1,000 for an entire body.

In 2023, the Department of Justice charged Nassiri and Med Ed Labs with fraud following an investigation into their sale of unclaimed bodies, misrepresentation of the bodies’ condition and origin, and deceptive profit-driven practices

NBC found the school’s program made at least $82,000 from leasing bodies to Med Ed Labs over two years. 

Once Mr Nassiri received the bodies, he would prepare them for resale at a massive markup. He did not disclose how much he would charge for each specimen, but a corpse can go for $3,000 to $5,000, though some can go for as much as $10,000.

He entered into a lucrative contract with the US Army and Defense Health Agency, which manages military hospitals and clinics, from 2019 to 2021. 

Med Ed Labs was given more than $570,000 to supply bodies for medical training, and it landed deals with medical tech companies to help train doctors.

Eventually, Mr Nassiri built a thriving business with annual revenue exceeding $2million. 

In 2021, Mr Nassiri’s lab acquired the body of 98-year-old World War II veteran David Saunders from a Baton Rouge mortuary service.

In 2021, Med Ed Labs acquired 98-year-old WWII veteran David Saunders’ body from a Baton Rouge funeral home after LSU declined his donation due to an infectious disease. The body was sold to DeathScience.org, which held a public autopsy at a Portland Marriott [shown]

Tickets for the cadaver class that Nassiri facilitated ran for up to $530 per ticket

Mr Saunders’ wife had wanted to donate her husband’s body to the Louisiana State University’s medical school, but the school declined because Mr Saunders had died of an infectious disease. 

Then, the funeral home, referred her to Med Ed Labs.

Med Ed Labs then sold Mr Saunders to DeathScience.org, which staged a public autopsy of his body at a Portland, Oregon Marriott hotel ballroom for paid ticket-holders.

Mrs Saunders told the New York Times: ‘At no time did they tell me they were going to resell his body.

‘Under no circumstances would I have my husband’s body put on display.’

After the national scandal that ensued, the University of North Texas Health Science Center asked Mr Nassiri and his staff for a full accounting of any bodies still in the company’s care and to 'coordinate the return of all specimens and ashes.’ 

A few years later the medical school conducted an internal audit and noticed it was missing nine pairs of ankles and feet that had been sent to Med Ed over two years prior. 

That same medical school would also charge that Nassiri shipped remains back in dirty, disintegrating containers likened to 'scrap cardboard.’

Nassiri sourced many of the bodies at Med Ed Labs [pictured], including unclaimed ones, from the University of North Texas Health Science Center, which has been accused of using thousands of unclaimed bodies for research, medical education, and profit 

Despite multiple warnings from Texas health regulators from 2019 to 2021 regarding the lab’s failure to treat bodies ethically, Mr Nassiri kept working.

In 2023, Mr Nassiri and Med Ed labs were charged with fraud by the Department of Justice as a result of an investigation into their sales of unclaimed bodies, misrepresenting the condition and origins of the bodies, violating consent agreements, and engaging in deceptive practices for profit.

Officials from the Army and Defense Health Agency stated they were unaware of Mr Nassiri’s shady dealings when they made the contracts official. 

Some federal contracts were subsequently terminated, including one that was canceled after Med Ed Labs failed to fulfill its delivery promises.

Unfortunately, Mr Nassiri’s story of callous treatment toward human bodies is not unique. 

In Arizona, a man who died of cirrhosis of the liver had wanted to be an organ donor but was not eligible due to his condition, so his wife approved his body to be used for research purposes.

Instead of going to a university medical school as she expected, the body was sent to the Biological Resource Center in Phoenix, Arizona, where it was sold to the Department of Defense without his wife’s knowledge or consent, and she later discovered it had been used in a simulated Humvee explosion as a crash test dummy.

And at the University of North Texas Health Science Center, some bodies were used to train healthcare providers in anatomy labs, others were dismembered and leased to organizations such as medical schools, the US Army, and for-profit medical technology companies.

Social media links on the Surgical & Medical Training Services website lead to Nassiri’s personal pages, where he now promotes his „Seven Fs”—faith, family, friends, fitness, fun, financial security, and fortitude—along with inspirational quotes

Mr Nassiri told a reporter in October that Med Ed Labs had filed for bankruptcy in March and was no longer in business, mere days before Allstate’s lawsuit against him was set to go to trial.

Discussing the legal battle on his YouTube page, Mr Nassiri blamed his lawyers for his later legal loss: ‘As things went to trial, [Allstate’s] team had everything they needed: excellent attorneys, plenty of money backed them up… and they built a magnificent suit against me.

‘The attorney I had did absolutely nothing; didn’t have one witness, not one expert, not in one exhibit during the entire two-week trial in federal court. As a result of that lawsuit, a judgment came our way… that was way too big for us to handle and that led to a massive destruction in my life.’

But NBC News found that he may still be in the body business. 

In January, a new body broker business called Surgical & Medical Training Services was registered at the former Las Vegas address of Med Ed Labs. 

While Mr Nassiri himself isn’t listed in the documents filed with Nevada’s secretary of state, his brother’s name is.

The company’s website looks very similar to that of Med Ed Labs and Mr Nassiri paid an application fee to open a cremation and body donation service last year at the same address.

Mr Nassiri appears to have shifted his career aspirations slightly from cadaver salesman to self-help guru.

Social media links on the Surgical & Medical Training Services website lead to his personal pages on Instagram and Facebook, where his posts no longer mention his body brokering work but promote what he calls the ‘Seven Fs’ — faith, family, friends, fitness, fun, financial security, and fortitude — along with inspirational quotes, including one attributed to Thomas Edison.