A sign sits above the front gate at Burr Oak Cemetery July 9, 2009 in Alsip, Illinois. Hundreds of people turned up at the cemetery today to search for and inspect the graves of family members to see if they had been desecrated. (AFP)
About 200-300 graves in a predominantly African-American cemetery near Chicago have been found to be dug up and the remains dumped elsewhere for the purpose of reselling the grave sites to unsuspecting customers, authorities said.
Four workers -- a manager and three gravediggers -- at the Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, south of the city, have been charged with dismembering a human body.
"The elaborate scheme that spans several years involves the digging up of numerous graves and re-selling those plots to unsuspecting customers," Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart said in a statement on Friday.
Dart said the graves desecrated were extremely old and those that did not have regular visitors. When preparing the site for a funeral, the gravediggers would dig up the plot, many times breaking the vault or casket.
When this occurred, they would remove the remains and dump them in an unused area of the cemetery, Dart added.
"The funeral would take place, with the deceased being buried on top of what remained. The money paid would be split between the workers involved," Dart said. About $300,000 are likely to have been netted during the years.