Seven people including the morgue manager at Harvard Medical School were arrested and charged with stealing and selling human remains from mortuaries at the Ivy League school and the University of Arkansas, prosecutors said.

The arrests involved an underground network that robbed corpses — including the bodies of two stillborn infants — at Harvard Medical School’s Anatomical Gifts Program and an Arkansas mortuary and crematorium, U.S. Attorney Gerard M. Karam said in a statement Wednesday.

Cedric Lodge, 55, allegedly stole the remains from the university morgue, where he worked, and sold the body parts online with the help of his wife, Denise, 63, to associates Katrina Maclean, 44; Joshua Taylor, 46; and Matthew Lampi, 52.

Officials said that one of Lampi’s clients, Jeremy Pauley, bought and sold body parts with him, with the two exchanging more than $100,000 with each other.

Pauley eventually led detectives to Candace Chapman Scott, who is accused of stealing cadavers slated for cremation in Little Rock and selling them to Pauley in Pennsylvania.

Like with Lodge’s operation, many of the bodies Scott is accused of selling belong to those who donated them for scientific research purposes at the University of Arkansas Medical Sciences.

“Some crimes defy understanding,” Karam said of the underground market the defendants were accused of setting up and participating in. “The theft and trafficking of human remains strikes at the very essence of what makes us human.

“It is particularly egregious that so many of the victims here volunteered to allow their remains to be used to educate medical professionals and advance the interests of science and healing,” he added. “For them and their families to be taken advantage of in the name of profit is appalling.”

Among the body parts sold included two desiccated faces MacLean paid Lodge $600 for, and in 2020, Taylor allegedly sent Denise $200 with a memo that read, “braiiiiiins.”

Prosecutors also claimed Lodge allowed his buyers to enter the Boston morgue to pick out what body parts they wanted, with the rogue manager then stealing the remains and shipping them through the mail.

Lodge was fired on May 6, with Harvard describing his alleged actions as “an abhorrent betrayal.”

“We are appalled to learn that something so disturbing could happen on our campus — a community dedicated to healing and serving others,” the school’s medical deans said in a statement.

“The reported incidents are a betrayal of HMS and, most importantly, each of the individuals who altruistically chose to will their bodies to HMS through the Anatomical Gift Program to advance medical education and research.”

Leslie Taylor, of the University of Arkansas Medical Sciences, also expressed her shock at what occurred to the bodies entrusted to her school.

“We couldn’t even imagine that something like this could happen,” Taylor told 13WHAM, apologizing to the families who failed to get the fully cremated bodies of their loved ones back.

The defendants face conspiracy and the unlawful transportation of stolen goods charges, which carry a maximum of 15 years behind bars.