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Turning ash into cash

Italian police have arrested 13 people on charges of faking cremations at a Tuscan cemetery and hiding the corpses before burning them in groups to pocket the savings on cremation costs.

Investigators found bodies stashed at the cemetery in Massa ready for group cremations, as well as hidden plastic sacks containing about 600 kg of mixed ashes — the fruits of a scam that ran from 2005 to 2007, involving 500 bodies, police said. The police round-up of cemetery and funeral home staff, as well as a former police officer allegedly involved in the scheme, has now left locals wondering whose ashes they were handed following cremations.

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