“The human egg is a precious resource, exchanged in markets open, gray or black.”
black market
Posted inEditor's Pick
Harvard, the Human Remains Trade, and Collectors Who Fuel the Market
“At some point in Cedric Lodge’s almost 30-year career in the Harvard Medical School morgue, working mostly alone and far from the eyes of his supervisors, he allegedly decided to get a piece of this trade.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Poop Broker
“Michael Harrop started a booming underground market for human feces. Something smells off.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Crimes of the Centuries
“Tomb raiders, crooked art dealers, and museum curators fed Michael Steinhardt’s addiction to antiquities.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Buying a Baby on Nairobi’s Black Market
“In reality, once Anita has sold a child on, she knows little about their fate. She sells them to the businesswoman for 50,000 shillings for a girl or 80,000 shillings for a boy, she said — £350 or £550. That is roughly the going rate in Nairobi to steal a child from a woman on […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Mortician and the Murderer
An incredible photo essay in which both the images and words tell the crazy story of imprisoned mortician David Sconce (up for parole in 2022). In the ’80s, Sconce turned his family’s California funeral home into a mass crematorium and black market body part- and organ-harvesting business.