A bungling New York City funeral home already under fire for losing bodies and exploiting families has now shipped the remains of a 96-year-old Queens grandmother to the wrong country where she rotted so badly it looked as if her skin was “falling off,” a new lawsuit alleges.
Carmen Maldonado’s grief-stricken children had enlisted RG Ortiz Funeral Home to help transport their elderly mother’s body to her native Ecuador just days after she died on May 18, according to the suit filed Wednesday in New York State Supreme Court in Queens.
Instead, the woman’s casket was mistakenly sent off to Guatemala — some 1,400 miles away — where she remained for two weeks while her body decomposed, the court papers charge.
“The hands of the body, the skin was falling off, so they had to wrap them in saran wrap,” the family’s lawyer, Phil Rizzuto, told The Post on Thursday.
“I can’t imagine what the family is feeling like, or what the family went through seeing that.”
What’s more, her “sickened” kids allege that they also only found out about the blundering error after one of their relatives spotted a video on TikTok — and forced the funeral home to fess up to their mistake, according to the suit.
The alleged saga erupted after RG Ortiz employees took possession of Maldonado’s body on May 20 — two days after she died — to prepare for a small viewing and service at the Bronx funeral home.
Maldonado’s remains were then supposed to be sent to Parque del Paz — the town in Ecuador where she was born — for a second viewing and burial, the suit alleges.
But on May 26, Maldonado’s casket showed up in the wrong Latin American country, according to the complaint.
“Carmen Maldonado was not properly prepared for transport and was carelessly sent to the wrong country while in the care and custody of the defendant, RG Ortiz Funeral Home Inc.,” the complaint charged.
Still, the funeral home never informed the family of the mistake and they only learned of it after coming across a TikTok video from a local Guatemalan journalist who posted about the mix-up online, the family’s lawyer said.
Rizzuto alleges the funeral home initially tried to cover up their mistake when confronted by Maldonado’s children.
They eventually came clean though when they showed them the video, the lawyer alleged.
By the time the elderly woman’s body could eventually be retrieved on June 10, her remains were so badly decomposed it looked as if her skin was melting off, according to Rizzuto.
Get all the stories that move New York to your inbox
Sign up for our Metro Daily newsletter!
Thanks for signing up!
The kids were left “horrified, saddened, sickened, dismayed” by the error, the lawsuit alleges.
The Maldonado family is seeking unspecified damages.
The lawsuit comes just months after the funeral home chain was forced to cough up hundreds of thousands of dollars to customers for alleged predatory and deceptive practices after reaching an agreement with the city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection.
In one alleged incident, RG Ortiz, which has eight different funeral homes across the five boroughs and primarily serves Spanish-speaking communities, presented a dead man’s body “sitting inside a plastic bag” for a viewing, the city’s consumer watchdog said.
Another time a customer’s loved one smelled of decomposition.
The Post reached out to RG Ortiz Funeral Home about the latest lawsuit but didn’t hear back immediately.
