Funeral Home Sent a Grandmother’s Body to the Wrong Country, Suit Claims

A Queens family filed a lawsuit this week against a funeral home, accusing it of sending their loved one’s body to the wrong country, according to court records.

The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday by Carlos Minchala and his siblings, says that the Rivera Funeral Home in Corona, N.Y., wrongly sent their mother, Carmen Maldonado, to Guatemala instead of Ecuador.

Ms. Maldonado, 96, died on May 18 in Queens. After a funeral service on May 22, her body was supposed to be sent to Ecuador for a second funeral and for burial, the lawsuit says.

But instead of being sent to Ecuador, the lawsuit says that Ms. Maldonado’s body was sent to Guatemala. Family members later learned that her body had been sent to the wrong country by watching a video they found on TikTok.

The video was a clip of a news report about a family in Guatemala that had received the remains of the wrong person. In the video, Leonor Valencia said she was expecting the remains of her husband, who had died in New York. Instead, Ms. Valencia said she had received the remains of Ms. Maldonado.

It was unclear how the body of Ms. Maldonado was sent to Guatemala. Ms. Valencia could not immediately be reached on Friday. It was not immediately clear where her husband’s body ended up.