US man sentenced for stealing and selling brain samples on eBay

An Indiana man has been sentenced to four years of imprisonment after he admitted to stealing human brain samples and other human tissue from a medical museum and selling them.

The 21-year-old man has been identified as David Charles.

According to media reports, Charles admitted to breaking into the Indiana Medical History Museum many times in 2013 and stealing jars of preserved tissue.

Charles was arrested in December 2013, after a man who purchased about six jars of brain tissue on eBay for USD $600, alerted authorities. He was nabbed after the authorities arranged a meeting between Charles and an eBay seller who provided the brain tissue to the buyer.

According to the police authorities, Charles had stole 60 more jars of human tissue the day before he was to meet the buyer.

The museum on the site of Central State Hospital, had treated patients with psychiatric and mental disorders between 1848 and 1994.

According to the museum director, tissue that came from autopsies conducted between the 1890s and 1940s was stolen.