Los Angeles ? An embalmer hired by the University of California, Los Angeles’ medical school to keep better track of cadavers donated for study and research was arrested Saturday on suspicion of grand theft, part of an investigation by campus police into allegations that he and another employee sold corpses and body parts for profit.

Henry Reid, director of UCLA’s willed-body program, was taken in handcuffs from his Anaheim, Calif., home after at least eight UCLA police officers searched his property for several hours and left with several boxes. Reid declined comment Saturday as he was taken into custody. He is being held at Los Angeles County Jail, and bail was set at $20,000.

The university will seek felony charges against Reid, said Nancy Greenstein, director of police community services for the UCLA Police Department.

Police are investigating whether Reid, 54, and another employee falsified documents to sell bodies and parts of bodies for personal gain, said sources close to the investigation. The staffers were placed on leave.

UCLA’s willed-body program, the oldest in the United States, receives about 175 donated bodies every year and has a waiting list of more than 11,000 people who have agreed to donate their bodies for use by researchers and medical students. The school has placed a guard on the seventh floor of UCLA Medical Center, where cadavers, worth thousands of dollars to biomedical companies, are stored in a large freezer.

Reid was named director in 1997, a year after the school was sued by the families of cadaver donors for failing to properly dispose of their remains. Families have accused UCLA, for example, of putting ashes from cremated bodies into Dumpsters taken to a landfill and then lying to loved ones.

UCLA attorneys in court papers claimed as recently as last month that they had fixed all problems in their cadaver program. Attorneys for families and donors were seeking an order requiring the university to treat corpses properly. But Commissioner Bruce Mitchell tentatively ruled Feb. 10 that UCLA had proven the program was working well under Reid.

“There is evidence that (Reid) … instituted comprehensive new protocols, which are being followed and which comply with industry standards,” Commissioner Mitchell wrote in his preliminary ruling.