Fun With the Memo Field While Committing Abhorrent Crimes

[With just three little words, “head number 7” says so much.]
Recently, the manager of the Harvard Med School morgue was accused of stealing and selling human body parts. Cedric Lodge and his wife Denise were among a half-dozen people arrested for some pretty grotesque crimes. This part is also at least a little bit funny though:

Over a three-year period, Taylor appeared to pay Denise Lodge more than $37,000 for human remains. One payment, for $1,000 included the memo “head number 7.” Another, for $200, read “braiiiiiins.”

In a recent Money Stuff column, Matt Levine’s take was that the memo field itself is the issue:

…[Y]ou can know, intellectually, that you should not put evidence of crimes in writing, but when you get to the little memo field in PayPal or Venmo or your checkbook or whatever, and you are buying human brains stolen from the morgue, you will be unable to resist writing “brains.” I get it! I am typing this advice, and I have seen the consequences when people fail to follow it, and I have absolutely no interest in ever buying stolen human remains, and if I did I would not use PayPal, but if I did buy brains using PayPal, I would absolutely type “braiiins” in the memo field. “Welp, guess I’m going to prison,” I’d think, as I typed it. The temptation is so strong!

Levine proposes a niche payment platform that specifically does not have a memo field, or better yet, has a memo field which does not actually save. You know, for crimes you just really want to talk about but know you shouldn’t.

Link: https://www.wbur.org/news/2023/06/14/cedric-lodge-massachusetts-nh-harvard-morgue-cadavers-indictment