Moriarty, Miller Bill Aims to Protect Families by Ensuring Accurate Organ Donor Records

Family of Keith Lott, from left, Joiell, Blake, Tiffany, Brook, Minnie, Johnny, and Alexander pose for a photo at their home in Washington Township, NJ, Saturday, June 13, 2026.  Joe Warner | for NJ.com

By Karin Price Mueller | NJ.com

His family gathered around his hospital bed.

Machines were purring. Beeping.

They were keeping Keith Lott alive.

Lott, a husband, father, son and beloved uncle, was brain dead, doctors told the family after a series of tests over several days in May.

“In the room, they were showing us on the monitor, the scan of his brain and everything,” said Johnny Lott, Keith’s father, his voice trembling slightly with fresh grief.

“You could see there was no activity.”

Keith’s family was devastated, but they understood. They braced themselves and prepared to disconnect Keith from the machines.

To say goodbye.

But then two strangers said no. They couldn’t let Keith go. They said the family was not in charge. Instead, Keith was under their charge. And they were going to keep him alive until they could harvest his organs for donation.

“I said, ‘Hold up,’” said Keith’s brother, Alex Lott. “He’s Muslim. Religion trumps everything.”

It was the start of an agonizing two-day standoff over Keith’s body parts.

Representatives from NJ Sharing Network, an organ procurement group that’s being investigated by a Congressional committee for alleged “fraud, cover-ups, and illegal practices” after whistleblower claims, insisted that Keith was an organ donor.

What the family says happened next exposes a dark side of the organ donation system and further intensifies accusations that the organ procurement group uses aggressive, ethically-suspect and even illegal tactics to meet its mission. Or as a Congressional letter to NJ Sharing Network put it late last year, alleged actions could “amount to not only extreme abuse of public trust, but also potential violations of law.”

It also raises important questions about how someone’s decision to no longer be a part of the donor program could allegedly, somehow, be neglected — or outright ignored — by a group tasked with saving lives. Keith had previously been a donor, but when he renewed his license a year before his death, he didn’t re-up his donor status, his family said and his license shows.

NJ Sharing Network responded to inquiries from NJ.com, but it declined to address specific questions about what happened in the Lott case.

“We are unable to comment on individual patients, donor families, or specific cases in order to protect privacy and dignity, and we are unable to provide further details,” spokeswoman Terese Greer said.

That provided little solace to the people who love Keith.

“I get it that people out there need these parts, these body parts,” Alex Lott said. “But if someone made a vow with his faith that he does not want to be a donor, you have to respect that.”

A lifetime contract?

The Lott family spent that Saturday prepping for their weekly Sunday barbecue.

Steaks from Sam’s Club. Chicken from ACME. Side dishes galore.

Johnny and Minnie Lott, Keith’s parents, were nearing 57 years of marriage. They’d always host the extended family — their boys were all married now — at their Turnersville home.

Keith, 47, was the baby of four brothers.

“When it comes to food and family, that was his love language,” Keith’s wife, Brook, said of her husband.

The yard was set up with several smokers and two barbecues so they could always accommodate Brook’s and Keith’s religious dietary restrictions.

This gathering would also be a celebration. Keith had just completed the training for his promotion as an assistant director at SEPTA, Philadelphia’s public transit system.

Monday would be his first day flying solo in the new position.

Set-up complete, Keith and Brook took the half-hour car ride back to their Swedesboro home that Saturday evening, May 16. As they got ready for bed, they joked about whether Keith’s work clothes should be laid out that night or if it could wait for the morning.

Then they got intimate.

They were trying to have a baby.

“I kept telling him I’m so proud of you,” Brook said of Keith’s promotion. “I love you so much and I’m so proud of you.”

But then something happened.

Keith slumped over.

“He was falling on me and I couldn’t understand him,” Brook said, her voice steady but eyes brimming with tears behind her glasses.

Keith started foaming at the mouth. Brook called 911 and stayed on the phone while she started to perform CPR.

“It only took five minutes (for paramedics to arrive), but it felt like it took hours,” she said.

Brook watched as they took over CPR, pumping on Keith’s chest, giving him breaths.

Then they’d pause to shock his heart.

It took several tries, but they got a heartbeat. Lights flashing, they rushed him to the emergency room.

Brook called the family, and they all hurried to Cooper University Hospital in Camden, where doctors put Keith on a ventilator.

Keith had suffered cardiac arrest, and blood had stopped flowing through his body for all those minutes. A CAT scan showed brain swelling.

Doctors said the next 72 hours would be critical.

The family was there on Sunday.

And Monday.

They were there on Tuesday, when doctors performed what’s commonly called a brain death exam, checking for certain reflexes. Then another scan.

“And that’s when they came back to us and said there’s no brain activity,” Alex Lott said.

Keith was declared dead at 4:12 p.m. on May 19.

But he wasn’t taken off life support just yet.

According to Islamic law, Keith needed to be buried quickly, within three days at the very latest. The family had to make arrangements.

But it took less than an hour for two unexpected visitors with other plans to come to the family.

“The Sharing Network came in and said OK, now we got to talk about taking steps for him to be an organ donor,” Alex Lott said.

But Keith was not an organ donor, his family said.

“I didn’t want his body opened up like that,” said Minnie Lott, Keith’s mother. “Even separate from him being Muslim.”

While some Islamic leaders permit organ donation under certain circumstances to save a life, others believe the body should not be altered, even after death.

Before Keith fell in love with Brook and converted to Islam in 2023, he’d signed up to be an organ donor through his driver’s license. But after his conversion, he didn’t check the donor box when he renewed his license in 2025. He no longer wanted to be a donor.

But there in the room, the NJ Sharing Network reps didn’t care, the Lott family said.

“They kept saying when you check that box to be a donor, it’s a lifetime contract,” Tiffany Lott, Keith’s sister-in-law, said.

The showdown

There were more than 103,000 people on the national transplant waiting list this month, the federal Health Resources & Services Administration said on its website. More than 48,000 transplants were performed in 2024, it said.

The website also said 17 people die each day waiting for an organ transplant, and that every donor can save eight lives and “enhance” more than 75 more.

In New Jersey alone, there are nearly 4,000 people waiting for transplants. Most are waiting for kidneys, but others are waiting for a liver, pancreas or heart, the agency said.

There are two organ procurement organizations, known as OPOs, in New Jersey — NJ Sharing Network and The Gift of Life. They are assigned to regions and hospitals by the federal government.

The NJ Sharing Network has come under heavy criticism in recent years.

The group’s president and chief executive earns more than $700,000 a year, according to the group’s latest tax filing. Five other officials earn more than $400,000 a year, and five more earn about $300,000 a year.

The House Ways and Means committee launched an investigation in July 2025, citing some damning allegations.

Nearly a dozen whistleblowers provided the committee with “evidence of fraud, cover-ups, and illegal practices, including an instance where NJTO (NJ Sharing Network) proceeded with organ recovery from a patient showing signs of life,” the committee said.

It issued a public request for information from the group, including about “a shocking donor case where NJTO began the organ recovery process from a patient who later showed signs of life, and despite those signs of life, NJTO executives directed the organization’s frontline staff to continue with the organ recovery process.”

It also alleged the group skipped people on the national waitlist to provide organs in “quid-pro-quo arrangements.”

In one “particularly egregious” case, it said NJ Sharing Network’s organ allocation practice “resulted in hundreds of waitlist patients being skipped, and of those patients dozens have died, and many others were impacted.”

It also accused the group of overbilling Medicaid and cited “instances of organ harvesting without patient consent, including the use of New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission documents to unfairly pressure families during a time of grief.”

That allegation is eerily similar to what the Lott family said happened with Keith.

At the hospital, Keith’s family members said, it took “two minutes of ‘I’m sorry’ before they were like, ‘Let’s get down to business,’” Alex Lott said.

NJ Sharing Network representatives told the family Keith had signed up to be an organ donor with his 2021 license, the family said.

“They made no reference to 2025,” Alex Lott said.

When the family showed Keith’s 2025 license and insisted Keith was no longer a donor — and that it was against his religion — the donor group wasn’t fazed, the family said.

“They said you have to go to the registry to get yourself removed,” Alex Lott said.

Doctors, nurses and hospital staff seemed conflicted about who they should listen to – the family or the Network, the family said.

“The nurse was saying, she’s like, ‘If I take him off (life support), I could be fired,’” Keith Lott said.

Then the Sharing Network told the family and hospital representatives they’d take it to court, family members said.

“We’ll go to court,” Alex Lott said. “But in the meantime, we’re taking him off the machine and if we have to carry him out of here ourselves, we’ll carry him out because we have to bury him within three days.”

‘Ethically untenable’

If you want to be an organ donor, you can sign up directly with a state or federal registry, or if you’re in New Jersey, you can elect to be a donor when you receive or renew your driver’s license.

The Motor Vehicle Commission doesn’t maintain an organ donor registry, spokesman William Connolly said, but it collects organ donor information from drivers and uses its Limited Online Access Program to provide organ procurement organizations with “direct, real-time electronic access to the donor information.”

When a driver changes their donor status, it’s “immediately updated on their MVC record once the transaction is completed,” he said.

In its statement to NJ.com, NJ Sharing Network agreed that you can change or remove your registration status at any time by contacting the MVC.

A spokeswoman said the group accesses the MVC database “in real time to verify the most up-to-date information regarding their organ donor status that is entered, updated, and provided from the MVC.” But she would not address why it only referenced Keith’s 2021 license and not his 2025 renewal at the hospital.

The group also did not answer Alex Lott’s allegation that representatives insisted people have to remove themselves directly with the registry. Or the family’s claim that they were told that once you’re a donor, you’re a donor for life.

If that’s what NJ Sharing Network claimed, it’s incorrect, said Kirk Johnson, an assistant professor of Justice Studies and Medical Humanities at Montclair State University.

Under New Jersey statute, donors have the explicit right to amend or revoke “an anatomical gift” at any time before death, said Johnson, who holds a doctorate in medical humanities.

“So the … claim `once you’re a donor, you’re a donor for life’ has no basis in New Jersey statute,” Johnson said. “It is not only ethically untenable; it is legally wrong.”

Johnson noted people who remove their donor designation are deleted from the database completely.

“The removal creates a gap, not a refusal,” he said, noting that NJ Sharing Network would find no record of the person as a current donor. “The updated 2025 license showing no donor designation is itself evidence of removal.”

The Lott case, he said, raises key questions about NJ Sharing Network’s statement that it uses “real-time data” to verify a potential donor’s status.

But it doesn’t explain why Keith was still on life support and why NJ Sharing Network was still claiming authority over his organs.

‘The arrogance’

A few days into the standoff, Keith’s niece Blake decided to try another strategy. She called her boss.

Blake, a Rowan University political science graduate who is pursuing her master’s degree, is an intern for state Sen. Paul Moriarty, D- Gloucester.

She called his office at 9:31 a.m. that morning, looking for advice. Was there an attorney the family should call?

But once Blake explained what was happening, staffers got to work.

“They basically told (the hospital) what they were doing was illegal,” Blake said staffers recounted to her. “They said you’re not going against the family’s wishes, and his license? He’s not an organ donor and there’s the religious aspect,” she said she was told.

Cooper University Hospital said it could not discuss the case because of privacy reasons, but it said honoring the documented wishes of patients “is fundamental to the care we provide.

“Organ donation is a highly regulated process governed by federal and state law, and organ procurement organizations are independent, federally designated entities that operate under their own protocols,” spokeswoman Wendy Marano said.

After the incident, Moriarty, the state senator, said he had extensive conversations with MVC officials and believes the database is up-to-date.

“This certainly points to gaps in the system and I don’t think the gaps are at the Motor Vehicle Commission,” he said.

Moriarty introduced a bill that would “require that organ procurement organizations must access the latest, newest, most up-to-date information that is available at the MVC.”

“Quite honestly, if they can’t do that, we should not cooperate with them,” he said.

The legislator called the Lott’s ordeal “disturbing.”

“I can’t imagine having to make the painful decision to remove life support machines so your brain dead loved one can pass on peacefully, only to have a stranger say, ‘Not so fast. We’re in charge. We’re going to keep him alive to harvest his organs,’” he said.

“I can’t imagine what was going on in that room.”

About two hours after Blake called the senator, NJ Sharing Network relented, the family said.

“We’re going to release the body,” the Lotts said a representative told them.

“As if they had any right to his body,” said Keith’s brother Alex, who has since taken himself off the organ donor list.

“The arrogance.”

Keith Lott was buried three days later, in line with his religious wishes.

To change or check your organ donor status, go to registerme.org, or complete this form anytime to make a change in the MVC database. To have changes reflected on your physical license, go in person or wait for your renewal.