Los Angeles -- Two UCLA employees have been placed on administrative leave amid a criminal investigation into allegations that they stole body parts from cadavers donated to the school and sold them for personal gain, school officials and others familiar with the matter said Friday. Although the extent of the wrongdoing is still unknown, people familiar with the case say the wrongdoing could involve dozens -- possibly hundreds - - of cadavers donated to the school's willed body program and may have spanned up to five years. Wrongdoing on that scale would dwarf previous cases involving the sale of cadaver parts at other medical centers around the country.

The UCLA program, which receives about 175 donated bodies each year, makes cadavers available for medical education and research.

Former Gov. George Deukmejian has agreed to take on the job of overseeing reform of the program, Louis Marlin, a university lawyer, said Friday.

Campus police said they were informed of the allegations several days ago and are working quickly to investigate them.

"We have a lot of people working on it," said Nancy Greenstein, UCLA's director of police community services.

UCLA medical school officials released few details Friday evening other than to confirm that the two employees had been placed on leave and that a criminal investigation had been launched. "We are cooperating fully with the (UCLA) Police Department and will share more information as soon as police assure us it will not jeopardize their investigation," Dr. J. Thomas Rosenthal, associate vice chancellor of the UCLA School of Medicine and chief medical officer of UCLA Medical Center, said in a written statement. "At this stage, we must do nothing to undermine the integrity of the investigation, and we will announce additional details in the near future."

Problems with willed body programs also have plagued other medical schools. In 1999, UC Irvine fired the director of its willed body program amid suspicions that he improperly sold spines from cadavers to an Arizona hospital that paid $5,000 to a company owned by a business associate of his.

An audit released in December 2000 found that the former director of the UC Irvine cadaver program misappropriated money and tried to cover it up. The audit confirmed that donated cadavers had been used without university permission in a private anatomy class in the willed body morgue and that families may have received the wrong remains or been improperly billed for the return of their relatives' ashes. The former director denied wrongdoing.

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