By Jen Christensen, CNN

(CNN) — The US House Ways and Means Committee said Wednesday that it is investigating the organ procurement organization for the New Jersey region for what it called “extreme abuse of public trust” and possible illegal activity, including trying to procure organs from people who didn’t volunteer to be donors and, in at least one case, trying to continue with the organ recovery process in a patient who had “reanimated.”

The allegations were discussed in a letter the committee sent to the New Jersey Organ and Tissue Sharing Network, one of 55 organ procurement organizations that are federally designated nonprofits tasked with the multibillion-dollar business of managing the recovery of organs for transplantation in the United States.

The committee, which has investigated several organ procurement organizations over what the lawmakers say is behavior considered unacceptable, says it has been asking the New Jersey network for records and information at least since July.

Investigators spoke with nearly a dozen whistleblowers, the letter says. One of the incidents it highlights involves an unnamed patient at the Virtua Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Camden, New Jersey. The patient was pronounced dead and the network started the process to recover their organs, the letter says, but soon after the recovery process began, the person “reanimated.”

The procurement team called the network’s chief executive officer to find out what to do. Witnesses told the committee that the CEO instructed the NJTO staff on site to “proceed with recovery,” according to the letter. “However, hospital staff intervened, and recovery did not move forward.”

Neither the hospital nor the procurement organization responded to CNN’s requests for comment.

The committee described the case as “shocking” and “alarming” and said several whistleblowers told investigators that documents with regard to details about the case were deleted or manipulated.

The committee’s letter also alleges that the New Jersey Sharing Network misused documents to tell patients’ families it had authority to remove organs, even if the patient was not currently listed as an organ donor on their driver’s license or, in some cases, had withdrawn their permission to donate; may have procured and thrown out hundreds of organs just to meet federal metrics; and gave organs to people out of sequence on the transplant list.

“This is unacceptable,” the letter says. “The organs procured by every [organ procurement organization] across the country belong to the individuals on the waitlist who are ranked and matched using medical criteria. They do not belong to the OPOs, and it is not NJTO’s role to pick winners and losers on the transplant waiting list.”

The letter also says the organization has made misleading statements to Congress throughout the investigation.

“These allegations raise questions about whether NJTO should keep its tax-exempt status and highlights the need for potential legislative reforms,” the letter says.

The House Ways and Means Committee has asked the New Jersey organization to send additional documents including any complaints it has received, documents from the head of the organization and staff communications, as well as any more unredacted documents related to the patient in the Camden case.

The letter is the latest development in the committee’s focus on the nation’s organ procurement groups.

In July, the committee sent a letter to the Indiana Donor Network with regard to its use of private jets for non-mission charter flights. It also demanded documents from the Miami-area Life Alliance Organ Recovery Agency, and after its investigation, the US Department of Health and Human Services moved to decertify the organization – essentially shutting the operation down – in September.

The investigation found unsafe practices, staff shortages and paperwork errors, according to HHS. Agency Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said at the time that the move was meant as a “clear warning” to other donor organizations.

In September, the committee sent a letter to the Network for Hope, a Kentucky-based organ procurement organization, that demanded documents related to practices it considered unsafe.

In one case four years ago in Richmond, Kentucky, a man says he woke up on the operating table while a recovery team was shaving his chest to take his organs.

Witnesses say the hospital staffers were pressured by people within the organization to continue with the procedure, but a local surgeon refused to continue the operation when she saw that the man wasn’t dead. The Kentucky Attorney General’s Office has also been investigating the case.

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