Two men who allegedly used the University of California at Los Angeles’s Willed Body Program as a source of cadaver parts for sale to some 20 medical-research companies were arrested on Wednesday, for apparently the second time, on charges connected with a scandal that initially broke in 2004, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The two were initially arrested three years ago, when a UCLA investigation concluded that the men — Henry Reid, director of the Willed Body Program from 1997 to 2004, and Ernest V. Nelson, said to be a middleman in the deals — had profited from the illegal sale of bodies that had been donated to the university’s medical school for teaching and research. They were later released without being charged, but cadaver scandals, at UCLA and other universities, undermined the viability of donated-body programs.

Several hundred families whose relatives donated their bodies to UCLA have sued the university, and a lawyer representing them said he hoped the arrests would shed light on what happened, asserting that other UCLA officials were likely to have been involved in the complicated scheme. A similar scandal has cost the University of California at Irvine hundreds of thousands of dollars in settlements with families. The Times could not reach Mr. Reid or Mr. Nelson for comment.