Funeral home owners accused of storing decaying bodies expected to plead guilty to COVID-19 fraud

[October 24, 2024]  By JESSE BEDAYN

DENVER (AP) — Colorado funeral home owners accused of misspending nearly $900,000 in COVID-19 pandemic relief funds and living lavishly, all while allegedly stashing 190 decaying bodies in a building and sending grieving families fake ashes, are expected to plead guilty to federal charges Thursday.

Jon and Carie Hallford, owners of Return to Nature Funeral Home about an hour's drive south of Denver, have been charged with 15 federal offenses related to defrauding the U.S. government and the funeral home's customers. Additionally, over 200 criminal counts are already pending against them in Colorado state court, including for corpse abuse and forgery.

The Hallfords used the pandemic aid and customers' payments to buy a GMC Yukon and Infiniti that together were worth over $120,000, laser body sculpting, trips to California, Florida and Las Vegas, $31,000 in cryptocurrency and luxury items at stores like Gucci and Tiffany & Co., according to court documents.

The federal charges could carry up to 20 years in prison and $250,000 in fines.

Jon Hallford is being represented by the federal public defenders office, which does not comment on cases. Calls and emails to Carie Hallford’s lawyer in the federal case have not been returned, and her attorney in the state case, Michael Stuzynski, declined to comment.

A hearse and debris can be seen at the rear of the Return to Nature Funeral Home, Oct. 5, 2023, in Penrose, Colo. (Jerilee Bennett/The Gazette via AP, File)

The federal indictment arrived after last year's discovery of the 190 corpses in a bug-infested building owned by Return to Nature in Penrose, a small town southwest of Colorado Springs. The Hallfords allegedly stashed bodies as as far back as 2019, at times stacking them on top of each other, and in two cases buried the wrong body, according to court documents.

An investigation by The Associated Press found that the Hallfords likely sent fake ashes and fabricated cremation records to families who did business with them. Court documents allege that the dust inside some of the bags was dry concrete, not the cremated remains of lost loved ones.

The discovery devastated relatives of the deceased, who began learning that their family members' remains weren't in the ashes that they ceremonially spread or held tight but were still languishing in a building. The stories prompted Colorado lawmakers to patch the state's lax funeral home regulations in 2024, requiring routine inspections of facilities and licensing for funeral home roles.
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Bedayn is a corps member of The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

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