Owners of Funeral Home With Decaying Bodies Are Charged With Covid Relief Fraud

A couple who were arrested last year after at least 190 bodies were found decomposing at their Colorado funeral home were arrested again on Sunday on federal charges that they fraudulently obtained more than $880,000 in pandemic relief money, which they spent on vacations and personal goods, according to the F.B.I. and court records.

The couple, Jon and Carie Hallford, who owned Return to Nature Funeral Home in Colorado Springs and Penrose, Colo., face 15 federal fraud charges, according to an indictment filed in U.S. District Court in Colorado that was unsealed on Monday.

The new federal charges add to state charges, including corpse abuse, that the Hallfords face in Colorado after at least 190 bodies were found decaying at their Penrose funeral home last October in a scene that the authorities described at the time as “horrific” and “very disturbing.”

Mr. Hallford and Ms. Hallford were scheduled to appear before a federal judge in Denver on Monday afternoon. There was no listing in federal court documents for their lawyers. Lawyers representing them on the state charges did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.

The Hallfords could each face up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 if convicted in the federal case, according to the federal indictment. Federal prosecutors did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Monday.

From March 2020 to October 2021, the Hallfords applied for small-business loans for pandemic relief, obtaining three separate payments that totaled $882,300, according to the indictment. In paperwork they submitted to the Small Business Administration, the Hallfords said that they were not involved in criminal activity, “when in truth and in fact, the Hallfords were jointly engaged in a separate, ongoing wire fraud scheme to defraud customers of their business,” according to the federal indictment.