Colorado funeral home owner accused of stashing nearly 190 bodies to be sentenced for fraud

DENVER (AP) — A Colorado funeral home owner accused of stashing nearly 190 dead bodies in a decrepit building and sending grieving families fake ashes is set to be sentenced Friday in federal court for cheating customers and defrauding the government out of nearly $900,000 in COVID-19 aid.

Jon Hallford, owner of Return to Nature Funeral Home, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud last year and faces a maximum of 20 years in prison. Federal prosecutors are seeking a 15-year sentence and Hallford’s attorney asked for 10 years.

He’s pleaded guilty in a separate state case to 191 counts of corpse abuse.

Hallford and co-owner Carie Hallford were accused of storing the bodies between 2019 and 2023 and sending families fake ashes. Investigators described finding the bodies in 2023 stacked atop each other throughout a squat, bug-infested building in Penrose, a small town about a two-hour drive south of Denver.

The morbid discovery revealed to many families that their loved ones weren’t cremated and that the ashes they had spread or cherished were fake. In two cases, the wrong body was buried, according to court documents. Many families said it undid their grieving processes. Some relatives had nightmares, others have struggled with guilt, and at least one wondered about their loved one’s soul.

Federal prosecutors accused both Hallfords of pandemic aid fraud, siphoning the aid and spending it and customer’s payments on a GMC Yukon and Infiniti worth over $120,000 combined, along with $31,000 in cryptocurrency, luxury items from stores like Gucci and Tiffany & Co., and even laser body sculpting.

Hallford’s attorney, Laura H. Suelau, asked for a lower sentence of 10 years in the hearing Friday, saying that Hallford “knows he was wrong, he admitted he was wrong” and hasn’t offered an excuse.

His sentencing in the state case is scheduled in August.

Carie Hallford is scheduled to go to trial in the federal case in September, the same month as her next hearing in the state case in which she’s also charged with 191 counts of corpse abuse.