DENVER (AP) On Friday, the owner of a funeral facility in Colorado was given the maximum penalty of 20 years in jail for defrauding the federal government of over $900,000 in COVID-19 help and scamming clients by hiding nearly 190 dead corpses in a dilapidated premises and sending false ashes to bereaved families.
Last year, Return to Nature Funeral Home’s owner, Jon Hallford, entered a guilty plea to conspiracy to commit wire fraud in federal court. Hallford will be sentenced in August after entering a guilty plea to 191 charges of corpse abuse in state court.
Hallford’s lawyer requested a 10-year sentence at the hearing on Friday, while federal prosecutors requested a 15-year sentence. The circumstances and scope of Hallford’s conduct, as well as the emotional harm to families, justified the heavier term, according to Judge Nina Wang, even though the case only involved one fraud allegation.
According to her, this is not a typical fraud case.
Prior to the punishment, Hallford told the judge in court that he started Return to Nature in order to positively influence people’s lives. After that, though, things went completely wrong, especially for me.
“I sincerely apologize for what I did,” he stated. I continue to despise myself for my actions.
It was alleged that Hallford and his spouse, Carie Hallford, sent families phony ashes and stored the remains from 2019 until 2023. In 2023, investigators reported discovering the dead piled on top of one another in a cramped, insect-infested structure in Penrose, a small town located approximately two hours’ drive south of Denver.
Many families learned from the tragic revelation that the ashes they had distributed or treasured were false and that their loved ones had not been cremated. Court documents show that the wrong body was buried in two incidents.
Numerous families claimed that it halted their grieving process. A few family members experienced nightmares, some battled feelings of guilt, and at least one pondered the soul of their loved one.
A youngster called Colton Sperry was one of the victims who spoke at Friday’s sentence. He informed the judge about his grandmother, who Sperry claimed was a second mother to him and passed away in 2019, while keeping his head slightly over the lectern.
Before the discovery, which sent Sperry into a deep despair, her remains had been sitting in the Return to Nature facility for four years. He claimed that at the time, he informed his parents, “I could see my grandma in heaven and speak to her again if I die too.”
He received treatment and an emotional support dog after his parents took him to the hospital for a mental health evaluation.
With tears in his eyes, he told the judge, “I miss my grandma so much.”
The Hallfords were charged by federal prosecutors with pandemic aid fraud, embezzlement, and spending of the funds and customer payments on a GMC Yukon and Infiniti valued at over $120,000 each, as well as $31,000 in cryptocurrency, luxury goods from Gucci and Tiffany & Co., and even laser body sculpting.
In order to testify about his mother’s being cast into a festering sea of death, Derrick Johnson informed the judge that he had traveled 3,000 miles (4,830 kilometers).
Was she nude, I wonder as I lay awake? Was she like lumber, piled on top of others? Johnson stated.
He said that the Hallfords lived, laughed, and ate while the bodies decayed in secret. The money from my mother’s cremation probably went toward a first-class airfare, a cocktail, and a day at the spa.
During Friday’s hearing, Jon Hallford’s lawyer, Laura H. Suelau, requested a reduced sentence of 10 years, stating that Hallford is aware of his error, has acknowledged it, and has not provided an explanation. In the state case, he will be sentenced in August.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Tim Neff detailed the carnage inside the building and asked for a 15-year sentence for Hallford. Because the remains were piled so high and in such different degrees of decay, investigators were unable to enter parts of the chambers. In order to walk above the fluid, which was subsequently drained out, FBI agents had to set down boards.
In September, Carie Hallford’s next hearing in the state case, where she is also accused of 191 counts of corpse abuse, coincides with the federal case’s trial.
