Funeral home proprietors from Colorado admit guilt to deceitful financial charges at a federal court
Jon and Carrie Hallford admitted guilt to one charge of conspiring to commit wire fraud. The judge still needs to approve the plea deal, which proposes that the prosecutors won't ask for over 15 years of imprisonment. The exact timeline for this approval isn't specified.
The proprietors of Return to Nature Funeral Home, situated about an hour south of Denver, faced 15 federal charges due to defrauding the U.S. government and their clients. They already have over 200 criminal charges against them in Colorado state court, including abuse of corpses and forgery.
Assistant US Attorney Tim Neff stated after the court hearing that the plea agreement includes both Hallfords accepting responsibility for COVID-19 fraud and deception towards their customers.
According to court documents, the Hallfords utilized pandemic aid and client payments to buy a GMC Yukon and an Infiniti worth over $120,000 together, laser body sculpting, trips to California, Florida, and Las Vegas, $31,000 in cryptocurrency, and luxurious items from shops like Gucci and Tiffany & Co.
Jon Hallford is represented by the federal public defenders office, which won't comment on specific cases. Attempts to reach Carie Hallford’s lawyer in the federal case have been unsuccessful, and her state-level lawyer, Michael Stuzynski, declined to comment.
The federal indictment came after the discovery of 190 corpses in a bug-infested building associated with Return to Nature in Penrose, a small Colorado town. Court papers claim that the Hallfords stored bodies as far back as 2019, at times piling them on top of each other and in two instances, burying the incorrect body.
An investigation by The Associated Press discovered that the Hallfords likely sent fake ashes and forged cremation records to families who did business with them. Court documents allege that the substance within some of the bags was dry concrete, not the cremated remains of deceased loved ones.
The revelations left relatives of the deceased devastated as they discovered that their family members' remains weren't in the ashes they ceremonially spread or kept. These stories led to Colorado lawmakers amending the state's funeral home regulations in 2024, mandating regular inspections of facilities and licensing for funeral home positions.
Crystina Page, whose son's body was left in the funeral home after his death in 2019, spoke in court Thursday, acknowledging that the plea deal represented the closest approach to justice she would get, but that it "only barely skims the surface of the atrocities they committed."
"My son was one of those victims," said Page, describing her son's body when it was in the funeral home's building. "Rats and maggots had eaten half his face."
The Hallfords, including Jon and Carrie, expressed remorse in court for their actions against us, their clients and the U.S. government. Despite the plea deal, the emotional impact of their actions is still being felt by families like Crystina Page, whose son's remains were not handled with dignity.
