DENVER — The owners of a Colorado funeral home are anticipated to enter guilty pleas to federal charges on Thursday, facing accusations of misappropriating nearly $900,000 in COVID-19 relief funds while allegedly engaging in extravagant spending. Additionally, they are accused of improperly storing 190 decomposing bodies in one of their facilities and providing grieving families with counterfeit ashes.
Jon and Carie Hallford, who operate Return to Nature Funeral Home located about an hour south of Denver, have been charged with 15 offenses relating to government fraud and the exploitation of their clients. In addition to these federal charges, there are over 200 criminal charges pending against them in Colorado state court, which includes allegations of corpse abuse and forgery.
According to court documents, the Hallfords misused both the pandemic assistance and payments from families for personal gain, acquiring a GMC Yukon and an Infiniti valued at over $120,000, paying for laser body sculpting treatments, and funding trips to various states including California, Florida, and Las Vegas. They also invested around $31,000 in cryptocurrency and splurged on luxury goods from prominent brands like Gucci and Tiffany & Co.
If convicted of the federal charges, the Hallfords could face up to 20 years of imprisonment and fines reaching $250,000. Jon Hallford is currently being represented by the federal public defender’s office, which has refrained from commenting on the case. Efforts to reach out to Carie Hallford’s attorney regarding the federal charges have gone unanswered, while her state case lawyer, Michael Stuzynski, also declined to provide any comments.
These federal indictments followed the shocking revelation last year of the 190 corpses discovered in a building infested with pests, owned by the Hallfords in Penrose, a small town located southwest of Colorado Springs. Reports indicate that the Hallfords had been storing these bodies as early as 2019, and in some instances, they were found stacked upon one another. There were even two known cases where the wrong body was interred.
An investigation revealed that the Hallfords may have sent false ashes along with fabricated cremation documentation to grieving families. Allegations from court documents suggest that some of the ashes provided to families were actually composed of dry concrete rather than the cremated remains of their loved ones.
The heartbreaking discoveries deeply affected relatives who learned that their loved ones’ remains were still stored in the funeral home’s facility and not encapsulated in the ashes they believed they had received. The disturbing accounts led to state lawmakers enacting tighter regulations on funeral homes in Colorado in 2024, necessitating regular inspections of facilities and licensing for personnel operating in funeral home roles.