Funeral home owner who sent families fake ashes pleads guilty to fraud

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DENVER (AP) — A Colorado funeral home owner accused of stashing nearly 200 decomposing bodies in a room-temperature building admitted in federal court Monday that she cheated customers and defrauded the federal government out of nearly $900,000.

Carie Hallford, who ran Return to Nature Funeral Home with her husband Jon Hallford, pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Carie Hallford faces a maximum of 20 years in prison, though federal prosecutors agreed to ask for 15 years at a December sentencing hearing.

Hallford already pleaded guilty once in federal court, but a judge last year rejected the agreement with prosecutors and still has to approve this one.

Crystina Page’s son David died in 2019, and his body was left in an inoperable refrigerator for four years. Standing outside the federal courthouse Monday, Page said she's disappointed about the possibility that neither Hallford goes on trial, something she hoped would have brought answers about what happened to her son and others entrusted to their care.

“We still don’t know the truth of what they’ve done to us,” she said.

The federal case brought against both Hallfords focused on two schemes: falsifying documents to siphon nearly $900,000 in COVID-19 pandemic-era financial aid from the U.S. Small Business Administration and deceiving customers by taking payments for cremations the Hallfords never did.

Instead of cremating the nearly 200 bodies between 2019 and 2023, the Hallfords allegedly stored the bodies in a decrepit building and sent some customers dry concrete instead of ashes.

The Hallfords pocketed around $130,000 of their customers' payments meant for cremations or burial services and spent it, along with the federal funds, on luxury products — a GMC Yukon, laser body sculpting, vacations, jewelry and cryptocurrency.

In a separate case in state court, both Hallfords have been charged with 191 counts of corpse abuse, including for twice burying the wrong body and leaving others to decompose. Jon Hallford has already pleaded guilty to those 191 counts, as well as a fraud charge in the federal case for which he was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

The building packed with bodies was discovered in 2023 in Penrose, Colorado, about a two-hour drive south of Denver. It shook already grieving families. Many learned that their loved ones' remains weren't in the ashes they spread or held tight but were instead decaying in a building.

Investigators found bodies stacked atop each other, swarms of bugs and maggots, and so much liquid on the ground it had to be pumped out.