The owners of a Penrose funeral home accused of improperly storing 190 decaying bodies in a building while misspending more than $800,000 in COVID federal relief funds pleaded guilty in federal court Thursday for defrauding customers.
Under a plea agreement, Jon and Carie Hallford each admitted guilt to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Each faces up to 20 years in federal prison, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Prosecutors said they will not seek more than 15 years under the plea agreement, The Associated Press reported.
A sentencing date has not yet been scheduled.
The owners of Return to Nature funeral home, which operated in Colorado Springs and about an hour south in Penrose, were charged with 15 federal counts for defrauding the federal government and the funeral home’s customers.
They still face more than 200 criminal counts, for abuse of a corpse, theft and forgery, in Colorado state court, that could lead to decades in state prison. The owners are scheduled to appear in state court for a plea hearing Nov. 8.
When investigators entered the funeral home building in October 2023, they found “abhorrent” conditions with dozens of stacked bodies, federal court documents said. Some bodies had 2019 death dates.
While the Hallfords promised customers to cremate or bury their loved ones, they instead sent fake ashes and fabricated cremation records to families, an investigation by The Associated Press found. Some families received urns filled with a dry concrete mix, not the cremated remains of their loved ones, federal court documents said.