US funeral home owner who stashed 191 bodies sentenced to 20 years | Crime News

Investigators have described to find decaying bodies stacked to each other in a dilapidated and infested building of bugs.

An American judge of the American state of Colorado gave a owner of the funeral home, who hid 191 corpses on his premises, a sentence of 20 years in prison for having deceived customers and defrauded the federal government.

The federal prosecutors had asked for a 15 -year sentence for Jon Hallford, the owner of the funeral show returning to nature in Colorado, where he and his wife, Caries Hallford, stored bodies between 2019 and 2023 and sent false ashes of families.

At the hearing on Friday, the American district judge Nina Wang said that the circumstances and the scale of the crimes of John Hallford, as well as the emotional damage to the families he inflicted, justified a longer sentence.

“This is not an ordinary fraud case,” said judge Wang, when she inflicted the maximum prison sentence of 240 months.

The investigators were called to the dilapidated and insect building in the small town of Penrose, about 160 kilometers (100 miles) south of Denver, in 2023, after reporting an “odious smell” from the property.

At the trial, the investigators described to find the bodies stacked on each other and not be able to move in certain parts because they were so high with human remains.

FBI agents also had to lay boards so that they could walk on the crime scene and above the bodily fluid which had gathered on the ground.

The morbid discovery of investigators in 2023 revealed for the first time to many families that the ashes they had received from the return to nature were false. Documents have shown that Hallford had sent family polls filled with dry concrete mixture and, in two cases, the bad bodies had been buried.

In separate accusations, Jon Hallford pleaded guilty to 191 charges of mistreatment of the corpse before the State Court. He should be sentenced to these accusations in August.

Carie Hallford is expected to be tried in the federal case in September. This same month, she will attend her next hearing in the case of the State, in which she is also accused of 191 corpse charges.

Covide-19 fraud

At Friday’s hearing, Jon Hallford was also imprisoned for having defrauded the US federal government over $ 900,000 in emergency financial assistance to the Americans dealing with the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a statement, the American lawyer’s office in the Colorado district said that the Hallfords had “defrauded the Small Business Administration through COVVI-19 fraudulent loan requests”.

Federal prosecutors said that the hallfords had syphoned money and spent it, as well as customer payments, on views of more than $ 120,000, as well as $ 31,000 in cryptocurrency and luxury stores like Gucci and Tiffany & Co.

In addition to his prison sentence, Jon Hallford was also “sentenced to paying $ 1,070,413.74 in restitution to commit fraud by wire”, according to the District of Colorado.

The colorado district press release said the hallfords “collected more than $ 130,000 from mourning families for funerals that have never been provided”.

“Instead of ensuring an appropriate disposition of remains, Hallford allowed bodies to accumulate in various states of decomposition and decomposition within the installations of the funeral show,” he said.

According to a prescription suspended the recording of the house as a funeral establishment, Jon Hallford had affirmed when the bodies were discovered “that he practices taxidermia” on the property.

Before the court before the conviction, Jon Hallford told the judge that he had opened the return to nature to have a positive impact on people’s lives, but “then everything was completely uncontrollable”.

“I’m so sorry for my actions,” he said. “I always hate myself for what I did.”