(PrimeChronicle.org) – Colorado funeral home owners Jon Hallford and Carie Hallford face criminal charges for allegedly defrauding clients of the funeral home. The married couple also faces charges for misusing COVID-19 relief funds. The Hallfords, who ran the Return to Nature funeral home in Colorado Springs, face 13 counts of wire fraud with an additional 2 counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
The Hallfords represent just one of many cases of COVID relief funds being illegally obtained. Kyle Waldron faces over a year in prison and is ordered to pay over $1 million dollars in restitution for illegally obtaining relief funds. Over $300,000 was seized by federal agents from Waldron’s bank accounts. Waldron allegedly obtained the relief funds by submitting numerous fake IRS forms including an obscene number of non-existent employees. The Judge presiding over Waldrons case has also ordered the Georgia man to serve 3 years of supervised release after his initial time in prison.
However, financial fraud is only the start of the crimes allegedly committed by Hallfords.
The grisly situation at the Return to Nature was only discovered after neighbors reported an unsettling odor emanating from the funeral home. The FBI has now uncovered at least 190 bodies in varied states of decay and decomposition scattered throughout the facility. Records show evidence of corpses being left without any post-death care beginning in 2019. Bodies of loved ones went without preservation, burial or cremation.
Dried concrete waste was given to families in place of cremated remains.
The Hallfords also obtained roughly $900,000 in COVID relief funds. In addition to the relief fund money, the couple also garnered an alleged $130,000 from the families of the deceased. Deceased that were left to openly mummify at the Hallford’s fraudulent funeral home. The Hallfords 15 federal offense could result in $250,000 in fines as well as up to 20 years in prison for the Hallfords.
The FBI is currently collecting victim information.
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