Funeral home owner faces consequences for deceiving customers and government, stealing $900K

A Colorado funeral home owner who admitted to stashing nearly 190 dead bodies in a decrepit building and sending grieving families fake ashes  has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for wire fraud.

Jon Hallford, owner of Return to Nature Funeral Home, was found guilty of cheating customers and defrauding the federal government out of nearly $900,000 in Covid-19 aid.

He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud in federal court last year but is still waiting a sentencing in August after he pleaded guilty to 191 counts of corpse abuse in state court.

At a hearing on Friday, federal prosecutors sought a 15-year sentence and Hallford´s attorney asked for 10 years. 

Judge Nina Wang said that although the case focused on a single fraud charge, the circumstances and scale of Hallford’s crime and the emotional damage to families warranted the longer sentence.

‘This is not an ordinary fraud case,’ she said.

In court before the sentencing, Hallford told the judge that he opened Return to Nature to make a positive impact in people’s lives, ‘then everything got completely out of control, especially me.’

‘I am so deeply sorry for my actions,’ he said. ‘I still hate myself for what I´ve done.’

Hallford and his wife, Carie Hallford, were accused of storing the bodies between 2019 and 2023 and sending families fake ashes. 

Investigators described finding the corpses in 2023 stacked atop each other throughout a squat, bug-infested building in Penrose, a small town about a two-hour drive south of Denver.

The bodies had been left at room temperature to rot. The were only found after neighbors issued complaints over a ‘dead animal smell’ covering the area around the funeral home. 

Some of the bodies had been in the maggot-infested building for years before they were discovered. 

Their funeral home promised a more natural burial, offering to bury bodies without embalming fluids or metal caskets if families opted not to have remains cremated. 

Relatives would pay upwards of $1,200 for an eco-friendly end, which also came with the promise of a tree planting in the Colorado National Forest. 

The morbid discovery revealed to many families that their loved ones weren’t cremated and that the ashes they had spread or cherished were fake. The supposed ashes were allegedly ‘concrete dust.’

Relatives said they raised their suspicions with the couple but were ignored or brushed off every time. 

When the family of retired Army officer Tanya Wilson received her ashes, her brother Elliot thought they were unusually heavy and confronted Carie Hallford. 

When he took them to a nearby funeral director he was told: ‘I’ve never seen anything that looks like that in the range of what cremated remains would typically expect to look like.’

Two families were so suspicious they mixed the ‘ashes’ with water and found that they solidified.

In two cases, the wrong body was buried, according to court documents.

Many families said it undid their grieving processes. Some relatives had nightmares, others have struggled with guilt, and at least one wondered about their loved one’s soul.

Among the victims who spoke during Friday’s sentencing was a boy named Colton Sperry. 

With his head poking just above the lectern, he told the judge about his grandmother, who Sperry said was a second mother to him when she died in 2019.

Her body languished inside the Return to Nature building for four years until the discovery, which plunged Sperry into depression. 

He said he told his parents at the time: ‘If I die too, I could meet my grandma in heaven and talk to her again.’

His parents brought him to the hospital for a mental health check, which led to therapy and an emotional support dog.

‘I miss my grandma so much,’ he told the judge through tears.

Federal prosecutors accused both Hallfords of pandemic aid fraud, siphoning the money and spending it and customer’s payments on a GMC Yukon and Infiniti worth over $120,000 combined, along with $31,000 in cryptocurrency, luxury items from stores like Gucci and Tiffany & Co., and even laser body sculpting.

Derrick Johnson told the judge that he traveled 3,000 miles to testify over how his mother was ‘thrown into a festering sea of death.’

‘I lie awake wondering, was she naked? Was she stacked on top of others like lumber?’ said Johnson.

‘While the bodies rotted in secret, (the Hallfords) lived, they laughed and they dined,’ he added. ‘My mom’s cremation money likely helped pay for a cocktail, a day at the spa, a first class flight.’

Jon Hallford´s attorney, Laura H. Suelau, asked for a lower sentence of 10 years at the hearing Friday, saying that Hallford ‘knows he was wrong, he admitted he was wrong’ and hasn’t offered an excuse. 

His sentencing in the state case is scheduled in August.

Asking for a 15-year sentence for Hallford, Assistant US Attorney Tim Neff described the scene inside the building. 

Investigators couldn’t move into some rooms because the bodies were piled so high and in various states of decay. FBI agents had to put boards down so they could walk above the fluid, which was later pumped out.

Carie Hallford is scheduled to go to trial in the federal case in September, the same month as her next hearing in the state case in which she’s also charged with 191 counts of corpse abuse.