Colorado funeral home owners accused of misspending nearly $900,000 in pandemic relief funds and living lavishly, all while storing 190 decomposing bodies in a building and sending fake ashes to grieving families, pleaded guilty Thursday to federal fraud charges for defrauding customers.
John and Carrie Halford both pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. A judge must still approve the plea agreement, which stipulates that prosecutors will not seek more than 15 years in prison. It is unclear when this will happen.
The owners of Return to Nature Funeral Home, located about an hour’s drive south of Denver, have been charged with 15 federal crimes related to defrauding the U.S. government and funeral home customers. More than 200 criminal charges are already pending against them in Colorado state court, including abuse of a corpse and forgery.
The plea agreement includes Halford admitting to fraud related to COVID-19 and committing fraud against customers, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tim Neff said after the hearing.
The Halfords used pandemic aid and customer payments to buy a GMC Yukon and Infiniti that together are worth more than $120,000, laser body sculpting, trips to California, Florida and Las Vegas, and $31,000 in cryptocurrency and luxury goods at stores like Gucci and Tiffany & Co. Inc., according to court documents.
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John Halford is represented by the federal public defender’s office, which does not comment on cases. Calls and emails to Carrie Halford’s attorney in the federal case were not returned, and her attorney in the state case, Michael Stuzinski, declined to comment.
The federal indictment arrived after 190 bodies were discovered last year in an insect-infested building owned by Return to Nature in Penrose, a small town southwest of Colorado Springs. The Halfords have allegedly stored the bodies since 2019, sometimes stacking them on top of each other and in two cases burying the wrong body, according to court documents.
An Associated Press investigation found that the Halfords likely sent fake ashes and fabricated cremation records to families who did business with them. Court documents allege the dust inside some of the bags was dried concrete, not the cremated remains of missing loved ones.
The discovery was devastated by relatives of the deceased, who began to learn that their family members’ remains were not in the ashes they had ceremonially spread or preserved, but were still lying in a building. These stories prompted Colorado lawmakers to correct the state’s lax funeral home regulations in 2024, which require routine facility inspections and licensing for funeral home roles.
Christina Page, whose son’s body was left at the funeral home after his death in 2019, spoke in court Thursday, saying she understood the plea deal was as close to justice as she would get, but it “only scratches the surface.” Of the atrocities they committed.”
Describing her son’s body while it was in the funeral home building, Paige said: “My son was one of those victims. He lost 60% of his body weight.” “Rats and worms ate his face.”
& Edition 2024 The Canadian Press
