The owner of a Colorado funeral home who promised so-called green burials but instead hid nearly 200 decaying bodies at the business pleaded guilty to fraud in federal court on Monday, according to court documents.
The woman, Carie Hallford, ran the Return to Nature Funeral Home in Penrose, Colo., about 100 miles south of Denver, with her husband, Jon Hallford. The couple advertised burials that included biodegradable caskets and shrouds. But a foul smell emanating from the business led investigators to discover at least 190 corpses at the site in 2023, in a scene that the county sheriff called “horrific.”
The Hallfords had been leaving bodies to decompose at the site for years, according to prosecutors. They gave families urns filled with concrete dust instead of the ashes of the deceased and provided the wrong bodies for cemetery burials.
On Monday, Ms. Hallford pleaded guilty as part of a plea agreement in the U.S. District Court in Colorado to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, a charge that carries up to 20 years in prison. She will also pay a fine of up to $250,000 and restitution of more than $1 million to victims, according to the plea agreement.
Ms. Hallford, who is scheduled to be sentenced in December, had previously pleaded guilty to federal charges, but a judge rejected that agreement because it capped her sentence at 15 years. Mr. Hallford, who pleaded guilty to similar federal charges last year, was given 20 years in prison, the maximum sentence, in June.
Prosecutors in the cases accused the Hallfords of two main schemes: Cheating customers by selling cremation services without performing them and defrauding the Small Business Administration of more than $800,000 through fraudulent Covid-19 pandemic relief loan applications.
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The post Owner of Funeral Home With Nearly 200 Decaying Bodies Admits to Fraud appeared first on New York Times.
