The owners of a Colorado funeral home where more than 190 decomposing bodies were found during a state investigation in 2023 are now facing federal charges of illegally obtaining more than $880,000 in pandemic relief funds.
Jon and Carie Hallford were in federal court in Denver, CO, on April 15, 2024 where prosecutors laid out a scheme in which the couple applied for Small Business Association loans and received three payments totaling $882,300, according to an article in The New York Times.
The loan money was used by the Hallfords, who ran Return to Nature Funeral Home, for a vehicle, vacations, cosmetic medical procedures, dinners and jewelry, among other things, the Times stated. More than $19,000 was spent on items from Amazon, according to the Times.
In addition to fraudulently obtaining SBA loans, the Hallfords collected $130,000 from families for cremations and burials that were never done. In some cases, the couple provided family members urns that contained a dry concrete mix rather than cremated remains, and at least twice the funeral home buried the wrong body and withheld that information from the next of kin.
The Hallfords were arrested in November 2023 after Colorado investigators discovered scores of decaying corpses, some there for at least four years, in the couple’s Penrose, CO, funeral home. The couple had fled to Oklahoma where authorities found them. They have been charged by the state with hundreds of counts of abuse of a corpse, money laundering and forgery. But federal investigators soon became involved, and the ensuing federal indictment shows the depth of the Hallfords’ alleged deception went far deeper.
SBA loans were given out during the pandemic to help businesses that were struggling to stay open. But the funds were meant to be used for specific operational purposes. Instead the couple “used the bulk of the loan proceeds for their personal benefit,” the Times quoted the indictment as saying.
The Hallfords’ case, along with several other high-profile incidents of misconduct by funeral industry workers in Colorado, caused the state to once again consider licensing funeral directors. Colorado is currently the only state in the U.S. that does not require a license to practice funeral directing.
Sheila Canfield-Jones was one of the Return to Nature clients that received cement dust rather than cremated remains. During a press conference when legislation that would license funeral directors was introduced, Canfield-Jones said her case prompted her to take a hard look at Colorado laws and contact legislators about the issue, according to a Colorado Public Radio story.
“I’m reading these laws and they’re horrible and they’re bad, and we need to do something now,” Canfield-Jones said.