DENVER — The couple who owned a Colorado funeral home — where 190 rotting bodies were discovered last year — have been indicted on federal charges of fraudulently obtaining nearly $900,000 in pandemic relief funds from the U.S. government, according to court documents released Monday .
The new federal charges against Jon and Carie Hallford add to charges filed in Colorado state court for corpse abuse.
Attorneys for the Hallfords did not immediately return phone messages and emails from the Associated Press. The couple has not yet entered a plea to the state’s abuse of corpse charges.
Even before the new charges were unsealed, public records showed the Hallfords were plagued by debt and faced evictions and lawsuits over unpaid cremations, even as they spent lavishly and received more than $123,300 in loans from the Small Business Administration for relief from the COVID-19 pandemic, according to US government data. They also received a $15,000 grant for pandemic relief, according to federal data.
They bought a GMC Yukon and an Infiniti that together were worth more than $120,000 — enough to cover twice the cremation costs of all the bodies found in their business building last October, according to previous testimony from FBI Agent Andrew Cohen.
They also paid for trips to California, Florida and Las Vegas, as well as $31,000 in cryptocurrency, laser body sculpting and shopping at luxury retailers such as Gucci and Tiffany & Co., according to court documents.
But they left a trail of unpaid bills, disgruntled landlords and unresolved business disputes.
The couple once claimed to a former landlord that they would pay their rent if they were paid for the work they did for the Federal Emergency Management Agency during the coronavirus pandemic. The company’s website featured logos from FEMA and the Department of Defense.
FEMA has said they had no contracts with the funeral home. A search of the Department of Defense database also revealed no contracts with the funeral home.
In 2022, the company failed to pay more than $5,000 in property taxes at any of its locations in 2022, public records show. Last year, the company was hit with a $21,000 judgment for failing to pay for “a few hundred cremations,” according to public records and Lisa Epps, attorney for the Wilbert Funeral Services crematory.
The new federal charges are the latest example of the alleged lies, money laundering, forgery and manipulation of the owners over the past four years that have devastated hundreds of grieving families.
The discovery of the 190 bodies last year, some of which had languished since 2019, led families to learn that their loved ones were not in the ashes given to them by the funeral home. Instead, they were rotting in an insect-infested building about two hours south of Denver.
An investigation by the Associated Press found that the two owners likely sent fake ashes and fabricated cremation information. It appears that on the death certificates given to families, along with the ashes, they wrote that the cremations were carried out by Wilbert Funeral Services, who denies that they were carried out for the funeral home at the time.
As the decomposing bodies were identified at the funeral home facility, families learned that the ashes they held could not be the remains of their loved ones.
As early as 2020, there were concerns about the company’s improper storage of bodies. But there was no follow-up from regulators, allowing the collection of bodies to grow to nearly 200 over the next three years.
Colorado has some of the most lax rules for funeral homes in the country. Those they serve do not have to complete high school, let alone earn a degree in mortuary science or pass an exam. The case has prompted lawmakers to introduce bills that would bring the rules in line with those of most other states, and some even surpass them.
