Funeral home owners accept plea deal for federal charges of wire fraud
DENVER, Colo. (KRDO) - In a federal courtroom on Thursday afternoon, Return to Nature funeral home owners Jon and Carie Hallford both changed their plea of not guilty for over a dozen counts of wire fraud-related charges, to guilty, as the two have accepted a plea agreement from the U.S Attorney's office.
Carie Hallford appeared in court at 1 p.m. on Thursday, with her husband Jon appearing afterward at 1:30 p.m. The two have been litigated as separate cases since their arrest in April 2024. She and her spouse both plead guilty to Judge Nina Wang, on one count of Conspiracy to Commit Wire Fraud, as per the plea agreement drafted by the U.S. Attorneys.
The deal stipulates that they will not request a sentence that’s lower than the minimum of 78 months. However, the judge could give up to 15 years in prison. A sentencing date is not set yet. The attorneys have until Oct. 28 to file dates they would like the sentencing to be.
Both agree to pay pay $1,012,000 in restitution.
Jon Hallford was transferred to the federal courthouse in Denver after residing in Teller County Jail since September 5, 2024. Prior to his transfer for unknown reasons to Teller County, Jon had been held in federal custody in FCI Englewood in Denver since April 15, after a judge deemed Jon was a flight risk. That same day, the Judge permitted Carie to continue being monitored by GPS while reporting to her attorney on a weekly basis. Carie appeared in federal court under her own power on Thursday.
Families of the nearly 200 victims in the couple's funeral home scandal, were previously given an opportunity to speak with the U.S. attorney's prosecuting the husband and wife, where a deal of 15 years was mentioned. The dozens of families in attendance provided mixed reactions.
The federal charges were originally filed as 13 counts of Wire Fraud, and two counts of Conspiracy to Commit Wire Fraud in April. However, prosecutors elected to have the husband and wife plead guilty to only one charge of Conspiracy to Commit Wire Fraud for the plea deal.
U.S Attorney explained in a lengthy federal court hearing on April 15, that from 2020 into 2021 during the pandemic, the Hallfords knowingly lied with paperwork they submitted for loans through the Small Business Administration (SBA), which led to them receiving three different loans payments totaling over $800,000.
Prosecutors also allege that upwards of $130,000 dollars that the Hallfords earned from taking cremation and burial payments from families, were spent on: vacations, cryptocurrency, cosmetic procedures, dining, jewelry, and more.
Those fraud-related charges stem from a larger investigation that launched into the couple in October of 2023, where Jon and Carie stand accused of improperly storing nearly 200 bodies inside one of their funeral home buildings in Penrose, Colorado, where neighbors reported a foul odor coming from the property. The two were later arrested in Oklahoma in early November, for over 260-plus felony charges for abuse of a corpse, theft, forgery, and money laundering.
Investigators allege that the bodies were left to decompose, stacked on top of one another in the small building while the couple allegedly pocketed tens of thousands of dollars for cremations that they never performed for families. Court documents previously alleged that the Hallfords gave families ground-up concrete, instead of ashes for the cremations they didn't do.
The two used a bondsman to bail out of El Paso County jail for their state charges but were required to live under GPS monitoring, while they lived in a hotel and worked through the delivery service Doordash, before their arrest by U.S Marshalls on the federal charges a few months later.
The couple had previously been offered a plea deal on the state level, on July 1, for prison time over the state case as well. It's unclear the status of that deal, given the acceptance of a federal plea deal.
