The owners of a Colorado Springs funeral home have been indicted on federal charges including fraud related to COVID relief funds. Authorities say they failed to cremate or bury at least 190 bodies they were paid to handle dating back to at least 2019, according to court documents unsealed Monday.
Jon and Carie Hallford, who owned Return to Nature Funeral Home in the Penrose area of Colorado Springs, were indicted on 15 charges brought by a federal grand jury in Colorado District Court. The indictment brought back previous accusations that the Hallfords gave families dry concrete instead of ashes, collected more than $130,000 from families for cremations and burials they never performed and buried the wrong body on at least two occasions.
The new charges are in addition to the hundreds of felonies the Hallfords are already facing in Colorado, including misspending pandemic relief funds, abusing corpses, theft, money laundering and forgery. They are also facing lawsuits from many of the families that hired Return to Nature.