Owners of a US funeral home have been accused of spending almost $900,000 (£723,000) in pandemic relief funds on things including vacations, cosmetic surgery, jewelry and crypto -cash.
Jon and Carie Hallford, owners of Return To Nature Funeral Home in Colorado, already face more than 200 criminal charges related to the discovery last year of 190 decomposing bodies in an insect-infested storage building.
These accusations include abuse of corpses, money laundering, theft and forgery, including allegations that they gave families dry concrete instead of cremated ashes, collected money for burials and cremations they never performed and buried the wrong body twice.
They now face 15 more charges, alleging they spent $882,300 (£708,000) in pandemic relief funds on items including two vehicles – a GMC Yukon and an Infiniti worth over $120,000, trips to California, Florida and Las Vegas, $31,000 in cryptocurrency, laser body sculptures. , and luxury goods from retailers such as Gucci and Tiffany & Co.
The couple appeared in federal court Monday, where the prosecution argued they were flight risks, having fled to Oklahoma last October after the discovery of the decomposing bodies and again before their arrest on charges states in November.
The judge did not decide whether they should be released pending trial, but scheduled another hearing for Thursday.
The discovery of the 190 bodies, some of which had been there since 2019, shocked the state of Colorado, which has one of the weakest funeral home regulations in the United States.
Concerns were raised as early as 2020 about the company’s improper storage of bodies, but regulators failed to act, allowing the body count to reach nearly 200.
Only after neighbors complained about the odor did authorities take a closer look at the modest 2,500-square-foot building in Penrose, about 30 miles south of Colorado Springs.
Since the discovery of the bodies, dozens of families have learned that the ashes distributed to them could not be those of their loved ones.
