On March 16 local time, Carie Hallford, the former operator of a funeral home in Colorado, USA, was sentenced by a federal court to 18 years in prison for multiple crimes including funeral service fraud and defrauding federal pandemic relief funds in collaboration with her ex-husband.
The 48-year-old Carie Hallford and her ex-husband Jon Hallford jointly operated the “Return to Nature” funeral home in Penrose, Colorado. From September 2019 to October 2023, they collected over $130,000 (about RM510,000) from clients for funeral services, which included cremation fees for the deceased. However, they never actually performed the cremations as agreed, instead handing ashes boxes filled with concrete mixtures to families, falsely claiming they were the ashes of their loved ones.
Investigations showed that the two improperly handled at least 190 bodies, which were hidden within the funeral home until they decayed. There were even instances where the wrong bodies were buried. To cover up these crimes, the couple falsified the manner of body disposition in Colorado’s death registration system, falsely claiming that relevant bodies had been cremated or buried.
In addition to deceiving grieving families, Carie and Jon also targeted the federal government’s pandemic support policy. Carie admitted in court that the two conspired to fraudulently obtain $900,000 (about RM3.54 million) in COVID-19 small business relief funds, money that was supposed to be used for the funeral home’s operation. Instead, they squandered it all on luxury cars, cryptocurrencies, Gucci and Tiffany luxury goods, and various beauty treatments.
This case was discovered in October 2023 when police received reports of a pungent odor coming from the funeral home. After police intervened and investigated, they found decomposed bodies. Following the incident, Carie and Jon were arrested by police in Oklahoma and faced multiple felony charges including abuse of corpses, theft, money laundering, and forgery of documents.
At the March 16 hearing, Carie claimed that she had suffered long-term abuse and psychological manipulation from her ex-husband Jon, and that she had become a different person trying to “please someone who could never be satisfied.” However, the judge made it clear this could not excuse her cruel treatment of clients.
In the end, the judge sentenced Carie to 18 years in prison and ordered her to pay $1.07 million (about RM4.21 million) in compensation, with an additional requirement of three years’ supervision after her sentence. She is also scheduled to be sentenced on related state charges on April 24. Her ex-husband, Jon Hallford, was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison in June 2025 and is likewise ordered to pay about $1.07 million in compensation.