A judge in the US state of Colorado has handed a funeral home owner, who stashed 191 dead bodies on his premises, a 20-year prison sentence for cheating customers and defrauding the federal government.

Federal prosecutors had sought a 15-year sentence for Jon Hallford, the owner of Return to Nature Funeral Home in Colorado, where he and his wife, Carie Hallford, stored bodies between 2019 and 2023 and sent families fake ashes.

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At Friday’s hearing, US District Judge Nina Wang said the circumstances and scale of John Hallford’s crimes, as well as the emotional damage to families he inflicted, warranted a longer sentence.

“This is not an ordinary fraud case,” Judge Wang said.

Investigators were called to the dilapidated, insect-infested building in the small town of Penrose, about 160 kilometres (100 miles) south of Denver, in 2023 after reports of an “abhorrent smell” coming from the property.

At trial, investigators described finding the bodies stacked on top of each other and being unable to move into some rooms because they were piled so high with human remains.

FBI agents also had to put boards down so they could walk around the crime scene and above the bodily fluid that had pooled on the ground.

The morbid discovery by investigators in 2023 revealed for the first time to many families that the ashes they had received from Return to Nature were fake. Court documents showed Hallford had sent families urns filled with dry concrete mix, and in two cases, the wrong body had been buried.

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In separate charges, Jon Hallford has pleaded guilty to 191 counts of corpse abuse in state court. He is scheduled to be sentenced for those charges in August.

Carie Hallford is scheduled to go to trial in the federal case in September. That same month, she will attend her next hearing in the state case, in which she’s also charged with 191 counts of corpse abuse.

COVID-19 fraud

At Friday’s hearing, Jon Hallford was also jailed for defrauding the US federal government out of nearly $900,000 in emergency financial assistance provided to Americans dealing with the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a news statement, the US Attorney’s Office in the District of Colorado said the Hallfords had “defrauded the Small Business Administration through fraudulent COVID-19 loan applications”.

Federal prosecutors said the Hallfords syphoned the money and spent it, along with customers’ payments, on SUVs worth more than $120,000, along with $31,000 in cryptocurrency, and luxury items from stores like Gucci and Tiffany & Co.

In addition to his jail sentence, Jon Hallford was also “ordered to pay $1,070,413.74 in restitution for a conspiracy to commit wire fraud”, according to the District of Colorado.

The District of Colorado statement said the Hallfords had “collected more than $130,000 from grieving families for funeral services that were never provided”.

“Instead of ensuring proper disposition of the remains, Hallford allowed bodies to accumulate in various states of decay and decomposition inside the funeral home’s facility,” it said.

According to an order suspending the home’s registration as a funeral establishment, Jon Hallford had claimed when the bodies were discovered “that he practises taxidermy” at the property.

In court before the sentencing, Jon Hallford told the judge that he opened Return to Nature to make a positive impact on people’s lives, but “then everything got completely out of control”.

“I am so deeply sorry for my actions,” he said. “I still hate myself for what I’ve done.”