A Colorado funeral home owner who stashed nearly 190 dead bodies in a decrepit building and sent grieving families fake ashes received the maximum possible sentence of 20 years in prison on Friday, for cheating customers and defrauding the federal government out of nearly $900,000 in COVID-19 aid.
Jon Hallford, owner of Return to Nature Funeral Home, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud in federal court last year. Separately, Hallford pleaded guilty to 191 counts of corpse abuse in state court and will be sentenced in August.
At Friday’s hearing, federal prosecutors sought a 15-year sentence and Hallford’s attorney asked for 10 years. Judge Nina Wang said that although the case focused on a single fraud charge, the circumstances and scale of Hallford’s crime and the emotional damage to families warranted the longer sentence.
Sounds like a lot more effort than to simply cremate the bodies.
The end of the article where the FBI agents were having to put boards down just to get through … Greed knows no boundaries and that’s enough Internet for tonight.
Why the hell was the guilty party just storing the bodies in the first place? Did they not have the means to actually cremate them or were they doing something weirder? 😨
Cremation cost money. The relatives sent money to the owner to cremate but the owner takes the money without doing anything. I guess its spur of the moment without long term planning. The bodies just keeps piling up until it was discovered. Thats how i interpreted it.
If only there was some way of disposing of the evidence.
“While the bodies rotted in secret, (the Hallfords) lived, they laughed and they dined,” he added. “My mom’s cremation money likely helped pay for a cocktail, a day at the spa, a first class flight.”
The appropriate sentence here is to stash him in the same building, and boarding it up.
Can’t do better than 20-years in a minimum security for a wealthy white dude though. It’s not like he did some heinous, irredeemable crime like smoking marijuana while black or something.
I don’t think he’s like a decent person or anything, but 20 years of captivity is a hell of a long time…
For desecrating 200 corpses?
This is just for fraud. The corpse abuse sentencing is in August.
What’s the difference between 5, 10, 20 years in a case like this? How does it affect the person who did it, or help the families that were harmed?
Americans like their punishment based justice system generally, it’s why you always see people scoffing at literally decades long sentences as “not long enough” so it helps American families who believe in punishment based justice because the person is being punished. It’s cultural
Some judgements are purely punitive, not intended to help anyone. From a social perspective this kind of passed judgement could hopefully prevent others from doing similar things?
Nobody does crimes thinking they are going to get caught. Or they’re passion crimes or people don’t factor the penalty because they’re not suppose to be caught
It doesn’t sound like they were considering any kind of risk-reward tradeoff when they were doing this, so I don’t think the threat of prison would have deterred them.
Yeah, 20 years seems needlessly long
It’s pretty lenient for a cruelty system masquerading as “justice”.
Genuinely wouldn’t have been surprised if they would’ve sentenced him to 20 years for each of the 190 instances.
Just over 1 month prison for each family defrauded, including the body of their loved one discarded like trash.
If he did this to just one family, would he have only gotten a month?
The court has disrespected these families worse than he did.
It’s the maximum possible sentence. The court can’t do more. Also, this is just the sentence for COVID aid fraud. Sentencing for the corpse abuse charges is scheduled for August.
It’s the maximum possible sentence. The court can’t do more.
So, if they tried this as 190 individual cases, he’d only get a 5 weeks each? The courts really needed to do more.
Also, this is just the sentence for COVID aid fraud. Sentencing for the corpse abuse charges is scheduled for August.
I reread the article multiple times, and 20 years is the maximum for everything, including defrauding the government, to be confirmed in August.
I agree what happened is a travesty but here’s the thing that gets me most … it’s an unregulated business, so the onus is on the state to get their act together and make the rules.
According to this legal site, mishandling of a corpse gets you a lot more than 5 weeks, with mention of funeral homes and hospitals:
The penalties for these crimes vary significantly by jurisdiction. Some states classify abuse of a corpse as a misdemeanor, which may result in fines and a jail sentence of up to one year. More serious acts can be charged as a felony, carrying stiffer penalties, including several years in prison and fines that can reach $10,000 or more.
Organ Harvesting for the black market, maybe.
you can’t harvest organs from dead people, just brain dead people still under artificial life support
they are still useful for research, medical colleges, military so they can blow it up.
That’s only true if they’re going to be put in living people. There is a huge black market for person parts.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_morgue_case
Lodge worked as the morgue manager under the Anatomical Gift Program at Harvard Medical School from 1995 until his firing on May 6, 2023.[3] The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania accused of him of conspiracy and interstate transport of stolen goods. From roughly 2018 to 2022, Lodge allegedly delivered human remains by post to customers, who sometimes visited the morgue to choose their preferred body parts.[4] While selling services associated with the cost of procuring cadavers is not illegal in the United States, selling bodies or body parts is.
You reminded me of a creepy thkng that happened in my country, Colombia, around 30 years ago:
A university’s medical departament was found to be attracting homeless people by promising them trash (it’s common here for homeless people to get money by recycling trash), and then murdering them inside the university. Medical students would then, unkowingly, do their practices with said bodies. Some organs were also allegedly trafficked.
There is no exact data of how many people died like this, but an estimation is around 50. Aditionally, basically all of the people behind this faced no repercusion.
Here’s an English notice about this: www.infobae.com/en/2022/03/27/this-was-the-massacre-of-a-group-of-street-dwellers-inside-a-university-in-barranquilla
Reading only the headline: Why, isn’t that his job?
sent grieving families fake ashes
Yes I also read the rest of the text, i just wanted to make a joke.
