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.
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?
This mainly addresses the ‘fraud’ side of things, not the desecration of corpses. Notice how the article states, “(for cheating customers) and defrauding the federal government out of nearly $900,000 in COVID-19 aid”. That’s what they really care about, he tried fucking the government. So as I read it, the Feds wanted 15 years & they probably tacked on an additional fiver for the corpse fraud. He was going to get 15 years because the government wanted him to get 15 years.
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.
Jeah, 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.