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.
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.
So, if they tried this as 190 individual cases, he’d only get a 5 weeks each? The courts really needed to do more.
I reread the article multiple times, and 20 years is the maximum for everything, including defrauding the government, to be confirmed in August.