Owners of Funeral Home With Decaying Bodies Are Charged With Covid Relief Fraud

A couple arrested last year after at least 190 bodies were found decomposing at their Colorado funeral home were arrested again on Sunday on federal charges that they fraudulently obtained more than $880,000 in pandemic relief money, which they spent on vacations and personal goods, according to the F.B.I. and court records.

The couple, Jon and Carie Hallford, who owned Return to Nature Funeral Home in Colorado Springs and Penrose, Colo., face 15 federal fraud charges, according to an indictment filed in U.S. District Court in Colorado that was unsealed on Monday.

The new federal charges add to state charges, including corpse abuse, that the Hallfords face in Colorado after at least 190 bodies were found decaying at their Penrose funeral home last October in a scene that the authorities described as “horrific.”

Mr. Hallford and Ms. Hallford appeared before Magistrate Judge Scott T. Varholak in Denver on Monday afternoon. During a 13-minute hearing, Judge Varholak did not immediately decide if the Hallfords should be released until a trial, and he scheduled an arraignment hearing for them on Thursday, according to court documents.

During the hearing, Assistant United States Attorney Tim Neff argued that the Hallfords were a flight risk, and said that they fled to Oklahoma last year when the decaying bodies were initially found, The Associated Press reported.

Ms. Hallford was being held in the Jefferson County Jail. It was unclear where Mr. Hallford was being held.