After 190 bodies found rotting, funeral home owners ordered to pay $950M
A Colorado judge has ordered a couple to pay more than $950 million for allegedly giving grieving families urns full of fake ashes and running a bug-infested funeral home facility where 190 improperly stored bodies were found in various states of decay.
The bodies and the extent of the couple's alleged fraud were discovered late last year after area residents reported a putrid stench emanating from the Penrose facility. The discovery sparked a massive investigation that came to include local, state, and federal investigators and responders. The FBI deployed a team of agents trained to respond to mass casualty events, such as airline crashes.
In addition to the class-action suit, the Hallfords face hundreds of state and federal criminal charges over their allegedly fraudulent funeral services. Specifically, the couple faces 286 charges at the state level, including felony charges of abuse of a corpse, theft, money laundering, and forgery, according to the Colorado Springs Gazette.
At the federal level, they face 13 counts of wire fraud and two additional counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. The US Department of Justice alleges that the pair defrauded grieving customers by not providing the cremation and burial services for the deceased as promised, despite collecting more than $130,000 in payments.
