DENVER — The co-owner of a funeral home in Penrose pleaded guilty in court Monday to a federal felony wire fraud charge, marking her second change of plea in the case.
Carie Hallford and her husband Jon were charged with 15 federal crimes after they were accused of fraudulently obtaining nearly $900,000 in COVID-19 relief funds and using those funds for personal luxuries instead of for their business.
Her plea agreement continues to claim that the Hallfords failed to cremate or bury roughly 190 bodies, while simultaneously collecting approximately $130,000 from families for burial services which were never provided. The couple "concealed the gruesome collection of bodies at their Penrose location by preventing outsiders from entering their building, covering the windows or doors of the building to limit others from viewing inside, and providing false statements to others regarding the foul odor emanating from the building," the plea agreement reads.
Carie Hallford's agreement also states that the Hallfords, in a number of instances, provided a decedent's family with an urn that contained dry concrete mix instead of remains. On at least two occasions, the agreement claims the Hallfords "arranged for and provided the wrong body for a cemetery burial resulting in the incorrect remains being buried in a gravesite plot while concealing this fact from the next-of-kin."
The federal guilty plea from Carie Hallford is a separate case from the local case in which the husband-and-wife duo face charges related to allegedly stashing nearly 200 bodies in their Return to Nature funeral home location. That case is still pending in state court, and the two have accepted plea agreements.
Carie Hallford initially pleaded not guilty in the wire fraud case in April of 2024, then pleaded guilty under a different agreement in the fall of 2024. That agreement was rejected in March of 2025 because it bound the court to a particular sentence, and as a result, Carie Hallford withdrew her plea.
On Monday, Carie Hallford withdrew her not guilty plea in exchange for a guilty plea. She pleaded guilty to Count 11 of the indictment — conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
"I really wanted this to go to trial. I think a lot of the victims wanted this to go to trial, because it has become very clear and evident that we will not get information about the case unless it goes to trial," said Crystina Page, who used Return to Nature Funeral Home when her son died in 2019. "We believed that by going to trial, we would be able to hear the evidence and be able to hear what they actually did to us. We still don't know the truth of what they've done to us. So, how do we heal from something if we don't know what that harm was?"
Kelly Schloesser attended Carie Hallford's court appearance on Monday too. Her mother, Mary Lou Ehrlich, was 83-years-old when she died in 2022. Schloesser said the family used Return to Nature Funeral Home.
"She was my mother, obviously, and she was just this wonderful person, and she was a caregiver all of her life," Schloesser said, explaining who her mother was. "That's one of the things that hurts me so much in this case, you know, because even in an old folks home, you take care of people that have just passed away, right? And mom always handled them with so much dignity and so much compassion and so much respect. What these two people did is just the opposite of caring for people that have passed away. It's disgusting what they did."
Carie Hallford's sentencing is scheduled for Dec. 3. The guidelines in the plea agreement recommend a sentence of 78 to 97 months in prison but the sentencing will ultimately be up to the judge. The maximum penalty in the case is 20 years behind bars, and prosecutors are recommending a sentence of 15 years in prison.
John Hallford pleaded guilty to the same count and in June was sentenced to the maximum of 20 years. In that case, Judge Nina Wang deemed that the alleged fraud was “inextricably connected” to the other crimes the couple is accused of committing.
In the decomposing bodies case, the Hallfords have both pleaded guilty to abuse of corpse charges in state court. John Hallford’s sentencing in that case is set for Aug. 22. Carie Hallford’s sentencing is yet to be scheduled, but will likely happen after her federal sentencing.
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