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The owner of a Colorado funeral house was sentenced to maximum jail, when he was found guilty of snatching around 190 bodies in a decrying building and sending fake ash to families rather than their loved ones.
John Holford, owner of Return to Nature Funeral Home, was sentenced to 20 years in jail on Friday for cheating customers and cheating the federal government from about $ 900,000 in Kovid -19 aid. He convicted the conspiracy to cheat wire in the federal court last year.
Separately, Holford convicted 191 cases of corpse abuse in the state court and sentenced in August.
During Friday’s hearing, federal prosecutors asked for a 15 -year sentence, while Hallford’s lawyer requested a 10 -year request.
Mixed-up
John Holford, the owner of Return to Nature Funeral Home, was sentenced to cheating on customers and cheating the federal government from about $ 900,000 in Kovid -19 aid. (Muscogi County Sheriff Office)
Judge Nina Wang said that despite focusing only one fraud allegation despite the case, Hallford’s crime circumstances and the scale -the emotional impact on families, sentenced the maximum sentence.
“It’s not a simple fraud case,” he said.
Next to the punishment, Holford told the judge that he opened the funeral house to have a positive impact on people’s lives before “everything was completely out of control, especially before”.
“I am very sorry for my tasks,” he said. “I still hate myself what I have done.”
Hallford and his wife, Carrie, were accused of storing bodies between 2019 and 2023 and sending fake ash to families. Investigators found that in 2023, the body stood over each other over each other, Penroz of the Bagh-Eastern Building, Colorado on top of each other.
Colorado ‘Green’ funeral homeowners arrested after searching 190 decaying bodies: Police
Investigators could not go to some rooms as the bodies were so high and piled up in various states of decay. The FBI agents had to keep the boards down so that they could walk over the fluid.
Many families learned after the discovery that their loved ones were not cremated and the ashes they had received were fake. In two cases, the wrong body was buried.
John Holford was punished with a maximum possible 20 -year maximum punishment in jail. (AP)
Some relatives had bad dreams, others were struggling with guilt and at least one thought of the soul of his loved one.
According to The Associated Press, the aggrieved colon Spari spoke during Friday’s sentence and told the judge about his grandmother, who said she said she was another mother in 2019 and died.
His body was inside the creation of nature for four years till the search, which Sparie said that he was pushed into depression.
He said that he told his parents at that time, “If I also die, I can meet my grandmother in heaven and talk to him again.” He was eventually rushed to the hospital for a mental health check -up, causing therapy and an emotional support dog.
“I miss my grandmother very much,” he told the judge in tears.
Federal prosecutors accused both Holford of epidemic aid fraud, snatched the money and the payment of customers is jointly jointly jointly on a GMC Yucon and Infinity, jointly jointly, as well as $ 31,000 in Cryptocurrency, Luxury Item from stores such as Guchi and Tiffany and Company.
The owner of the funeral house of Colorado who left the dead bodies
John Holford and his wife, Carrie, were accused of storing bodies between 2019 and 2023 and sending fake ash to families. (AP)
Another victim, Deric Johnson, told the judge that he traveled 3,000 miles, so that his mother was “thrown into the sea of ​​a celebration of death” to testify about this, “AP said.
“I was thinking that I was naked? Was she piled up on others like a lumbar?” Johnson said.
He said, “While the bodies were secretly, (hallford) lived, they laughed and they dined,” he said. “My mother’s probability of cremation money helped pay for a cocktail, one day in the spa, first -class flight.”
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Carrie Holford is going to test in the federal case in September, the same month as its next hearing in the state case, in which he is also charged with allegations of misuse of the corpse.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.