Denver (AP)-The owner of Colorado received the funeral of the homeland, which hidden nearly 190 bodies in a dilapidated building and sent sad families of fake ash on the maximum sentence for 20 years in prison on Friday, due to the deception of customers and defrauding the federal government from nearly 900,000 dollars in Aid Covid-19.
John Holford, the return to nature, acknowledged the funeral of the homeland, as guilty of conspiracy to commit wire fraud last year. Prosecutors have sought the prison sentence for 15 years and Halford’s lawyer requested 10 years.
Judge Nina Wang said that although the case focused on one fraud charge, the circumstances and size of the Halford crime and the emotional damage of the families justify the longest judgment.
“This is not an ordinary fraud case,” she said.
In court before the ruling, Halford told the judge that he opened a return to nature to make a positive impact on people’s lives, “Then everything came out of control completely, especially I.”
He said, “I am very sorry for my actions.” “I still hate myself for what I did.”
Halford will be sentenced in August in a separate case of the state in which he admitted that he was guilty of 191 charges of offering corpses.
Halford and co -owner Carrie Holford were accused of storing bodies between 2019 and 2023 and sending fake ash families. Investigators described the finding of the bodies in 2023 at the top of each other throughout the squatting building, the match in Pinrose, a small town two hours by car south of Denver.
The discovery of the obsessed of many families revealed that their loved ones were not burned and that the ash they spread or proud of them is fake. In two cases, the committee was buried, according to the court documents.
Many families said they permeated their sad operations. Some relatives suffer from nightmares, others struggled with guilt, and one of them wondered at least about the spirit of their loved ones.
Among the victims who spoke during the verdict on Friday were a boy named Colon Spery. His head was wandering directly above the lecture, he told the judge about his grandmother, which Spery said was a second mother of him and died in 2019.
Her body was immersed in the building of return to nature for four years until the discovery, which sank in depression. He said he told his parents at the time, “If she also dies, I can meet my grandmother in heaven and talk to her again.”
His parents brought him to the hospital to examine mental health, which led to treatment and an emotional support dog.
“My grandmother misses a lot,” he told the judge with tears.
The Federal Public Prosecutors accused Halford of fraud in friendly aid, toured and spent aid and customer payments on GMC Yukon and Infiniti with a value of more than $ 120,000 in combined, along with $ 31,000 in the cryptocurrency, and luxury materials from stores such as Gucci and Tiffany & Co. Even Laser Body Sculping.
Derek Johnson told the judge that he had traveled 3000 miles to testify about how to “throw his mother in a sea of death.”
“I lying wake up wondering, was it naked? Was it stacked over others like wood?” Johnson said.
“While the bodies were secret, (Halford) lived, they laughed and had dinner,” he added. “Mothers’ burning money is likely to help pay the price of a cocktail, which is a day in the spa, a first -class trip.”
Halford’s lawyer, Laura E. Soylo, a penalty less than 10 years in the hearing on Friday, saying that Halford “knows he is wrong, admitted that he is wrong” and did not make an excuse. The ruling is scheduled to be issued in the state case in August.
One of them asked for 15 years in Halford, American lawyer Tim Neve described the scene inside the building. Investigators were unable to move to some rooms because the bodies have accumulated high and in various cases of dissolution. The FBI agents had to put plates so that they could walk over the liquid, which was later pumped.
Carrie Holford is scheduled to go to trial in the federal case in September, in the same month in which the next hearing was in the state case, which was charged with 191 charges of misuse of the bodies.