Enlarge / An urn with ashes and a numbered cremation stone that is placed in the coffin of the deceased before the cremation. (credit: Getty | Rolf Vennenbernd)

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 judgment was issued in a civil class-action lawsuit against Jon and Carie Hallford, who owned the Return to Nature Funeral Home in Penrose, Colorado. It is the first high-profile case against the couple to return a ruling.

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.

Enlarge (credit: Getty | Pavlo Gonchar)

A federal grand jury has indicted an embattled Alzheimer's researcher for allegedly falsifying data to fraudulently obtain $16 million in federal research funding from the National Institutes of Health for the development of a controversial Alzheimer's drug and diagnostic test.

Hoau-Yan Wang, 67, a medical professor at the City University of New York, was a paid collaborator with the Austin, Texas-based pharmaceutical company Cassava Sciences. Wang's research and publications provided scientific underpinnings for Cassava's Alzheimer's treatment, Simufilam, which is now in Phase III trials.

Simufilam is a small-molecule drug that Cassava claims can restore the structure and function of a scaffolding protein in the brain of people with Alzheimer's, leading to slowed cognitive decline. But outside researchers have long expressed doubts and concerns about the research.

Enlarge / Ten milligram tablets of the hyperactivity drug, Adderall, made by Shire Plc, is shown in a Cambridge, Massachusetts pharmacy Thursday, January 19, 2006. (credit: Getty | Jb Reed)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday warned that a federal indictment of an allegedly fraudulent telehealth company may lead to a massive, nationwide disruption in access to ADHD medications—namely Adderall, but also other stimulants—and could possibly increase the risk of injuries and overdoses.

"A disruption involving this large telehealth company could impact as many as 30,000 to 50,000 patients ages 18 years and older across all 50 US states," the CDC wrote in its health alert.

The CDC warning came on the heels of an announcement from the Justice Department Thursday that federal agents had arrested two people in connection with an alleged scheme to illegally distribute Adderall and other stimulants through a subscription-based online telehealth company called Done Global.  The company's CEO and founder, Ruthia He, was arrested in Los Angeles, and its clinical president, David Brody, was arrested in San Rafael, California.