This story contains details some might find distressing.
The court heard Bush defrauded nearly 200 families out of £500,000 and had acted out of “financial greed”.
Hilliard warned that unless a body was one of those recovered by police in 2024 and properly identified, no-one who had used Legacy’s cremations services “at any time can be absolutely certain they received the ashes of their loved one”.
“He must have a heartless side to him – which allowed him to treat the living and the dead in the way he did, and he was very confident he would get away with what he was doing.”
The judge added: “I don’t think I have ever known offences affecting so many people and so deeply.”
The court was told relatives of 46 people who were cremated between 2017 and 2024 were given the wrong ashes and the loved ones of another 11 deceased never received any.
“How betrayed they now feel,” said the judge.
“Husbands and wives, partners, parents, children, grandchildren, now discovering that they are left with nothing, or in some cases we heard, an empty plastic bag or a teaspoonful of ash which the police managed to recover for them.”