Flds - Follow The Money

[mollymalone]

Molly,

That last link won't work for me.

That was because I goofed. Thanks for letting me know. I've fixed it in that post.

http://www.rickross.com/reference/polygamy/polygamy331.html

 

[mollymalone]

http://www.deseretmorningnews.com/dn/view/1,5143,635208994,00.html
Wyler said his elderly father-in-law continues to hand over his entire Social Security check to Warren Jeffs "in the hope that he can get his wives and children and home back."

Despite being a fugitive, Jeffs exerts a great deal of control over these towns. Jeffs has reportedly told his followers not to pay the taxes.

 

[SewingDeb]

That was because I goofed. Thanks for letting me know. I've fixed it in that post.

http://www.rickross.com/reference/polygamy/polygamy331.html

Thanks Molly.

 

[mollymalone]

Thanks Molly.

Most welcome!

 

[mysteriew]

Federal authorities have been probing allegations of crimes involving the Fundamentalist LDS Church and its leader Warren Jeffs for years — but have been unable to develop enough probable cause to launch a full-scale investigation or bring charges.
"Those cases where you hear rumor and innuendo about child brides and corruption, we have to have reasonable suspicion to open an investigation," U.S. Attorney for Utah Brett Tolman said Thursday. "Beyond that, we have to have probable cause to even get search warrants and grand jury subpoenas. That we have not been able to establish on numerous occasions."

In an extensive interview with the Deseret News on Thursday, Tolman and Tim Fuhrman, the special agent-in-charge of the Salt Lake City office of the FBI, detailed their efforts to investigate crimes within the FLDS Church. They also spoke against the need for a federal task force on polygamy-related crimes, despite a push by the U.S. Senate majority leader and the Utah and Arizona attorneys general.
http://deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,695275674,00.html

 

[mollymalone]

Federal authorities have been probing allegations of crimes involving the Fundamentalist LDS Church and its leader Warren Jeffs for years — but have been unable to develop enough probable cause to launch a full-scale investigation or bring charges.
"Those cases where you hear rumor and innuendo about child brides and corruption, we have to have reasonable suspicion to open an investigation," U.S. Attorney for Utah Brett Tolman said Thursday. "Beyond that, we have to have probable cause to even get search warrants and grand jury subpoenas. That we have not been able to establish on numerous occasions."

In an extensive interview with the Deseret News on Thursday, Tolman and Tim Fuhrman, the special agent-in-charge of the Salt Lake City office of the FBI, detailed their efforts to investigate crimes within the FLDS Church. They also spoke against the need for a federal task force on polygamy-related crimes, despite a push by the U.S. Senate majority leader and the Utah and Arizona attorneys general.
http://deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,695275674,00.html

"Innuendo" "rumor" my foot!! Yes, they have to have reasonable suspicion but that's... :silenced: I won't say what I'm thinking. If the FBI can investigate it fine, but otherwise a federal task force might be what's needed to shake things up and get to the bottom of it.

Edited to add: They've got so many avenues they can follow on this sect for financial fraud alone.

 

[mollymalone]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...-wanted-the-man-with-eighty-wives-408507.html

set off to try to track Jeffs down for my programme The Man With 80 Wives. I spent a month criss-crossing the country questioning his followers and former followers, his brother and nephew and, most significantly, some of his most senior henchmen, known as "bishops". It was hard going - Jeffs's followers are openly hostile to outsiders. They tail your car, shout abuse. Nevertheless, I came close. I learnt that he had recently performed marriages near the communities I was investigating. And I managed to contact key members of Jeffs' hierarchy, the very people who would know his whereabouts and could well have been harbouring him.

But when I mentioned their names to Robert Foster, the FBI agent in charge of the investigation, he told me he had never heard of them. He had not heard about the marriages Jeffs had performed. And he had never been down to Jeffs' compound in Texas.That was in October, a year into the supposed manhunt. The FBI has changed gear since then. Agent Foster has been replaced by Agent John E Lewis, and this past few months, the net appears to finally be closing in on the FLDS.

 

[mysteriew]

Brett Tolman says a federal task force would only deal with federal crimes.

“That would be fine, but the majority of crime that we are talking about here that may be involving the FLDS or any other community would be a state crime,” says U.S. Attorney Brett Tolman.
http://www.abc4.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=259a984d-c9e3-4a2c-918b-396495b7d6cb

He is really t'd off about this.

 

[mysteriew]

You know, he says that most of the crimes are state crimes. But taking kids across borders for sex, federal. Kids from out of the country- federal. Theft from SS, federal. If there is any record of them drawing welfare benefits in one state while living in another that is federal. Any defense contract violations such as using underage kids- federal. And some of those have been proven in court on a limited basis according to the articles posted by MollyMalone in the court thread.

 

[mollymalone]

You know, he says that most of the crimes are state crimes. But taking kids across borders for sex, federal. Kids from out of the country- federal. Theft from SS, federal. If there is any record of them drawing welfare benefits in one state while living in another that is federal. Any defense contract violations such as using underage kids- federal. And some of those have been proven in court on a limited basis according to the articles posted by MollyMalone in the court thread.

I don't understand how he can say it's just state crimes. Trafficking women across country borders is another one. Idaho is checking that out too. A lot of the crimes appear to fall under racketeering and qualify for RICO charges.

 

[mysteriew]

I don't understand how he can say it's just state crimes. Trafficking women across country borders is another one. Idaho is checking that out too. A lot of the crimes appear to fall under racketeering and qualify for RICO charges.

Oh, there is also the belief that they have taken the UEP money and assets across state lines, in violation of a court order.

I just thought of this. Right after the raid, the FBI obtained a search warrant, and it was sealed so we don't know what that contained. Utah FBI is also against the federal task force. Could it be possible that they already have something in the works and worry that the process of setting up a task force could delay whatever it is they have in the works?

 

[mollymalone]

http://www.rickross.com/reference/polygamy/polygamy855.html

Significant assets were sold by the FLDS church just prior to the land in Texas being purchased, including a property in Utah called the Steed Ranch, which sold for a little over $8 million, and a couple of other parcels in Apple Valley, (Utah)," Hoole said. "That money didn't stay in Short Creek. It's probably a very safe assumption that it went to Texas."

 

[mollymalone]

PHOTOS at the link
http://www.google.com/search?q=flds+floyd+county&btnG=Search&hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1
June 11 2007 -Samuel Fischer’s Westwood Products currently employs about 20 people in Hildale Utah to make custom cabinets for high-end homes. He says he will rename it Techsun when it moves to Texas. The Warren Jeffs’ follower plans to move his Utah cabinet making company, two wives and twenty four children to west Texas and local residents are worried others will follow.

In Lockney, people worry that Fischer is paving the way for thousands of Jeffs’ followers now living in Utah and Arizona. Fisher already has a contract on the 176,000-square-foot industrial complex that once produced farm implements under the Tye Company banner. Now he is shopping for housing. He has closed on one house in nearby Plainview (Hale County) and has contracts on three others there. He is reported to be checking out the migrant labor camp twelve miles away in Floydada. The camp, which was originally subsidized by the U.S. government, contains accommodations for 156 family units in fourteen buildings.

“He wouldn’t be looking at houses if he didn’t have some others coming,” she said. "He didn’t tell us anything,” Mathis said. “He evaded some (questions) and even the ones he answered I didn’t feel he was being truthful.”I have no idea how many families will move to the area, but I do know that this business will not bring new jobs for local people-not unless you happen to be a member of one of the FLDS families", Gilroy said.

 

[mollymalone]

http://blogs.sltrib.com/plurallife/2007/05/samuel-fischer-and-uep.htm
May 16, 2007- He had closed that morning on three homes in Plainview, about 30 miles west. Nothing against Lockney, he said, but he was able to find a home that better fit the needs of his family in Plainview. The other two homes will be for workers who are likely to relocate with him.

http://thehopeorg.org/texas_FCHB_Fischer_speaks_to_Lockney_community.html
"One reason for coming here," said Fischer, "is that I couldn't buy 5 acres of commercial ground with nothing on it, in Utah, for the same amount as the Tye Company. Fischer is purportedly buying the Tye Company for $750,000. He also purchased 3 homes. One in Edmundson, one in Halfway, and another outside of Plainview.

Fischer says he and his family will live in one house and "key people", who will be moving here, will live in the others. He said he did not know who those people would be.

Fischer said he bought those homes because there were no houses in Lockney that were large enough to fit his needs. He also said his son has 5 horses and he needed acreage for the horses. Fischer said he was the sole proprietor and that he had "no partners". He said none of the money was "coming from the church", and that no one directed him to do this.

 

[mollymalone]

http://www.hesperianbeacon.com/051707news.htm
Warren Jeffs closest followers (remember that Fischer said Jeffs is his spiritual leader) value the truth so dearly that they seldom use it. Mr. Fischer desperately wanted to portray himself as a fine upstanding businessman imbued with high moral ethics and strong family values...." he stood aside and did nothing when Warren Jeffs excommunicated his father from the FLDS Church then reassigned his mothers.....I would have liked very much for Mr. Fischer to explain how this translates to family values. ....."I would have liked for him to explain why he did nothing as some of his sons were kicked out of the church, and the town in which they grew up. I would also like to ask him why even to this day he prevents them from seeing his own mother, their grandmother, who we are told is dying of cancer.

Mr. Fischer told us he is being forced out of Hildale, Utah because the state is taking over the United Effort Plan Trust. Wisan has been busy in recent months transforming the UEP so that individual members may own the homes they built on UEP land. Samuel Fischer has been given this same opportunity..... "It is Fischer who balked at the deal, not the State of Utah."

Mr. Fischer kept emphasizing that he intends to hire local people at his Lockney plant. That may very well be the case. I hope it is. However, we have been told here in Eldorado that the YFZ Ranch truly was intended as a hunting retreat but that the group's intentions changed once they owned the land.

 

[mollymalone]

http://www.janabommersbach.com/pm-fea-july05.htm
Gone is any semblance of private ownership. All property and all businesses are owned and controlled through a "trust" that is totally controlled by Jeffs. Bistline writes that Jeffs even demanded that people sign over their individual 401-K retirement plans to him.

 

[mollymalone]

http://www.google.com/search?q=Warren+Jeffs+wives&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&start=160&sa=N
In 1942, members signed over ownership of their homes to a trust established by the church, which now has tens of millions of dollars in land and in businesses spread across the West and into Canada.

 

[mollymalone]

http://www.p2pconsortium.com/index.php?showtopic=1190
f the 9,000 members of a polygamous Mormon sect in south-west Utah felt comfortable borrowing from their local bank like there was no tomorrow, it was because, in their minds, that was precisely the case. The world, they had been told, was coming to an end.

The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints gladly used high-interest funds to finance suspect business ventures. There was the water melon farm on which not a single water melon was planted, and plans to convert old military barracks into homes fell through when they found lead paint and asbestos inside. Now, though, the tap has been turned off. After years of obliging the sect, the local Bank of Ephraim has been forced to shut down after state regulators found it could no longer handle all the loans it had extended. It was only after the crackdown in June that the bank's president, Keith Church, discovered the truth.

Several years ago, the sect, led by a recluse named Warren Jeffs, rumoured to have 70 wives, made members take an oath to drain the bank as fast as possible because doomsday, just around the corner, would see the world and its financial system collapse.

 

[mollymalone]

Oh, there is also the belief that they have taken the UEP money and assets across state lines, in violation of a court order.

I just thought of this. Right after the raid, the FBI obtained a search warrant, and it was sealed so we don't know what that contained. Utah FBI is also against the federal task force. Could it be possible that they already have something in the works and worry that the process of setting up a task force could delay whatever it is they have in the works?

That could be or it could be it's just a turf /credit for busts type of thing. I'm hoping that the FBI and the states are working hard on this on their own.

However, since in the past there's been such a blind eye....there's been such a struggle over the years getting anyone in officialdom to do anything, and there's been such a mess with coverups with FLDS being in the LE there, a task force might be needed. The task force, being made up of people not from those states wouldn't have the same sensitivities that the locals have about not stepping on certain toes.

 

[mollymalone]

http://www.rickross.com/reference/polygamy/polygamy282.html
The math was simple: Bad loans plus embezzlement brought down a
small-town bank.

Last June's closing of the Bank of Ephraim made instant losers of 50 people and groups ranging from turkey farmers to the local Chevrolet dealer and state college. Together they had $3.6 million in uninsured deposits.
Stockholders who lost millions more insisted they had investors lined up to
rescue the bank, but were rebuffed by regulators, who sold the deposits to a
bank unwittingly instrumental in its looting, the Far West Bank of Provo, Utah.

But in this farming community in one of Utah poorest counties, where many are struggling to hold their own, resentment runs deep against regulators who shut down the 99-year-old Bank of Ephraim. They complain that government examiners, fooled by phony bank statements, never detected the fraud. They accuse state regulators of tolerating risky loans to
the fundamentalist religious sect halfway down the state. The loans reached $18 million, 90 percent of the Bank of Ephraim's portfolio, said former bank President Keith Church.

Afterward, Church learned from business owners that they had been instructed by Rulon Jeffs, former leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, to "go out and borrow as much money as they could" because civilization was about to collapse. State Banking Supervisor Jim Thomas said the Bank of Ephraim was cleaning its
balance sheet of the bad loans when embezzlement delivered the knockout punch.