In this episode we interview Utah attorney Mark Pugsley. Mark is a commercial litigator at Ray Quinney & Nebeker, is the founder of the web site UtahSecuritiesFraud.com, and has handled civil disputes, investment fraud cases, securities arbitrations, whistleblower cases and regulatory investigations for over twenty years.
In this episode, Mark discusses the culture of financial fraud (e.g., ponzi schemes) within Utah Mormonism.
For those interested, a list of past Mormon-related cases will be assembled here. Please feel free to share links to other stories in the comments below.
Partial List of Known Utah/Mormon-Related Fraud Cases
- Indicted: Kurk Branham Barton (with support of BYU QB/coach Ty Detmer). Scam: Ponzi scheme. Article Date: 8/17/2011. Amount allegedly defrauded: >$50 million.
- Indicted: Robert and Martin Hooker. Scam: Montana Gold Mine. Article Date: 1/30/2998. Amount allegedly defrauded: >$2 million.
- Indicted: Shane Baldwin. Scam: Distressed debt secured by “property.” Article Date: 6/1/2015. Amount allegedly defrauded: >$14 million.
- Indicted: Curtis DeYoung. Scam: Misappropriated pension funds. Article Date: 2/26/2015. Amount allegedly defrauded: >$24 million.
- Indicted: Robert Hollaway. Scam: Ponzi scheme based on computer software. Article Date: 8/7/2014. Amount allegedly defrauded: >$25 million.
- Indicted: Rick Koerber. Scam: Ponzi scheme based on alleged real estate holdings. Article Date: 8/25/2014. Amount allegedly defrauded: >$100 million.
- More to come….
Episode Transcript
Host: John Dehlin · Guest: Mark Pugsley
This transcript is machine-generated and lightly edited for readability. The audio is authoritative. Please excuse occasional errors in names and spelling.
Introduction and Guest Welcome
John Dehlin [00:00:00] Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories foundation and relies solely upon the support of people like you, its listeners to help keep the podcast alive or to become a member of the community. Please become a monthly subscriber by visiting MormonStories.org and clicking on the Donate button on the right side of the page under support. All contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible and go towards producing the podcast and building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you. Thanks for your support.
Mark Pugsley [00:00:36] The kindly light amid encircling gloom
John Dehlin [00:00:43] Lead
Mark Pugsley [00:00:43] thou me on the night is dark.
John Dehlin [00:00:48] Hello and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. Today recording date it's December 18, 2015. It's 3:36pm and I'm very excited to have with us today Mark Pugsley. Mark is an attorney. According to his bio, he's a commercial litigator who focuses on fraud. And so the title of the podcast for today is Mormonism and the Culture of Fraud. And you know, most of my listeners will be familiar with the fact that Utah seems to be a hotbed of activity when it comes to pyramid schemes, scams, you know, Ponzi schemes, securities fraud, etc. And Mark is, you know, I would say a top litigator in Utah on these types of cases. So we won't be digging too much. You know, we'll hear a little bit about Mark's story. But but the focus of today isn't going to be really Mark's story. It's more going to be Mark's expertise as a litigator around fraud. And also we're going to just tell the background of how much this goes on in Utah, why it's a problem, why you should care about this. And then we're going to dig in just to some cool stories of maybe five or ten of the top stories that Mark's familiar with that he can share with us in terms of his experience as a litigator. And what we hope you walk away from from all this is sort of the ability to detect scams and fraud, the ability to basically understand how they operate at a basic level, a knowledge of what some of the main cases in the past have been and what you need not only to prevent fraud in your life, but also in the life of loved ones around you, like your parents and others. So that's what it's all about. And Mark Pugsley, welcome to Mormon Stories Podcast.
Mark Pugsley [00:02:55] Thanks, John. Thanks for having me.
Why Fraud Is a Particular Problem in Utah
John Dehlin [00:02:57] All right, so let's just start off right off the bat by talking about, you know, why this is important and more specifically, why this is important for Mormons and for people in Utah.
Mark Pugsley [00:03:10] Okay, sure, John. And I, again, I appreciate you letting me come on and talk about this. I feel like this is a growing problem. The FBI estimated in 2010 that Utah had over $1.4 billion in fraud losses. And since then, it's been growing. And the number of cases that I have dealt with in the 21 years that I've been practicing grows all the time. And as I have gotten, as I've been doing this for a long time, the one thing I will say is, is that church seems to come up in almost every case, the LDS Church. And there's a reason for that. And one of the reasons that Utah has one of the highest number of fraud cases per capita in the country, not the highest, but one of the highest, is because of the Mormon population here. And so there's a lot of things that I think we can talk about that people should keep an eye out for and kind of think warning signs, and we can just go through it. Okay.
John Dehlin [00:04:12] And I noticed in your kind of show notes that Utah county has a particularly big problem. Is that right?
Mark Pugsley [00:04:20] Yeah, for sure. Alpine, for some reason, is the hotbed. Ask anybody in law enforcement, FBI, and they'll tell you that Utah county, most of their cases come from Utah County. That said, of the cases that I'm going to talk about today, some of the bigger ones were not Utah County. Some of them were smaller counties up north. One from Davis county, one from Salt Lake, a couple from Provo and Orem area, and then one actually down south even further. So it spans the gamut in terms of location, but it seems like Provo. Well, I'd say Alpine in particular seems to have a large number of people with a lot of money, and everyone's kind of trying to make fast money. And I think some of that has been driven by the multilevel marketing culture that's down there, because a lot of people have made money very quickly, but for some reason, there's a culture down there of trust. And that actually pervades all of these cases, that people think that if someone's in their ward and they have a potential opportunity, they must be a good guy. He's my elders Quorum president, and he gives good lessons. Therefore he must be someone I can trust and. And invest with. And the fact is, that's absolutely not true. Whether someone is good in their calling and whether they offer a legitimate investment opportunity are two very different things. And people, unfortunately, tend to conflate the two. And that's the problem I keep seeing,
John Dehlin [00:05:51] and I also see in your show notes, that the church has in some ways been largely silent on this issue, or at least they don't talk about it much. I would even bet that in the past, higher church leaders have maybe even been involved sort of behind the scenes in some of this kind of stuff, at least through, you know, endorsing. And maybe they've steered clear of that in the past decade or two. But I know growing up, I heard of many cases where general authorities would sort of behind the scenes, endorse various sorts of things. But the church doesn't talk a lot about this. And as you said, people are really trusting. So you listed several questions that are of interest to you in this discussion, and why don't you go ahead and list those off and then we'll dive in.
Mark Pugsley [00:06:43] Sure. Let me just.
John Dehlin [00:06:49] And I can just fill them in.
Mark Pugsley [00:06:50] I've got a different outline.
John Dehlin [00:06:52] No, it's good. Oh, do you want to talk about it?
Mark Pugsley [00:06:55] Oh, sure. So one of the things I was going to say, John, is a lot of your podcasts are theological, and some of them are historical. This one, I think, is cultural. And these are cultural problems that we'll be talking about. None of them really relate to anything doctrinal or anything about the church. But this is something. There's something about Mormon culture that leads to this problem. And one of the questions that I often ask myself is, you know, if the LDS Church is truly the one true church on the planet, you would think that, in fact, we would have a much lower incidence of people screwing each other. But the reality is the opposite, and it's very unfortunate. People who are truly living the gospel, I think, ideally would not want to screw their neighbor and defraud them, but that unfortunately happens all the time. The other thing that I think we can talk about, and this actually is more down your line of interest, is why are people so often able to compartmentalize their church life with their business life? And this is something in legal circles, you can ask a lot of lawyers and they'll tell you they see people who are stake presidents and bishops by the weekend, but during the week, they're extremely aggressive businessmen. There are people who are working very hard to do whatever they can to make a quick buck. And it's something that seems to be. You'd think it would be a conflict, but people seem to be able to manage that pretty well. And I don't know why that is. But maybe you have a thought about that.
John Dehlin [00:08:33] And then sometimes you've mentioned that there seems to be a culture of wanting to get rich quick. And I have no way of knowing how much that's a Utah thing versus just a human thing. And it may be that large families play a role in that to some degree. Yeah. And it's worth wondering whether Mormons are more gullible than maybe other people. I just have no idea. But let's go ahead and. Let's go ahead and dive in. Talk really quickly just about your background and specifically your education and work experience and kind of what brought you to this field.
Mark Pugsley [00:09:07] Okay, sure. I. I grew up in Salt Lake City, went to the University of Utah undergrad, served a mission in, probably the best mission in the world. I continue to think that I served the best mission location in the world, which was Fiji, the Fiji Islands, had a great mission. Then I went away. After I graduated from the U, I went away to graduate school. I got a master's degree and a law degree from Duke University, then went to Los Angeles, practiced there for about four years, and then moved to Salt Lake City, joined the firm of Ray, Queenie and Nebuchur, and I've been there ever since 1998. Who was the best
John Dehlin [00:09:49] basketball player for the Blue Devils that played while you were there?
Mark Pugsley [00:09:52] Oh, well, Christian Laettner and Grant Hill were both playing when I was there, and Bobby Hurley. So I was there during kind of the Glory Days national championships. Oh, yeah. I was there for two national championships. It was a lot of fun. So, yeah, I had a good time.
John Dehlin [00:10:06] I had to ask.
Mark Pugsley [00:10:09] So then what happened is when I first moved to Utah, when I worked in Los Angeles, I did a lot of securities litigation. And when I moved to Utah, I began to do the same thing. I didn't know that there was a need for it, but it turned out there was someone. There was really a need for people who specialized in securities. And so I started doing more and more. And I was going to tell you a story that kind of is the reason I started this website. So I started a website called utahsecuritiesfraud.com and what happened? This was probably five or six years ago, or maybe it was more than that, I don't remember. But there was a family that called me and we actually had a family connection with them. And I'm just going to call them the Smarts for the purposes of today. They were really nice people, both retired, living in their home that was fully paid for. Then they had been approached one day by someone in their ward who worked for a company called Franklin Squires. Franklin Squires was run by a guy named Rick Kerber who ran a. I don't know. I'll call it a scheme. He has been indicted, but he hasn't been convicted. So these are all allegations. But I can tell you what they told me, which is that they'd been told that if they invested with them, with the Franklin Squires Group, they would earn 6% per month on their money, guaranteed, no risk, all the stuff. And you'll hear this over and over the guarantee. So they attended a party at the flashy home in Alpine of Rick Kerber. They saw Maseratis and Lamborghinis out front. He's a very flashy guy. They agreed to invest, and unfortunately, they thought the opportunity sounded so good that they took out a mortgage on their house, which had been paid off. So they leveraged their house and they liquidated their 401 and invested literally everything they had with this company. And within months, it was gone. So In May of 2009, Kerber was indicted and he was charged with operating a Ponzi scheme that took in over $100 million, 50 million of which was lost. And by the time they called me, the smarts were. Keep in mind, they were retired. They had spent all of their retirement money and leveraged their house. So they were in a really bad situation. And unfortunately, in these cases, it's really hard to fix the problem. There's not a lot I can do, and it's heartbreaking. I mean, these were retired people who now, the husband was going back to bag groceries just to pay the bills. And so at that point, I decided I wanted to start getting the word out. I had been hearing these stories, but this one really hit home to me because these were about the age of my parents. And so I started a website called utahsecuritiesfraud.com where I've been tracking these schemes for quite a while now.
Utah as the Fraud Capital of the Nation
John Dehlin [00:13:15] All right, well, that's a good story to kind of kick this off. Why don't we. You know, you've mentioned that Utah has been called the fraud capital of the nation. Why don't you define what affinity fraud is for us, and then we'll talk about Ponzi schemes. And
Mark Pugsley [00:13:31] so affinity fraud. Many people have heard of Bernie Madoff. Bernie Madoff, if you remember that story, was a guy who used the Jewish faith in a lot of ways in his Jewish connections in Florida and in New York to gain trust. And the same thing happens in Utah. Affinity fraud literally is fraud of your friends, defrauding your friends. And so this happens where someone has a church relationship or a family relationship or some other connection and they'll use that to gain trust. And so because of that connection, people feel like they're trustworthy and they'll invest with them. So affinity fraud is kind of a broad term that refers to those cases that involve friendships or church relationships. And that's what happens in Utah most of all.
John Dehlin [00:14:18] So almost anytime you hear about a deal through church, you should almost be concerned. Right. Because they're going to be preying on that trust in those relationships. It's almost like a dual relationship. You want your financial world, if possible, to be separate from those relationships that are around religion. Right?
Mark Pugsley [00:14:39] Yeah. The thing I've told people many times is if you are being pitched on a deal and in the context of that pitch, someone, you know, casually drops that they're a stake president or a bishop or we're a bishop, you know, I think you should be done. I think that's the end of the conversation.
John Dehlin [00:14:57] Or related to some celebrity in Mormonism or to some general authority or so in the cousin or son in law.
Mark Pugsley [00:15:04] This is, you know, you talked about what used to happen. What used to happen is these guys would send free stock to general authorities and then they would tell all their investors that, you know, elder so and so is an investor in our company, which wasn't technically true, but they would. Then the general authorities would have all this stock and they didn't know what to do with it. The church now has changed. They don't allow general authorities to accept free stock anymore because they realized people were using that to gain trust. But people drop names all the time. And you're going to see a lot of these as we talk about them that, that do exactly that.
John Dehlin [00:15:38] And then also using like Harvard or Yale or Wharton or Stanford. Right. Don't they often use names of big schools or New York, you know, securities firms? They try and use the reputation of universities or companies. Right.
Mark Pugsley [00:15:54] That happens too. And that happens probably nationwide. The problem here we have in Utah is unique to the Mormon church. And what we usually see is people dropping, you know, bishops names or general authorities names or their callings. Those are the most common things we see.
John Dehlin [00:16:08] Okay.
Mark Pugsley [00:16:09] And by the way, most of the people that they hit up, if you had a company you were trying to start, it would be normal for you to hit up the people in your neighborhood, your friends and neighbors, for money to get your company going. And that doesn't necessarily Mean, it's a fraud, but that's one of the sources you would go to. Right, if you needed to raise a bunch of money. So it's not, it's not unusual, it's not anyone's fault. It's just the reality of the situation here. And it's the same reason we have so many multi level marketing companies here, because people have big networks of friends and family that they hit up.
John Dehlin [00:16:44] Yeah, but you just don't want to make an investment based on, you know, relationships that are church connected. Based solely on that.
Mark Pugsley [00:16:53] Yes.
John Dehlin [00:16:54] Based solely on someone's claim to familial or institutional ties.
Mark Pugsley [00:16:58] Exactly. If the strength of an investment should lie on the financials of the company, what the company's doing, how it's structured, who's doing it, the relationship with the church should have nothing to do with it. Obviously you want to check out people's biographies, you want to know what their background is, whether they filed bankruptcy and stuff. But whether they were the bishop or the stake president has nothing to do with an investment opportunity and it should stay out.
How Ponzi Schemes Work and Warning Signs
John Dehlin [00:17:23] Okay, so what's a Ponzi scheme?
Mark Pugsley [00:17:26] So Ponzi scheme is where people start bringing in money and a lot of these, I think, start innocently again. If you were starting up a new practice and you needed some money to fund it, a lot of times you'll go out and talk to your friends and family, you'll start raising money to fund your new company that you're going to start. And one of the ways people find that it's actually not that easy to get people's money. So one of the ways that they find that they can get it is, is by offering returns that are unusually high. So they'll say you can put your money in the bank, you can put it in the stock market, but I'll pay you 10%, for instance, a year. 10% a year is good compared to what you would get in a lot of places. Then they guarantee it because people want guarantees or they don't ever want to lose. So then what happens is gradually these.
John Dehlin [00:18:17] Is that illegal to guarantee a return?
Mark Pugsley [00:18:21] I wouldn't say it's technically illegal. You can secure an investment on real estate, for instance, and get that's kind of a guarantee that if the investment goes bad, then you can foreclose on the property. But guarantees are something that happen all the time, more just to give people peace of mind. But it's hard to enforce it. You can give what's called a personal guarantee. You can even do it in writing. But frankly, if the company is going through the tubes and if the investment and the individual running it are going down the drain with it, the odds of getting money through a personal guarantee are very low. So they're not worth much.
John Dehlin [00:18:59] Okay, all right. Yeah. I mean, at some point, a guarantee is like a loan, isn't it? You're basically guaranteeing some type of rate of return. Right.
Mark Pugsley [00:19:11] It's not like. It would be more like if I gave you a loan and you promised me that you would pay it back for sure, no problem. I guarantee it. Then that really doesn't give me a whole lot of peace of mind. What often happens in these cases is people, because they have promised returns that are so high, they start paying them out. Word gets out that this guy's paying really good returns. He's paying 3% a month, whatever it would be. And so word gets around to the neighbors and friends, and as more money comes in, he has to make more payments. The reality is there's nothing there. The hallmark of a Ponzi scheme is there's no real underlying business, and that money's coming in from new investors, and it's going out to the older investors. So money's coming in the door and going right back out. It's not actually going to run the business itself.
John Dehlin [00:19:59] And aren't they skimming the money then to fund their own private sort of.
Mark Pugsley [00:20:03] In many cases, lifestyle is what we actually hear. I mean, one of the other hallmarks you see of almost all these cases is an extravagant lifestyle that these guys are living. So they're taking money out, they're paying off investors. Word gets out, more money comes in, goes back out. People aren't getting paperwork, they're not getting anything in writing, and they're just kind of trusting somebody. I've seen cases where people have given someone hundreds of thousands of dollars on a handshake. It's crazy.
John Dehlin [00:20:31] To me, part of the Lamborghini, Ferrari sort of thing is to create the impression of success, right?
Mark Pugsley [00:20:36] Right. Yeah, exactly.
John Dehlin [00:20:38] Okay, so how does it typically happen? How does somebody get sucked in?
Mark Pugsley [00:20:42] Well, it typically happens through what I just described, which is word gets out through word of mouth. If there's someone in your ward who's driving a really, you know, upgraded from a. From a Camry to a Mercedes, and they're living a great lifestyle, and they might. Someone at church might say, hey, what are you doing? Where are you investing? What's going on? Word gets out, well, I've got this really great deal. I'm making all this money Every month I'm getting payments. He's never missed a payment. That's always the thing. Oh, he's never missed a payment. Well, yet. And so word gets out, and then other people want in because they're getting 3 to 5%, if they're lucky, on the stock market. Five would be really good. Most legitimate businesses don't pay 2 to 3% per month. It just doesn't happen. And even New York Wall street firms don't consistently pay those kind of payments. And the reality is, most new businesses can't return that kind of money on a regular basis right from the beginning. It takes a business years to get going. But when you hear people starting to make payments immediately on loans or on investments, that's a big red flag. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
John Dehlin [00:21:54] Okay, so you mentioned not getting statements. You meant, you know, claims of never missing a payment. You know, interest rates that are, you know, returns that are too high. Again, based on relationships and not on evidence.
Mark Pugsley [00:22:10] Right.
John Dehlin [00:22:11] A newly emerging sort of thing. Right. Those are all people that don't.
Mark Pugsley [00:22:16] People that tell you they're in a rush, we need the money right now. People that will not want to give you paperwork. That's one of the real common things, is that people. To put an investment in a company, you're supposed to get what's called a private placement memorandum. There's got to be all sorts of paperwork with all the risks and disclosures. And if you're just doing it all word of mouth and on a handshake, that's a big, big problem. The other thing that we see in a lot of these cases is people, during their pitches, they talk about church stuff a lot. They drop church issues. They talk about their home teacher. They talk about their son being on a mission. We see people that are starting sales pitches with a prayer. So even though you're there in an investment pitch, they want to have a prayer before it starts, which I think ought to be a red flag. Guarantees unusually high returns. Discussing the scriptures in the context of an investment pitch, we. I heard a story once where one of the investigators said that the guy that was pitching the investment would always have tears running down his eyes, out of his eyes, as he would tell them what a wonderful blessing this could be and how much tithing and how they could help the church through the great opportunity that he was offering them. And this guy could turn on and off the tears in a second. So very manipulative.
John Dehlin [00:23:36] So our excessive reliance on emotion that sometimes we call the spirit or Sometimes we don't, but that can be risky, relying on personality and emotion and how someone makes us feel. Because obviously, if someone is able to make someone else feel really good, that's a way to manipulate them.
Mark Pugsley [00:23:58] Right, right, exactly. And it happens in church, and it happens outside of church, too.
John Dehlin [00:24:02] And then you mentioned no underlying business as being a concern. Now, really quickly tell us the difference between a Ponzi scheme and a pyramid scheme.
Mark Pugsley [00:24:11] They're really pretty much the same thing. There's really two. Two words that describe the same thing. And it's basically. And a lot of them start out with a real business, John. It's not like it's nothing from the outset, but the more money that comes in, the more money then it goes out. Well, people talk about MLMs, and those are a little bit different, but okay,
John Dehlin [00:24:30] yeah, well, yeah, so talk about an mlm.
Mark Pugsley [00:24:32] So mlm, that's not what I do. I do mostly things that I deal with investments. But MLMs, as you know, money comes in, then the only way you're going to get more money back or make money on it is to bring in new investors. And then those guys are encouraged to bring in more investors. A lot of these have a similar structure where someone starts up some sort of business and then they pay people that invest. They pay them what's called a finder's fee in order to bring in new investment. And so sometimes there's an MLM quality to these, but in most MLMs, there's actually a product that's getting sold. In a lot of my cases, they might start out with a company like a business of some sort, and we've got this product we're going to do. But when it comes right down to it, the paying out of investors, money coming in and going back out, hardly any of it is going to the underlying business.
John Dehlin [00:25:25] Okay, so if you were to say, well, give me all the paperwork that I need to know, give me all the information that I need to be able to decide whether or not to invest, what should you demand?
Mark Pugsley [00:25:38] Well, that's. And we can talk a little bit about that. And one of the things I would recommend is that if you're going to put in a lot of money, hundreds of thousands of dollars, it's definitely worth getting a corporate lawyer who can help you document it and review the documentation. But definitely you want to ask for financials, you want to ask for disclosures, you want to understand what's. What the risks of the company are. And that usually is put forth in a document called a private Placement memorandum.
John Dehlin [00:26:06] Yeah, that's what you talked about earlier.
Mark Pugsley [00:26:07] Without getting into too much detail. In order to offer it legally, you have to either offer it through a broker or you have to use a private placement memorandum. And the reality is, most of these scams, they don't even want to give you any paperwork except maybe a flashy brochure, but they're not going to document it all. But let me say this just to be clear. Getting a lot of paperwork doesn't necessarily mean that it's a good investment. You still have to review it. You have to pay attention. You have to Google people's names. I've got a couple of these, I'll talk about that. If they would have just googled the name of the guy that was hitting him up for money, they would have immediately seen that that person had been already in prison twice for investment fraud. That would have been a huge red flag. But so many people don't even Google the person's name.
Notable Fraud Cases Within Mormonism
John Dehlin [00:26:50] All right, well, let's jump in. You say you've got some, some of the war stories, the most prominent sort of fraudsters within Mormonism. Why don't we talk about some?
Mark Pugsley [00:26:59] Alright, sounds good. And let me just have a quick disclaimer, John, because a lot of these cases I'm going to talk about are my cases. I was involved in, I think all but one of these cases in some way or another. In case some, I represented the bad guy. In some cases I represent investors who have lost money. I've been doing this for a long time and I'm one of the only people in Utah that specializes in securities fraud. So a lot of these cases have come across my desk in one form or another. The information that I'm going to talk about here though is all going to be public information. I'm not going to talk about private information that I would have learned in the context of an attorney client privilege situation.
John Dehlin [00:27:42] Okay, good to know. All right.
Mark Pugsley [00:27:43] Okay. So the first one I was going to talk about is one of the most, one of the most renowned, famous, I guess you could say. And the reason for that is that it was a big one. It ran for a lot of time. It ran for 20 years. Over $180 million was lost through this. And this was through a guy named Val Southwick up in Ogden, Utah. And he was a real flashy guy. He had some real estate investments that he ran in Las Vegas and in Utah. The reality is that the investments that he was touting were not making as much money as he thought as he Told people. But some of the things that are interesting about this case, by the way, he was sued by the SEC in 2008 and February of 2008.
John Dehlin [00:28:34] He.
Mark Pugsley [00:28:34] When people would come in, and I have talked to many people who were pitched by Mr. Southwick, he told many investors that he was a former stake president. And in fact, that was not true. He'd never been a stake president. He showed. Typically, if people were kind of not sure, one of the things he would do is he would give them his temple recommend. He would show them his temple recommend to demonstrate that he was a credible guy. He had. If you walked into his office, he had church memorabilia all throughout the office. He had a. He had a Liahona on his desk. He had a replica of the golden plates on his desk. And he had around. He had pictures of temples, I understand, and a number of pictures of him with general authorities framed on the wall. So the whole office, the minute you walked in, was built to generate a level of trust that was from people, because most of the people he was hitting up were. Were members of the church. He did a couple things that were interesting. He had the missionaries come to his office every Friday to pray with his employees and also to any investors who happened to be in the office at the time. And then when they came, he would actually pay them between fifty and a hundred dollars cash for their trouble, the missionaries, and send them on their way. So if investors were in his office on Friday, he would bring them in for a very heartfelt prayer. One of the people that was indicted and convicted after the fact was a guy named Bill Hammons, who was an LDS bishop in, I believe, Las Vegas, or maybe it was in Mesquite, but he was a bishop at the time. He made over $10 million selling these investments for Val Southwick. And he was later indicted and is, I believe, in prison now. One of the things we see a lot, and this will come up in a number of these cases, is that when Val Southwick and especially Hammonds was being sentenced, they would get letters from their ward members, their bishops, from their stake presidents, give them to the judge to show what a great person they are, how wonderful they are, and that they shouldn't spend time in prison because they're so wonderful. Many times that actually backfires because judges see that as well. They don't like it.
John Dehlin [00:31:05] Yeah.
Mark Pugsley [00:31:06] Very manipulative. Yeah. He told a lot of investors that his son was on a mission when he wasn't. He took about. Over the last six years, he took $9 million in cash out of the company and had a fleet of 19 luxury vehicles, including Porsches, Ferraris, and Bentleys. And so he would drive them around and drive them to church. There's a story from a person who was in his ward that told me once that he would. He was living the young men's presidency, and every time they had an activity, he would cater it. So whether it was on Sunday or any other day. So he was a really flashy guy. He perpetuated his company for many, many years until he was shut down in 2008. Okay, so the next one is a guy out of Linden, Utah. So this is one of our Utah county cases. And this guy you might have seen in the news a couple years ago, his name was Jeff Moen, and he was sued by the SEC in 2009. He raised approximately $41 million in a very, very short period of time. And he had this kind of deal where he said that you put your. Your money into the CD in New Zealand and this bank in New Zealand, but it was actually fictitious, from what I understand. He promised returns. Get this. He promised his investors returns of as much as 30% a month. People would say, wow, 30% a month. How awesome would that be? So they'll liquidate investments. They'll liquidate their 401s to invest with this guy. Interestingly, he's one example where he actually had a criminal record at the time that he raised this $40 million. He'd been convicted of securities fraud in 2003, 2004, 2007, and he also had a number of convictions for theft.
John Dehlin [00:33:00] How does he keep operating with a license?
Mark Pugsley [00:33:03] He never had a license. None of these guys were ever licensed.
John Dehlin [00:33:06] Wow.
Mark Pugsley [00:33:06] So that's also something that you could do, is you can talk to the Division of Securities or the SEC or FINRA and check whether they have a license. So he did not have a license, but because he had a name that was somewhat bad, bad reputation, and could be Googled, he used a number of people in his ward and his friends to go out, and he paid them a finder's fee to bring investors in. And one of the evidence that. Pieces of evidence that they got in that case was a list of a number of ward directories where people had used their ward directory and then notations in the margin of how much money they'd raised from each person, as they'd called all the people in their ward. So that was a case where a lot of money was raised very, very quickly from Utah county residents, primarily after he was charged Criminally, he fled the country. And Jeff Moen was in Panama when the. When the authorities picked him up, somehow they found him in Panama and extradited him back to the United States. This case was in the news because a lot of the money that he raised he put into cars. And he bought like hundreds of cars and had them in a warehouse in Bountiful. And I don't know if you remember this, but they opened up this warehouse for the news and they showed all these cars. He had a Batman car and an old car that was like the. The Dukes of Hazzard. And he was. This is where he put his money. For whatever reason, he would buy old cars and put them all in a warehouse. Another thing that was interesting, I have
John Dehlin [00:34:37] to imagine it's a way to take the really promising potential investors to just show them how successful you are. I mean, how else? You could fly into mansions, right? You could take them on a yacht. But I'm just thinking having a bunch of cars is just one way to.
Mark Pugsley [00:34:55] It may be. Or maybe he thought this was something that couldn't be traced or something. I have no idea. I have no idea why he did this. But it wasn't hard for the SEC to find these, and they auctioned them all off. There's another thing that was interesting about this case is that when he was in jail, he tried to hire an inmate that he was with to kill four key witnesses in his case. And so he ended up. That guy turned on him and he ended up. He's probably serving more time because he tried to take out a hit on four witnesses in his case.
John Dehlin [00:35:27] Ouch.
Mark Pugsley [00:35:27] So, yeah, not a good guy. But if you met him, you'd hear all about how great he was and what a strong member of the church he was. Okay, so this is one that's a brand new one, actually. This was just filed this year. And this involves a guy in Bountiful and his name is Roger Bliss. And I've written this one up on my website, and most of these are up on my website, but this is one where he raised and lost very quickly, $3.2 million of people in his ward, primarily up in Bountiful. He told investors that he had received annual returns of 100 to 300% per year and that his average profits were about $920,000 a day. So people bought that, and it's crazy to me. And all he was doing was trading Apple stock, he said. But he said he had some sort of secret trading scheme through these dark pools where he was Trading and no one else knew about it. And he was a specialized trader. None of that was true. And in fact he told people he had $300 million that he was managing and he didn't, he didn't have anywhere close to that. But no one asked him for documentation, no one asked him for proof, no one asked him for paperwork. And people gave him $3.2 million just basically on a handshake. He actually, when the SEC came in, you know, he had told people that he had. What did he say? He told people he had $300 million in the bank and in his brokerage account. In fact, he had only $32,000 in his brokerage account. So he was just lying. And that guy has been. He was sued by the SEC in February of this year. So that one happened pretty quick. This one is out of Brigham City. Got a Brigham City case for you. Almost Logan.
John Dehlin [00:37:21] Close to home.
Mark Pugsley [00:37:21] Yeah, yeah, close to home. So this is a guy named Dean Udy U D Y and he is, according to papers that were filed in the case, there were 1500 investors who lost about $20 million with him. The interesting part about this case is that he was, at the time that he was raising all this money, he was a stake president and then a regional representative. So he was a regional representative during most of the time that this money was raised from investors and lost. So of the cases that I have, the one that's interesting about that and I actually don't have any involvement in that case, but the interesting thing about it is that he was a very high ranking church official and still was defrauding people every day. He and his son also were indicted by a grand jury in Las Vegas for bank fraud. So this is a bad guy who. Someone's discernment wasn't working with this guy. That's when they called him to be general authority, I can tell you that.
John Dehlin [00:38:26] So, so would he have been in the. One of the quorums of the 70 then?
Mark Pugsley [00:38:30] Well, I think he was. He was. This was in 2012. Yeah, and I think that was after. I'm trying to, I don't know the time off the top of my head when he was a regional rep. But he was either an area authority or maybe it was before they did that, maybe it was when they used to have 70s or something, I don't know.
John Dehlin [00:38:47] But once you've got that distinction then you can. So yeah, 1987 he was appointed. I'm looking up at the website. Okay, 1987 he was appointed as a regional rep. Okay. Yeah. Which I think is like a third corpsman of the 70 kind of thing.
Mark Pugsley [00:39:03] Yeah. He was a high up guy, but apparently didn't see any conflict between his Sunday duties and what he was doing to people. And he did, from what I understand, use his church calling in a. In his pitches. And obviously, if you're a stake president or a regional representative, you're going to have a high level of trust that you can achieve that other people wouldn't be able to do. And people are going to think, wow, he's a regional rep. He must be a great guy. I'm going to invest with him.
John Dehlin [00:39:31] Tell me really quickly how someone maintains these scams for 10 or 12 years. How do they do it?
Mark Pugsley [00:39:38] Well, part of the.
John Dehlin [00:39:39] Without getting shut down.
Mark Pugsley [00:39:40] Well, a lot of these things, what they do is they encourage people to keep the money in. So they will be sending out account statements that look like they're making more money, more money, more money. What they can't have is people pulling their money out because money is coming in. They're showing paper returns, but they're keeping it in there for their retirement someday. Meanwhile, more money is coming in. The other thing is that if people are paying out returns that are too high, that's very hard to sustain. But people who are paying out 10% a year, it's more sustainable. Bernie Madoff raised billions of dollars through this exact thing. He actually wasn't ever really trading any of the stocks that he claimed to be. But yet people, investment pools and professional investors were putting money with this guy because his track record and his reputation were so good. And he kept that going for a long time. Val Southwick kept his going for a long time. And in some cases, he really did have investments and he had real estate that he was doing. Some of them really do have things that they do to show people. They can take people on tours, they can show how great it is. But when it comes right down to it, what they do is they have investment forensic investigators come in and they can show that most of the money wasn't ever going into any particular thing. It was just kind of going in the door and right back out again to monthly payments. But a lot of them don't actually make the payments. They just show the payments on written statements. So people might think that their investment pool is getting bigger and bigger and bigger, but the reality is the money's not there.
John Dehlin [00:41:13] Okay, got it.
Mark Pugsley [00:41:14] By the way, the way these things often blow up is in 2007, a lot of cases blew up because all of a Sudden, people, other investments or their job or something crashed and they needed to get their money out. And when people start pulling their money out of these, that's when they blow up.
John Dehlin [00:41:30] Got it.
Mark Pugsley [00:41:33] Another one I'm going to talk about is right actually near my house. This guy is a guy named Travis Wright. He ran a company called waterford funding. The SEC sued him in 2010. He had a very lavish lifestyle. He raised $145 million from just 175 investors. Small number of investments, very high number of almost a million dollars, average per person. He promised returns of 24% per year. So very high returns. In fact, only a small amount of the money that he raised actually went into any investment at all. He used, According to the SEC filings, he used 15 million of that for personal use, including he bought the house of former Jazz player Jeff Hornacek on Walker Lane. And the story that I've heard from people who are investigators in the case is that he didn't like where the pool was, so he moved the pool over 3ft or 5ft. It was like just. He just moved the pool over, had it totally dug out, redone. He imported, you know, those cobblestones from France, those square cobblestones that the streets are made out of, and had this imported driveway just for his driveway. And it was a $5 million home that he totally renovated. He was a big hunter and went on lots of. He collected guns and went on lots of safaris and things and had lots of trophies around his house. People, by the way, are going to know, some of the people that listen to this are going to hear, are going to recognize these cases, and I hope that they'll be putting some of the comments on your website, because I know people have personal details that I actually can't talk about. One of the classic details, though I happen to know about that case, is that when he was the Scoutmaster, he wasn't in any high up church position, but he was the Scoutmaster and took the Scouts on some very lavish Scout trips. When he was sentenced to prison, he brought his whole scout troop in their uniforms to the sentencing so that they could. So the judge could see and see what great guys these were that he'd helped. And I can tell you that did not go over very well. Again, that backfired. It's not always a good idea. So, anyway, so the next one isn't particularly interesting, except that this guy is named John Dudley. He's from Sandy, and he was criminally indicted in 2011. But one of the things that he did. His sales method was very like mlm. And what he would do is he would have investors and he would say to you, John, I'm going to pay you a fee if you'll let me, if you'll invite some of your ward members to your house on Monday nights and then we can have like a prayer and I can pitch them on this investment in your home. So what he did is he actually leveraged the reputations of people that were investors to bring in other investors. So they might not have known him particularly, but because they knew John Dehlin and trusted him, he would leverage that to get more investors. So that happens a lot. He promised 5 to 10% per month. Again, all these guys, if there's one pattern, you'll see they're offering returns that are outrageously high. He said it was a foreign exchange and it was very exclusive, actually. He just used the money to buy two homes, a ski boat, airline tickets, gifts, trips, and mostly for his own use. So that one didn't last very long. It wasn't super big, but he was very clever in basically using the reputations of other people in order to gain trust. Again, the affinity fraud factor comes into play. Okay, there's one up in Denver that I want to talk about, mostly because it's a bigger case. It involves $21 million. He's serving 12 and a half years in prison. His name is Sean Merriman. He was a bishop. One of the interesting things though that he did with the money, he was a big art collection and so he used people's money to buy art. What did he do with this art? He had some of it in his house. But what he would do is he actually had a moving art collection that was posted in LDS wardhouses throughout Colorado. So his really, I mean, he had very, very expensive art. By national, I mean, world renowned masters. And he would have it in wardhouses all around in his stake where he lived, and maybe bigger than that. And then he would have, I think his name somehow posted that this was Mr. Merriman's art collection and he would use that to gain more investors. The government seized $4 million in fine art, antique cars, sports memorabilia and animal trophies from his safaris. So his art exhibit was called the Renaissance of Faith in Art and it included Rembrandt, Rubens and Durer pictures. So very wonderful, expensive million dollar paintings that were hung in wardhouses to promote faith.
John Dehlin [00:46:56] Wow.
Mark Pugsley [00:46:57] So that was, let's see, he was indicted. SEC complaint was filed in 2009. So this was a Few years ago. Another, more recent one that the SEC filed was against a guy out of Fountain Green, Utah. So this is the furthest south in Utah. And it was against someone named Wendell Jacobson. And actually they sued his son as well. The allegation in the SEC complaint was that he raised $200 million from more than 400 investors. He was, according to the SEC complaint, a bishop in a snow college student ward at the time, that he raised a lot of this money, at least when he was shut down. And also they alleged that he told many people that church leaders, including members of the quorum of the 12, were investors in his company. That may or may not have been true, but that was what he was doing. His, his. He did invest in apartment complexes. And the interesting thing about that is that, and this is one where I'm not sure it was a Ponzi scheme that the SEC has said that it is. It's not clear to me that it was. And in fact, he did have a lot of apartment buildings. And that money's been now returned to investors. They sold all the apartments. And investors, from my understanding, have received 100% on their dollar, which in most cases, when they get shut down by the sec, they appoint a receiver. The receivers try to liquidate everything and get the money back to investors. And most investors in a Ponzi scheme get cents on the dollar, like 10 cents if you're lucky. So this was an unusual one that way. So the last one I was going to talk about actually is Joseph Smith. And it's interesting that I'm not a historian, so I won't, you know, I'm not a pro at this. You might know more about this than I do. But, you know, he started a bank called the Kirkland Safety Society Anti banking company, he called it. And you know, I've read about this and it's a fascinating story because in fact, it was an illegal bank. He used it to gain money from church members and raised looks like $30,000, which in those days was a lot of money. Later he, you know, he used it for various things. And then the bank failed and he was named in 17 lawsuits. And then of course, that had a fallout in the church. So that's the last story I was going to tell John. But the thing that's interesting about this to me is that this was the Joseph Smith Anti banking or the Kirkland Safety Society was long before Charles Ponzi ever gave the name Ponzi scheme. And yet in a lot of ways, what Joseph Smith did back in Kirtland was a Ponzi scheme. And the fallout of that was that a lot of people left the church. And the fallout of a lot of these modern ones is the same. Many people leave the church over. People become disillusioned, people become frustrated. They think that they, you know, if they put their trust in a church member. If you can't trust a church member, who can you trust? And it's sad. It's sad because unfortunately, the church culture, I think, puts a premium on financial and worldly success. And people then try to do that. They look for any way to kind of work up the church ladder. And sometimes having a nice house and driving a nice car can help you to get into those positions, unfortunately.
Why Mormons May Be Especially Vulnerable
John Dehlin [00:50:30] So do you think Mormons are more gullible for some reason? Or if there's gullibility, what do you think the roots of the gullibility are?
Mark Pugsley [00:50:45] So in Mormonism, it's a big religion. There's a lot of people and there's very sophisticated people who are CPAs. I mean, Mitt Romney obviously is a brilliant guy and very sophisticated investor. I know many members of the church who are extremely sophisticated and would never fall for one of these things. The problem is a lot of these schemes, those aren't who they're going after. The real sophisticated. I mean, I've never been hit up on one of these because people kind of know who I am and they know that I know what to look for. But someone who's less sophisticated, someone who doesn't understand the niceties of complying with the SEC regulations, those are the ones that they're typically targeting. And a lot of them come from people's 401s. People would often be advised to move their 401ks into a company called American Pension Services, which would let them invest in other things. This year, American Pension Services turned out that the guy who ran that stole $24 million from it. So you can't even trust sometimes the companies that are managing your money for you. The main thing that you'll see in all of these cases is that people were not licensed to sell. And one of the ways that you can check this is you can go on the SEC's website. You can go on FINRA's website and check their licenses.
John Dehlin [00:52:07] FINRA?
Mark Pugsley [00:52:08] FINRA? Yeah, the financial industry regulatory association. FINRA used to be called nasd, and they're the ones that license stockbrokers. So you can check to see if someone has a license, but most of these people do not. And that's the problem okay.
Double Lives, Red Flags, and How to Protect Yourself
John Dehlin [00:52:24] Okay. Now, you mentioned in your program notes people living double lives. What is it that you see as being important about that?
Mark Pugsley [00:52:37] Well, you tell me. I mean, what do you think about that? You've seen that. Haven't you seen that in your practice or in your personal experiences? I mean, people who might act one way during the day and they might be gay, you know, people who are the bishop, but they are going out on the weekends with men. I mean, there's a lot of times, and maybe that's not unique to Mormon culture, but it does seem that we have a problem with people who are kind of having this dual personality. They're one guy at church and they're a different guy during the week. And I see that a lot. The other thing that I see is that people will use their position in the church, but they'll also feel that if they keep paying tithing and if they keep their temple recommend current, if they go through all these niceties, that the church has a certain number of recommend questions. One of them is, are you honest with your fellow men? Unfortunately, I think people fudge that one. They might to pay their tithing and do some of the outward things. But it's easy to say I feel good about my business dealings when in fact they're stealing money. And not all these people, I think, feel that they're doing anything wrong. A number of my clients that I've represented before the SEC insist until the day is done that they are honest people, good members of the church. And unfortunately, if they're not following the law and they're not doing. And it's. They may or may not be right, but they might not know it.
John Dehlin [00:54:11] So you've represented the bad guys?
Mark Pugsley [00:54:13] Oh, yeah.
John Dehlin [00:54:14] And the good guys, Both victims. And what's that like representing the perpetrators? I mean, honestly, some of the listeners might be turned off by that, but our legal system requires that everyone have representation. Right. Somebody's got to do it.
Mark Pugsley [00:54:31] Right. Right. And there's not a lot of people in Utah that represent people before the sec, and I'm one of them. And so I get calls. They're very hard cases. They're hard cases for a lot of different reasons. And it's hard to get into it and understand that people have been harmed. And it's hard to see. Sometimes you have clients that you don't always trust what they're telling you is true. And I can't talk about specific circumstances, but I can tell you that that's certainly one of the challenges. And I get frustrated. I've gotten disillusioned over the years. I've gotten a little cynical about people because of it, but I see both sides. My favorite kind of case is actually to help people who have been victimized, because there are sometimes ways that you can go and try to get their money back. That's one of the things I do. And I'm trying to move my practice more into helping victims than helping bad guys. But I've done both.
John Dehlin [00:55:28] But you do both because that's kind of the domain you kind of have to. To specialize.
Mark Pugsley [00:55:31] Right, Right.
John Dehlin [00:55:34] Okay. So we've talked about kind of the warning signs. We'll just review. I've heard, you know, excessive rates of return promises on a handshake, lack of documentation, lack of licensure, you know, excessive reliance on religious or other sort of ways of manipulating through influence or reputation. Right.
Mark Pugsley [00:56:05] You've hit all the main ones. A lot of them also talk about things that are very complex, like offshore trading or currency trading or commodities. And they'll say they've got a certain system. I see that a lot where people are saying, I've got this special system and no one else has it, and if you invest with me, I'm going to make you millions of dollars and I'm making other people millions. And in fact, you. That's not true. But people, when it sounds too complicated, they often don't look into it. And the other thing that people often have is a friend or a family member who's already invested. And they'll say, well, so and so checked into this because they're a smart guy or a smart woman, and so they must have done the homework. So I'm not going to bother. I'm just going to trust that they did the homework. And that's a really bad idea. Really bad idea.
John Dehlin [00:56:51] All right. And so let's say that you are approached for one of these things. What can you do? I mean, obviously you can say, no, I'm not interested. What else is there beyond that?
Mark Pugsley [00:57:03] So you can. And if you are interested, and certainly there are people out there that have genuinely legitimate opportunities. And I wouldn't say that anyone who approached you for an investment is going to defraud you. I think, though, that it's really important to be careful. And if you see any of these red flags that you just mentioned guarantees really high returns. Those are the two really high returns in particular. And then people talking about church, if you see those things happen, just slow the thing down. Because a lot of times people try to push you into it very Quickly. And so I would say, look, I'm going to take the time I need to get all your paperwork, I'm going to Google your name, I'm going to do my research, I'm going to talk to my attorney, I'm going to do a lot of things to look into it. Because I'm just saying anyone who is asking for $100,000 or $50,000 of your hard earned money, you don't want to hand that over unless you've done your homework. You've got to protect yourself.
John Dehlin [00:58:04] So can they hire someone like you to do that due diligence?
Mark Pugsley [00:58:09] Yeah, it's not really what I do. I sometimes help people vet things, but that's not really what there's a lot of attorneys do corporate law and do securities investments. And any lawyer hopefully would be able to help you vet the thing, look through the documents, make sure their paperwork is there. Lawyers also have access to databases so they can look at whether so and so has been sued or not, whether their company is in litigation, whether they filed bankruptcy. All of those things are available to a lawyer who can look into kind of their history. And that's a good idea.
John Dehlin [00:58:43] And then what if you are listening to this podcast and you realize you or someone you love is actually in one of these scams right now? What do you do?
Mark Pugsley [00:58:53] So this is really where the rubber meets the road. And I think it's important for people to know that there is help out there. A lot of times if you're in an investment scam right now, when the economy is going good, you might not know it, you might be getting your monthly payments every month, but you could indeed be in a scam, especially if these returns are super high. So what I would say is, first of all, talk to a lawyer. But if everything's going great, that doesn't necessarily mean that it will continue to go great. So it used to be that I would get calls from people periodically that their grandmother or their parents were in a scam scam, and they would say, hey, help me get them out. And I would say, well, let's talk to the sec. But the victims wouldn't want to do it because the victims want the scheme to keep going. They want it to perpetuate itself because the only way they're going to get their money back is if the scheme continues on. Right. So they were very reluctant to talk to anyone because they don't want to throw a wrench into the gears that are seemingly going just fine. That was changed about three years ago when The SEC and the state have both passed what's called whistleblower laws. So a big part of my practice now is helping people who are aware of a scam, people who maybe work for a company that they think is a scam. They can actually get a financial award for reporting that to the sec or to the state. State. And getting it stopped before the whole thing blows up. And that's really important because the SEC has the ability to shut these things down when they're in operation, before all the money disappears. The problem is mostly the ones that blow up. When the economy tanks, the money's gone and it's way too late, and no one's ever going to get their money back. So if you know someone who's involved in one of these, have them talk to a lawyer who understands whistleblower cases. If you have. If you work for a company that you think is perpetuating a scam, talk to a lawyer who does whistleblower cases, because those kind of lawyers can help you go proactively to the state in the SEC and shut it down. And you can get paid as much as 30% of whatever the fines are they collect under certain circumstances. So there's a lot of fine print on that. But this is a big part of the growing way to enlist the public and try to find these cases because they want to shut them down before it all blows up. Also, if the people are affiliated with a brokerage firm or if they're affiliated with a company, a bank or someplace, sometimes there can be a big company that you can go after, and those opportunities are sometimes there, but sometimes not. So there's things you can do, but not always.
Final Cases, Reflections, and Closing Thoughts
John Dehlin [01:01:46] Okay. Does the name Rick Korber mean anything to you?
Mark Pugsley [01:01:51] Yeah, that was, you know, the smart story that I told you right up front. That was Rick Kerber.
John Dehlin [01:01:56] Oh, okay. You didn't mention his name, though.
Mark Pugsley [01:01:58] Yeah, he had that website, Free Capitalist. And he was a guy that did not get indicted, but he's still. They're still kind of going after him. So. Yeah, Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:02:12] I actually have neighbors that apparently lost hundreds of thousands of dollars from.
Mark Pugsley [01:02:17] Yes, he had a thing where he was doing equity skimming, he called it. And so you would give him your money and he would buy houses and fix them up. And he had all these things. And the pitch was very, very attractive, but people lost hundreds of millions of dollars. One of the stories I've liked about Rick Kerber is that he was really good at having big parties at his house with his Maseratis parked out front but then the investors, what they didn't realize is that they had their money, had bought that car that they were looking at and then he would give them hot dogs. So yeah, he was. And one of his associates was just indicted as well. So that case actually is ongoing. But that's one of the big ones. Yes.
John Dehlin [01:03:03] Okay. All right. Yeah, I just had that memory right at the end.
Mark Pugsley [01:03:07] Yeah.
John Dehlin [01:03:07] All right, well, your name is Mark Pugsley. The website, although the law firm for you is Ray, Quinney and Nebeker. The website is Utah securitiesfraud.com but I'm hopeful that this podcast will help some people either avoid losing a bunch of money or maybe get out while the goings good before they lose too much.
Mark Pugsley [01:03:32] Me too. Me too.
John Dehlin [01:03:35] Alright. Well, Mark, I appreciate you joining us on Mormon Stories and sharing your expertise. I'll thank our listeners for their support of Mormon Stories. Want to encourage them to go to MormonStories.org As Mark said, if you know any of these guys and they're almost all guys, and you have any details of the cases, please share them@mormonstories.org if you know of other cases or even ongoing cases, it'd be fun to have you list them in the comments section as well. And just most importantly, let's try and become more aware about these sorts of things. And awareness sort of begins by talking about it. So, Mark, thanks for joining us on Mormon Stories.
Mark Pugsley [01:04:18] My pleasure. Thanks, John.
John Dehlin [01:04:19] All right, listeners, join us again. Thanks for your financial support. It's what makes this possible. And please join us again soon on Mormon Stories. Thanks again and have a happy New Year and Merry Christmas to all. Take care, everybody. Thanks, Mark.
Mark Pugsley [01:04:37] All right, thanks, John.
John Dehlin [01:04:44] Thanks for joining us today on Mormon Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us make more like it by becoming a monthly subscriber@mormonstories.org music for this episode was provided by the Lower Lights and other sources.
Mark Pugsley [01:04:59] Cease to make me whole
John Dehlin [01:05:06] when with a wounded heart, anger or malice I draw myself self apart Searching my soul.
Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.
87 Responses
A very important topic. I’ve been a tertiary victim of this by being employed by one of the perpetrators of this. I got out as soon as I found out it was a scam. Last I heard my old boss was in prison.
Needed to listen to this right away – not just happening in Utah, but my retired mother (single), living in Saskatchewan Canada, had her entire nest egg, six figures, taken from her by trusting her home teacher. A few months after we started to deal with this mess, realizing what had happened, the church sent out a letter to be read in sacrament meeting regarding ‘fraud schemes and unwise investments’ (Dated 02/27/2008, I have a copy of it).
Quote from the letter- “We are concerned that some Church members ignore the oft-repeated direction to prepare and live within a budget, avoid consumer debt, and save against a time of need…”
This made my blood boil! Sure the church has ‘counselled’ regarding such, but my mother was set up and ‘counselled’ to follow his direction/inspiration as a hometeacher! Yes, tears were in his eyes too, she has said. He said he felt ‘inspired by God to be there and direct her regarding her finances’.
‘Keith’ was assigned as her ‘hometeacher’ and as such, stole all she had, even asking for rights to the title of her home. According to this article on lds.org https://www.lds.org/ensign/1973/03/the-responsibilities-of-home-teachers?lang=eng
he did everything a hometeacher should and as a woman she was always taught to listen to her priesthood leader, he is the ‘voice of God’ for her. He bore his testimony, in that he had a ‘burning desire to help her financially’ and it was coming from the Lord Himself.
Taken from the article a hometeacher must, * Build a relationship of trust between you and your assigned family, *Help serve them with temporal needs and spiritual, sharing your testimony and an inspired message at least monthly, *If there is a need, it is a hometeacher’s responsibility to see it is met, before the Bishop is involved.
So there it is. Another woman in the church set up for failure at the hands of a patriarchal system that is to ‘protect and bless her’. I blame the church, and I blame Keith. My mother? Yes, she is naive, but in her mind she was following the counsel of an assigned priesthood leader, and as women in the church are taught, the ‘priesthood’ has the ultimate say.
‘Keith’ has moved around into the USA and is still an active member today!
Sounds like someone I came across as well. Rooked people out of hundreds of thousands of dollars as he made his way through Edmonton and Calgary before heading to the states. I’m so sorry to hear that your Mother was a victim.
BK??? From Calgary, Edmonton, Utah, ….
he is one the biggest scams i’ve ever met. he has left a trail of financially ruined people.
if anyone ever comes across him or one of his offers stay far away.
So, my husband and I unfortunately came across him and got tangled up in the Teton Air fiasco. What is his status now? Has he been prosecuted?
I too was involved with the Air Ranch fraud and lost a large sum of money. Does anyone have any details or updates on what happened? dba95604@gmail.com
He is the CEO of a Refining company Independent Oil Corp. Building a refinery in Saskatchewan. Many investors, contractors are not getting paid but strung along. Lots of safety concerns.
He is STILL leaving a trail of broken promises, conning people out of money, no verifiable successes, tall tales and out for himself. I caution anybody considering investing in anything connected to BK, BK Hospitality, BK Ranch, etc. Run away!!
Please tell me more. Via email. Friend is involved with an investment with BK
Hey I have a cousin that is working for him what kind of scam is he into sounds like no shortage of cash my cousin says he getting paid but doesn’t no what this guy does
BK and his family are still at it in southern Alberta, ripping people off and looking like “Ranchers” in the public sphere. Everyone forgot “BK Ranch” from around 2009 when he hired all these locals (Okotoks area) to build his ranch and never paid them.
He is a snake oil salesman and sells sub par products and gets investments from people who trust him. People have lost millions in family fortunes trusting him. After they invest in his trust funds or companies for shares he will say that they need to invest more money to keep the company going. Meanwhile he takes the investment for he and his family to live off of, the shareholders never see a cent.
A class action lawsuit should be brought against him for each of his holdings. He has been doing this for years and this is how he and his family thrive. Sinking all their stolen money into horses, trucks, and land. He intentionally targets members of the church and others, just search the court case “BLK vs Utah” from 2014.
It won’t be long before whoever works for him isn’t paid, and he and his family move on to another location (so far it has been Calgary, out by Longview, Saskatechewan, Utah) and they are escaping their crooked deeds. Heed my warning and stay far away, tell your friends and family. Social media makes them look good but their fame is built on stolen money.
BK is the biggest scam artist I’ve ever met and probably ever in Alberta. He is lieing about his refinery. He will not build it and keep the money. The idea is stolen from others and is not financially viable. He sets everyone up in his wake as patsy’s and walks away. Now he’s set his son up to take a fall. He has been sued numerous times, banned from the Alberta oil and gas community and the ERCB., Scammed half the Foothills MD and all friends and neighbors to build his old house in DeWinton forcing the trades into bankruptcy. There is much much more. Including ripping off major NFl players for $100’s of thousands. I could go on and on. DO NOT TRUST THIS MAN – YOU WILL BE RIPPED OFF at the LEAST !!! Believe me I bately made it out of one of his scams and still lost $40000. Some lost millions … These are all true stories – everyone of them on here is true. He is a thief- narcissist and a con man.
I should add it was a Ponzi scheme in ‘oil well investments’. Apparently many trusting members invested, with the little investors ‘making’ immediate money while the ‘bigger’ investors lost everything. The ‘little’ guys would tell others ‘wow, made a ton’, getting the attention of others.
However, if you meet a member of the church named ‘Keith'(older man, bad eyebrows), having lived in Saskatchewan, with a lifetime of experience in ‘oil’…….RUN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! He too did this all without any type of security license.
About 15 years ago, I was ripped off by this asshole, BK, to the tune of over 40K with his broken promises and get rich oil schemes. I honestly can’t believe how he has not been successfully sued and/or thrown in jail. I wonder how many people have been bilked. I despise the way he uses his membership in the mormon church to gain trust.
THE ALBERTA ENERGY REGULATOR HAS NAMED A VETERAN CALGARY OILMAN FOR FAILING TO COMPLY
WITH 18 ORDERS
(Source: Calgary Herald) The AER says that three companies he controlled failed to pay security deposits, orphan
well fund levies and abandonment costs.
On Thursday, the AER formally “named” BLK under Section 106 of the Oil and Gas Conservation Act, a
move that is expected to severely curtail his ability to operate in the Alberta oilpatch, as well as that of any company
in which he has a controlling interest.
It said that BK was in control of Copper Creek Petroleum Inc., Reid Resources Inc. and Savant Energy Ltd. when
they failed to comply with the orders over a three-year period beginning in 2010.
“The evidence and Mr. BK’s apparent lack of respect for the regulator’s processes, including this process, leads to
the conclusion that it . . . is in the public interest to name Mr. BK as recommended,” the declaration says.
The order requires BK to tell the AER what oil and gas companies or licences he is involved in and demands that
he warn any potential buyer of oil and gas licences in which he has a stake of his status with the AER. It says security
fees must be paid by any companies in which BK has a controlling interest.
“It bears repeating that, in the panel’s view, it is in the public interest for companies that encounter challenges to work
with the regulator to mitigate risks of noncompliance and to come into compliance if challenges arise,” the declaration
says.
“In this case, the panel would prefer to incent Mr. BK to address impacts resulting from the noncompliance and
demonstrate his ability to be a responsible operator. If Mr. BK addresses impacts and his ability, the restrictions
imposed by this decision could be suspended by the AER.”
An AER summary of orders shows that Copper Creek failed to pay security and orphan well fund fees for six wells
and a facility; Reid Resources failed to pay administration fees for two pipeline licences; and Savant failed to pay
security, orphan well fund and abandonment costs on two wells and a property, along with pipeline fees.
All three companies are named by the Orphan Well Association on a list of defunct licensees, with the association
noting that it has had to pay $30,000 in abandonment costs for Copper Creek, $2,000 for Reid Resources and
$583,000 for Savant so far.
“The orphan well program came into operation in 2002 with the specific intent of protecting the public from having to
foot the cost of any reclamation or abandonment activities,” said David Gowland, Alberta manager for the Canadian
Association of Petroleum Producers. “We feel it’s the responsibility of the industry as a whole to ensure these costs
don’t fall to the taxpayer.”
He pointed out the annual orphan well fund levy set by the AER and collected from industry was doubled this year to
$30 million from $15 million in 2014.
BK is named in online documents as the principal of two other small Calgary oil and gas companies, BK Energy
Trust Inc. and Bradley Oil & Gas Inc., which were petitioned into receivership in August 2014.
According to an online report from receiver Hardie and Kelly Inc., BK was declared bankrupt in February 2014,
with Deloitte Restructuring named trustee. It says the two companies were founded in 2011 and 2013, respectivel
He is a criminal end of story – saw it with my own hard earned money.
In so sorry Clint. Do you want to tell your story on Mormon Stories Podcast?
Are you going to do the podcast?
This man has to be stopped.
We have a friend involved with him right now and need proof for him.
Wow, that’s horrible, G. I can only imagine the frustration and betrayal you and your mother must feel after such an incident. When I read that instruction regarding the duty of a home teacher, “to serve them with temporal needs and spiritual,” I read that to mean things like making sure they are able to pay the rent and utilities, buy groceries, and put gas in the car, not advise her on what to do with a six-figure nest egg. That home teacher abused an inspired program for his own financial gain. I hope that he is eventually caught and made to answer for his behavior.
Will you send me a copy of that 2008 letter that was read. pawest777@gmail.com
I tried. Not a valid email?
“Maybe Mormons are more gullible than other people.” I don’t know if we are more gullible than other people, but we are gullible. =)
It is a sad thing to say that I have always had a rule that my family lives by. 1) Never work for a member of the “Church” 2) never buy or sell something to a “church” member. The reason for these rules was due to the issues that it never works out. One way or another we always get burnt.
Hi. I don’t mean to shutbyou down, but i don’t think Mormons are necessarily more gulible than most. There is something to be said about a culture that teaches absolute trust in authority figures. It’s hard to teach a standard and then tell people not to practice it on a day to day basis in their lives even in non religious contexts. Especially when they are taught that their religion supercedes all other concerns.
Is it true that Utah is the only state in the Union with two FBI white collar crime investigation offices? I think I heard Shawn McCraney claim that once years ago. It’s one of those claims that seems unbelievable, not because Utah isn’t corrupt, but because other states are so large (think NY city, for example). I’d be curious to know the answer to that question since it’s bugged me ever since I heard it. Sorry I didn’t get it in in time for the interview.
While as a business undergraduate at BYU in the early 1980’s I was invited to attend a BYU conference where this was the topic. They gave examples similar to what Mark Pugsley gave in this podcast. They were warning everyone about these type of scams.
I remember watching the news at that time about a diamond scam. As I recall it involved people in the church and a lot of money was taken from a small Utah town.
I recall them mentioning that people feel that if they are righteous and pay their tithing etc, they deserve the outsized returns that are beyond what can normally be had in the market.
I guess there is one born every minute.
Two examples of both victims and perpetrators in my family:
1.) One of my family members was defrauded of $250K by his stake president. There were never any repercussions in the church for the stake president as a result of his being convicted in court for his dishonest conduct. Using his position of authority as stake president, he defrauded others in the church as well.
2.) Another family member (also strong in the church, in a leadership position) was convicted and served time for investment fraud in a Ponzi scheme to the tune of about 8 million. He maintains his innocence to this day, and friends/family in the church have stood fast with him. It was the non-members who took him to court and easily prevailed (Federal case) due to the aggregious nature of fraud.
The cognitive dissonance which must be maintained by the most bright and intelligent LDS members severely hamstrings their critical judgement and warps their ethics. The feeling that one is manifestly entitled to earthly riches as a result of being among the valiant, the chosen, clouds their judgement.
I would be extra cautious when doing business with anyone who is a member of the LDS church.
Don’t forget about Mormon frauds ouside of Utah
Anthony Vassallo and Ken Kenitzer, Two Mormons in California who ran an 80 million dollar scam
https://www.pleasantonweekly.com/news/2009/03/12/update-sec-alleges-40m-ponzi-scheme-involving-pleasanton-businessman
Darren Palmer, Idaho Bishop Fleeces his Ward
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/27/us/27ponzi.html
Shawn Merriman, Bishop from Aurora Colorado, 15 million scam again ripped off members of his ward
https://www.cnbc.com/id/47881681
Julius Blackwelder, Bishop from Connecticut who got 1.5 million from his ward
https://www.ctpost.com/local/article/Mormon-bishop-gets-prison-for-Ponzi-scheme-4628550.php
Three more from Utah, California and Mass.
https://www.deseretnews.com/article/705396722/California-man-used-Mormon-leadership-position-in-investment-fraud-scheme-SEC-says.html?pg=all
Daniel Hunter, Californian
https://www.ocweekly.com/news/socal-white-collar-crook-wins-federal-prison-trip-6468686
Add to that list Max Tanner, from Las Vegas:
https://www.justice.gov/archive/usao/nv/news/2002/11082002.html
And add to that Mark Ellison, Douglas Swenson, and his sons:
https://www.ktvb.com/story/news/crime/2014/08/20/dsbi-swenson-sentenced/14359533/
Disappointed that you did not mention Paul H. Dunn and his son-in-law, Jeril Wingett. Jeril, after all, had the ordinance of “his calling an election made sure.”
Paul Dunn was also affiliated with Grant Affleck and Wade B. Cook and he was a fraud himself. Read “Lying For The Lord” by Lynn Packer
Interestingly, Rick has recently mentioned John in a podcast.
https://soundcloud.com/libertyreef/lds-church-correct-and-thoughtful-in-policy-changes-for-same-sex-couples-and-children-episode-1
What did he say?
At 9:30
My recollection is that he criticized your “coverage” of the SSM -children policy. He claimed to have met with Thomas Monson and said he is not suffering with dementia and has full faculties. And he pretended to not know how to say your last name which I thought was pretty obviously false and funny but guess that saying your last name wrong is SOP for TBM’s discussing you in a way to slight you while simultaneously having to reference you. In pure Rick fashion it was name dropping and posing, saying that he had been called on “important” business to Salt Lake and some kind of “special function” with Monson. Rick seems to be trying to revitalize his radio personality and my feeling is that he potentially sees you as an opponent that he can attack to gain listners/followers. For that reason I honestly kind of hate to bring it up since it just gives him more notoriety which I don’t want to do. No doubt, he’ll read this (on a podcast he surely never visits) and have to come in here and have to defend his honor.
What is funny and disturbing is that if the story is true, Monson is calling Rick to meet with him only a few years after Ricks Ponzi activity presumably caused the church to release the announcements on money and investments. My guess is that he’s been forgiven by the church and given his golden ticket. Why not? They surely saw some of that 100 million.
What might be even more fascinating to readers here is that I have good reason to believe that Rick was the subject of a Daughters of Mormonism podcast called “She Wasn’t a Wife For Me” where former wife Michelle spills the beans on polygamy in their relationship . I mention this because it makes a meeting of these two even more hysterical, and yet somehow not that surprising.
https://daughtersofmormonism.blogspot.com/2011/06/episode-17-she-wasnt-wife-for-me.html
So, Thomas S. Monson is in full use of his mental faculties but meets with former Ponzi ring leader, former polygamy seeker?
Ugh. He is incapable of getting to the point.
Tl:dr: You are too lowly to understand the handbook. It requires training to grasp it.
“The following are serious transgressions” that “require a disciplinary counsel” but we aren’t saying they are equivalents. On the other hand, as evidenced in this thread. Stealing millions is perfectly fine but sexual cohabitation requires we kick you out. So I can only assume that loving relationships are much worse in the eyes of god than fraud.
I also have to bow to him. He’s a master of the subtle ad hominem.
Dean Udy and I are both from Riverside, Utah. He’s a couple of years older than me and both of us went to Utah State. I bought one of the first whole life insurance policies Dean was selling for Connecticut Mutual in about 1963–I think the year he was a senior. He was a ‘business partner’ with Hugh Pinnock as they were both involved in Connecticut Mutual life insurance. I met Pinnock a couple of times when he was a GA and he seemed like a shifty character–as I think was born out in his involvement in the Mark Hofman debacle.
I really enjoyed the discussion about how can people live double lives and want would like to add a thought that relates to both Joseph Smith and current ponzi schemers. I am currently reading the book Quiet by Susan Cain. The book is about being an introvert in an extroverted country. Cain references the observation of cultural historian, Warren Susman that in the mid 1800’s the nation changed from a Culture of Character to a Culture of Personality. This struck a chord with me because this is also the time of the restoration and the beginning of the ‘charismatic church leader.’
Evidence that the cultural change took full effect by the early 1900’s is Dale Carnegie’s personality books which are still widely used today. In a book on public speaking, he suggests ‘truth or lie’ speech giving where you try to have the audience believe your convincing lies as a way to practice becoming a better public speaker.
If you are in a extroverted country and extroverted church and believe convincing and charismatic speech giving as the spirit speaking to you, you just might follow the brethren’s talks or join a ponzi scheme.
An important, timely conversation, John and Mark. A doctor in our ward invested hundreds of thousands of dollars over several decades with a local real estate investor/developer only to have the the principals end up in jail and the money never materialize. As was described in the interview, the doc just left the money in the pot and was told year-by-year how it was growing until he supposedly had earned over a million dollars. Thanks for nothing. At trial the man’s widow actually testified on behalf of the accused. They were friends and confidants.
This subject brings to mind 3 Nephi 16:10:
“And thus commandeth the Father that I should say unto you: At that day when the Gentiles shall sin against my gospel, and shall reject the fulness of my gospel, and shall be lifted up in the pride of their hearts above all nations, and above all the people of the whole earth, and shall be filled with all manner of lyings, and of deceits, and of mischiefs, and all manner of hypocrisy, and murders, and priestcrafts, and whoredoms, and of secret abominations; and if they shall do all those things, and shall reject the fulness of my gospel, behold, saith the Father, I will bring the fulness of my gospel from among them.”
Affinity fraud is one more symptom of spiritual rot among we gentiles. The report that priestcraft is flourishing in affluent Alpine, UT is telling. May they not progress to the point of murders!
This was a phenomenal episode! Something that absolutely needed to be adressed in Utah and in Mormon culture but something TSCC will never do because it hurts their image. I was thinking about the phrase “by their fruits ye shall know them” while listening to this, and if you look at the fruits of state heavily influenced by Mormonism you have a state that leads the nation in (their fruits):
-Affinity fraud
-Anti-depressant usage
-Porn usage
-Teen suicide
-Highest per capita in plastic surgery
-One of the leading states in bankruptcy
However, Utah does lead the nation in cookies being left of neighbors doorsteps with passive aggressive messages about how they are throwing away their salvation.
The first Mormon fraudster was Joseph Smith in Kirtland Ohio. He opened an illegal bank, the Kirtland Safety Society and printed money that quickly lost value, but Smith jumped overboard before it collapsed then fled the state before he could be jailed.
I have relatives who were defrauded by former Mormon bishop Ted Johnson in Virginia. My grandfather was one of his initial investors, and he used that relationship to bring in other investors, as my grandfather was widely respected in the community as being a frugal and smart money manager. Many of the people who invested had little financial literacy but wholeheartedly trusted Johnson (who had been a very charismatic and beloved bishop), my grandfather, and a few other pillars of the community who were early investors.
During the trial, lawyers introduced Johnson’s personal journal into evidence as this was where he was doing the real bookkeeping (recording whos investments were paying who’s “returns”). Johnson’s lawyers unsuccessfully argued the journal should not be admitted into evidence because it was a religious item and admitting it would jeopardize his religious liberties.
Also, my grandmother had always said she wanted “Teddy” to conduct her funeral when she died as he had such a way with words and she loved to hear him talk on Sundays at church. She maintained this desire even after he was convicted. (I never knew for sure, but my belief is that as one of the early investors in the scheme, my grandfather at least recouped his money, and may have come out ahead even.) Unfortunately he was unable to conduct her funeral as he began his prison sentence shortly before she died.
https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/pr5567-08
These stories of fraud and deception among the “saints” is fascinating. Trust and faith are destroyed because of the deception individuals and situations.
Many years back, in the East Millcreek area of Salt Lake City, I witnessed a similar situation. A member of a local bishopric, claimed to be an ‘investment counselor’. He went through the area, asking elderly, widowed individuals to invest and grow their hard earned retirement monies, by allowing him to manage their funds.
Over the course of 11 years, he sent monthly statements to more than 100 individuals, showing falsified numbers and gains, to his clients.
It wasn’t until one client needed to cash out her investment, due to hardship, that the scheme tumbled. This client was a ward member, and a legally blind woman, who had owned and run a very humble, small newspaper and gum shop under the steps of the Utah State Capitol bldg. She was a humble individual and worked hard. To watch her fumble daily, trying to do her work while being legally blind, was very touching. When she realized that all she had earned for 20 years was now gone, it was devastating. She died shortly thereafter, feeling very saddened and disillusioned. She was one of many affected by this.
This counselor in the bishopric, used the money over the years to build a larger, nicer home and drive nicer cars. When he was sentenced, his wife begged the local judge to allow him only 11 months of prison time served in a ‘white collar’ lock up facility, rather than a longer term that would have required him to spend time in the state penitentiary — she was terrified that he’d be raped in prison! It seemed okay that he’d figuratively raped and deceived many in his neighborhood. These were individuals who were vulnerable and trusting. His wife was bitter that neighbors leaked pictures of the couple to the local news stations. She continued to remain bitter that her husband had been caught; rather than being humbled and apologetic. Her husband was excommunicated and served 11 months of lock up time. When he returned, he was quietly reinstated in the Church. The neighborhood was still reeling over the incident.
The fallout from this incident left the neighborhood with a very weird vibe for a long time. People were less trusting, and remain stunned by the incident. Perhaps it was because of shame and disappointment in their willingness to be so gullible.
Just when you think nothing will surprise you in life, something comes along that reminds us that yes, we are all human. But these incidents point out a larger issue: that there is a disconnect between principals taught in sunday worship and practice of day-to-day ethics among the “saints”. Compartmentalization is a useful tool. Not surprising.
Super informative, thanks. I’m not Mormon, but I recognize some of these tactics from my own cultural community. It’s even more tricky because for us there are a lot of immigrants, and the language barrier and general lack of understanding of how the US financial system works makes it even easier for these con-artists to prey On people. In general, I think a lack of mixing amongst people outside your cultural group leads to being an easy “mark.” Did not know you could check licensing online. Definitely forwarding that link to family & friends.
Very interesting!
https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/mesa-mormon-scammers-duane-slade-brent-williams-and-guy-williams-sentenced-to-prison-6641865
Duane Slade moved to Austin, TX after scamming $160 Million from members in Arizona, Utah and Nevada. It’s crazy that Slade moved to Kurk Barton’s ward in Austin. (Barton scammed members out of $50 Million.)
This guy Duane Slade is the son in law to a man from Renton Washington that was convicted of the same type of crime, he swindled senior citizens out of their life savings. He spent almost 10 years in prison. Some of Jerry Kings money ended up with with Duane. This is a crime family extraordinaire. The families that were swindled finally recovered $26.00 each from Jerry King after he got out of prison. He stole $12 million, Surprised the IRS never got him for taxes not paid by the thief.
Sherwood Hills resort in Sardine Canyon was endorsed by the Osmonds, and Paul H. Dunn, in the late 70s. The owner was a Mormon from Preston, ID. I don’t remember exactly what kind of deception he used to get people to invest in it, but he did make a big deal of being a good Mormon. I remember my dad saying “If a man goes out of his way in a business deal to let you know that he’s a Mormon, you’d better keep your hand on your wallet.”
Having never lived in Utah before, I was surprised, when we moved to Alpine, Utah, by how popular MLMs were among my ward members. Perhaps this was because we had several owners of Noni, Zango, Gensis Pure etc. living in our ward and they all seemed to being doing very well. I have to admit at one point, I got caught up in their enthusiasm and agreed to go with a friend to a meeting for a new MLM. We were going to get in on “the ground floor”. The majority of the meeting was hype about the pay structure. When they finally got around to the product- a newly discovered fruit drink with healing powers (sound familiar) , I commented that at 100 dollars a bottle it would take 600 dollars of drink a month to feed my family of six. Seemed expensive to me. I had to laugh when I received a phone call from one of the women at the meeting a few days later. She informed me that there was another meeting the next week and in this meeting we needed to emphasis the “business opportunity” over the product. Needless to say I abandoned my hopes of getting rich quick and didn’t go. Several years later I heard on KSL radio about a study done at Harvard Business School on MLMs: 50 percent loss money, 40 percent break even, and only 10 percent actually make money. Seems like an unethical business model to me. Maybe it’s popular with Mormon s because the business model feels familiar: takes a lot of your effort and money and in return you get a fake fraulent product.
Me too! From the mid west…. Moved to Utah for 4 years during college. I didn’t know what MLM was until living there. Couldn’t believe all the crappy dealings going on! It was an eye opener!
I don’t know if it is “fraud” exactly, but some good friends told me of a case where relatives of Orson Scott Card invested in a theater company he started in Utah decades ago. The theater failed and none of the investors ever received their money back.
Seeing as how Orson wound up doing so well as an author it is interesting that he never felt the need to try and recompense these people who helped him get a start, some of whom became quite poor as the years wore on.
steer clear of BLK. Mormon guy who is one of the scummiest, slimiest guys I’ve ever met. Canadian, but has spent a lot of time ripping off people in Utah, Idaho, Colorado. He even scammed some NFL players out of a lot money. Currently lives in Canada, but has extradition order from the US.
Google his name and have fun. the comments sections is where you can find the good stuff.
Here’s one article.
https://calgaryherald.com/business/energy/energy-regulator-names-oilman-for-failing-to-comply-with-18-orders
Sounds like Keith Greff. I believe they all work under the same Ponzi umbrella and teach each other how to scam.
Mark Pugsley’s comment about Joseph’s fraud in the Kirtland Anti-Banking Society scandal reminded me of another, even more successful fraud perpetrated by Joseph, one the Church tries keeping quiet, even today. The mechanics of how Joseph conducted the Three (and Eight) Witness Testimonies aren’t generally known, but key evidence, holographic copies of either testimony, signed by the witnesses have never been published by the church–because those particular documents never existed, except as obvious forgeries at the end of the printer’s manuscript copy. Neither of the two testimonies were composed by the witnesses themselves, but were dictated by Joseph, who also had Oliver Cowdery fill in each of the signatures just in time to have them published at the back end of the Book of Mormon. The case is explained in greater detail in an essay, “Phantom Witnesses Never Lie,” at the website http://www.bookofmormonlit.com. I appreciated your podcast for reminding me how easily faith and trust can be abused.
What about these essential oil MLM’s like “do Terra” and “Essential oils from Livestrong”? I know that the FDA is after them for making unsupstantiated claims. Do you plan to go after them?
Rick Koerber is a special kind of crazy and his ex wife would be an awesome interview, though I doubt she is willing to talk about this since it may get her in legal trouble. The guy is a sociopath with a god complex. He likes to tie his scheme in with libertarian ideas, Cleon Skousen worship, and Ayn Rand stuff. It’s very “philosophies of men…”. Not to mention the fact that he thinks God wants him to practice polygamy and he basically thinks he is the new Joseph Smith. Bring Him on! I’m sure he can’t resist the opportunity to talk about himself for a few hours.
I would also LOVE to hear a podcast with Rick Koerber. He has some really interesting views on extreme capitalism and how it relates to Mormonism.
I suspect that many of the fraud victims prayed and got the answer that they should invest in the fraudulent scheme. Answers to prayers are a enigma to me. I can’t tell if they are real answers or not.
A foundational fraud in Mormondom is duping the membership into interpreting FEELINGS as inspiration from the Holy Ghost aka TRUTH. The Church knows nothing about actual Truth, but has invested huge sums of money and expertise into manipulating FEELINGS through HeartSell tactics. Watch this great video for a brutal expose’ on just how reliable your FEELINGS are as a Truth Detector.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycUvC9s4VYA
As seen from the Mormon Bunker in Nevada –– GO home
Behold, another Mormon Moment: Grifters unite, thrust in your sickle and reap and reap some more.
This latest dust up in my home state, Oregon, with Cliven Bundy and ilk has brought to the fore superior mormon thinking.
Cliven Bundy and his 14 children have abused the natural resources of our country while breeding an army of The Chosen.
When confronted by the abuse of overgrazing, excess animals on allotments of public lands, the Bundys’ claim the land belongs to them.
Yes Grifting is baked into the Mormon Mind-Set –– Given their privileged access to the Afterlife, mormons know the rights afforded the worthy here on earth are deserved.
Fraud is as fraud does and Mormon Fraud is blessed by Our Heavely Father who got the word second hand from Our Prophet Joseph Smith, The Mormon Music Man.
What the Hell are Bunker Nevada Mormons doing in Harney County Oregon?
We Know, the still small voice is involved somehow, and we know it will all be sorted out in the end.
It boils down to a binary reality of 1’s and 0’s. Either there is one God or there are no gods –– sometimes vacillating between the two numbers, one can become perplexed leading to the that still small voice mumbling repeated phrases.
It’s true, it’s true
There was A LOT of meat left on the bone after this one… I appreciate the stab at this topic, but I kept waiting for the in-depth connection to Mormonism and it’s doctrines. Is this a cultural matter? Absolutely, but the culture is driven by the doctrine and the expectations of Mormon members created during the practice of the Mormon faith.
At 7:07 minutes Mark makes this statement “… and these are cultural problems that we will be talking about. None of them really relate to anything doctrinal or anything about the church.”
In the next breath Mark makes this statement “If the LDS church is truly the one true church on the planet you would think that we would have a much lower incidence of people screwing each other , but the reality is the opposite.”
These two statements, and the exploration of each of them, are the MEAT of this topic. It was interesting to learn about the various cases of fraud in Utah, but all of that information is on Mark’s website utahsecuritiesfraud.com.
I’d like to see a panel to discuss these issues:
– The doctrinal connections in Mormonism between wealth and righteousness
– The relationship between affinity fraud and Mormon doctrine and Mormon culture of trusting leaders
There is another hour or two hanging out there on this topic for sure.
Doubting Thomas: I agree there is a lot more to be discussed in this area, but that was not really the goal of this podcast. I participated in a Mormon Expositor podcast about a year ago with a panel that spent some time digging into those topics. Here is a link if you’re interested: https://mormonexpositor.com/85-mormons-and-money-the-prosperity-doctrine/
Mark thanks for drawing attention to the wonderful Expositor podcast. I listened again not knowing of your good efforts on Prosperity Theology Fraud.
Your site is great: https://rqn.com/blog/utahsecuritiesfraud/#.Vo1fyumcORc
For those who haven’t, this is a must listen, thank you,
https://mormonexpositor.com/85-mormons-and-money-the-prosperity-doctrine/
Beyond the still small voice: Like Christ, Prophet Joseph Jr. is driven by the same demons drilling their shouts and murmurs into his skull. And, like Jesus, no amount of counseling will help. The myth is the truth. And truth will set you free to explore other truths for the glory of Zion. Mormon Tribals are all about truth so long as prosperity is the product. Remember, Apocalypse is beauty for the chosen.
Not necessarily fraud, but wondering if there might be any recourse against a six-figure state worker who does nothing all day – under protection from his LDS superiors – but tend to matters of the Stake over which he presides?
The sad thing is that this type of fraud happens on a smaller scale. Amway was one of the biggest scams preying on the lower-middle class. Mormons and non-Mormons with little means would spend hundreds and thousands of dollars on conventions, products, and start-up kits. I served as a counselor with an elders’ quorum president (his daddy was also the stake president) who used his position and namesake to promote and recruit for his Amway business.
I remember other MLM schemes as a kid like Bon-Del Water Filters, the wheat grinders, life insurance, scriptures on tapes and videos, and health products. My parents were constantly approached by fellow Mormons about money-making opportunities, especially after my dad opened a successful business. However, they did eventually lose money from stock investments involving a member of their ward.
The topic about dual personalities is so accurate. I’ve noticed how friendly members were to me until I rejected their invitation to check our their presentations. Suddenly, they don’t want to talk to me anymore. I guess they are disappointed in me because I won’t be able to pay for my kids’ missions, college tuition, and increase my tithing donations.
Thanks for another interesting podcast.
This one hits real close to home for me. I had always believed we can and should trust our people with in the church community. I was not “suckered” into bad investments, or anything even remotely like that. But my bishops fraudulent actions has almost destroyed my own business while he talks from the pulpit about how the Lord is blessing him because he has the gospel in his life. I have even understood he will read scriptures to inactive members from the BoM of the promises of the Lords temporal blessing if we will only follow Christ (interpretation go to church).
The scariest part in the pod cast is the part where the comment was made of those being defended, “I am a good guy.” I am convinced now that many of these “good guys” really believe they are doing no wrong. There is nothing you can do to convince them otherwise. They have themselves and everyone around them believing “all is well in Zion, yea Zion prospers”. When becoming a victim of any type of fraud involving people who have grown up justifying there fraudulent actions and where a leader of the church is concerned there is no hope for the victim. The church teaches to NEVER say anything bad about a leader, even if it is true. There is no real way to be heard especially if you want someone to understand what is really happening.
I have asked myself hundreds of times why aren’t ethics ever talked or discussed in church? Why is it that the only moral things that are taught are to do with sexual transgressions yet it should cover so much more. ? Do church member really think about moral and ethical responsibilities and obligations within business and professions? I would say only if it was taught outside the church.
After a lot of desperation I quit going to church, in hopes of one thing, maybe someone would listen. That is when after about a year of many interested experiences I learned the real truth. Perhaps it is hard to teach something you can not follow, and that goes all the way to the top and back almost 200 years. Dark secrets have consequences and unless those dark secrets are brought out in to open and truly exposed and removed from an organization it will never be able to remove these types of problems from within. (Just my opinion)
Thanks for a great discussion, the more we know the more we grow.
Great comment, thank you. It is absolutely correct that the church culture that forbids criticism of you leaders contributes to this point. Also, i believe that the church actively covers up this situations because it reflects poorly on the church and they dont want that. The result is that more and more people are victimized.
@Cliff Crosland, it is sad to think of what The Wright family endured and lost all their possessions and the family home they grew up in….this is true…, Now, put yourself in the shoes of the families that are, like my family being taken as I speak, for ongoing 7 years, without a voice to speak of the lies we have and are forced to be subjected too. A Mormon judge, and the lifelong neighbors of our NON-MORMON family were preyed upon and have had to watch as these people we never associated with during 50 that 4 months before our fathers death began visiting, offering blessings,. The judge, who lived on property (he had schemed out of some other victim ) lived two lots over and across the street from two of our father 5-acre investment properties. He operated a dairy farm on the side while he was a justice of the Peace full time. My father knew him by checking on these properties over past 20 years and speaking casually to one another. The judge was a Mormon bishop and had a $86,000. Fed tax lien due in Aug of 2015. My father passed away in Nov. Of 2015. This judge was aquainted with the Mormon neighbors and their families where our family home of 50+ years was located. These neighbors we grew up with, but, they never interacted with the NON-MORMON, until they were on their death-bed and could be “worked” to give these SOB’s a foot in our lives and obtain signatures on blank pages , to help keep our family out of probate and protect us from those who would take advantage when transferring the 5 million in rental properties that we free of mortgage and all with long-term paying tenants in place producing $22,000. a month income that we managed as a family nearly all our lives. This judge found out our father had not named a personal Rep to his Will after we had disclosed to the neighbor when he inquired how his was doing healthwise, one week earlier. The judge on his 1st appearance seemed trustworthy..he talked my father into letting him help by being personal rep and distribute to both his daughters all his real and personal assets as soon as possible after his death because he was a judge and knew the procedures and documents to file to expedite things so we could get all in a very short amount of time. My father offered him to act as PR and he accepted offer and was paid in full to distribute our father’s 5 million dollar estate to us when our father died with no other money to be paid for fees. The day after the judge accepted offer, my father had his attorney draft a Last Will and Test that revoked all trusts he had formed and to pay all funeral expenses and any claims needing paid, and devised and bequeathed all to be divided evenly 50/50 between his two daughters as soon as was allowed after his death. This Will named the judge as personal Rep. ….The judge did not know the contents of this Will. My father signed the Will, had two persons witness it and had a notary sign it. He left a copy of this in an envelope on top of his desk, in the office where I managed and dealt with tenants, after signing it.
One month later, the judge made his 2nd visit to our home, with his wife , in the evening , because my father’s Blood pressure had gone down to dangerous level. We trusted this man at this point and were relieved to know he would oversee what was being left to us….he was a judge…how much more protection could one hope for? Except for the fact that a judge is not allowed by the judicial code of conduct Canons and rules to accept or act in any of these type of positions such as Trustee, executor, power of attorney, guardian, conservator, personal rep. for anyone other than a immediate family member living in the same home as the judge. He led my father to believe he could. I handed him the above referenced Will before he left to make sure all was in order In case my father passed away. B IGGEST MISTAKE I HAVE EVER MADE Other than telling the Bishop my father was worrying himself to death by not having a person In mind that he could trust enough to not take all he was leaving from us when he died. Two days after getting the Will the judge started conspiring with the other neighbors who were all related. The neighbor we told about not having a PR – his daughter was married to an estate planning Mormon lawyers relative, the neighbor next to her is the half-brother to the fiduciary president that took control of all the bank accounts, properties, rent income for 7 years now and we have been held like prisoners not knowing what frauded documents they are going to draft that is going to take our homes, etc. They charge us every month to steal all we own and we are forced to live this known lie they are holding us under.. the judge began coming Dailey to our house in his judges robe obtaining signatures…he took the deeds from the office and recorded falsified, cut and paste graphics and began selling properties immediately. We have suffered like know one knows because of these crooks. We have no where to turn. They need stopped. They are doing this to all that cross their paths. In every state.
It rocked me to hear Travis Wright’s name in the podcast. Travis Wright was my young men’s leader, and I think something that often goes unnoticed is the pain and suffering caused to family when a father/mother is convicted of fraud. His kids were really wonderful, fun people to be around, and his wife was a loving friend to so many in the ward. If I remember correctly, Travis was arrested shortly after I moved out of the ward to college, so I didn’t see the fallout first hand. However, from what my family has told me, the agony felt by his family members and close friends was horrific. I won’t share details. Just imagine what it would feel like to find out that most of your possessions were going to be auctioned off, that you were losing the home you grew up in, and that the life you thought you had was all disappearing before your eyes. Imagine all of this going on, and still realizing that you love your dad with all of your heart, and that he loves you and is extraordinarily sorry for the pain he caused. Imagine what it would be like to try to forgive your father, for trying to understand the fall from grace when his legitimate financial firm gradually turned into a ponzi scheme after some of its investments began to struggle.
My heart really goes out to the members of the Wright family who did nothing wrong. It takes a lot of courage to face such an excruciating ordeal and try to show love to your father. It also takes immense courage for Travis’s close friends to struggle onward after losing their money. It was really surprising to see that even some of Travis’s closest, lifelong friends were swindled.
Ultimately, I think that a dangerous human phenomenon is at play here: in some twisted way, I think people begin to believe the lies they tell when more and more people begin to believe them.
Thanks for your comment Cliff. I also know the Wright family and feel terrible about the fallout it caused with his family and friends. There are no winners in a Ponzi Scheme, and this one is certainly no exception.
Responding to Cliff Crosland’s comments, I appreciate your insights on a personal level, of the wreckage within a family and community because of deception and wrong doing.
You said,”Ultimately, I think that a dangerous human phenomenon is at play here: in some twisted way, I think people begin to believe the lies they tell when more and more people begin to believe them.” I couldn’t agree more about this dangerous, and intoxicating human phenomenon. When ego clouds judgment, and relationships of trust are utilized for deception; causing the vulnerable and innocent to suffer, it is a sad thing.
I too, know the Wrights well. Travis’ situation is so typical of so many of these types of fraud. As I watched him grow in ego and arrogance over the years, it was fascinating. I stayed at arms length, kind of amused at how a guy so young, could be so full of himself, and dismissive of others. I had one scrape with him at the beginning of a business situation that I’d been asked to attend. It was not pleasant. I went away feeling a weird vibe and knew that my inner voice was saying, “stay away from these folks”. I’m glad I listened.
He had a very sweet, kind, young wife and kids. The wife (name withheld) always seemed naive and innocent to things. If she was indeed innocent, my heart goes out to her. I know her and her extended family well. I can’t imagine the stunning, heart wrenching and shocking turn of events — especially after the bragging in the community about the imported floors and walls of european castles that were hundreds of years old, that were used in their home. Friends were so taken by all of the fuss and flap over the Wright’s ‘good fortune’ — at such a young age. Again, I was not impressed. What seems too good to be true in life, always is.
I had friends and neighbors who were totally taken by the social invitations and charisma of Travis. I howled when the story hit the news, thinking of some of the ‘elitist’ neighbors who were duped by all of it. Some of them were so socially malleable and taken with the drive for acquisition of material things. They bragged about dinner parties, etc. with the Wrights. It was kind of comical.
Most of these cases are similarly connected to egos-out-of-control. These schemers do begin to believe their own lies, becoming drunk with the power of persuasion. Intoxicated on how their imagined power and control are working on average people. Working on the axiom of ‘if you believe, it will happen’.
What would be more useful, is to hear cases of people who were swindled out of life savings, retirement, college funds, etc. I know some of these folks who died impoverished and heartbroken at being deceived and swindled. No restitution was ever offered to them. I liken it to cartels and drug dealers who never see the human misery and wreckage caused downline, by their trafficking of life altering substances. Sad.
The LDS Church is pretty whacked out in how they view and deal with these matters that ruin people’s lives. I’ve seen it firsthand.
Thank you for this comment. I have represented hundreds of victims in these schemes, but unfortunately due to client confidentiality I cannot tell their heartbreaking stories. The details in the stories I did tell were based on public documents for the same reasons.
I tried to encourage those who are victims to post their own stories here, and I hope they will.
I was on the high counsel of my stake when Shawn Merriman was introduced to us at the beginning of one of our meetings. He said he had done fairly well in business and had collected Rembrandt prints with religious themes. He passed one around which was kind of surprising thing to have happen in a high counsel meeting The guy looked like your typical successful LDS businessman/bishop. Of course, I compared myself to him and felt like a bit of a loser. Anyway, he said he wanted to do a show at the stake center. The stake agreed and it was very well done and well attended. A lot of local dignitaries came. I remember the stake PR person falling all over herself over the VIPs. Then about a year later it came down that the money to purchase the art was basically stolen. That was a buzz kill. I heard next to nothing said about it in the stake.
This was so interesting – so great to get it out there! I saw this happening on a smaller scale with church friends/acquaintances pitching my parents on pyramid schemes. It always left a bad feeling in the air. We also had emotional first-hand accounts from a formerly wealthy friend who lost it all when taken advantage of by his Stake President BFF. Said Stake President later became a general authority. This was really upsetting to me at the time as a committed, believing church member of that stake. So sad.
Hi, John in a similar vein I think it might be interesting to hear a story about the miracle product schemes that go around Mormonism. Here are Just a few that I’ve been approached with: Ear drops that cure autism, colds, and all kinds of diseases. Bracelets that keep you balanced somehow. Tablets that make your gasoline last longer. Herbal foot baths that pull all the toxins out of your body. These are just a few that I remember off hand. It really is a strange phenomenon that Mormons are so trusting and buy into these things.
This also made me think of the business that hire RM’s and have them use their sales techniques to go door-to-door to sell home security systems. I’m from Atlanta and between college semesters we would get a spike in membership where all these Utah RM’s would suddenly show up in our ward because they were selling something in our area.
My husband and I have been swindled by neighbors, friends, bishops, stake presidents, trusted young women leaders that I looked up to ect. This happens on a small scale as well. Alone the losses seem small but over the years, if we add them up , to us it’s a small fortune. Not to mention the thousands of dollars paid to tithing. It’s just a thought but could tithing be conditioning us to give our money away to anyone who asks for it? It has taken us many shcemes and many blows to our ego, but we have finally learned not to trust many people with money. Thanks for bringing this very important issue to the forefront John and Mark.
Just an observation, as a member of the local business community in Utah, regarding Multi Level Marketing Companies ( MLM’s) or Direct Sales Networking Companies (DSN) or Network Marketing Firms (NMF). My company has been called on to offer certain services to these companies over the years. We’ve offered legitimate business services that these firms order. I’ve been doing this for 21 years now. Each time I go into a new meeting with these type of firms (especially the start up ones), I am leary. I’ve been swindled a few times with unpaid bills and a million excuses by some of them.
What I wanted more to comment on, is the whacky internal cultures that they have. Normally, it is a man or woman who had an idea, sold it to neighbors and family as the start of their companies. Sometimes it’s a group of partners who back it. Eventually, when the money is rolling in, due to the pyramid of downline sales associates (unsalaried), the owners or partners get whackier and whackier in their eccentricities: corporate jets, exotic trips, palatial homes, huge salaries and bonuses. spin off businesses, and other things that satisfy the ego. Sometimes they treat you well. A few remain approachable, kind and fair. Others are so punch drunk with their imagined fame and power, that they treat people very poorly. I could tell tons of tales.
With some (not all) this fame and fortune also causes ruin in their families. Entitlement, unrealistic expectations, lack of understanding of the ‘average person’, substance abuse, etc. are often apparent. Getting rich quick, hasn’t been beneficial to their family lives.
I’ve seen a lot of this in Utah. Texas and Georgia seem to also have a preponderance of it. Most of these companies will tell you that it is not about a product that they are delivering, rather about “opportunity” in sales and growth. It doesn’t matter if they are selling candles, oils, security, jungle juice, pet products, beauty products or more. Most of the owners barely believe in their product and simply see it as a way to get somewhere else. They are always having to come up with a new product or tweak a product to keep followers interested. They get on stage and sell this stuff with tears and touching stories, with a gospel zeal. Some of these meetings make your stomach turn. Only about 10% of the downline sales associates ever make real money with these schemes.
One backstage experience that I remember years ago, was the owner of a company coming onto the stage to speak. Women were standing in the audience, screaming and waving their hands in the air, like the guy was a rockstar. He had a Tom Jones brillo pad afro, skin tanned like luggage leather, hairy chest, gold chains AND a shiny gold zip-up jumpsuit, with shiny gold Pumas that were custom made. It really was like a Tom Jones concert — short of women throwing their underwear on the stage! Many of these women were LDS. When he spoke, he told women to throw away their hormone replacement pills and cancer treatments, etc. Many in the audience were in wheelchairs. He promised that his juice would cure all. I could see his corporate attorney squirming in the front row, with these claims. Five years later, the guy was in prison for tax evasion, to the tune of 90 million. I’ve seen so many situations like this, with men and women who are drunk with ego, power and a mission. It’s their alternate gospel. And many of them are active LDS church members. They prey upon the vulnerable who come to their events as though these were gospel revival tents! They are selling salvation from sickness, dry skin, aches, pain, disease — and a life of drudgery.
Good Topic. I’m going to have to ponderize on this for a little while
Another LDS-related fraud, out of Idaho Falls.
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/27/us/27ponzi.html?_r=0
When I hear Miormon and Ponzi I always think of the guy killed by Jodi arias, I think he was part of one. Actually it’s a good thing to live by – not to mix church friends with investments. One of my friends in my ward has been trying to sell me life insurance.
https://www.ksl.com/?sid=38381479&nid=148&fm=home_page&s_cid=toppick1
Today’s KSL – Another 28M lost to a Utah county Ponzi Scheme.
John,
This hit a massive cord with me. I lost over $200,000 in the summer of 2010 to a couple of gentlemen from Sandy, Utah who sold me on their charm, BYU alumni status, and “church connections” (one was a former Bishop and one was a current High Counselor). The investment they ran was a complete sham from the moment it was put together. I ended up claiming BK and almost losing my family’s house while these two rolled on to their next chapter in life. The lowest lifeforms I’ve ever dealt with. (Looking back, I can’t believe how dumb I was. One of them in the “recruiting stage” even showed me his temple recommend; that should have been a massive red flag.)
I ended up contacting 4 or 5 other people who had lost money in this same green technology company and the total is well over $1 million (taken from other LDS people like myself). I’m happy to go on record with anyone or direct them to the ripoff report if anything I say here is disputed. Not the first time I’ve lost money to people in the church, but certainly the most significant to my current well being.
I’ve now learned if anyone starts talking about their mission, their kid’s temple wedding or their Stake calling in the course of doing business I run as fast as I can. I’m active LDS, but the personal integrity inside the church is embarrassing. I own a small business and after 25 years of experience I can say I’d rather hire a non-member any day of the week. Better ethics all around.
This is what you should expect from a church that was founded upon lie after lie after lie by a congenital liar, liar, liar. Your LDS leadership scammers are doing nothing more than imitating the illustrious founder of the Mother of All Scams. Look in the mirror, swallow hard, and then tell yourself that Joseph Smith has scammed you out of way more than $200,000 over your lifetime. Not only your money, but your time and energy that could have been invested on something that you won’t eventually sorely regret.
Surprisingly, Meridian published an excellent article on this subject years ago:
https://ldsmag.com/article-1-4764/
It would be great for this article to be reprinted in the Ensign.
Regarding Daniel HunterIII, He has children, are they just as crooked as their father. Who paid the fathers fines ?
I went to a presentation in Orem when I was a BYU student that initially impressed me. The guy who presented it was a jokester who could actually be funny. I admired the spontaneity of his presentation, and it was mostly about replacing a lot of household products that contain poisons with naturally derived cleaning products. At the time I worked at the Provo Park Hotel (now part of a Marriott chain, I think). I was planning on going to the managers of the hotel and selling them these sorts of products in place of the poisonous chemical cleaners that most hotels use.
Then I was taken into another room to speak with one of the many representatives, which is where I started getting uncomfortable. I just kept saying I would come back after thinking about it, and sit in on another presentation. The guy I was talking to (also college-aged) kept pressuring me to put money into it right away, and I kept thinking about how odd it was that I would make even more money by signing other people up to sell. I hadn’t sold a single thing yet. But I kept replying that I needed time to think.
I then went back for another presentation and discovered that even though another guy was presenting, he was making all the same jokes at the same times that the other guy made them. I left right then.
You would think that I would have learned my lesson, but I got sucked into another hotel conference room meeting a couple of years later that promised all the new furniture I would need at remarkably low prices. Definitely lost a little money on that one. (At least it wasn’t my life savings.)
NEVER BUY THE EXTENDED WARRANTY!!!!!!!!!!