Posted on 05/15/2008 4:55:48 PM PDT by Flo Nightengale
ELDORADO, Texas (AP) — In just five years, the West Texas polygamist sect transformed 1,700 acres of scrubland purchased for $700,000 into a bustling ranch with a blazing-white limestone temple, sprawling three-story log cabins, woodworking shops and a dairy.
Assessed value of the property now: $20.5 million.
How did members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints do it?
Sweat equity was clearly one factor. The men quarried limestone themselves from the hard ground and built the enormous homes with their own hands, using skills learned at construction companies close to the sect's main base of operations, on the Arizona-Utah line.
But as for where they got the money for building materials, dump trucks, rock-cutting equipment and other supplies, that is still something of a mystery.
"Who funded it? We're investigating. That's for dang sure," said Jeff Shields, a court-appointed lawyer studying the sect's finances.
Some suspect the FLDS supplied money to Eldorado from a $114 million trust fund that once included all the homes and land in the side-by-side FLDS towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz. Money may also have come from construction businesses and other ventures run by sect members, including an aircraft wheel and brake manufacturer in Nevada that holds a $1.2 million Pentagon contract, and an engineering firm that landed $11.3 million in work from Las Vegas water authorities.
Questions about the source of the sect's money have been swirling around the FLDS since Texas authorities raided their Yearning for Zion ranch last month and seized more than 460 youngsters because of evidence that the sect has been marrying off underage girls to older men.
The renegade Mormon splinter group bought the property for $412 an acre in 2003 and rapidly turned it into a self-contained home for roughly 700 people, with rows of planted vegetables and other farming enterprises, a dairy that produces milk and cheese, and shops for cabinetmaking and other woodworking — all to supply the ranch, not to turn a profit on the outside.
Enormous homes went up in a matter of weeks, and when the temple was built, at least 200 men swarmed to the property to cut rock from the soil and assemble the gleaming 80-foot house of worship, said J.D. Doyle, a pilot who has taken hundreds of photos of the ranch's development from his small plane. With the natural clay soil useless for farming, sect members brought in black dirt to grow vegetables.
"They worked around the clock. They can put up a 21,000-square-foot house in 2 1/2 weeks. Move in and have it perfect," Doyle said. "It was amazing to us to watch them do this."
The sect paid $424,000 in property taxes last year, or about 18 percent of Schleicher County's annual revenue. It is the third-biggest taxpayer in the county, behind two pieces of land that produce oil. Although FLDS is a church, it never sought tax-exempt status in Texas or in other Southwest states in which it operates.
Judge Johnny Griffin, the county's chief executive, said that as far as he knows, ranch residents paid their tax bill on time and without complaint.
FLDS spokesman and attorney Rod Parker said he doesn't know how the ranch and equipment were purchased or why the insular group never sought tax-exempt status.
The four men listed on Yearning for Zion corporate documents have no listed phone numbers in Texas, and the numbers for the Utah businesses controlled by David S. Allred, the member who scoped out the property first, have been disconnected.
Court-appointed accountants are trying to figure out if some of the money came from a trust fund now under government control.
The trust, set up in the 1940s, covered essentially everything in Hildale and Colorado City. In 2005, however, a Utah judge appointed an accountant to dissolve the trust after state attorneys argued that the sect's prophet, Warren Jeffs, and other leaders were using the assets for their own benefit.
Jeffs was arrested in 2006 and is serving up to life in prison after being convicted in Utah as an accomplice to rape for arranging the marriage of a 14-year-old girl to an older man.
Shields, an attorney on the trust case, said there has never been a full accounting of the trust assets because church leaders refused to turn over documents or answer questions. Even the identities of the trustees are a mystery; more than half are listed as "unnamed" in court documents.
The court-appointed lawyers overseeing the trust have subpoenaed any financial records state troopers may have seized in the April 3 raid on the Texas ranch.
"We have good cause to believe there's something relevant to what we're doing up here," Shields said.
Parker called such links "fantasies" and denied any trust money was used to fund the ranch.
The sect has other sources of money beyond the trust. Former members and experts on the sect say it encourages members to sign over any earnings from outside jobs to church leaders. In return, the church gives followers housing, clothes and food.
Within FLDS, "nobody owns anything. Everything is owned by the prophet, even your dress. You don't own the dress. You're allowed that article of clothing based on his mercy," said former member Carolyn Jessop, who lived in Hildale.
The outside ventures include New Era Manufacturing, an aircraft parts maker and defense contractor whose chief executive has been identified as an FLDS leader and close associate of Jeffs.
In the end, everything will be taken from the FLDS, families, children and their property, and the charges will be tax evasion. If it is good enough for Al Capone it is good enough for the FLDS.
I will make another prediction based on the California Supreme Court ruling allowing gay marriage. In less than ten years, any form of marriage between consenting adults will be legal.
Good. Then maybe the government will give up all its schemes to use "marriage" as an excuse to impose extra taxes on people, and to control who gets your hard-earned Social Security survivor benefits, and to control who gets how much of your estate at what tax rate after the inheritance tax kicks back in again in 2011.
It probably boils down to tax evasion.
Sounds like fun...guess people don't mind if they are isolated and told no other proper way exists to live.
You think it will mean less 'schemes' from the Government? LOL The government always wants more control and regulation. CPS and Tax regulations now trump the Constitution.
You are seeing the "New Government" at work here, right before your eyes, out in the open, and very few are even complaining. Take the children, seize the records and throw the parents in jail for tax evasion.
Reminds me of the Templar’s. They are the reason we consider Friday the 13th an evil day.
Where did you find this quote?
“”nobody owns anything. Everything is owned by the prophet, even your dress. “
It's in the second to last paragraph in the article.
It’s in the second to last paragraph in the article.
LOL...........
FIP ping
Could be right. Of course, the next step for all forms of "marriage" would be that both the homosexuals & the polygamists would force public schools to teach all forms of "marriage" as "legit." (There goes the myth that what people do in their own bedrooms or compounds doesn't impact others)
The fruit don't fall far from the tree!
“Grampa” has big bucks...
I thought you were a 'facts only' type of guy.
Who knew!!
I’ve been wondering this whole time, what they were doing for a living to pay for that property, the temple and those homes.
It is against the law to work hard, make money, and have assets. Someone has been saying for some time here that somebody wanted that valuable property. Funny how on a conservative website that these things are cheered.
I thought it was because of that OTHER religion: Triskaideka.
The Triskaidekaterians first appeared in Europe in the middle ages, and their influence has spreadly world wide. While no official tenets of faith seem to exist, their belief is widely diffused; even being found in members of other religions.
Triskaidekadelphia, their main city, has not yet been found by ascheologists, but the TB’s are assured that someday it will; thereby allowing them to say, “Nyah - nyah -nyah! We TOLD you so!”
Well, if so, that will certainly disappoint the F*** group, won't it. Not only would the laws insist that both partners be adults, but also consenting.
Who here has criticized their work ethic? The issue at hand is whether funds from the Hildale/Colorado City trust fund were used for the development of the Texas compound.
FTA: In 2005, however, a Utah judge appointed an accountant to dissolve the trust after state attorneys argued that the sect's prophet, Warren Jeffs, and other leaders were using the assets for their own benefit.... Shields, an attorney on the trust case, said there has never been a full accounting of the trust assets because church leaders refused to turn over documents or answer questions. Even the identities of the trustees are a mystery; more than half are listed as "unnamed" in court documents. Boy, these people don't like to tell anyone who they really are, do they?
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