Food Stamp Trial May Be Turning Point for Polygamist Sect, Andrew Chatwin watched as federal agents and sheriff’s assembly swarmed this rural bedmate beginning endure week, affronted dairy and aftermath aliment and a aliment administration centermost in bulletproof vests, accoutrements drawn, handcuffs dangling from their belts.
“I anticipation this day would never come,” said Mr. Chatwin, 48, a aloft affiliate of the Fundamentalist Abbey of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the camp that rules the hearts and minds of followers actuality and beyond the accompaniment band in Colorado City, Ariz.
According to prosecutors, the businesses were key players in a high-desert cabal that siphoned millions of dollars in food-stamp allowances from the pockets of American families to coffer accounts controlled by the bedmate sect, whose leaders — a lot of prominently, the confined Warren Jeffs — chase a self-styled anatomy of Mormonism and behest area followers live, how abundant they eat and whom they marry.
The arrests are alone allotment of the acknowledged troubles adjoin the camp and its home-base communities, accused in a federal civilian rights balloon in Phoenix of abstinent housing, utilities and able policing to nonbelievers. In closing arguments on Wednesday, the aegis argued that the government was application the towns as scapegoats to seek animus adjoin a adoration it abhors.
“Who is acute adjoin whom?” Jeff Matura, who represents Colorado City, asked in his closing statement, afore the case went to the jury.
The accumulated moves — the raids, arrests and the bigotry case adjoin the towns — could announce a axis point in the government’s administration of the camp afterwards decades of desultory action. Pictures of accouchement bawl as the Arizona authorities yanked them from their mothers during a adverse arrest in 1953 afflicted activation accessible accord for the polygamists and, experts said, amount Gov. John Howard Pyle his re-election and kept law administration away.
Now, some experts altercate that the accompanying prosecutions resemble the action acclimated by the federal government to go afterwards the abominable New York abomination families like the Gambinos. “You chase the money,” said Sam Brower, a clandestine investigator from southern Utah who affiliated aloft camp associates with the authorities, allowance them body the case.
After raids abundant in absolute choreography on Feb. 23, actuality and in Colorado City, agents arrested 11 camp leaders and others on artifice and money-laundering charges. A part of the humans taken into aegis was Lyle Jeffs, the brother and adopted agent of Warren Jeffs, who is confined a activity book for animal corruption of under-age girls he claimed as his wives.
Court affidavit alarm a adult arrangement that relied on carapace companies to legitimize the money becoming from counterfeit food-stamp affairs — either because no appurtenances were exchanged or because the articles bought at the dairy and aftermath aliment were taken to the administration centermost to be resold or donated.
Over four years, the stores’ food-stamp sales rivaled those at Costco and Walmart, the allegation alleges. The money, it says, paid for a $30,236 Ford F-350 truck, a $13,561 John Deere tractor and $16,978 in cardboard products, a part of added items.
Meanwhile, bounded association said, mothers in ankle-length dresses and braids fought in band over the deficient food of algid atom and meat doled out at the administration center.
“For 60 years, the accompaniment of Utah and the accompaniment of Arizona looked the added way if it came to this group’s convenance of polygamy,” said Robert Hoole, a Salt Lake City advocate who has represented abounding aloft associates of the fundamentalist church. “In the exhaustion that was created by their searching the added way, a host of accessory crimes grew up, and this accumulation became a bent enterprise.”
In interviews, lawyers, defectors and advisers who accept researched the fundamentalist abbey said the crackdown was accident now because the allegations of bent behavior became too boundless to avoid — and because abundant humans who larboard the abbey agreed to affirm for the government.
One of them was Dowayne Barlow, 47, a aloft abettor to Lyle Jeffs who larboard the fundamentalist abbey in 2012. He was in federal cloister in Phoenix on Wednesday, apprehension the jury’s decision. In an interview, he said, “The government, they came as accurate carelessness fighters. They’re traveling to deliver us.”
But some warned that it would be naïve to say that the end of the camp is near.
“For associates of the abbey who acutely accept in the credo of the faith, who are acutely committed to it, things like this can in fact accept a adverse impact,” said Amos Guiora, a law assistant at the University of Utah who has interviewed dozens of aloft abbey associates and accounting abundantly about them. “The administration can say, ‘See, government absolutely hates us.’”
Federal and accompaniment authorities in Arizona and Utah had said they believed that Warren Jeffs’s confidence in 2011 could destabilize the sect, estimated to accept 6,000 followers. But in practice, his access never waned, prosecutors said. From abaft bars, for example, he ordered believers to carelessness the homes they were architecture and alter their money to the architecture of belted compounds.
As a result, half-built houses dot the adjoining towns, collectively accepted as Short Creek if they were acclimatized as a individual association in 1913 by a accumulation of Mormons who bankrupt abroad from the Abbey of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints afterwards it banned polygamy.
Members of the splinter accumulation set out searching for a refuge, and they begin it here. Colorado City and Hildale are adherent adjoin adamant red mountains, a six-hour drive from Phoenix.
Children are home-schooled and put to plan early. On a contempo morning, three adolescent girls lined up rocks forth the alpine fence surrounding their home as their mother stood watch, easily on hips.
Discreet signs adhere aloft believers’ foreground doors, the chat “Zion” corrective blush on white board. The signs are meant to area off “angels of destruction,” Mr. Chatwin said.
For months, families accept lived in tents and trailers affected by a aerial fence in Colorado City, afterwards they were evicted from the homes area they lived for abnegation to pay acreage taxes.
According to interviews, the food-stamp artifice seemed to be an accessible abstruse a part of humans in the arena — addition archetype of a convenance they alarm “bleeding the beast.”
“They abhor the government, but they are alone too blessed to yield from the government,” Assistant Guiora said.
The aliment at the centermost of the food-stamps case — the Meadowayne Dairy Abundance and Vermillion Cliffs Produce, which are in Colorado City — accept bashful selections that resemble the articles begin at accessibility stores.
It was the admeasurement of the association the aliment serve and, the allegation says, the “abnormally ample and frequent” food-stamp sales they logged that alive the government’s suspicions.
Beneficiaries have to bash government-issued cyberbanking cards through a apparatus to accomplish food-stamp purchases. If the dairy abundance reopened three canicule afterwards the raid, a assurance taped to the foreground aperture warned shoppers: “Card apparatus is unavailable. Cash or analysis only.”
“I anticipation this day would never come,” said Mr. Chatwin, 48, a aloft affiliate of the Fundamentalist Abbey of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the camp that rules the hearts and minds of followers actuality and beyond the accompaniment band in Colorado City, Ariz.According to prosecutors, the businesses were key players in a high-desert cabal that siphoned millions of dollars in food-stamp allowances from the pockets of American families to coffer accounts controlled by the bedmate sect, whose leaders — a lot of prominently, the confined Warren Jeffs — chase a self-styled anatomy of Mormonism and behest area followers live, how abundant they eat and whom they marry.
The arrests are alone allotment of the acknowledged troubles adjoin the camp and its home-base communities, accused in a federal civilian rights balloon in Phoenix of abstinent housing, utilities and able policing to nonbelievers. In closing arguments on Wednesday, the aegis argued that the government was application the towns as scapegoats to seek animus adjoin a adoration it abhors.
“Who is acute adjoin whom?” Jeff Matura, who represents Colorado City, asked in his closing statement, afore the case went to the jury.
The accumulated moves — the raids, arrests and the bigotry case adjoin the towns — could announce a axis point in the government’s administration of the camp afterwards decades of desultory action. Pictures of accouchement bawl as the Arizona authorities yanked them from their mothers during a adverse arrest in 1953 afflicted activation accessible accord for the polygamists and, experts said, amount Gov. John Howard Pyle his re-election and kept law administration away.
Now, some experts altercate that the accompanying prosecutions resemble the action acclimated by the federal government to go afterwards the abominable New York abomination families like the Gambinos. “You chase the money,” said Sam Brower, a clandestine investigator from southern Utah who affiliated aloft camp associates with the authorities, allowance them body the case.
After raids abundant in absolute choreography on Feb. 23, actuality and in Colorado City, agents arrested 11 camp leaders and others on artifice and money-laundering charges. A part of the humans taken into aegis was Lyle Jeffs, the brother and adopted agent of Warren Jeffs, who is confined a activity book for animal corruption of under-age girls he claimed as his wives.
Court affidavit alarm a adult arrangement that relied on carapace companies to legitimize the money becoming from counterfeit food-stamp affairs — either because no appurtenances were exchanged or because the articles bought at the dairy and aftermath aliment were taken to the administration centermost to be resold or donated.
Over four years, the stores’ food-stamp sales rivaled those at Costco and Walmart, the allegation alleges. The money, it says, paid for a $30,236 Ford F-350 truck, a $13,561 John Deere tractor and $16,978 in cardboard products, a part of added items.
Meanwhile, bounded association said, mothers in ankle-length dresses and braids fought in band over the deficient food of algid atom and meat doled out at the administration center.
“For 60 years, the accompaniment of Utah and the accompaniment of Arizona looked the added way if it came to this group’s convenance of polygamy,” said Robert Hoole, a Salt Lake City advocate who has represented abounding aloft associates of the fundamentalist church. “In the exhaustion that was created by their searching the added way, a host of accessory crimes grew up, and this accumulation became a bent enterprise.”
In interviews, lawyers, defectors and advisers who accept researched the fundamentalist abbey said the crackdown was accident now because the allegations of bent behavior became too boundless to avoid — and because abundant humans who larboard the abbey agreed to affirm for the government.
One of them was Dowayne Barlow, 47, a aloft abettor to Lyle Jeffs who larboard the fundamentalist abbey in 2012. He was in federal cloister in Phoenix on Wednesday, apprehension the jury’s decision. In an interview, he said, “The government, they came as accurate carelessness fighters. They’re traveling to deliver us.”
But some warned that it would be naïve to say that the end of the camp is near.
“For associates of the abbey who acutely accept in the credo of the faith, who are acutely committed to it, things like this can in fact accept a adverse impact,” said Amos Guiora, a law assistant at the University of Utah who has interviewed dozens of aloft abbey associates and accounting abundantly about them. “The administration can say, ‘See, government absolutely hates us.’”
Federal and accompaniment authorities in Arizona and Utah had said they believed that Warren Jeffs’s confidence in 2011 could destabilize the sect, estimated to accept 6,000 followers. But in practice, his access never waned, prosecutors said. From abaft bars, for example, he ordered believers to carelessness the homes they were architecture and alter their money to the architecture of belted compounds.
As a result, half-built houses dot the adjoining towns, collectively accepted as Short Creek if they were acclimatized as a individual association in 1913 by a accumulation of Mormons who bankrupt abroad from the Abbey of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints afterwards it banned polygamy.
Members of the splinter accumulation set out searching for a refuge, and they begin it here. Colorado City and Hildale are adherent adjoin adamant red mountains, a six-hour drive from Phoenix.
Children are home-schooled and put to plan early. On a contempo morning, three adolescent girls lined up rocks forth the alpine fence surrounding their home as their mother stood watch, easily on hips.
Discreet signs adhere aloft believers’ foreground doors, the chat “Zion” corrective blush on white board. The signs are meant to area off “angels of destruction,” Mr. Chatwin said.
For months, families accept lived in tents and trailers affected by a aerial fence in Colorado City, afterwards they were evicted from the homes area they lived for abnegation to pay acreage taxes.
According to interviews, the food-stamp artifice seemed to be an accessible abstruse a part of humans in the arena — addition archetype of a convenance they alarm “bleeding the beast.”
“They abhor the government, but they are alone too blessed to yield from the government,” Assistant Guiora said.
The aliment at the centermost of the food-stamps case — the Meadowayne Dairy Abundance and Vermillion Cliffs Produce, which are in Colorado City — accept bashful selections that resemble the articles begin at accessibility stores.
It was the admeasurement of the association the aliment serve and, the allegation says, the “abnormally ample and frequent” food-stamp sales they logged that alive the government’s suspicions.
Beneficiaries have to bash government-issued cyberbanking cards through a apparatus to accomplish food-stamp purchases. If the dairy abundance reopened three canicule afterwards the raid, a assurance taped to the foreground aperture warned shoppers: “Card apparatus is unavailable. Cash or analysis only.”
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