Polygamist Leader Takes Deal In Food Stamp Fraud, Escape Case

SALT LAKE CITY UT — The high-ranking leader of a secret polygamist sect accused of funneling millions of dollars in food stamp benefits to a communal storehouse and phony companies pleaded guilty to fraud and escape in federal court Wednesday. Lyle Jeffs, who was on the run for a year after greasing his ankle monitor with olive oil and slipping it off, faces up to five years in prison on the two felony counts.

Jeffs, 57, was one of 11 members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints who have been arrested and was the architect of the scheme, federal prosecutors have said. The others pleaded guilty or saw their charges dismissed, but prosecutors treated Jeffs differently because he lived lavishly while the others struggled, according to reports.

Jeffs, who will be sentenced Dec. 13 on a felony count each of defrauding the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and failure to appear in court, will also be required to pay $1 million in restitution, the government said. A money laundering charge was dismissed as part of the plea agreement. (For more news from Salt Lake City Patch, sign up for real-time news alerts and newsletters. If you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app.)

John Huber, the U.S. attorney for Utah, told reporters the resolution of the case was a “compromise” rather than a “deal,” and that both sides won and lost motions on what a jury would be allowed to hear about the polygamous sect, which is based along the Utah-Arizona border, the Salt Lake City Tribune reported.

Jeffs will remain in custody until his sentencing.

“He’s in shackles. He’s in chains. He’s not getting out anytime soon,” Huber said.

The food stamp fraud investigation coincided with other government efforts to upend the strict theocracy of the sect, which broke from mainstream Mormon churches that disavowed polygamy more than a century ago.

Speaking with reporters outside the federal courthouse in Salt Lake City, U.S. Attorney John Huber said Jeffs’ plea was a fair conclusion to the case. The scheme, which the government said involved $12 million in illegally received food stamp benefits, took benefits from poor people, Huber said.

“We’re not out to punish people of faith, people with sincerely-held religious beliefs,” he said. “We’re out to punish fraudsters. Lyle Jeffs is now a convicted fraudster.”

Jeffs, who reportedly had nine wives, was awaiting trial in June 2016 when he escaped from home confinement. He was captured in South Dakota this past summer after pawn shop workers recognized him as the man who had sold two pair of pliers. He was living out of his pickup at the time, according to reports. A $50,000 reward had been offered for his capture.

Although no members of the sect appeared in court, parishioners told the Salt Lake City Tribune that they support Jeffs, who was known as the bishop of Short Creek, a reference to the twin communities of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona. Together, the two border towns make up the largest polygamist enclave in America.

Those two communities remain under court supervision for the next decade after they were found in an Arizona religious discrimination case to have denied non-believers police protection, building permits and water hookups. The sect was also the subject of child labor disputes in Utah.

Jeffs’ brother, Warren Jeffs, continues to run the sect from his cell in a Texas prison, where he is serving a life sentence for raping underage brides. Convicted in 2011, he had about 80 wives. On the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List for arranging marriages between followers and underage girls, he was convicted in 2007, but the sentence was overturned.

The Associated Press contributed to this report

Photo: Polygamist sect leader Lyle Jeffs, shown here leaving the federal courthouse in 2015, pleaded guilty Wednesday, Sept. 20, in what prosecutors called a multimillion-dollar food stamp fraud case. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File_