SALT LAKE CITY -- Investigators say they noticed something strange when they began tracking food stamp transactions coming out of two small convenience stores in a polygamous community on the Arizona-Utah border.
The volume of food stamp purchases was so large that it rivaled big-box stores like Wal-Mart and Costco.
They said they later learned that residents were scanning their food stamp debit cards at the stores but getting no items in return, letting leaders of the polygamous sect divert the money to front companies. The proceeds paid for a John Deere loader, a Ford truck and $17,000 in paper products, federal prosecutors said Tuesday.
The alleged scheme is at the heart of what marked a major takedown of top leaders of the secretive sect in which followers adhere to the belief that having multiple wives brings exaltation in heaven.
Eleven people were charged with food stamp fraud and money laundering, including Lyle Jeffs and Seth Jeffs, top-ranking leaders of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and brothers of imprisoned sect leader Warren Jeffs.
Lyle Jeffs runs the day-to-day operations in the polygamous community of Hildale, Utah, while Seth Jeffs leads a branch of the group in South Dakota. Their brother Warren Jeffs is serving a life sentence in Texas for sexually assaulting girls he considered brides at a secretive church compound in that state.
Prosecutors accuse church leaders of orchestrating a years-long fraud scheme that included meetings where they told members how to use the use food-stamp benefits illegally for the benefit of the faith and avoid getting caught, charging documents show.
One common tactic was buying groceries with the food stamps and giving the supplies to the church's communal storehouse for leaders to choose how to divvy up.
The practice has been called "bleeding the beast," taking money from a government they disdain and using as they see fit, said Amos Guiora, a University of Utah law professor who has studied the church.
The arrests - which were made Tuesday in Salt Lake City; Custer County, South Dakota; and the sister cities of Hildale, Utah and Colorado City, Arizona - are the government's latest move targeting the sect based on the Utah-Arizona border, coinciding with legal battles in two states over child labour and discrimination against nonbelievers.
The arrests come amid a civil rights trial in Phoenix against the twin polygamous towns of Hildale and Colorado City, Arizona, in which prosecutors say the communities discriminated against people who were not members of the church by denying them housing, water services and police protection.
Federal labour lawyers also are going after the group on allegations that leaders ordered parents to put their kids to work for long hours for little pay on a southern Utah pecan farm.
The communities deny those allegations.
Prosecutors said the actions in this new case weren't coordinated. But Sam Brower, a private investigator who has spent years investigating the group, said one common theme in all the cases is that authorities are finding more willing witnesses with inside knowledge because large numbers of people who have been kicked out or left.
Lyle Jeffs and Seth Jeffs and the others are expected to make their initial court appearances in Wednesday in three different federal states.
Federal prosecutors are asking the judge to keep them behind bars, arguing in court documents that they are flight risks. They contend if allowed out on bail, they polygamists are likely to flee and seek hiding in the group's elaborate network of houses throughout North and South America, using aliases, disguises, false identification documents and pre-paid cellphones to help people avoid being caught.
The sect does not have a spokesman or a phone listing where leaders can be contacted. The Associated Press could not verify if the defendants had attorneys yet.
Blake Hamilton, an attorney representing Hildale, said none of those indicted was serving in a government position and that it had nothing to do with the city government.
U.S. Attorney John Huber said repeatedly Tuesday that the indictment was not about religion, but fraud.
Guiora said the bust goes well beyond fraud - putting in doubt who will lead the group and how members will respond to a decisive message from government officials they have historically despised.
Associated Press writers Jacques Billeaud in Phoenix and Felicia Fonseca in Flagstaff, Arizona, contributed to this report
