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 The charges were contained in a grand jury indictment unsealed in
U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City on Tuesday as FBI agents and
sheriff's deputies raided church-owned businesses and arrested
leaders of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints in Utah-Arizona border towns and in South Dakota.
The church, a breakaway sect of the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints, informally known as the Mormon Church, preaches
that polygamy leads to a favored place in heaven.
"This indictment is not about religion. This indictment is about
fraud," U.S. Attorney John Huber said in a statement.
The indictment charges 11 defendants with one count each of
conspiring to defraud the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance
Program (SNAP), commonly called food stamps, and with conspiring to
commit money laundering.
 Among those charged was 56-year-old church leader Lyle Jeffs, the
brother of polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs who is serving a life
prison sentence for sexually assaulting two young girls at a
religious compound in Texas.
Jeffs and another high-ranking official, John Wayman, were arrested
on Tuesday in Salt Lake City. Another Jeffs sibling, Seth, was
arrested in rural South Dakota, where he leads an FLDS congregation.
Prosecutors allege church leaders directed adherents starting around
2011 to funnel food bought with SNAP funds into an FLDS Storehouse
to feed the broader church community.
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In some cases, church leaders withdrew cash from food-stamp cards
they took from congregants and used the money for bill-paying.
Winford Barlow, among those indicted, spent $30,236 for a 2012 Ford
F-350 pickup truck, according to prosecutors, and Kimball Barlow
signed a check for $16,978 in paper products.
FLDS Church members in the Hildale, Utah and Colorado City, Arizona
border communities receive millions of dollars in SNAP benefits per
year, according to prosecutors who did not give a total value for
the alleged fraud.
Six of the 11 people charged have been arrested so far. Those
arrested are to appear on Wednesday in federal courts in Utah and
South Dakota. Those convicted could face as much as 25 years in
prison.
(Reporting by Eric M. Johnson in Seattle; Editing by Dan Whitcomb
and Cynthia Osterman)
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