For a polygamous religious sect whose child-rapist leader reportedly rules from a prison cell, the crime of food stamp fraud seems frankly banal—and yet, the misuse of such public welfare could very well be the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ undoing.
Eleven leaders and members of Warren Jeffs’s polygamous sect in Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona—a community of roughly 6,000 known as Short Creek—have been charged with conspiracy to defraud the nutrition assistance program and conspiracy to commit money laundering, according to a federal indictment filed in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City that was unsealed Tuesday.
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