Prosecutors: Businessman guided polygamists in fraud scheme

Source: Associated Press


Brady Mccombs, Associated Press
Updated 12:17 pm CST, Thursday, January 30, 2020

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A pair of Utah polygamists teamed up with a California businessman with ties to Turkey to defraud the U.S. of nearly $500 million from a biodiesel fuel program because he offered the men protection from what he called his “umbrella” of law enforcement and government sources, prosecutors said Thursday.

Businessman Lev Aslan Dermen joined the scheme in late 2011. about two years after the men launched it, and pushed them to expand the operation exponentially by using burner phones, elaborate money transfers to Turkey and Luxembourg and shipping fuels from countries such as Ireland and India and through Panama at one point, U.S. Department of Justice attorney Leslie Goemaat said during opening statements in the trial.

. . .She told jurors in a federal courtroom in Salt Lake City that the men aimed to defraud the government of $1 billion but only received $470 million before their final claims in 2015 were rejected. A federal investigation was started weeks later and the three men were indicted in 2018.

Brothers Jacob Kingston and Isaiah Kingston, the polygamists who owned a renewable energy company used in the scheme, pleaded guilty last year to money fraud and other charges and are expected to testify against Dermen during the trial that may last a month or longer.

Read more: https://www.chron.com/news/crime/article/Prosecutors-Businessman-guided-polygamists-in-15016965.php