The Hoard of Mormon Wealth
I am of the opinion if it wasn’t for an Ensign Peak Adviser whistleblower, that the church would have carried on filing the way it did, in order to hide the investment fund from its membership.
One of the biggest bombshells was dropped on my religious life in the middle winter of 2023. (This isn’t as big as the abuse issue for me) It was a rather mild winter and we were looking forward to springtime blossoms, warmer weather, and — wait. What is this? Our church is being fined by the government? That’s impossible. One of our core principles found in the articles of faith is that we obey, honor and sustain the law. Article of Faith 12
What was the amount of the fine?
$5 million dollars. $1 million directly from the church, $4 million from it’s investment arm, Ensign Peak.
What did the Mormon church do?
The Church was concerned that disclosure of its portfolio, which by 2018 grew to approximately $32 billion, would lead to negative consequences. To obscure the amount of the Church’s portfolio, and with the Church’s knowledge and approval, Ensign Peak created thirteen shell LLCs, ostensibly with locations throughout the U.S., and filed Forms 13F in the names of these LLCs rather than in Ensign Peak’s name
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To obscure the amount of the Church’s portfolio, and with the Church’s knowledge and approval, Ensign Peak created thirteen shell LLCs, ostensibly with locations throughout the U.S., and filed Forms 13F in the names of these LLCs rather than in Ensign Peak’s name. The order finds that Ensign Peak maintained investment discretion over all relevant securities, that it controlled the shell companies, and that it directed nominee “business managers,” most of whom were employed by the Church, to sign the Commission filings. The shell LLCs’ Forms 13F misstated, among other things, that the LLCs had sole investment and voting discretion over the securities. In reality, the SEC’s order finds, Ensign Peak retained control over all investment and voting decisions.
What did the church have to say about it?
Since 2000, Ensign Peak received and relied upon legal counsel regarding how to comply with its reporting obligations while attempting to maintain the privacy of the portfolio. As a result, Ensign Peak established separate companies (LLCs) that each filed Forms 13F instead of a single aggregated filing. Ensign Peak and the Church believe that all securities required to be reported were included in the filings by the separate companies.
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We affirm our commitment to comply with the law, regret mistakes made, and now consider this matter closed.
Mormon Church Statement on SEC Order
How could this have happened? Doesn’t the church have audits that prevent these things from occurring?
Yes. The church does have an auditing department. Each year in April, they give the same repeated statement, that boils down to this:
“We are an independent department. We follow the rules given by the Lord Jesus Christ in revealed scripture. We have found that this year, the church followed the rules.”
Here’s a link to one of those reports, for the year 2024.
If you go all the way back to the year 2000, when the church says it started filing things wrong with the SEC, you will see similar statements each and every year. The auditing department, made up of “credentialed professionals” didn’t find this gross misstep by the church in their filings with the government.
The Church Auditing Department must be full of a lot of yes men.
I am of the opinion if it wasn’t for an Ensign Peak Adviser whistleblower, that the church would have carried on filing the way it did, in order to hide the investment fund from its membership.
Since then, we have been able to get a better snapshot of the church’s investment fund. There is a website called The Widows Mite Report, that tracks to the best of its abilities the church’s assets.
There’s a lot of information there, and you can see while the assets of the church have grown, the church’s donations to charity are small. I personally found that the church donates less to charity (<1%) than what it asks of its members (10%) in order to go into the temple to receive special ordinances. This amount is also less than a for-profit company. You may have heard of them. Walmart. Yes, Walmart donates more proceeds of its revenue percentagewise than the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I posted about this online and called it priestcraft. There is a better term for it: simony.
In the 1828 dictionary of Websters, this is the definition given for priestcraft:
PRIE'STCRAFT, noun [priest and craft.] The stratagems and frauds of priests; fraud or imposition in religious concerns; management of selfish and ambitious priests to gain wealth and power, or to impose on the credulity of others.
Today’s current definition of priestcraft is rather useless. This one is of note because this is the word that was used in the book of Mormon to describe a character named Nehor who was going around spreading “false doctrine.”
The church requiring 10% of its members before letting them inside its temples and receiving “saving ordinances” qualifies itself as an institution that practices priestcraft and/or simony.
The Four Fold Mission of the Church
The four fold mission of the church is declared in its handbook.
God’s Work of Salvation and Exaltation
We come unto Christ and assist in God’s work by:
Living the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Caring for those in need.
Inviting all to receive the gospel.
Uniting families for eternity.
The investment fund and church assets has swelled to over $200B, since the whistleblower reported it first in 2019.
One of its main missions is to care for the needy. Walmart doesn’t even have that listed as one if its main ones, and they donate more. Isn’t there something wrong there?
A lot of the members online don’t see any problems with this investment fund. They post often, as you can see on the hashtag on X/Twitter - #MakeItATrillion. I get told often “how much do you think it costs to build a city?” or “we’re saving and we don’t know what’s next” or “we do take care of the poor, we donated $1.5B last year”
The vast amount of wealth doesn’t matter to the main membership, it seems. They see no contradiction in the amount of firings the church did back in the late 90’s to the custodial and maintenance crews that serviced the church meetinghouses. They published a magazine article of testimonials of how members cleaning the church buildings blesses members lives.
I’m puzzled by their viewpoint, but it’s probably due to needing to support and sustain the leaders. Every year, in Conference they ask for sustaining votes. What’s interesting here is they address those who do not sustain them, to discuss with their “Stake Presidents.” So, they put the Stake President on the front lines to deal with issues that the main membership may voice at general conference. Is that really a sustaining vote? Anything done in the church needs to be done with Common Consent.
Not only are Church officers sustained by common consent, but this same principle operates for policies, major decisions, acceptance of new scripture, and other things that affect the lives of the Saints (see D&C 26:2).
To sum up, I think there’s a lot wrong with what’s going on. The church’s leadership isn’t subject to criticism. They can do as they please. They can commit tax fraud, even though in the handbook it says if a member does commit fraud, they are subject to a membership council. The leaders are apparently exempt from that.
The church’s leadership can claim they aren’t using the funds for anything wrong. Why do they keep asking for more money? Why do they prioritize buying stocks and properties instead of helping the poor?
Maybe it’s because the church isn’t led by Jesus Christ, as they claim.
There’s something so disgusting about church corruption. It hides behind a flimsy mask of righteousness, and is a fucking insult to the intelligence of any who see to engage with it.
Amen! This was such a huge shelf breaker for me. They’re just a big corporation with members who have been trained to dismiss major red flags such as this.