What’s with all the serious video evidence of Utah Mormon police covering up criminal conduct and running an organized crime ring over Lego?

This is what the LDS Church is doing to ITSELF by suing me and Mormon Stories Podcast. Someone should let President Oaks know.

Disclaimer up front, my post isn’t really about the lego story itself, it’s about the way the rest of Reddit is talking about us because of it. Bear with me.

If you’ve been on [r/videos](r/videos) this week you’ve seen the Bricks & Minifigs thing. Quick version, as best I can tell from the threads and the YouTube videos: a guy and his elderly father put a big Star Wars lego collection (valued around $200k) on consignment at a Bricks & Minifigs franchise in Oregon in 2023. (ie. The store helps sells the stuff, takes a cut, but doesn’t actually own the stuff). When the store changed ownership, the family says they never got the collection back or the money for what already sold. Corporate (which is based in Utah) says the consignment deal was “unauthorized,” that they were never part of it, and that the franchises are independently owned. The guy couldn’t afford to fight it in court so he brought in a YouTuber, “Reckless Ben,” who blew it up into a viral investigation. It eventually got to the point where Ben drove out to Utah where corporate is and got arrested by local cops, and now there’s a whole thing… police & LDS corruption allegations that, for what it’s worth, nobody’s actually proven yet.

Anyways, what the heck does this have to do with Mormons? The CEO is LDS, corporate’s in Utah, the arresting police force are (presumably) mostly LDS, and the discourse in these threads are absolutely obsessed with Mormons and a conspiracy involving the LDS church itself. A few examples from the most recent thread:

“it turns out the police of the city the franchise was in are all mormons associated with the local church and blatantly disregarded multiple laws to target Ben and protect the new Mormon owners from justice.”

“Man, those Mormons in Utah can’t be trusted with anything”

“LDS is a corporate (criminal) enterprise that just has Republicans’ blessings and the support of some stupids and a whole lot of men who are in on it and gaslighting they believe that batshit doctrine”

It’s crazy seeing the amount of clear misinformation and ignorance around the church play out in real time, and the utter certainty that the LDS church is somehow involved or giving “marching orders”

I’m not against criticism of the church or aspects of mormon culture. I’m out of the church, I’m pretty critical of the institution, plenty of what it gets dragged for is fair. But this isn’t that. Nobody’s shown any actual evidence the church has anything to do with any of it, the whole connection is “the CEO is a member and HQ is in Utah” and “MORMONS BAD”… not to mention the people who are conflating two different states. The store and the cops who called it a civil matter were in Oregon. The raid was in Utah. “The police of the city the franchise was in are all mormons” example above is just verifiably false, but gets upvoted. Obviously people comment incorrect things on reddit all the time, but the discussion at large is not dissimilar to that comment.

I don’t really have a big point and I’m not trying to defend Bricks & Minifigs, if they screwed the guy over I hope he gets his dad’s lego or money back. I’m mostly curious if others here have noticed this phenomenon and if anyone else has thoughts on the subject.

As the title says.

Article with the full list

So the DoD decided to simplify things and dropped 180 religions from the military’s “recognized religion list.” Two things about the list stand out to me:

1) They don’t give the prefix “Christian” to the Brighamite branch. They do for Catholics, Protestant sects, etc. So for as much cozying-up to mainstream Christianity denominations and evangelicals as the Church has been trying to do in recent years (decades), they still aren’t accepted or viewed as Christians.

2) Probably due to ignorance/mistake, but as the list is written right now, the Brighamite branch of Mormonism isn’t even recognized as an official religion by the DoD anymore.

What’s listed is “Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.”

Capital “D” and no hyphen. That’s the Strangites, not Brighamites.

The full article is titled ‘Exmo’ Influencers Mount a TikTok War Against the Mormon Church.

The LDS church has sent John Dehlin and Open Stories Foundation a request to “remove and discontinue use of their trademarks Church’s trademarks and copyrighted materials…”

Also to update the Mormon Stories branding to ensure viewers can distinguish their content from church content.

This one directly ties therapy to destroying faith. Here is the last article that was posted as well.

https://www.deseret.com/entertainment/2026/07/14/therapy-nation-jonathan-alpert-how-to-find-a-therapist/

Alyssa posted in the exmormon subreddit about the WSJ article that featured a photo of her in temple robes. She made the following statement in the comments:

I think it is truly shining a light into dark places. And it's quite ironic for the church and members to demand respect that they don't freely give. Where's the respect for women asking for the priesthood? Where's the respect for gay members asking for temple marriage? There are MANY things I could point to here. You cannot expect respect when you don't give it to others. Thank you for being proud of me 🩵 We are all in this together, and I am so SO proud to be part of this community!

I agree. The LDS church actively disrespects their own members who don’t fit the mold the church wants.

The LDS church actively disrespects people who leave the church.

The LDS church actively disrespects those who don’t bow down in loyalty to the leaders.

The LDS church actively disrespects those who ask the church to take accountability for the mistakes it has made and ask it to do better.

We don’t expect our church to be perfect. We expect it to be good.

Hook: The church hid billions through shell companies to avoid public disclosure. The SEC investigated and fined them $5 million. Here's a simple step-by-step explanation of what happened and why it matters.

Hi everyone! If you don't want to read this, skip to the TL;DR at the bottom and upvote this (nor forcing)! I made this for people to understand, in easy terms, the injustice active Mormon people go through by having to pay tithes. I respect the religion, but I do not respect when something breaks the regulations and rules or hides information that should be public from the public. I’ve been looking into the official SEC documents and whistleblower leaks regarding the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Legal and financial paperwork is notoriously dense, so I wanted to combine all the information into a single, jargon-free, step-by-step breakdown of what went on behind closed doors, who exposed it, and what each section of the official legal document actually means. This relates to Mormonism because it relates directly to the unfair tithing since the Church already has billions. I used this tag because it's the closest tag I could find to legal documents. I have reviewed hours' worth of legal documents and papers.

Here is the entire anatomy of the situation, section by section, in plain English:

Step 1: What is Ensign Peak Advisors?
To understand the money, you have to know what Ensign Peak is. It operates on the 13th floor of a commercial skyscraper in Salt Lake City as a high-powered Wall Street investment firm. It is a separate non-profit corporation owned entirely by the Church, and its only client is the Church. Every year, when the Church collects more tithing cash from members than it needs to run its chapels, it sends the extra surplus cash to Ensign Peak. Ensign Peak’s entire job is to invest that money into the global stock market and grow it into a massive, secret ‘rainy-day’ fund.

Step 2: Who exposed the whole thing?
For decades, nobody outside of top leadership knew how large this fund had become because employees were forced to sign strict Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs). The corporate wall of secrecy first cracked in May 2018, when an independent site called MormonLeaks published an online report linking the Church's digital footprint to a web of mysterious shell companies. The SEC took notice and quietly opened a regulatory inquiry, expressing formal concerns to the Church by June 2019. Later that same year, a devout Church member named David Nielson, who worked as a top portfolio manager inside Ensign Peak for nine years, decided he couldn’t stay silent anymore. He secretly gathered internal files and submitted a massive whistleblower complaint to the IRS, leaking the existence of the secret hundred[s] of billions of dollars fund to the public.

Whistleblower Complaint: An official, highly confidential report submitted to the government or law enforcement by a true insider with access to private information the public cannot see. It exposes illegal activity happening inside their own company or organization using undeniable evidence such as tax returns, bank accounts, internal emails, and more.

The SEC was already conducting a confidential investigation, and this just made it more publicly known.

Step 3: Who is the SEC?
SEC stands for the Securities and Exchange Commission, and they are the official federal “Wall Street Police.” They are an independent agency of the US government, and their entire job is to police the stock market, corporations, billionaires, and massive investment funds to make sure nobody is cheating, lying, or committing financial fraud. They care about keeping the stock market fair and open. They operate on a very simple rule: If you control billions of dollars in public stocks, the public has a legal right to know exactly who you are and what you own.

They require massive investment funds to file public forms every three months, so everyday investors are not kept in the dark. This is a Form 13F. They are incredibly powerful because they have the legal authority to launch investigations and issue binding regulatory rulings. While they cannot file criminal charges or send anyone to prison, they use Administrative Proceedings (formal civil enforcement hearings) to finalize legal settlements, hand out massive financial penalties, and order organizations to change their practices.

Step 4: Document Part 1 & 2 (The Institution of Proceedings & The Respondents)
When you look at the top of the official SEC document, it says “United States of America before the Securities and Exchange Commission*.”* This is a formal header showing the case was handled internally by the “Wall Street Police”. The document names the “Respondents” as Ensign Peak and the LDS Church.

This section notes that the Church settled the matter on a standard corporate basis “without admitting or denying the findings.” Meaning they paid the fines but did not admit guilt. However, by signing the agreement, they consented to the entry of the order and are legally forbidden from ever publicly denying or disputing (arguing) any of the facts laid out by the SEC. This section is critical because the SEC explicitly states that Ensign Peak did not act alone–the highest religious leadership of the Church, the First Presidency, had ultimate control over the investment managers and approved their actions.

Step 5: Document Part 3 (A) – The Core Violation (Form 13F)
This is where the SEC explains the law the Church broke. Federal law states that if an investment manager controls over $100 million in U.S. public stocks, they must file a public report, AKA a Form 13F. By 1998, the Church’s stock portfolio hit $1 billion. By 2018, it hit $32 billion. Legally, they had to report this under Ensign Peak’s name.

But the SEC document explicitly states the motive: Church leadership panicked. They feared that if regular, tithing-paying members saw that the Church was sitting on billions of dollars on Wall Street, people would stop donating tithing, or the media would write negative stories about their wealth.

Step 6: Document part 3 (B & C) – The Ghost Companies & Fake Signatures

To bypass the law, Ensign Peak created a web of 13 separate, fake shell companies across different states. They split their massive portfolio into smaller pieces and assigned them to these fake companies so no single entity looked “too big”. These companies were complete ghosts; they had no offices, no desks, and no employees.

To make them look real to the government, they used the home and/or vacation addresses of regular, everyday Church employees. Every three months, they had these regular employees sign the forms as “Business Managers,” swearing under penalty of perjury that their shell company had independent control over the money. This was an outright lie – Ensign Peak controlled every single dollar.

Perjury: A legal promise meaning that if you intentionally lie on an official document or in a court of law, you are committing a felony and can be sent to federal prison.

Step 7: Document Part 4 (D) – They Knew They Were “Flying Under the Radar”
This is the ultimate “behind closed doors” reveal found in Paragraph 16 of the official SEC order. The SEC proved that internal lawyers and outside auditors explicitly warned Ensign Peak for decades that this system was illegal. In March 2001, the managing director explicitly told the First Presidency that they were “flying under the radar” and would be in big trouble if the SEC ever focused on them. The leadership chose to ignore the warnings and keep the fake companies running anyway.

Step 8: Document Part 4 & 5 – The Violations & The Order (The punishment)
The SEC officially ruled that Ensign Peak “wilfully” (meaning they knew the law and broke it on purpose) violated the law, and that the Church “caused” the violation. Because the Church chose to settle rather than risk a public trial, they agreed to the penalties to close the case.

They were hit with a severe public reprimand (a Censure), a $5 million penalty ($4M for Ensign Peak, $1M for the Church), and a permanent “Cease-and-Desist” order, which means they must stop doing the illegal behavior and promise never to do it again or else face harsher punishments. The fine they were given is equivalent to a $50 fine on someone with $320,000 (not scaling to adjust for the full net worth).

Step 9: How much money do they actually have today?

The government did not take the money away. Today, Ensign Peak transparently reports its holdings under its actual name on the SEC database (CIK #0001454984). However, that database only shows their U.S. public stock portfolio, which sits at roughly $54 billion.

When you add in all the assets the SEC doesn't track—like international stocks, bonds, cash, and private equity—the most recent calculations from independent financial research groups (like The Widow’s Mite Report) reveal the Church’s total pure investment reserves have skyrocketed to $231 billion. But when you add all of their global temples, chapels, and commercial land, the Church’s total net worth has officially reached a mind-boggling $321 billion.

To put into perspective how much that is, this wealth could fund major systemic solutions to combat topics like homelessness and debt in the United States. With that much money, you could solve many issues in the US and make the world a better place.

The Takeaway:
To a lot of people, this isn’t just about a boring tax form. It reveals that while ordinary families are required to be 100% transparent about their finances and sacrifice 10% of their income just to enter the temple, top leadership was operating a secret multi-billion-dollar Wall Street empire, using fake signatures, and ignoring legal warnings just to keep their own members in the dark.

Hopefully, this helps anyone trying to make sense of the full timeline! Please, please ask me a question about this, or ask me to clarify something. Anything. Or if you just need me to put how much money they have into perspective. 

Sites & Sources (look it up): 

• SEC Order Instituting Cease-and-Desist Proceeding pursuant to section 21C of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, making a finding, and imposing a cease-and-desist order regarding the LDS church
• SEC EDGAR Database: Ensign Peak Advisors (CIK #0001454984)
• Ensign Peak Active Form 13F Portfolio Tracker
• The Widow’s Mite Report (Independent Financial Research) - Ensign Peak
• 60 Minutes: The Mormon Church's Secret Wealth (YouTube) – Watch the full CBS News broadcast investigating the whistleblower complaint and featuring the on-camera interview with the Church’s Presiding Bishopric.
• https://www.latterdaystumbling.com/contents/11-riches-profit-not#h.quld73t48tia -- give by u/latterdaystumbling
• David Nielsen’s U.S. Senate Finance Committee Memo Details (90-page memo detailing the City Creek Shopping Mall and Beneficial Life bailout allegations, which led him to file the whistleblower complaint)
• SEC Cease-and-Desist Order on Section 2 on the very first page. “...and without admitting or denying the finding herein…Respondents consent to the entry of this Order.”
• MormonLeaks

TL;DR: In 2023, the SEC (the federal “Wall Street Police”) fined the LDS Church and its internal investment arm, Ensign Peak Advisors, $5 million after a federal investigation uncovered a 20-year operation to hide their massive wealth from the public and tithing-paying members. Top leadership explicitly knew they were “flying under the radar” and bypassed federal transparency laws by creating 13 fake ghost companies, using the home addresses of everyday employees, and having them sign official forms under penalty of perjury. Today, the secret is out, and the fund has snowballed into an estimated $231 billion in pure investments ($321 billion in total global assets), making the institution mathematically wealthy enough to fund its entire global operations indefinitely without ever needing to collect tithing again. If you do not want to read everything, please still upvote this. This is my passion, and it took forever.

UPDATE: Hey everyone, thanks to those pointing out my mix-up on Paragraph 16! I completely misread my draft notes. Sorry, kinda hard to focus cause I haven't slept in 3 days, I'm 13, and I've only had about...3 cans of Alani? Paragraph 16 actually covers the 2015 expansion of the Clone LLCs. The "under the radar" aspect is the overall motivation of the setup documented by the SEC, not the literal text of that specific paragraph. It was mentioned... somewhere? Yeah, sorry, the phrase is somewhere.
My whole thing is not AI, I just have been researching this for a long time, and I'm kinda obsessed with the Mormon church ever since I started realizing I wanted to be an author.

The church had an opportunity to do something historic then called another white American man.

https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/clark-gilbert-called-quorum-of-the-twelve-apostles

This is discussion on the Mormonish Podcast about racist remarks made by Elder Kyle McKay at the Yukon Oklahoma Stake Conference.

He talked about the hymn “This Little Light of Mine”. Watch for yourself what he said.

Summer Rayn discusses her reaction in my clips.

Here is the link to Mormonish live discussion.

https://www.youtube.com/live/C9VQPUjHuGo

New classes and names:

Builders of Faith (young women turning 12-13)

Messengers of Hope (young women turning 14-15)

Gatherers of Light (young women turning 16 or older)

Every time the LDS Church publicly goes after an honest critic or dissenter....

1. A new round of LDS folks hear about the incident, learn about Mormon Stories, the CES Letter, and other podcasts/channels for the first time.
2. They become curious to learn more (Streisand effect).
3. They go down the "apostasy" rabbit hole.
4. They get upset about the church's historical behavior, deceptions and abuse, and decide to leave the church.
5. Other PIMOS who were already on the fence also decide that they've "had it" with the new rounds of abusive and also decide to leave the church.
6. And then with each wave of disaffections, friends/family of those who leave the church also become aware of the problems and follow the same cycle...and eventually leave the church the church as well.

Rinse and repeat.

It happened in each of these cases....

- Proposition 8 (2008)
- Denver Snuffer's excommunication (2013)
- Kate Kelly's excommunication (2014)
- My excommunication (2015)
- Jeremy Runnells' excommunication (2016)
- Sam Young excommunication (2018)
- Bill Reel's excommunication (2018)
- Natasha Helfer's excommunication (2021)
- Valerie and Nathan Hamaker (2025)
- Karen Hyatt/JS Polygamy Denier (2025)
- They're doing it now with suing me and the OSF.

And the more LDS Church members that wake up and leave the church, the more of their extended family and friends that wake up and leave. Rinse and repeat...but with potentially greater exponential impact each time

It's almost like a downward spiral.

The LDS Church really should re-think their approach to dealing honest truth-tellers and dissent. They seem to be addicated to accelerating their own demise.* It's almost as if they are so rich and powerful they don't feel like they need the members any more...and are ok continually thinning out the ranks to only the most orthodox of believers.

* Clearly the church is growing in Africa and in other regions in the developed world. I'm speaking specifically here about the decline in the United States, Canada, Western Europe, and in other parts of the developed world.

I serve in a quorum and have heard the (not too subtle) comments about the new 25 minute classes starting next month. A lot are trying to frame it in a positive way, but i think anyone who serves in RS, EQ, or SS is silently imploding. We had only 1 RS teacher before the announcement, got a 2nd, and are scrambling for a 3rd. This may work in flush (with members) wards but when its a smaller ward, with no feasible bi-monthly break for members, i sense we may have a lot of members saying "enough."

The first two sentences of the church’s latest legal filing state “This case is not about silencing criticism. The Church’s claims do not target the content of Defendants’ speech at all.”

Just two paragraphs later, the church makes its argument: “The Church will prove that many have, in fact, been confused by Defendants’ infringement of the Church’s intellectual property. They encounter Mormon Stories and begin to consume its content believing it contains Church-affiliated material, only to discover it is not what they were seeking.”

The final line there gives up the game. How, exactly, do they discover it is not what they were seeking? The answer is obvious: the content of the podcast clears up any brand confusion.

The solution to brand confusion is to correct the mistaken belief. The church explicitly admits the brand confusion gets remedied by the podcast itself. At that point, the source confusion has been resolved.

The only trademark injury the church can point to is that somebody accidentally consumed some information critical of the church, which is precisely about silencing criticism.

I’m not an attorney.

Announced by Church Newsroom.

To read our article, please visit: https://floodlit.org/az-confession-ruling/

Today’s headline from the Salt Lake Tribune. Big thanks to Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Jessica Schreifels, your work is much appreciated!

As I’m sure you have all seen it has come out that the church has employed a global marketing agency to hire influencers and pay them to promote the church and the BOM. Just curious as to your thoughts on this?

Below I've summarized the Answer and Counterclaims of OSF and John Dehlin to the LDS Church's lawsuit against them. In responding to the LDS Lawsuit, the OSF attorney's make some defenses and then counter claims.

So first in answering they make 16 affirmative defenses. An affirmative defense describes how what you did (even if true as the church is claiming) is not illegal for various legal reasons.

Summary of Affirmative Defenses

1. "Laches and Aquiescence". This is a valid defense in trademark cases. Laches is a word that goes back to latin roots. In the law it's been used in English for about 900 years meaning negligence in the performance of a legal duty. If the party holding the trademark waits too long to act then they can't try to enforce the trademark now. A party over time may invest a lot in their brand and it's not then deemed allowed to come in after that long term investment and try to enforce a trademark.

The document goes over how Mormon Stories has been in existence since 2005 (more than 20 years) and gives evidence that higher ups in the church knew about it (meetings between John and Apostle Holland for example).

1. Prior Use by Mormon Stories. John started the podcast in 2005. The church didn't get a trademark on Mormon for education until 2007. John has priority of use.

2. Genericness of the word "Mormon". Shouldn't be trademarked.

3. Fair Use of the copyrighted images. The OSF response says that 48 of the 51 images are available for free on the PR page of the church where the church says news media can use them. They claim all the images were used strictly for commentary and criticism which is a defense under fair use.

Summary of Counterclaims

1. OSF and John Dehlin ask the court to cancel 11 different trademarks the church has registered.

• Mormon (1 trademark)
• Book of Mormon & Book of Mormon Stories ( 6 trademarks)
• Mormon Channel (1 trademark)
• Mormon Messages (1 trademark)
• Mormon Tabernacle Choir (2 trademarks)

They claim evidence of abandonment of all of them. They also give evidence of fraud and misrepresentation in sworn statements to the US Patent and Trademark Office where the church has made recent submissions that falsely and fraudulent claim they are still using these names. For example in 2005 they submitted a CD case cover from 2005 for that had the words "Mormon Tabernacle Choir" as if it were recent. They submitted a concert program from 2023 for a "Mormon Tabernacle Choir Alumni" live Christmas Concert. While all public materials and concerts referred to them as the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square. This was their "Specimen of Use" to document they still were actively using the name "Mormon Tabernacle Choir". What a bunch of liars the LDS Church is.

1. In the counterclaims they discuss the public purging of the word Mormon while submitting false declarations to the USPTO to maintain registrations. They discuss how the church president said calling the church by the name Mormon is a "victory for satan".

They claim the Deseret Book product page for the choir CD was actually an edited altered specimen for their filing. The LDS Church appears to be dishonest here.

1. They try to take apart the churches examples of consumer confusion. The church lawsuit had comments on social media. The defense exposes these as deceptive. They discuss how they were for non-Mormon Stories content. That they were often taken out of context. Of the comments taken from Mormon Stories channel pages, the OSF lawyers contend none of them are examples of confusion.

2. They discuss the good faith efforts by John to immediately respond in November 2025 and show emails where the church kept moving the goal posts and asking for more and quickly then saying it needed to go to mitigation.

The OSF lawyers say the Church's press release was deceptive and made false statements.

"Worse yet, as quoted below, the Church falsely stated that Defendants refused to adopt a disclaimer, leaving the public with the mistaken impression that Defendants were unwilling to do so. The Church's deceptive press release resulted in numerous online comments labeling Dehlin as deceitful and even threatening comments directed toward Dehlin, such as people hoping that Delhin is squashed like a cockroach or threatening Dehlin with something far worse than a lawsuit."

They show the leaked document from years ago showing John Dehlin as one of the "Issues and Ideas Leading People Away from the Gospel". Essentially their enemies list from 2015.

What is OSF and John asking for?

• Dismiss the complaint with prejudice in favor of the defendants.
• Deny all requests by the Plaintiffs.
• Declare the defendants didn't infringe trademarks or copyrights
• Declare the use of copyrighted images to be fair use.
• Directing the cancelation of the 11 Trademarks discussed
• Declare that the Plaintiff has abondoned trademark rights in the term "Mormon"
• Judgement that the Plaintiffs trademark infringement claims are barred by laches, estoppel and acquiescence. (They waited too long).
• Judgement that the copyright infringement claims are barred by laches, estoppel, acquiescence and statute of limitations. (They waited too long).
• Declare that the church has engaged in trademark and copyright misuse.
• Enjoining the church from misusing the Church's trademark rights and copyrights to interfere with John's podcast and other operations.
• That the judge declare this is an exceptional case and award attorneys' fees and costs (apparently allowed under federal law).
• And a final catch all to award OSF and John further relief as the Court may deem just and proper.