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In this episode of American Greed, Jacob Kingston is a high -ranking member of

the Order, the most powerful religious sect you've never heard of.

I want to start by bearing my testimony that this is the work of the Lord. The

feds say the Order controls an empire of hundreds of businesses throughout the

American West.

allegedly worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Most of the members believe that they work hard to make money for the order

because God's army is going to need to be well -funded when Jesus comes.

But this deep -pocketed holy man has a surprising partner, a shady fuel baron

who calls himself the Lion.

He's this very flashy figure, dresses in very expensive clothes.

throws lavish parties, drives fancy cars.

The polygamist and the lion steal millions from the government in a

scheme until they are met by another unlikely combo, tenacious federal agents

and a teenaged girl.

My dad has over 300 kids.

Tonight, an insider determined to break away from the order and expose the

truth. I knew that this was my chance to get out, and I had to take it, and I

couldn't look back.

She is privy to all the transactions that happen within the order.

He started explaining that all these businesses are connected and all these

people are connected. They're all part of this cult.

A member of a fundamentalist polygamist sect, a guy with three wives and 20

children, teams up with an immigrant from Armenia.

to steal $500 million from the federal government.

Doesn't get any more American than that.

On a cold morning just before dawn, 17 -year -old Mary Jacobs gets up and

dressed while her family sleeps.

Today is the day she decides to change her life forever.

I remember getting up that morning knowing that I was going to leave the

Mary Jacobs is escaping from her parents, who would have her engaged to

her first cousin in two days.

The order.

believes in incestuous relationships to keep their bloodline pure.

It's something that you grow up knowing you're going to be married to somebody

in the family.

Working in the Order's accounting office, Mary knows where the financial

are buried and holds key information that could help to expose her secretive

family's alleged crimes.

And I remember when she came to me and she said, okay, I'm ready.

I said, great.

Let's go right now.

Let's contact the FBI.

In the suburbs of Salt Lake City, the streets are clean, the houses well kept,

and the neighbors are friendly.

It's also home to what has been called the most powerful polygamist group in

America, the Order, also known as the Kingston Group and officially the Davis

County Cooperative Society.

It's estimated 3 ,500 to 5 ,000 members live in the Salt Lake Valley, blending

into the suburbs in family homes with minivans in the driveway.

They don't live in compounds. They live in regular neighborhoods. They work

regular jobs. They dress in regular clothes.

You know, they appear outwardly like just regular, ordinary folks.

The sect was founded in 1935 by a man named Charles Eldon Kingston.

Today, seven brothers in the Kingston line run the group.

Their supreme leader is Brother Paul Kingston.

In 1995,

Mary Jacobs is born into the order. Her father, David Kingston, is one of these

seven brothers.

Her mother is his half -sister.

Married in the order at age 15.

My mom was a fifth wife to David Kingston.

He currently has 17 wives.

I am one of 15 children to my mom.

And my dad has over 300 kids in the Salt Lake Valley, and he's just one person

in the order.

And the idea is they are organizing the kingdom of God on earth.

under the order of heaven.

And it is very orderly. It's very number -based.

So the men are ordered by number.

Their wives are attached to them by number. And it's almost like the group

themselves as God's accounting system.

A numbered man in the order is somebody who signs away everything that they will

ever make into the order.

They believe it's like a way to get into heaven.

Over the last 100 years, the group's members create an empire of businesses

real estate throughout the American West.

They have many million -dollar businesses. They have security

You've got coin and laundry businesses, ice companies,

pawn shops.

And the idea is you build up these businesses for the greater good to

wealth.

In addition to polygamy, the order practices the voluntary consecration of

wealth, where all businesses and all money is shared with the group.

Former member Michelle Michaels explains the order's teaching.

If a child finds a penny on the ground, the first thing that he should want to

do is turn it into the church, turn it into the order.

He shouldn't even think about spending that penny.

until after it goes to the order bank.

The order bank is what members call their internal system that keeps track

income and spending for order members.

Mary Jacobs has been working at the order's financial office since she was a

child. From the time I was seven years old, I was preparing these financial

statements for every single member of the order.

All of the transactions and anything that an order member spends is recorded

those statements.

And then as I got older, I started preparing the business financials.

And then I started helping prepare their taxes for their different businesses.

Mary's older first cousin, Jacob Kingston, also grows up in the order and

this culture of creating wealth and prosperity for his people.

Jacob is a favored son, and before long, his formal portrait joins the others

amongst the ranks of the numbered men.

He is number 95.

I want to start by bearing my testimony that this is the work of the Lord and

that Brother Paul is the man on the wash tower.

Jacob Kingston is one of the grandsons of one of the founders of this sect, the

Kingston Group.

And according to their own beliefs, that means that his bloodline goes directly

back to Jesus Christ himself.

So he's sort of been a bit of a prince of the Kingston group ever since he was

born. And when he's 17, Jacob decides to get married to his sweetheart, Sally.

As a good polygamist, Jacob takes other wives and eventually winds up with a

total of three wives and around 20 children of his own.

In the early 2000s, Jacob enrolls in a doctoral program in mechanical

engineering and begins to develop a new business idea for the Order.

turning French fry grease into diesel fuel.

To foster green energy, the U .S. government pours billions into biofuels

form of tax credits.

It works out to roughly on the order of $2 a gallon straight from the federal

government just for having made this stuff. And then you get to sell the

and make whatever you make.

Jacob Kingston sets up a biodiesel refinery on his father's ranch in

Utah. And by 2008, the Washakie Renewable Energy Facility begins

vegetable oil, converting it into biofuel, and then trying to sell it. For

first few years, however, business is terrible.

All the places where they can source the actual vegetable oil are a long ways

away. So they wind up having to truck vegetable oil in from the Midwest.

It's expensive, right? They have to truck all this stuff way out to their

in the middle of nowhere, where they do indeed convert it into biodiesel, but

then they have to again truck it from there to wherever the buyers are.

With high expenses and low sales, profits are zero.

Until Jacob Kingston devises a plan to turn the company around.

He decides if he can't actually produce and sell the biofuel, He'll pretend like

he is.

Utah was a terrible place to make biodiesel, but as it turns out, it was a

place to commit fraud.

And with the right documentation, Uncle Sam will never notice a thing.

He gets in touch with some other really shady operators in this world of

biodiesel. Jacob pretends to make biodiesel.

sells it to them, they pretend to buy it from him, and then sell it on down the

line, and they pull in a couple of million dollars in federal tax credits.

So Jacob clearly thinks, wow, this beats doing business the legitimate way.

Kingston enlists his brother Isaiah, his first wife Sally, and his mother

Rachel, all employees of Washakie Renewable Energy, to help him falsify

documents and cook the books.

The paperwork appears to check out. The IRS and the EPA process the invoices,

and over the next few years, Jacob Kingston collects government checks

about $10 million.

The Kingstons had been engaged in this fraud scheme to steal money from the U

.S. Treasury for a couple of years.

They were doing pretty good at it.

Up next.

See the unholy alliance that turns a $10 million scam into a billion -dollar

empire of greed.

Jacob Kingston, member of the Order, had this giant mansion and parked in the

driveway are a chrome Lamborghini and a gold Ferrari.

Jacob Kingston is the public face of Washakie Renewable Energy, serving as

of the biofuel company.

But privately, he is a member of the secretive religious sect, The Order, and

plugging away at an ever -growing fraud scheme, buying cheap blended oil and

tricking the IRS into paying out millions.

They fake up paperwork to make it look like what they really bought was

vegetable oil and that they converted it into biodiesel.

They claim all the tax credits, cha -ching.

And then they're going to sell it to buyers in India.

700 ,000 gallons of biodiesel are shipped off to India.

But by the time the ship arrives, the buyer is out of business.

What's he going to do with this stuff?

Jacob sends his salespeople all over the place like...

Find me somebody who's willing to buy 700 ,000 gallons of possibly rancid

biodiesel. Who's going to buy something like that?

Who's going to buy something like that is Lev Derman, a .k .a. The Lion.

Lev Derman likes to call himself The Lion.

The Lion is born in Armenia, immigrates to L .A. as a teen.

and has close ties to Turkey.

His original name is Levon Termenjian, but he changes it to Lev Aslan Derman,

Aslan meaning lion in Turkish.

And all of his businesses are called Lion Trucking, Lion Fuel, or he's got a

couple of gas stations that are called Noil Gas, Lion Backwards, right?

The lions are his image. Everywhere he goes, he has sculptures of lions,

pictures of lions. He tells people, Call me the lion.

And he really carries himself with a lot of swagger. He likes to dress really

flashy. He drives Lamborghinis. He's got a Bugatti. He's got an armored SUV.

He's got an office on Rodeo Drive and travels around by private jet.

He lives in a very different world from poor Jacob Kingston, who grew up in a

house with seven kids in two bedrooms.

When the lion learns of Kingston's cut -rate boatload of questionable oil, he

says, I'll take it.

So not only is Derman going to buy the fuel, they're going to fake up all this

paperwork so that they can claim millions of dollars in tax credits. They

couple of million dollars.

Now they're in business together.

Once Kingston and Derman are in business together, Washakie Renewable Energy's

relatively small -time fraud operation suddenly goes boom.

What changed for the Kingstons and their fraud scheme once they met Lev Derman

is that they got to a new stratosphere of fraud.

And once Lev Derman got involved and the conspiracy continued under his

tutelage, the amounts of money are mind -blowing.

The unlikely partners go all in, shipping and trucking low -grade fuel

the world to make it look like real buying, selling, and biofuel conversion

going on.

There was just a shell game, shuffling around large amounts of dirty oil,

claiming that this was something good for the environment and something good

the nation.

Prior to working with Derman, the Kingstons submitted claims for IRS and

credit payments.

totaling about $41 million.

Within five years of meeting Derman, their claims total a staggering $1 .1

billion. And by 2015, $511 million of that had been paid out.

This is cash in hand. These are checks drafted from the United States Treasury

that are sent to the Kingstons and their associates.

The value of our order standards.

While still intimately tied to the order, Jacob Kingston is forging a high

-profile path to keep up with his unlikely business partner in crime, the

a .k .a. Lev Derman, a .k .a. Levon Tremensian.

After all, why orchestrate a billion -dollar cash scam if you're not going to

have a little fun?

The two of them are giving each other presents of Rolex watches worth north of

$100 ,000.

They're giving each other...

Maseratis and Bugattis.

At one point, Dermot shows up at a Kingston family picnic in a chrome

Lamborghini, comes around to the picnic, says hi to everybody, and then just

hands the keys to Jake and says, here, this is yours.

Through shell companies and offshore accounts, Terminzian purchases a luxury

hotel, a $12 million yacht, and a waterfront mansion in Huntington Beach,

California.

For his birthday, Jacob Kingston presents Derman with a $1 .8 million

Veyron. And Tremendian, in turn, buys Jacob Kingston a $3 .5 million mansion

Sandy, Utah.

One of the really foundational beliefs of the order is to live humbly.

Unfortunately, that tenet doesn't translate to leadership.

So someone like Jacob Kingston, who is...

High up in the hierarchy of the church, he lives in gated mansion communities,

driving Bugattis.

Kingston travels the world in style, investing in foreign enterprises.

Standing for a photo wearing a $2 ,000 suit with the president of Turkey, the

once humble polygamist has risen to unfathomable heights.

Next.

To keep all this going, Jacob Kingston is paying more and more to the lion's so

-called umbrella of protection.

And the cost is high.

LeVon Tremendian is increasingly holding him in the palm of his hand, telling

him, you will do exactly what I tell you, because otherwise, you're going

for good.

It's halftime at a Utah Jazz game, and CEO Jacob Kingston is center court.

As a $2 million a year sponsor of the team, he watches as his company promo

fills the jumbotron.

Sun, water, earth.

The miracle of our planet is that she seems to take care of us as we take care

of her. It's an extraordinary synergy Washakie Renewable Energy is built upon.

But what no one knows is that the Kingston's business plan has mainly

ripping off the government.

The order traditionally has tried to keep a very low profile, where Jacob

Kingston decided to do the exact opposite.

He tried to have Washakie's name up everywhere in Utah. Here he was claiming

the IRS that his company was producing millions and then hundreds of millions

gallons of biodiesel. And so in order to do that, he had to project the image of

a successful company.

That supposedly successful company is being paid hundreds of millions of

from the U .S. Treasury.

But the huge claims are raising some red flags.

By 2015, the company is getting audited by the IRS and the EPA opens an

investigation as well.

There is an IRS auditor sitting.

in Washakie offices, going through all the fraudulent paperwork that they've

created and asking for more paperwork, which Kingston family members are

furiously in the background creating more and more false paperwork to get

IRS auditor off of their back.

If Jacob Kingston is concerned, however, it doesn't slow down the fraud.

After all, Kingston trusts that the lion will protect him.

Levon Tremendian claims to have a vast network of law enforcement agents and

corrupt officials on his payroll, all of whom make up an impenetrable umbrella

of protection for those paying up enough to stand under it.

One of the reasons that Jacob thought he was fine committing this incredibly

brazen fraud was that Derman kept telling him, I have all kinds of cops.

and prosecutors and government officials on my payroll, and they're going to

protect us no matter what happens.

The way they split their fraud proceeds is that Kingston gets 25 % and

Tremendian gets 25%. Jacob Kingston believes that the other 50 % is going to

umbrella of protection.

The umbrella of protection is both a shield and a sword. It's protecting him

from the Fed.

But it's indebting him further and further to LeVon Tremendian.

And LeVon Tremendian is increasingly holding him in the palm of his hand,

telling him, you will do exactly what I tell you, because otherwise you're going

away for good.

What Tremendian is telling Jacob Kingston is to send more and more money

Turkey for safekeeping to the tune of more than $130 million.

Levan Tremendjian knows that at some point Jacob Kingston is going to be

but Levan Tremendjian's plan is that he will never be caught. And if he needs to

flee, he will get on his private jet, fly over to Istanbul, and live out his

days with all the hundreds of millions of dollars in fraud money that they've

made together.

And although the bulk of the $500 million in fraud proceeds is going to

lion, Jacob Kingston is still funneling plenty of his share of the illegal

profits to the order.

True to the practice of consecrating wealth, Jacob steers at least $30

into the order's coffers. Like, whatever Jacob needs to do, let him do it. But

it's working out great for all of us here at the order. There's tons of money

coming in.

Everybody's happy.

Next, the partner's umbrella has protected them from outside elements.

But what if their biggest threat is from within?

Mary Jacobs has never known life outside the order.

Until she's 17, and her parents enroll her in a local community college for

accounting classes to help her with her job at the Order's financial center.

My mom and my dad told me that I was going to go to college and get my

associates in business.

And then by the time I'm done with that, I should be engaged or married.

We were going to school so that we could better help grow the Order.

Mary is allowed to take classes only under strict supervision.

But despite the tight controls, she catches the eye of fellow student Brian

Nelson.

I was talking with a friend and we walked into the study hall and I saw

woman in the distance and it was Mary and I just thought she was beautiful.

So I went up and talked to her and Mary and I just hit it off right away.

Even though Mary is chaperoned to school every day by her brother, she finds

time during the day to sneak away and talk to Brian.

Who has never heard of the Order, Mary begins to open up about her family.

So she starts telling me about the structure of the Order.

My dad had 18 wives.

At the time, he had over 200 children.

And, I mean, at that point, I felt like I was living in an alternate reality.

Mary tells Brian that her father lives in secrecy and fear of being arrested.

David Kingston spent four years in prison during her childhood for incest

unlawful sexual assault of his 16 -year -old niece.

After she testified, he took her as his 15th wife against her will.

Now, in her relationship with Brian Nelson, for the first time in her life,

is seeing things from an outsider's perspective.

And Brian Nelson is horrified.

I mean, she started talking to me about... The really, really evil aspects

the order, like 15 -year -old girls marrying their uncles, marrying their

cousins. She started telling about her own parents, her parents are a half

-brother, half -sister. I said, these are felonies.

This is incest, third -degree felony.

I remember the incest part really kind of got to me, like there's something

really wrong here.

Outraged by what he is hearing, Brian Nelson wants to know more.

and wants to help Mary see that there is a different life outside the one she

has known.

But one day, Mary gets caught.

They completely, like, put me on lockdown.

I couldn't go anywhere without my mom next to me. I had to sleep in her bed

so that she knew I was there.

Mary says her father tells her there is only one way to make things right.

Marriage within the order.

The person they wanted to marry is her first cousin. She says she would be his

fifth wife.

And she has a deadline of two weeks to be engaged.

They wanted me to be engaged to him when I was 16 years old.

And I pushed it off for as long as I possibly could until my dad said, you

to be engaged by the end of these two weeks.

Mary begins secretly typing up a letter to Brian and is able quickly to email it

from the office while no one is watching.

So I'm receiving this email as an attachment, and it's a letter from her.

And it's saying, I'm sorry.

I was found out that I was talking to an outsider. They want me to marry

somebody within two weeks.

I want you to know I care about you, and I hope you forgive me.

And I immediately responded, hoping that she was going to still have access to

be able to read the email.

And I said, Mary, let's get you out.

Let's plan your escape.

Brian enlists the help of his parents, and they devise a plan to get Mary out

the state until she's 18, if she decides she wants to go.

That's when my mind started even thinking about the possibility of

order.

I can leave?

Like, that's a possibility for me?

I remember getting up that morning knowing that I was going to leave the

There wasn't another chance for me. Like, if they caught me, that was it. I

would never have another chance to leave.

So I went and woke up my younger sister, and I said, go start making the eggs.

I'm going to be right back.

And I went downstairs, grabbed a bag of my stuff, and left.

It was kind of the moment of truth.

I'm looking at the time, sure enough.

I see her running toward me.

And I go, Mary, Mary, run, run, come on. Let's go. We've got to go.

And we're running, and we're going straight to that outlet where my dad was

waiting in that car with the back seat open.

And then immediately Mary just jumps in. We get in. My dad takes off.

The next day, Brian's parents drive Mary to Las Vegas.

where she would stay for five months until she turns 18.

There, Mary Jacobs gets a job and her first taste of life outside the order.

She also continues to date and fall in love with Brian Nelson.

Things just seemed to fall into place, and he made me feel really comfortable,

and it was really easy to talk to him.

He made me feel good, and I actually had a choice in what I was doing.

They get married in Las Vegas on Mary's 18th birthday.

Only then does she return to the home she ran away from to let her polygamist

parents know she would not be rejoining the order.

They were shocked.

They shut off and they kind of were like, okay, it's time for you to go.

not going to be a part of our life anymore.

I told myself.

They need to see that I'm not trying to hurt them. I didn't leave the order to

hurt them, and I don't have a problem with what they're doing.

I just wanted something else for my own life.

Next, time outside the order changes, Mary Nelson, and she's finally ready to

sing. We told them who the owners of Washkey Renewable Energy was and that

were a part of the order.

Want more greed?

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podcast wherever you get your podcasts.

We'll be right back.

From the outside, Mary and Brian

Nelson appear to be an average young couple settling into married life.

creating a home, starting a family.

But Mary also opens up to her husband about what she has seen working in the

Order's accounting office for 10 years.

She is privy to all the transactions that happen within the Order.

She sees the way that they would bring in all this money and it would be

deposited into certain bank accounts controlled by the leaders.

And the biggest business that the Order operated was called Washakie Renewable

Energy.

Same with the business. All of the businesses are run through the order.

Brian Nelson becomes obsessed with exposing the order's alleged illegal

activities. And based on what he learns, he suspects a massive tax fraud.

This, he believes, could be the ticket to bringing the order down.

As Mary and Brian Nelson walk into a meeting with the FBI, agents are unaware

that one of the biggest tax fraud cases in Utah's history is about to unravel.

The young couple wants to share all they know about the order, from allegations

of sex crimes and underage marriage to various types of state and federal tax

fraud. You had somebody like me that wasn't going to let go, was going to do

everything to make sure.

that the order was brought down and exposed.

And then you had the perfect person to be able to help do that. And that was

Mary that saw and was a part her whole life of these financial transactions and

how they occurred.

We told them who the owners of Washkey Renewable Energy was and that they were

part of the order.

I was able to see a lot of the different transactions or even businesses that

Washkey

laundered money through.

Once we started talking and we started explaining that all these businesses are

connected and all these people are connected, they're all part of this

that's when they were like, oh, okay, there's something wrong.

The FBI quickly learned that the IRS and the EPA have already been secretly

investigating the company, their CEO, Jacob Kingston, and his ties to shady

Angeles fuel dealer It starts to become clear that

the issue here is a criminal issue. I mean, you're looking at this small plant

in northern Utah that's claiming millions, then tens of millions, then

of millions of dollars in credits from the IRS for producing biodiesel. And it

doesn't add up. They had already audited WashKey plenty of times before talking

to us.

They didn't understand the connection between Washkey and all their shell

companies and all of the businesses that were being used to launder all the

money.

So once we told them these are all run by the same people, I think it really

helped solidify what they originally thought was happening.

They met with them for hundreds of hours, hundreds, to detail what the

operations were, who the players were, what their role was.

how the Washakie energy scam was being run without Mary's information that

she brought with her when she left, and Brian's very detailed research into the

order, I don't think this ever would have happened.

Meanwhile, even as investigators are homing in, Jacob Kingston submits

$600 million in fraudulent claims.

This time, the claims are denied by the IRS.

and it's time for the feds to make a move.

At 8 a .m. on February 10, 2016, a team of more than 100 federal agents

mobilizes a coordinated effort to raid several locations related to the

investigation of Washakie Renewable Energy.

including the home and offices of CEO Jacob Kingston and the financial center

for the order.

But the feds won't know until much later about a phone call that had come in to

Jacob Kingston a few days prior from a man calling himself Mr. Green, who tells

Kingston a raid is in the works.

Michelle Michaels is 16 years old and working at the order offices at the

They were tipped off which places could possibly be hit.

They said, by this day, you need to have these computers wiped.

Michelle says she and other minor members of the order are enlisted to

destroy evidence.

Something was going to happen, and we couldn't let it get into the wrong

That's what I understood.

And then, obviously, the raid happened.

Connect the dots.

Despite all of the plans laid by federal agents to do this in secrecy and with

surprise, somehow a mole somewhere in the federal government tipped off the

Kingstons that the feds were coming after them.

A mole sympathetic to the order derails the investigation.

So the feds didn't really turn up all that much on those raids and they

actually... where you could see from the dust that there had been folders there

until very recently. We seized all these computers and found that the hard

drives had been wiped.

So whatever there was there, there are things that the order was trying to hide

and wanted to make sure that the government did not know about.

But the group was not able to wipe a non -order -controlled server used by

Washakie Renewable Energy.

and thousands of emails and other documents are able to be seized,

government to build a case.

Next, the tricky business of getting fraudsters into custody.

Are they going to flee to Turkey? Because if they flee to Turkey, we're

have a lot of trouble getting them extradited and brought to justice in the

United States.

On August 23, 2018, Jacob Kingston walks down a sky bridge at the Salt Lake City

Airport, heading for a flight to Turkey.

Before he can board the aircraft, plainclothes federal agents step out and

arrest him.

His brother Isaiah is also taken into custody the same day.

They are indicted on more than 40 counts of fraud and conspiracy.

On the same day in Los Angeles, Levon Tremensian, now legally going by the

Turkish name Lev Derman, is arrested after walking into a federal building

meeting on an unrelated case.

And at first, they all say, we didn't do it, we're innocent, not telling you

anything.

Jacob and Isaiah Kingston's mother, Rachel, as well as Jacob's first wife,

Sally, are also charged with multiple counts.

Washakie Renewable Energy was a family enterprise.

And all of them were involved in the fraud in various ways. They were

in creating fake paperwork, in making sure that fuel was sent around where it

was supposed to be sent, but then falsely reported on the paperwork.

Once the Kingston brothers realized they could be facing life in prison, they

agreed to plead guilty, fully cooperate, and testify against the lion.

For seven weeks, celebrity defense attorney Mark Garagos, who has

the likes of Michael Jackson, Winona Ryder, and Scott Peterson, defends Lev

Derman, a .k .a. Levon Tremensian, against the government's avalanche of

evidence supporting their charges that he is the mastermind of the billion

-dollar Washakie renewable energy fraud, even though his name is nowhere on the

paperwork.

Derman's defense basically was, I'm a legitimate businessman, and I was drawn

into this scheme by these crazy, corrupt, weirdo, polygamist characters.

It is true that Jacob had already been committing millions of dollars worth of

biodiesel fraud before he even met Derman. But we're talking about single

millions. It's only when Derman comes into the picture that all of a sudden

scam just mushrooms in size.

Jacob Kingston is the star witness testifying against his former partner in

crime. We were not asking the jury to believe Jacob Kingston.

We were just asking the jury to listen to Jacob Kingston and believe the rest

the evidence that we had at trial. The text messages, the bank records, the

other insiders who testified, the photos, the recordings, the videos.

All of it put together corroborated everything Jacob Kingston told the jury.

In March 2020, Lev Derman is found guilty on 10 counts and faces life in

Jacob, Isaiah, Sally, and Rachel Kingston, who all pleaded guilty, and

are awaiting sentencing, delayed due to the COVID pandemic.

The order, officially known as the Davis County Cooperative Society, states that

they were not aware of the fraud and that Washakie Renewable Energy

actively hid the details of their business activity.

Further, the group maintains that they have been unfairly persecuted because

some members practice plural marriage.

They claim to be targeted by the media, by Brian and Mary Nelson, and many other

former order members, mainly young women, who have spoken out against the

group's alleged practice of promoting underage marriage, and turning a blind

to abuse.

The group states that plural marriages of individuals under 18 are not allowed,

and that abuse should not be condoned under any circumstances.

Mary's mother has stated she would not have forced her daughter to marry her

cousin.

Meanwhile, Mary and Brian Nelson have settled into a new life.

I have an amazing life. I'm so thankful for everything that I have. I have two

amazing kids, and I'm married to the love of my life.

And there's just nothing like being able to choose your own life and things that

you want, and that's something that I never imagined would happen.

The Nelsons continue to work with other former Order members like Michelle

Michaels, who got out three years after Mary.

in order to expose what they claim are other alleged issues and crimes within

the group.

I've always talked about and said how Washakie is only one piece of this.

This is a war, and we won the battle of Washakie.

What's next?

No other leaders or members of the order have been charged with any crimes.

The Department of Justice continues to investigate allegations.

against the order leadership.

And so the hope is also that this sends a message to members of the order or

people who have left the order, that if they have evidence about crimes

committed by the order, that the numbered men, the leaders of the order,

untouchable, that they can be investigated, prosecuted, and brought to