A business entity connected to a leader of a controversial religious sect has purchased 40 acres in rural Cook County and obtained a permit to build a 6,000-square-foot pole barn with living quarters, raising questions about whether it will be used by the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints.
The religious sect separated from Mormonism in 1890 after the church renounced polygamy. Since 2001, the FLDS has been headed by Warren Steed Jeffs, who was sentenced in 2011 to life in prison plus 20 years on convictions of two counts of child sexual assault involving underage members of the sect.
His brother Seth Steed Jeffs was convicted in 2006 of harboring or concealing him. In 2016, Seth Jeffs also pleaded guilty to food-stamp fraud as part of a federal investigation into the practice of diverting benefits to church members.
KARE 11 reported Thursday that a Utah lawyer had been looking for Seth Jeffs since December 2017, when the attorney filed a lawsuit accusing Jeffs of witnessing the ritual child abuse by his brother and did nothing about it.
The lawyer, Alan Mortensen, said Seth Jeffs had been doing some handyman work on a woman's cabin in Cook County. She saw a news program about FLDS and recognized Jeffs, Mortensen said. Word got back to Mortensen, and he served Jeffs on Monday with a notice that he'd defaulted on the Utah lawsuit.
"We're going after his assets. He's an alter-ego of the church," Mortensen said.
He said Jeffs also faces "a bunch of court orders for child support and unpaid alimony against him, and now people know where to find him."
WTIP Radio in Grand Marais reported Thursday that Jeffs had been living in a cabin near Caribou Lake since August.
