Polygamous leader Lyle Jeffs flees home confinement

The U.S. Attorney in Utah has issued a warrant for the arrest of Jeffs, who absconded home confinement sometime over the weekend.

According to prosecutors, the FLDS and its leaders, specifically Lyle Jeffs, maintained an elaborate network of cash drops, fake IDs and safe houses in the U.S., Canada and South America to avoid law enforcement.

U.S. District Judge Ted Stewart granted Lyle Jeffs’ request to be released from jail at a June 9 hearing after the trial on food stamp fraud and money laundering charges was delayed until October.

Jeffs’s brother, Warren Jeffs, formerly led the sect.

Lyle Jeffs’ attorney, Kathryn Nester, argued that her client’s constitutional rights would have been violated if he were jailed until trial.

Jeffs got the home confinement and yesterday he ripped off his ankle monitors and is nowhere to be found.

Prosecutors said Lyle and other FLDS leaders instructed their followers to purchase items with food stamp cards and take them to a church warehouse – where they were redistributed and resold.

Lyle was arrested and indicted in February on charges of diverting at least $12 million worth of federal benefits. The mainstream Mormon church, officially called The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, disavowed the practice in 1890. Warren fled and made the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted Fugitives list in 2006. They also warned that witnesses would clam up out of fear of reprisal from Jeffs, who runs day-to-day operations in the community on the Utah-Arizona border.

At the time, Brower – who has worked in and written about the Short Creek area for years – posted that he was “aghast” and predicted that “Lyle will never go back to jail or prison”.

Thomas Jeffs, who left the church two-and-a-half years ago, said his father will be constantly on the move and assisted by FLDS faithful, and communicate with burner phones.

“I know you’re watching”.

The motion also asked that Jeffs be allowed to continue his involvement in the FLDS Church by allowing specific members to come to his residence on Sundays to hold religious services and requesting he be permitted to receive written correspondence from church members so that he can pray for them, though without physically answering their letters.

Prosecutors objected to his release, calling Jeffs a flight risk.