Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes & Tim Ballard Targets of Joint Criminal Probe by Salt Lake and Davis County District Attorneys – American Crime Journal |

Amidst rising controversy and strain from the Governor’s workplace, Utah Lawyer Common Sean Reyes and excommunicated LDS hero Tim Ballard now face a joint felony investigation by Salt Lake and Davis County District Attorneys, ACJ has confirmed

This text is now a part of ACJ’s complete investigative sequence Derailed: Operation Underground Railroad

Tim Ballard and Utah Lawyer Common Sean Reyes on the O.U.R. “Command Heart” August 1, 2020

For the previous 4 months, we’ve been following the joint felony probe launched by the Salt Lake County and Davis County District Lawyer Places of work into Tim Ballard, Operation Underground Railroad (O.U.R.), and Utah Lawyer Common Sean Reyes. Regardless of our persistent efforts to contact Davis County District Lawyer Troy Rawlings and Salt Lake County District Lawyer Sim Gill’s workplaces, we confronted silence. Nonetheless, two months in the past, we noticed a well-known face leaving Sim Gill’s workplace, confirming our suspicions. Moreover, we not too long ago realized that somebody carefully affiliated with O.U.R. met with the prosecutors’ investigators.

Whereas we couldn’t get in contact with both prosecutors’ workplaces to verify that such a gathering had certainly taken place, the Salt Lake County District Lawyer’s workplace did verify to ACJ there was an on going investigation again in April. This morning, we did communicate with an extra witness who initially met with DA Rawlings again throughout the first investigation in 2020, and he confirmed, he had been summonsed by each prosecutor workplaces to satisfy with their investigators to debate Utah Lawyer Common Sean Reyes, Operation Underground Railroad and Tim Ballard’s suspected felony exercise.

Two of the witnesses declined remark, and don’t want to be recognized, nonetheless, they’re acquainted faces from the earlier investigations.

A Federal Investigation Might Be Underway

Celeste Borys was Tim Ballard’s govt assistant from March 2023, till final fall as information of the Ballard and O.U.R. scandals have been breaking. To this point not solely has she filed a lawsuit with a bunch of ladies allegedly abused and sexually assaulted by Ballard, however publicly got here ahead, all of them to share their heartbreaking story. Prison complaints for sexual misconduct has been filed with a minimum of 4 different companies:

Linden Police Division

San Clemente Police Division

Campbell Police Division

Los Angeles Airport Police

Because of the crimes going down throughout state traces, mechanically some federal statutes could have been violated. This alone may be grounds for federal authorities to re-engage their unique felony investigation, maybe taking it out of the fingers of Utah based mostly particular brokers.

Meager Donations and Potential Kickbacks

Beforehand, Davis County District Lawyer Troy Rawlings had been investigating Tim Ballard and O.U.R. for fraud for over three years. VICE’s launch of over 75 paperwork obtained by means of a FOIA request from the Davis County DA’s workplace revealed a corporation in disarray. As of 2021, O.U.R. had amassed over $82 million in property, a stark distinction to the $10 million it had simply two years prior in 2017.

In keeping with O.U.R. Kind 990 filings from 2015 to 2021, one of many largest benefactors of O.U.R.’s donations was White Mountain Analysis, a non-profit managed by longtime Ballard and Glenn Beck affiliate Rudy Atallah, who served as their associate in a number of ventures, together with the Nazarene Fund.

In 2019, alone, Atallah managed White Mountain Analysis obtained practically $2.5 million from Operation Underground Railroad:

In 2018, White Mountain Analysis obtained simply over $2.3 million:

In the meantime, O.U.R. managed organizations utilized in fundraiser pushes, have been left in a dire want of money, most have been unpaid and left to fend for themselves or paid pittance, equivalent to acclaimed Guesno Mardy owned and operated Haitian orphanage, Lobby de Sion. They got a paltry $15,000, regardless of the very fact the constructing was in full disrepair with roaches and rodents and didn’t have electrical energy or working water.

In 2020, Jeff Frazier was appointed to direct O.U.R.’s assist of the orphanage. Reasonably than O.U.R. cowl the bills to get an orphanage reportedly with 200 orphans dwelling inside as much as code, Frazier needed to plea for donations from the general public on his personal. In a video (pictured on the left) Frazier stands in entrance of the Lobby de Sion constructing, which was bankrolled by Utah donors by means of the LDS Church for Guesno Mardy.

Frazier mentioned, “the generator give up, there’s no electrical energy”. He went on to say, “the water pump [has also] give up, there’s no working water. There’s no working washing machines to clean garments for nearly 200 orphans”.

Right here is the itemization from O.U.R.’s 2017 Kind 990:

Regardless of his lengthy and troubled historical past at O.U.R. with Tim Ballard on the helm, Frazier remained a Ballard loyalist, and was appointed CEO of Operation Underground Railroad following Ballard’s exile after damning allegations of sexual misconduct surfaced. Frazier was not too long ago changed by Tammy Lee, one other higher class white lady who has exploited the fears of People and made a profession out of the anti-human trafficking industrial advanced.

Different organizations that helped legitimize O.U.R. and made Ballard a hero additionally obtained meager donations, when truly combating sexual predators, however not human traffickers.

Washington State Patrol’s (WSP) Operation Web Nanny was Operation Underground Railroad’s declare to fame. It will be the case that gave them “the numbers” of the pedophiles they declare to have arrested, “over 200” O.U.R. and Tim Ballard typically touted. Besides Ballard has spent all his time in Haiti and different overseas international locations then later used Web Nanny as their declare to legitimacy. But in accordance with O.U.R.’s Kind 990 in 2017, O.U.R. donated simply $39,999 to the Washington State Patrol Lacking and Exploited Youngsters Job Pressure (MECTF).

It wasn’t even sufficient cash to pay for half the wage for an incoming cadet on the academy.

The next 12 months, in 2018, in accordance with O.U.R.’s 2018, Kind 990, they donated simply $52,500.

Once more, O.U.R. financials reveal the identical little care or concern with the WSP’s Operation Web Nanny identical to Lobby de Sion- together with underwhelming donations to the group. Regardless of Tim Ballard and O.U.R.’s claims of funding Operation Web Nanny and coaching and growing workers to fight human trafficking, the financials don’t lie.

The donations have been paltry and by all accounts of these concerned each on the WSP facet and O.U.R. facet, their contributions had little to no impact on the human trafficking entrance. In actual fact, their donations have been extra bother than it was price, that WSP refused donations from Operation Underground Railroad within the subsequent years. After receiving donations for 5 years and receiving a pathetic $250,000, WSP pulled the plug. O.U.R. would publicly declare to have been those to take “traffickers” off the streets, when in actuality the stings carried out by Washington State Patrols Lacking and Exploited Youngsters Job Pressure was slightly rudimentary and carried out by members of the duty pressure, not O.U.R. as each WSP and former operatives of O.U.R. have confirmed- repeatedly.

The busts have been within the type of To Catch a Predator with Chris Hansen on MSNBC, that are actually performed recurrently by Youtubers for clicks and views. Nonetheless, no traffickers are being taken off the streets. It has been round for over ten years and by 2015 over 500 companies and job forces had employed the everyday technique of posing as minors on-line and luring suspected pedophiles over with the promise of doable sexual relations to a selected deal with with cops. Whereas billions of {dollars} are being dumped into the anti-human trafficking equipment, there’s little greater than suspected pedophiles and teenage prostitutes (who’re arrested and prosecuted) to point out for it.

In the long run, no traffickers have been arrested and the evening earlier than Carlos Rodriguez gave his deposition to prosecutors in Utah, I had the possibility to interview him and ask, “what number of kids have been rescued throughout these sting operations?’

His reply? “Not one”.

Then I requested him level clean, “what number of traffickers did you guys rescue throughout the Web Nanny stings?”

His reply, “we didn’t arrest identified traffickers, no. That was not the intent. We arrested pedophiles and harmful intercourse offenders, simply as they[the stings] have been designed and meant to do”

None of this charade, prevented O.U.R. from fundraising by personally claiming that they had arrested over 200 human traffickers and having saved dozens of youngsters throughout the Web Nanny stings, which didn’t produce a single trafficking arrest or little one rescue in accordance with WSP’s former head of MECTF, Carlos Rodriguez.

Equally, Breaking Chains, a non-profit run by Steven Cass, obtained minimal assist in comparison with O.U.R.’s reported property. Steven Cass aka “Batman” or higher referred to as “Vampiro” within the Sound of Freedom propaganda movie. He obtained simply $60,000 and so far as we are able to inform, there’s legitimacy in what he does, simply not how he presents it, as on this video O.U.R. determined to launch within the midst of Ballard’s downfall.

Breaking Chains obtained simply $60,000 from the $100 million non-profit empire.

Cass, like so many different in what I name the anti-human trafficking industrial advanced, prefer to conflate “teen prostitution” and “survival intercourse” with “human trafficking”. Largely, utilizing the terminology brings about extra concern, issues and most essential of all, higher funding. Cass, like Ballard comes from a deeply non secular purview of their so-called mission, which already has a distorted notion of intercourse and teenage prostitution, it being unholy and this concept that girls “have to be pressured or seduced” to ensure that the intercourse trade to function, nonetheless, that’s the angle of pimps and traffickers themselves. In current surveys, lower than 5% of intercourse employees (in comparison with practically 26% in 1999) have been the victims of “pressured prostitution” . That is as a result of rise of the web, which has allowed ladies to work safely in residence and afford their very own safety and drivers both themselves, or by means of an company.

What I could make clear, is that Cass is definitely on the streets making an attempt to assist these ladies and has much more to point out for it than O.U.R., and has carried out so with only a fraction of only one % of the funding that O.U.R. has obtained this previous decade. Cass launched Tim Ballard and Paul Hutchinson to this recreation, throughout a time Ballard thought he and a bunch of elite commandos would enter overseas international locations and rescue kidnapped kids.

Apart from a number of different nugatory donations that almost all may blow throughout a nasty weekend in Vegas, majority of the paid funds go to Tim Ballard’s reported wage, different director reported salaries, authorized fess equivalent to having the distinguished LDS legislation agency, Kirton McConkie on retainer in addition to California lawyer Adam Becker amongst others.

We additionally can’t overlook Katherine Ballard’s $182,000 wage. For what? We don’t know.

Notably, O.U.R.’s monetary data raised questions on Tim Ballard’s reported earnings, with estimates starting from $14 million to $17 million since 2013. The Whiteboard assembly is an ideal instance of how Ballard detailed simply learn how to launder cash by means of a sequence of Ballard managed non-profits and for income to his firm, Slave Stealers, LLC. There are suspicions of kickbacks, significantly the $5 million paid to Rudy Atallah, all which underscores the necessity for additional investigation.

Regardless of the prolonged fraud investigation by Troy Rawlings and a Division of Justice grand jury probe, each efforts ended quietly, casting doubt on their effectiveness. O.U.R.’s shut ties to Utah Lawyer Common Sean Reyes and the obvious interference within the grand jury probe elevate issues about accountability and justice in Utah’s authorized system.

Troy Rawlings and Sim Gill owes it to the folks of Utah to pursue justice with out bias or affect of the LDS Church or Lawyer Common Reyes. Tim Ballard and O.U.R.’s alleged fraudulent actions demand transparency and accountability, no matter political affiliations, connections, or fears of upsetting the LDS Church.

The long-standing precept of separation between church and state in the USA underscores the gravity of Utah’s repute as the worldwide epicenter of fraud. Utah’s disturbing label as a theocracy is obviously evident, and the world is watching. It’s crucial that these accountable are dropped at justice and held accountable- with out additional delay.

Assets and Additional Studying

Tim Ballard is beneath felony investigation after a girl reported her sexual assault allegation to police (sltrib.com)

Tim Ballard Utah’s Flim-Flam Man – American Crime Journal | %

(231) The REAL story of Vampiro “Batman” (Ep.1) | The Sound of Freedom – YouTube

A Longtime Affiliate of Tim Ballard’s Is Rebuilding Operation Underground Railroad (vice.com)

Rudolph Atallah – Atlantic Council

Tim Ballard, founding father of Operation Underground Railroad, has had 4 new felony sexual assault complaints filed in opposition to him, lawyer says. (sltrib.com)

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