November 17, 2022 • 28 mins
Michele McPhee traces a wild scam to bilk the U.S. Government out of $500 million. The plan was hatched by a young man from a polygamist Mormon sect in Utah and it soon involves the Armenian mob and the President of Turkey. McPhee lays out all the twists and turns in her article in Los Angeles Magazine. Host Joel Stein tries to keep up while still making as many polygamy jokes as possible.
Read the full article here: https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/bleeding-the-beast-crooked-cops-an-armenian-mob-boss-a-500m-scam-and-an-unlikely-love-story/
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. I'm Michelle McPhee. My story, The Mobster in the
Mormon is in the November issue of Los Angeles Magazine
and is the story of the week. Every occupation has
a spectrum between those who do the real work and
(00:35):
those who don't. There are Navy Seals, and then there's
the US Navy's official singing group, the Sea Chances. They
are good in journalism. I'm the Sea Chanser, and the
Navy Seal is Michelle McPhee. Michelle and I started our
(00:58):
careers at exactly the same time. The very summer, I
was interning at Newsweek reporting on what news slang the
college kids were using. She was at the Boston Globe
covering the mob and during that summer, in the middle
of the day, a mobster walked up to her and
held her at gunpoint. If that had happened to me,
I have immediately walked away and started applying to law
(01:19):
school as soon as I changed my pants. Instead, she
stayed in journalism and went on to cover some crazy stories,
like she snuck into my boss, John Gotti's wake by
putting on high heels and red lipstick and dressing like
what she calls a gumada, whereas I'm such a whimp
I don't even feel comfortable saying that word on this podcast.
(01:41):
She also chased around Gianni Versace's killer in South Beach,
and she had this dicey encounter on a dirt road
in the South with a KKK. The dicest encounter I've
ever had was on a red carpet with doctor Oz
when he tried to smell my butt, which is why
Michelle delivered this insane story and why I'm making a
podcast about it. Writing is hard. Who's got that kind
(02:12):
of time when you're already busy trying to be Joe Stein?
So it turns on a mic mab It twiddles anob
because a journalist frand who's got in that dual jimetory
single story. Just listen to smart people speak, conversation, filming information.
(02:33):
It is a story of Michelle mcfee's article is a
mob story, but it's about a mob I never knew existed,
in fact, two of them. It is so nice to
(02:53):
meet you. I'm so excited to talk to you because
you are a real badass, like what you picture a
newspaper reporter to be like, Like, I'm scared of you. Well,
a lot of people are scared of me, so I
don't blame you. You wrote this amazing story in Los
Angeles magazine that I could not believe, Like I didn't
know any of this stuff. So you discover this incredibly
(03:15):
complicated scheme that starts with this polygamous breakaway sect of
Mormons that live kind of in Utah near Idaho called
the Order, which I had never heard of, a very
weird and very insular sect obsessed with the purity of
their bloodline. Look, these are people who believe that they
are direct descendants from Jesus Christ himself. Okay, So in
(03:38):
order to keep this bloodline pure, they marry one another.
So as a result, there is a lot of interfamilial marriage,
child brides, allegations of sex abuse, and marrying young girls
off to their much older uncles and in some cases
(03:59):
even half brothers. And they're incredibly racist and misogynist right. Well.
The Southern Poverty Law Center said that they could teach
the klu Klux Plan and a thing into what's just
saying a lot. The Order was founded in nineteen thirty
five by Elden Kingston, who didn't feel like the Mormon
Church allowed enough wives through intermarriage. They now have more
(04:20):
than two thousand members, all of whom are related to
each other in one way or another, or a third way,
probably a fourth. The multiple wives have many multiple children
who then go and work for the orders multiple corporations.
These include a call ranch, grocery store. There's a gun
manufacturing company that Donald Trump Junior has bought stuff from.
(04:41):
But the Order's main business is fraud. So the Order's
main enterprise is something they call bleeding the Beast, and
what that means is stealing from the government, which they
view as reparations because the government has discriminated against them
as polygamous. So they find a million ways to scam
the taxpayer and they thrive on it. And as the
(05:05):
family grew, this empire grew, and now prosecutors believe that
the Kingston Clan aka the Order is essentially its own
criminal empire. So Bleeding the Beast is like they're just
taking money from the government, right, So what they do
is they take multiple wives, but the wives have made
up last names so that they can apply for welfare
(05:29):
for their kids because the kids don't have a dad,
but the dad obviously is a member of the Order.
I mean, it's ingenious. Some of the things that they
pull off. They're working polygamy in their favor. That's exactly
what they're doing. They make if you're not going to
let's be a polygamist, then we're all single mom single moms.
Jacob Kingston's the great great grandson of the founder of
the Order, which sounds like it would make him a
(05:51):
big deal, but it did not because the founder has
hundreds of great great grandchildren. Still, Jacob's father was the
cults enforcer who meted out all the justice and the clan.
This also would seem to make Jacob a big deal.
It also did not because his dad has a hundred
and twenty seven kids with fourteen wives, some of whom
(06:13):
were also Jacob's half sisters. Despite not being at all
special genealogically, Jacob was unusually smart and ambitious. He got
a PhD in mechanical engineering from the University of Utah,
and he decided to start a company at the Order
which would actually help the world biofuel. His company, Wakashi
(06:34):
Renewable Energy or WRE, cleaned cooking grease and turned it
into biofuel for cars and trucks. Then he figured out
how to use his company to bleed the beast. The
federal government had just passed this green energy law, offering
a dollar for each gallon of clean biofuel, which was
more lucrative than actually making biofuel, especially, as Jacob learned,
(06:57):
if you keep moving around the same biofuel all around
the country, claiming that you cleaned it each location, and
then have your child labor force used their tiny little
hands to fill out as many one page forms to
the government as possible. This was so successful that his
company became a sponsor of the Utah Jazz. But Jacob's
bringing all this money to the Order and he's still
(07:20):
not getting any respect from the Order, right right, Like
the Order has this thing. I don't completely understand where
they give you. They rank you, They give you numbers,
kind of like the PGA. Right, Yeah, So like Paul
the Prophet obviously I think was number one because he's
the prophet. Then Daddy Daniel I think was three. And
(07:42):
Jacob didn't even have a number, he didn't rank. He
didn't even have a house. Of course, that was all
before he became the Walter White a biofuel. He testified
that he was living in an old old cabin with
rats and snakes with his first wife, Sally, and then
he drove a toyota Ursell at the time to visit
his other two wives. Between the three wives, by the
(08:05):
time Jacob Kingston was thirty six, he had twenty kids
in teen grandkids. Wow, that's a lot. That's a lot
of miles tofe you think about it. It's even crazier,
like you look at how many siblings he has. He
is one hundred and twenty seven. His dad has one
hundred twenty seven kids. By the way, I don't even
get the math on having one hundred twenty seven kids,
Like that's Wilt Chamberlain kind of work, right, It really is, honestly,
(08:28):
I mean this is kind of like I think it's
more kids than you know. Larry Bird had shots in
a way, which is astonishing. That's the best Boston metaphor
I've ever heard, well, the only a lot of Boston
metaphors for me, which I just want to give everybody
warning to the biod Boston Brooklyn accent that you have
to tolerate. Oh yeah, I haven't understood a third of
(08:49):
what you've said. You could just slow me down at
all points, Okay, So Jacob comes up with a way
to steal even more money from the government, which he
calls the Plan. What motivates Jacob to make the plan?
I think Jacob wanted to obviously ascend his status in
the Order. You know, his dad is a big shot,
(09:10):
his uncle is a big shot. He is not a
big shot. And you know, the more money you bring
into the Order, the hotter your wives are. This is
how basic it is. The more money you bring it
into the Order and the higher year of status. Nothing
like Los Angeles, nothing at all, exactly. And at some
point the plan gets so big and so successful that
(09:32):
he wants to take it to the next level, and
he feels like he needs a partner. How does he
go about finding someone to help him bring this scam
to the next level. So Jacob testified that he had
a sales guy who knew about this man in LA
who was an energy titan. He was a kingpin of
gas stations here in Los Angeles. And why would someone
(09:54):
in the Order know like someone in Los Angeles, Well,
there was somebody who was actually legitimately in the fuel industry.
When there was a tiny tinge of legitimacy to WRI
as they called it. They needed partners to move the biofuel,
and the salesperson knew about you know, this energy titan
(10:16):
and his name was Lev Derman. Okay, so this is
the guy everyone calls the Lion and seems to run
the Armenian Mafia, which is this mob family in Los
Angeles that I didn't even know existed. How does this
guy become a mob boss? He had a pretty great
immigrant success story. You know, he fled Armenia when he
was fourteen years old with his family. He enrolled in
(10:38):
Hollywood High School. You know, he got a part time
gig working at his family's gas station, and before you
know it, this guy owned a string of gas stations,
some trucking companies and had some very high ranking sources
to protect him from any you know, real law enforcement scrutiny.
(11:01):
He's a billionaire by the time he's thirty, right, correct,
He's a billionaire. He's moving in very very high ranking circles.
You know, he counts Tony Chappa, who was the assistant
director of the Secret Service here in Los Angeles, as
a close friend. He's buddies with Lee Bacca. He's running
(11:22):
Leebacco is the sheriff of La who was super corrupt, right, Well,
I know he went to prison. So the Lion has
a bunch of people on his payroll that he calls
the boys. Who are the boys? I mean, the boys
are pretty extensive. He has the FBI agent, he has
a Homely and Security investigations agent. He has Beverly Hills
(11:43):
police officers who are working off duty, buddies with a sheriff.
And that's not to mention all of the international connections
he had in Belize, in Turkey and other countries around
the world. Okay, so he's leading this incredible life. You
have these pictures of his private jet and his Bugattis
and they're all like these glowing gold colored things, like
(12:06):
like even Donald Trump would think they were tacky. His
fit at birthday party, somebody gifted him a two million
dollars Bugghatti. But they had live lions there to protect
the Baggatti at this birthday party that took place at
Universal Studios and one of the fancy hotels, and everybody
was there and it was like a movie set, you know.
They had live lions and models and the owner of
(12:29):
Lamborghini actually broadcasts from Italy into the party because he
was also obsessed with Lamborghini's lions, and Lamborghini's were Lebderman's thing.
When Jacob finally gets this meeting with the Lion, who
he thinks can help him take his scam the plan
to the next level, Like, what's that meeting? Like it
(12:50):
doesn't seem like these two would want to go into
business with each other. Well, Jacob described it on the stand.
He said that he showed up in commerce part of
La So Jacob shows up. Here's this backwater guy and
his wranglers, and he walks five the armed bodyguards and
the Lambeau donut rings and the dirt outside, and he
(13:10):
walks by the two lion statues that sort of flanked
the doorway of this trailer, walks in the furniture inside
he said was made by Lamborghini. They got down to business.
The Lion said that he wanted to tour the WRI
facility because the Lion did have ways to move oil
around and biofuel. He had oil companies. Yeah, he had
(13:32):
oil companies. He had he had trucking companies, and he
had roots and he had access. Oh so real. He
was actually just a good business oil guy who was
useful in that way. Plus he had guys on his
payroll and the FBI and the police who Jacob probably
needed to pull off the scam. And that's exactly what
Jacob really brought the Lion in for. It wasn't just
(13:53):
for his ability to move the product around. It was
because of what he called the umbrella of protection. You
know what confuses me is why would the Lion, who's
already a billionaire, has got stuff going on in LA
want to get involved with this racist polygamous sect that
has child brides Like I would just think he'd see
(14:15):
these people and not want to get involved. Well, look,
the Lion was always on the lookout for a new opportunity,
and Jacob presented one. It was easy cash, easy flow.
But I also think that he almost related to Jacob
in a weird way, because remember, this is not a
guy who came to the United States as a billionaire.
He was a refugee from a dissolving Soviet Union country
(14:39):
and he worked his way to the top, and I
think he saw that in Jacob. Jacob came from these
horrible circumstances in this racist polygamous cult, and he still
made something of himself and got this doctorate degree. So
I think that the Lion appreciated, you know, the brains
that Jacob brought to this operation. So I think, you know,
(15:02):
they had this mutual respect. It was almost like an admiration.
And as this friendship partnership grew, Jacob became more like
the lion, and the Lion tried to take on some
of Jacob's intellect. Okay, So eventually the Lion comes to
Utah to see Jacob and help him out with his
like snake and rat house situation, and he decides to
(15:22):
come on Pioneer Day, which is this Mormon holiday that
celebrates their coming to Utah. Now what is that meaning? Like?
So they have you know, parties all over Utah, parade
floats and little girls wearing prairie dresses and talent shows
in a swimming hole, and barbecues and piles of food
and sister wives everywhere. Suddenly there's like the roar of
(15:44):
a Lamborghini engine and this chrome merc Liago comes into
view on the scrubby grass. One blue alligator show comes out.
Outcomes a stranger. Now remember he's Armenian. So here's this
dark skinned guy. They don't have a lot of dark
skinned people around the order for that they're particularly they're
(16:06):
really racist, right, they're rarely racist, and the very you know,
they're very opposed outsiders. They actually call other people outsiders. Yeah,
so here comes this dark skinned outsider. But was really
shocking is his passenger, who was Jacob Kingston. Now remember
this lambo is still surrounded by a gog. Children and
(16:26):
people are snapping selfies and it looks like the spaceship
and it's a swarm of you know, Kingston's and the
lion turns. He makes sure that everybody's watching, and he
turns to Jacob and he says, hey, Jacob tosses him
the keys, it's yours, and the lion threw him a bone,
threw him the keys to that lamba and set him
on his way to becoming a different person into like
(16:48):
bolstering his self esteem. But he created a monster with
that move. Like that tossing of the lambo keys, I
think is the what turned Jacob Kingston into a monster.
When we come back, I'll make an inappropriate number of
polygamy jokes. But first a word from our sponsor about
some amazing items that would make a great gift your wife,
(17:10):
no matter how many of them you have. The Lion
had helped Jacob take Bleeding the Beast to a level
that no one in the Order could have ever imagined.
So at the height of the scam, how much money
are they making? So when it was all said and done,
(17:30):
they had five hundred and eleven million dollars that they
had successfully grabbed from the US taxpayer, from US, the
US taxpayer. They were making so much money they had
to start laundering it in other countries. Jacob was making
plans to flee to Turkey. By then he was friends
with the Turkish President Urtigon. So what were they doing
(17:51):
with all this money? In Turkey? They bought the mardaun
Polis five star hotel, an airliner called Bora Jet. They
had homes all over the place, like waterfront mansions and
hunted dim beachd like, I don't know, seventy properties all
over Utah. They had lambos galore. They had Bugatis. The
cars were insane, Like think about a Bugati. We're talking
(18:15):
about a two million dollar car. As Jacob and the
Lion are making all of this money, how did Jacob's
lifestyle change back at the Order. Well, remember when we
first met Jacob, he was living in this old, old
cabin with the rats and the snakes. He was wearing wranglers.
He had his Toyota Chursell until he got that Lambeau
as a gift from the Lion. All of a sudden,
Jacob started to believe that he was the Lion, that
(18:36):
he was a tough guy. He began wearing, in his words,
six hundred dollars pants, a sixty thousand dollar watch. He
was traveling the world. He was dressing like a kingpin.
He was storming around wri complaining about how the Order
was trying to take his money, saying, don't they know
I'm the Golden Goose. So Jacob is no longer like
(18:58):
this religious guy from the Order. He is now more
of a gangster. He is starting to look like Tony Montana,
and the Order is noticing, and they start to ask
the Kingston brothers, Isaiah and Jacob if they are donating
as much as they should in tie things to the Order,
to the Church. What's crazy about that to me is
(19:20):
not only he is not only is Jacob a religious guy,
but he's an engineering PhD. Like, there's nothing gangster about
that guy. He's just a nerd, right, this is Walter White.
Basically it goes to some nerdy scientist's head that he's
a gangster. Now that's exactly what happened. It's really incredible
to watch a metamorphose like this, Like this goes from
this tall, gangly, quiet dude is a little you know,
(19:43):
unsure of himself, to this missionic figure. Do they know
who I am? I can clean Greece? Yes? He was like,
do you know who I know? Okay? So the whole
thing kind of falls apart with an anonymous tip to
the FBI. Where does that come from? The anonymous tip
from the FBI comes from somebody who works in the
(20:05):
Order's bank, and she's seeing some one of the funny
money that's flowing around. She knows the rumors around the
Kingston clan that Jacob is making money hand over fist
and living like a gangster. So someone tips off Utah
officials to the cash flow. And she's doing that, probably
(20:26):
because she's being horribly mistreated by the Order. Right. Oh,
she wants out, She wants to leave the Order. They
want to marry her off to her uncle, who knows.
There's a million reasons why a woman in the Order
might find a way to get out, and this woman
clearly did that. The Lion has been paying dirty FBI agents.
(20:47):
So he finds out that they're starting this investigation into
the biofuel business. And Jacob has his own FBI informants
on his own payroll too, So they destroy a lot
of evidence, but they know that the FBI is closing
in on them. So everyone at this point is about
to get arrested. It seems clear. How does that actually
go down? So Jacob had stashed all this money in Turkey.
(21:08):
He told his first wife, Sally, and a couple of
their sons to meet him at the airport. They go
there and disguises. So when you have like so many children,
how do you choose which kids you want to take
with you to get out of the country. Yeah, that's
a really good question. I don't know, And especially if
you have twenty kids, how do you only pick two?
(21:28):
That's what I'm saying, fourteen kids. You just leave those
kids behind in the old cabin with the rats and snakes.
Oh so rd okay. So they're in the airport with
their disguises, so obviously there's agents everywhere. They're fanned out,
they're in playing clothes, they're waiting for Jacob. They don't
want to move in until they see Jacob. They don't
(21:49):
see Jacob, they panic, Oh my god, where's Jacob? And
then they realized that Jacob had flown in, so we
didn't have to go through the TSA lines. He was
waiting at the gate He was about to board the
flight to Amsterdam that would have taken him to Turkey
when they spotted him on the gateway. He had waiting
on the gateway, and they tackled him and took him down,
(22:12):
and took down his wife and two kids right at
the gateway. You get on that flight if you see
someone tackled right before they got on the plane. I
am not getting on that flight. You know what. I
probably wouldn't get on that flight either, No chance. I
don't know what's on that plane. No way. Okay. So
they arrest the lion, they arrest Jacob, They even arrest
Jacob's brother Isaiah, who's involved in the scheme, and they
(22:35):
throw all of them into the same jail in Utah.
Which that's got to be tense. It's very tense. Jacob
described it this way. The lion growled at him, look
at what you did. You took us all down, and
Jacob finally spoke back. He claims he said, you ruin
my life. And then he turned to Isaiah and said,
(22:59):
how much money is left? And that's when they realized
none zero, one hundred and thirty three million stash in
Turkey was going to be seized by the government. Everything
else had been spent, and they were broke, broke enough
that they had to hire one of their dad's wives
to be their initial lawyer. When you have to hire
(23:20):
one of your dad's wives as your lawyer, you know
things aren't going well. That's thanks. Yeah, But Jacob wasn't
going to testify against the Lion, right not initially, it
doesn't appear that Jacob was going to testify. But then
there were some reports that were moving around the jail.
The Lion was going to be abruptly transferred to a
worse jail than the one he was in and to
(23:43):
the Salt Lake County Metro Center, which is like the
Dumpy Jail. And there was a reason, and the reason
that was written about and jail records was Hannah. So
remember Hannah, the third wife. I can't keep track of
all the wives. That is a ridiculous thing to ask
for me. Well, you're actolutely right. But Hannah was the
(24:03):
young hot wife. Yes, she was the young hot wife
that he got after he started making money. Then Paul
gives you the young hut wife. So the young hut
wife had gone on one of the many, many vacations
that Jacob and the Lion had taken together to go
to Turkey and Istanbul. And apparently sparks flew because now
they're all in the same jail. But officials at the
(24:27):
facility were like, hold on a minute. This Hannah Tucker,
she's visiting the Lion. At first they were alarmed that
she might have been delivering messages like they were trying
to communicate. Yeah, but no, no, no, turns out that
they were plotting to run away together. Oh, she was
delivering a message, all right, she was, Hey, dl that
(24:47):
was a message. So Jacob, who's I guess been one
third cuckholded by the lion, is now does he turn
on him? You can draw a conclusion that perhaps Jacob's
tune changed with the government when he realized you don't
steal one of a man's wives, you know, I mean,
(25:09):
especially the young one. Yeah, it's okay, to steal the
older one. Well, I guess in the order, look, the
younger the better in the order. So because of this betrayal,
Jacob testifies against the Lion, and then what happens to Jacob.
Jacob got his come upance too, because somehow Jacob Kingston
was transferred into a cell where his bunkie was a
(25:31):
confirmed Satan worshipper who liked to read aloud from the
Satanic Bible. That's not an accident. That's on purpose, right.
It is religious, you know, because suddenly Jacob is no
longer the Walter wide to bio fuel, and now he's
doctor Jacob Kingston, the pious member of this long standing
(25:53):
church community. That's hilarious. It's probably aren't that many Satanist.
They probably had to dig him out of some other
state and bring him in. All this is still playing
out in court. The Lion is on trial, Jacob's on trial.
The dirty FBI agent who was on the lion Its
payroll is on trial, and it's going to take a
long time for this to work its way through the court.
(26:15):
The Mobster in the Mormon was written by Michelle McPhee
and it's in the November issue of Los Angeles Magazine.
Thank you so much, Michelle. The story is fantastic and
it's something only you could have written. That's what I
love about it. I'm just I'm glad there's still reporters
like you who I feel like could easily beat me up.
Ah well, thank you. I'm going to actually take that
(26:35):
as a compliment, but I would never beat you up.
This whole story just reminds me of how lucky I am.
I have one sister and she's great, but I couldn't
imagine one hundred and twenty seven of her three wives.
You know how many times a day I disappoint one
wife getting a graduate degree in engineering. It all sounds miserable.
(26:56):
I can't imagine I'd want a Bugatti that badly, even
once I find out what a Bugatti is. At the
end of the show, what's next for Joel Stunt? And
maybe he'll take a nap? Voc around online. Our show
Today was produced by Kate mcculiffe and nishaven Cut. It
(27:16):
was edited by Robert Smith. Our engineer is Amanda kay
Wang and our executive producer is Katherine Siradol and our
theme song was written and performed by Jonathan Colton and
a special thanks to my voice coach Vicky Merrick and
my consulting producer laurenz Elasnick. To find more Pushkin podcast
listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
(27:40):
listen to your podcasts. I'm Joel Stein and this is
the Story of the Week. Lee Bacco is the sheriff
of la who was super corrupt. Right, well, I know
he went to prison. Yeah, I walked into Barbara Streisan's
house and she had his number on, like speed dial
is number one? You're kidding me? No, Yeah, I'll always
(28:01):
remember that. We can't accuse Barbara Streisan anything on this podcast.
My mom would kill me. What I'm put to have
a hot attack? She would hate it if we said
anything bad about Barbara coming up on Story of the Week.
And this is a big part of what attracted you
to her. Right, You're like, oh, are you kidding me?
I mean that's hot, right, tell me that's not hot totally.
(28:22):
What a specific fetish you have white savors? Yeah, it's
weird white savior fetish. I'm just starting to realize that
in feat there's no porn heub channel for that at all. Yes,
although are we sure about that
Pushkin. I'm Michelle McPhee. My story, The Mobster in the
Mormon is in the November issue of Los Angeles Magazine
and is the story of the week. Every occupation has
a spectrum between those who do the real work and
(00:35):
those who don't. There are Navy Seals, and then there's
the US Navy's official singing group, the Sea Chances. They
are good in journalism. I'm the Sea Chanser, and the
Navy Seal is Michelle McPhee. Michelle and I started our
(00:58):
careers at exactly the same time. The very summer, I
was interning at Newsweek reporting on what news slang the
college kids were using. She was at the Boston Globe
covering the mob and during that summer, in the middle
of the day, a mobster walked up to her and
held her at gunpoint. If that had happened to me,
I have immediately walked away and started applying to law
(01:19):
school as soon as I changed my pants. Instead, she
stayed in journalism and went on to cover some crazy stories,
like she snuck into my boss, John Gotti's wake by
putting on high heels and red lipstick and dressing like
what she calls a gumada, whereas I'm such a whimp
I don't even feel comfortable saying that word on this podcast.
(01:41):
She also chased around Gianni Versace's killer in South Beach,
and she had this dicey encounter on a dirt road
in the South with a KKK. The dicest encounter I've
ever had was on a red carpet with doctor Oz
when he tried to smell my butt, which is why
Michelle delivered this insane story and why I'm making a
podcast about it. Writing is hard. Who's got that kind
(02:12):
of time when you're already busy trying to be Joe Stein?
So it turns on a mic mab It twiddles anob
because a journalist frand who's got in that dual jimetory
single story. Just listen to smart people speak, conversation, filming information.
(02:33):
It is a story of Michelle mcfee's article is a
mob story, but it's about a mob I never knew existed,
in fact, two of them. It is so nice to
(02:53):
meet you. I'm so excited to talk to you because
you are a real badass, like what you picture a
newspaper reporter to be like, Like, I'm scared of you. Well,
a lot of people are scared of me, so I
don't blame you. You wrote this amazing story in Los
Angeles magazine that I could not believe, Like I didn't
know any of this stuff. So you discover this incredibly
(03:15):
complicated scheme that starts with this polygamous breakaway sect of
Mormons that live kind of in Utah near Idaho called
the Order, which I had never heard of, a very
weird and very insular sect obsessed with the purity of
their bloodline. Look, these are people who believe that they
are direct descendants from Jesus Christ himself. Okay, So in
(03:38):
order to keep this bloodline pure, they marry one another.
So as a result, there is a lot of interfamilial marriage,
child brides, allegations of sex abuse, and marrying young girls
off to their much older uncles and in some cases
(03:59):
even half brothers. And they're incredibly racist and misogynist right. Well.
The Southern Poverty Law Center said that they could teach
the klu Klux Plan and a thing into what's just
saying a lot. The Order was founded in nineteen thirty
five by Elden Kingston, who didn't feel like the Mormon
Church allowed enough wives through intermarriage. They now have more
(04:20):
than two thousand members, all of whom are related to
each other in one way or another, or a third way,
probably a fourth. The multiple wives have many multiple children
who then go and work for the orders multiple corporations.
These include a call ranch, grocery store. There's a gun
manufacturing company that Donald Trump Junior has bought stuff from.
(04:41):
But the Order's main business is fraud. So the Order's
main enterprise is something they call bleeding the Beast, and
what that means is stealing from the government, which they
view as reparations because the government has discriminated against them
as polygamous. So they find a million ways to scam
the taxpayer and they thrive on it. And as the
(05:05):
family grew, this empire grew, and now prosecutors believe that
the Kingston Clan aka the Order is essentially its own
criminal empire. So Bleeding the Beast is like they're just
taking money from the government, right, So what they do
is they take multiple wives, but the wives have made
up last names so that they can apply for welfare
(05:29):
for their kids because the kids don't have a dad,
but the dad obviously is a member of the Order.
I mean, it's ingenious. Some of the things that they
pull off. They're working polygamy in their favor. That's exactly
what they're doing. They make if you're not going to
let's be a polygamist, then we're all single mom single moms.
Jacob Kingston's the great great grandson of the founder of
the Order, which sounds like it would make him a
(05:51):
big deal, but it did not because the founder has
hundreds of great great grandchildren. Still, Jacob's father was the
cults enforcer who meted out all the justice and the clan.
This also would seem to make Jacob a big deal.
It also did not because his dad has a hundred
and twenty seven kids with fourteen wives, some of whom
(06:13):
were also Jacob's half sisters. Despite not being at all
special genealogically, Jacob was unusually smart and ambitious. He got
a PhD in mechanical engineering from the University of Utah,
and he decided to start a company at the Order
which would actually help the world biofuel. His company, Wakashi
(06:34):
Renewable Energy or WRE, cleaned cooking grease and turned it
into biofuel for cars and trucks. Then he figured out
how to use his company to bleed the beast. The
federal government had just passed this green energy law, offering
a dollar for each gallon of clean biofuel, which was
more lucrative than actually making biofuel, especially, as Jacob learned,
(06:57):
if you keep moving around the same biofuel all around
the country, claiming that you cleaned it each location, and
then have your child labor force used their tiny little
hands to fill out as many one page forms to
the government as possible. This was so successful that his
company became a sponsor of the Utah Jazz. But Jacob's
bringing all this money to the Order and he's still
(07:20):
not getting any respect from the Order, right right, Like
the Order has this thing. I don't completely understand where
they give you. They rank you, They give you numbers,
kind of like the PGA. Right, Yeah, So like Paul
the Prophet obviously I think was number one because he's
the prophet. Then Daddy Daniel I think was three. And
(07:42):
Jacob didn't even have a number, he didn't rank. He
didn't even have a house. Of course, that was all
before he became the Walter White a biofuel. He testified
that he was living in an old old cabin with
rats and snakes with his first wife, Sally, and then
he drove a toyota Ursell at the time to visit
his other two wives. Between the three wives, by the
(08:05):
time Jacob Kingston was thirty six, he had twenty kids
in teen grandkids. Wow, that's a lot. That's a lot
of miles tofe you think about it. It's even crazier,
like you look at how many siblings he has. He
is one hundred and twenty seven. His dad has one
hundred twenty seven kids. By the way, I don't even
get the math on having one hundred twenty seven kids,
Like that's Wilt Chamberlain kind of work, right, It really is, honestly,
(08:28):
I mean this is kind of like I think it's
more kids than you know. Larry Bird had shots in
a way, which is astonishing. That's the best Boston metaphor
I've ever heard, well, the only a lot of Boston
metaphors for me, which I just want to give everybody
warning to the biod Boston Brooklyn accent that you have
to tolerate. Oh yeah, I haven't understood a third of
(08:49):
what you've said. You could just slow me down at
all points, Okay, So Jacob comes up with a way
to steal even more money from the government, which he
calls the Plan. What motivates Jacob to make the plan?
I think Jacob wanted to obviously ascend his status in
the Order. You know, his dad is a big shot,
(09:10):
his uncle is a big shot. He is not a
big shot. And you know, the more money you bring
into the Order, the hotter your wives are. This is
how basic it is. The more money you bring it
into the Order and the higher year of status. Nothing
like Los Angeles, nothing at all, exactly. And at some
point the plan gets so big and so successful that
(09:32):
he wants to take it to the next level, and
he feels like he needs a partner. How does he
go about finding someone to help him bring this scam
to the next level. So Jacob testified that he had
a sales guy who knew about this man in LA
who was an energy titan. He was a kingpin of
gas stations here in Los Angeles. And why would someone
(09:54):
in the Order know like someone in Los Angeles, Well,
there was somebody who was actually legitimately in the fuel industry.
When there was a tiny tinge of legitimacy to WRI
as they called it. They needed partners to move the biofuel,
and the salesperson knew about you know, this energy titan
(10:16):
and his name was Lev Derman. Okay, so this is
the guy everyone calls the Lion and seems to run
the Armenian Mafia, which is this mob family in Los
Angeles that I didn't even know existed. How does this
guy become a mob boss? He had a pretty great
immigrant success story. You know, he fled Armenia when he
was fourteen years old with his family. He enrolled in
(10:38):
Hollywood High School. You know, he got a part time
gig working at his family's gas station, and before you
know it, this guy owned a string of gas stations,
some trucking companies and had some very high ranking sources
to protect him from any you know, real law enforcement scrutiny.
(11:01):
He's a billionaire by the time he's thirty, right, correct,
He's a billionaire. He's moving in very very high ranking circles.
You know, he counts Tony Chappa, who was the assistant
director of the Secret Service here in Los Angeles, as
a close friend. He's buddies with Lee Bacca. He's running
(11:22):
Leebacco is the sheriff of La who was super corrupt, right, Well,
I know he went to prison. So the Lion has
a bunch of people on his payroll that he calls
the boys. Who are the boys? I mean, the boys
are pretty extensive. He has the FBI agent, he has
a Homely and Security investigations agent. He has Beverly Hills
(11:43):
police officers who are working off duty, buddies with a sheriff.
And that's not to mention all of the international connections
he had in Belize, in Turkey and other countries around
the world. Okay, so he's leading this incredible life. You
have these pictures of his private jet and his Bugattis
and they're all like these glowing gold colored things, like
(12:06):
like even Donald Trump would think they were tacky. His
fit at birthday party, somebody gifted him a two million
dollars Bugghatti. But they had live lions there to protect
the Baggatti at this birthday party that took place at
Universal Studios and one of the fancy hotels, and everybody
was there and it was like a movie set, you know.
They had live lions and models and the owner of
(12:29):
Lamborghini actually broadcasts from Italy into the party because he
was also obsessed with Lamborghini's lions, and Lamborghini's were Lebderman's thing.
When Jacob finally gets this meeting with the Lion, who
he thinks can help him take his scam the plan
to the next level, Like, what's that meeting? Like it
(12:50):
doesn't seem like these two would want to go into
business with each other. Well, Jacob described it on the stand.
He said that he showed up in commerce part of
La So Jacob shows up. Here's this backwater guy and
his wranglers, and he walks five the armed bodyguards and
the Lambeau donut rings and the dirt outside, and he
(13:10):
walks by the two lion statues that sort of flanked
the doorway of this trailer, walks in the furniture inside
he said was made by Lamborghini. They got down to business.
The Lion said that he wanted to tour the WRI
facility because the Lion did have ways to move oil
around and biofuel. He had oil companies. Yeah, he had
(13:32):
oil companies. He had he had trucking companies, and he
had roots and he had access. Oh so real. He
was actually just a good business oil guy who was
useful in that way. Plus he had guys on his
payroll and the FBI and the police who Jacob probably
needed to pull off the scam. And that's exactly what
Jacob really brought the Lion in for. It wasn't just
(13:53):
for his ability to move the product around. It was
because of what he called the umbrella of protection. You
know what confuses me is why would the Lion, who's
already a billionaire, has got stuff going on in LA
want to get involved with this racist polygamous sect that
has child brides Like I would just think he'd see
(14:15):
these people and not want to get involved. Well, look,
the Lion was always on the lookout for a new opportunity,
and Jacob presented one. It was easy cash, easy flow.
But I also think that he almost related to Jacob
in a weird way, because remember, this is not a
guy who came to the United States as a billionaire.
He was a refugee from a dissolving Soviet Union country
(14:39):
and he worked his way to the top, and I
think he saw that in Jacob. Jacob came from these
horrible circumstances in this racist polygamous cult, and he still
made something of himself and got this doctorate degree. So
I think that the Lion appreciated, you know, the brains
that Jacob brought to this operation. So I think, you know,
(15:02):
they had this mutual respect. It was almost like an admiration.
And as this friendship partnership grew, Jacob became more like
the lion, and the Lion tried to take on some
of Jacob's intellect. Okay, So eventually the Lion comes to
Utah to see Jacob and help him out with his
like snake and rat house situation, and he decides to
(15:22):
come on Pioneer Day, which is this Mormon holiday that
celebrates their coming to Utah. Now what is that meaning? Like?
So they have you know, parties all over Utah, parade
floats and little girls wearing prairie dresses and talent shows
in a swimming hole, and barbecues and piles of food
and sister wives everywhere. Suddenly there's like the roar of
(15:44):
a Lamborghini engine and this chrome merc Liago comes into
view on the scrubby grass. One blue alligator show comes out.
Outcomes a stranger. Now remember he's Armenian. So here's this
dark skinned guy. They don't have a lot of dark
skinned people around the order for that they're particularly they're
(16:06):
really racist, right, they're rarely racist, and the very you know,
they're very opposed outsiders. They actually call other people outsiders. Yeah,
so here comes this dark skinned outsider. But was really
shocking is his passenger, who was Jacob Kingston. Now remember
this lambo is still surrounded by a gog. Children and
(16:26):
people are snapping selfies and it looks like the spaceship
and it's a swarm of you know, Kingston's and the
lion turns. He makes sure that everybody's watching, and he
turns to Jacob and he says, hey, Jacob tosses him
the keys, it's yours, and the lion threw him a bone,
threw him the keys to that lamba and set him
on his way to becoming a different person into like
(16:48):
bolstering his self esteem. But he created a monster with
that move. Like that tossing of the lambo keys, I
think is the what turned Jacob Kingston into a monster.
When we come back, I'll make an inappropriate number of
polygamy jokes. But first a word from our sponsor about
some amazing items that would make a great gift your wife,
(17:10):
no matter how many of them you have. The Lion
had helped Jacob take Bleeding the Beast to a level
that no one in the Order could have ever imagined.
So at the height of the scam, how much money
are they making? So when it was all said and done,
(17:30):
they had five hundred and eleven million dollars that they
had successfully grabbed from the US taxpayer, from US, the
US taxpayer. They were making so much money they had
to start laundering it in other countries. Jacob was making
plans to flee to Turkey. By then he was friends
with the Turkish President Urtigon. So what were they doing
(17:51):
with all this money? In Turkey? They bought the mardaun
Polis five star hotel, an airliner called Bora Jet. They
had homes all over the place, like waterfront mansions and
hunted dim beachd like, I don't know, seventy properties all
over Utah. They had lambos galore. They had Bugatis. The
cars were insane, Like think about a Bugati. We're talking
(18:15):
about a two million dollar car. As Jacob and the
Lion are making all of this money, how did Jacob's
lifestyle change back at the Order. Well, remember when we
first met Jacob, he was living in this old, old
cabin with the rats and the snakes. He was wearing wranglers.
He had his Toyota Chursell until he got that Lambeau
as a gift from the Lion. All of a sudden,
Jacob started to believe that he was the Lion, that
(18:36):
he was a tough guy. He began wearing, in his words,
six hundred dollars pants, a sixty thousand dollar watch. He
was traveling the world. He was dressing like a kingpin.
He was storming around wri complaining about how the Order
was trying to take his money, saying, don't they know
I'm the Golden Goose. So Jacob is no longer like
(18:58):
this religious guy from the Order. He is now more
of a gangster. He is starting to look like Tony Montana,
and the Order is noticing, and they start to ask
the Kingston brothers, Isaiah and Jacob if they are donating
as much as they should in tie things to the Order,
to the Church. What's crazy about that to me is
(19:20):
not only he is not only is Jacob a religious guy,
but he's an engineering PhD. Like, there's nothing gangster about
that guy. He's just a nerd, right, this is Walter White.
Basically it goes to some nerdy scientist's head that he's
a gangster. Now that's exactly what happened. It's really incredible
to watch a metamorphose like this, Like this goes from
this tall, gangly, quiet dude is a little you know,
(19:43):
unsure of himself, to this missionic figure. Do they know
who I am? I can clean Greece? Yes? He was like,
do you know who I know? Okay? So the whole
thing kind of falls apart with an anonymous tip to
the FBI. Where does that come from? The anonymous tip
from the FBI comes from somebody who works in the
(20:05):
Order's bank, and she's seeing some one of the funny
money that's flowing around. She knows the rumors around the
Kingston clan that Jacob is making money hand over fist
and living like a gangster. So someone tips off Utah
officials to the cash flow. And she's doing that, probably
(20:26):
because she's being horribly mistreated by the Order. Right. Oh,
she wants out, She wants to leave the Order. They
want to marry her off to her uncle, who knows.
There's a million reasons why a woman in the Order
might find a way to get out, and this woman
clearly did that. The Lion has been paying dirty FBI agents.
(20:47):
So he finds out that they're starting this investigation into
the biofuel business. And Jacob has his own FBI informants
on his own payroll too, So they destroy a lot
of evidence, but they know that the FBI is closing
in on them. So everyone at this point is about
to get arrested. It seems clear. How does that actually
go down? So Jacob had stashed all this money in Turkey.
(21:08):
He told his first wife, Sally, and a couple of
their sons to meet him at the airport. They go
there and disguises. So when you have like so many children,
how do you choose which kids you want to take
with you to get out of the country. Yeah, that's
a really good question. I don't know, And especially if
you have twenty kids, how do you only pick two?
(21:28):
That's what I'm saying, fourteen kids. You just leave those
kids behind in the old cabin with the rats and snakes.
Oh so rd okay. So they're in the airport with
their disguises, so obviously there's agents everywhere. They're fanned out,
they're in playing clothes, they're waiting for Jacob. They don't
want to move in until they see Jacob. They don't
(21:49):
see Jacob, they panic, Oh my god, where's Jacob? And
then they realized that Jacob had flown in, so we
didn't have to go through the TSA lines. He was
waiting at the gate He was about to board the
flight to Amsterdam that would have taken him to Turkey
when they spotted him on the gateway. He had waiting
on the gateway, and they tackled him and took him down,
(22:12):
and took down his wife and two kids right at
the gateway. You get on that flight if you see
someone tackled right before they got on the plane. I
am not getting on that flight. You know what. I
probably wouldn't get on that flight either, No chance. I
don't know what's on that plane. No way. Okay. So
they arrest the lion, they arrest Jacob, They even arrest
Jacob's brother Isaiah, who's involved in the scheme, and they
(22:35):
throw all of them into the same jail in Utah.
Which that's got to be tense. It's very tense. Jacob
described it this way. The lion growled at him, look
at what you did. You took us all down, and
Jacob finally spoke back. He claims he said, you ruin
my life. And then he turned to Isaiah and said,
(22:59):
how much money is left? And that's when they realized
none zero, one hundred and thirty three million stash in
Turkey was going to be seized by the government. Everything
else had been spent, and they were broke, broke enough
that they had to hire one of their dad's wives
to be their initial lawyer. When you have to hire
(23:20):
one of your dad's wives as your lawyer, you know
things aren't going well. That's thanks. Yeah, But Jacob wasn't
going to testify against the Lion, right not initially, it
doesn't appear that Jacob was going to testify. But then
there were some reports that were moving around the jail.
The Lion was going to be abruptly transferred to a
worse jail than the one he was in and to
(23:43):
the Salt Lake County Metro Center, which is like the
Dumpy Jail. And there was a reason, and the reason
that was written about and jail records was Hannah. So
remember Hannah, the third wife. I can't keep track of
all the wives. That is a ridiculous thing to ask
for me. Well, you're actolutely right. But Hannah was the
(24:03):
young hot wife. Yes, she was the young hot wife
that he got after he started making money. Then Paul
gives you the young hut wife. So the young hut
wife had gone on one of the many, many vacations
that Jacob and the Lion had taken together to go
to Turkey and Istanbul. And apparently sparks flew because now
they're all in the same jail. But officials at the
(24:27):
facility were like, hold on a minute. This Hannah Tucker,
she's visiting the Lion. At first they were alarmed that
she might have been delivering messages like they were trying
to communicate. Yeah, but no, no, no, turns out that
they were plotting to run away together. Oh, she was
delivering a message, all right, she was, Hey, dl that
(24:47):
was a message. So Jacob, who's I guess been one
third cuckholded by the lion, is now does he turn
on him? You can draw a conclusion that perhaps Jacob's
tune changed with the government when he realized you don't
steal one of a man's wives, you know, I mean,
(25:09):
especially the young one. Yeah, it's okay, to steal the
older one. Well, I guess in the order, look, the
younger the better in the order. So because of this betrayal,
Jacob testifies against the Lion, and then what happens to Jacob.
Jacob got his come upance too, because somehow Jacob Kingston
was transferred into a cell where his bunkie was a
(25:31):
confirmed Satan worshipper who liked to read aloud from the
Satanic Bible. That's not an accident. That's on purpose, right.
It is religious, you know, because suddenly Jacob is no
longer the Walter wide to bio fuel, and now he's
doctor Jacob Kingston, the pious member of this long standing
(25:53):
church community. That's hilarious. It's probably aren't that many Satanist.
They probably had to dig him out of some other
state and bring him in. All this is still playing
out in court. The Lion is on trial, Jacob's on trial.
The dirty FBI agent who was on the lion Its
payroll is on trial, and it's going to take a
long time for this to work its way through the court.
(26:15):
The Mobster in the Mormon was written by Michelle McPhee
and it's in the November issue of Los Angeles Magazine.
Thank you so much, Michelle. The story is fantastic and
it's something only you could have written. That's what I
love about it. I'm just I'm glad there's still reporters
like you who I feel like could easily beat me up.
Ah well, thank you. I'm going to actually take that
(26:35):
as a compliment, but I would never beat you up.
This whole story just reminds me of how lucky I am.
I have one sister and she's great, but I couldn't
imagine one hundred and twenty seven of her three wives.
You know how many times a day I disappoint one
wife getting a graduate degree in engineering. It all sounds miserable.
(26:56):
I can't imagine I'd want a Bugatti that badly, even
once I find out what a Bugatti is. At the
end of the show, what's next for Joel Stunt? And
maybe he'll take a nap? Voc around online. Our show
Today was produced by Kate mcculiffe and nishaven Cut. It
(27:16):
was edited by Robert Smith. Our engineer is Amanda kay
Wang and our executive producer is Katherine Siradol and our
theme song was written and performed by Jonathan Colton and
a special thanks to my voice coach Vicky Merrick and
my consulting producer laurenz Elasnick. To find more Pushkin podcast
listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
(27:40):
listen to your podcasts. I'm Joel Stein and this is
the Story of the Week. Lee Bacco is the sheriff
of la who was super corrupt. Right, well, I know
he went to prison. Yeah, I walked into Barbara Streisan's
house and she had his number on, like speed dial
is number one? You're kidding me? No, Yeah, I'll always
(28:01):
remember that. We can't accuse Barbara Streisan anything on this podcast.
My mom would kill me. What I'm put to have
a hot attack? She would hate it if we said
anything bad about Barbara coming up on Story of the Week.
And this is a big part of what attracted you
to her. Right, You're like, oh, are you kidding me?
I mean that's hot, right, tell me that's not hot totally.
(28:22):
What a specific fetish you have white savors? Yeah, it's
weird white savior fetish. I'm just starting to realize that
in feat there's no porn heub channel for that at all. Yes,
although are we sure about that
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