FLDS leader’s brother takes the stand in trial over proceeds from North Shore land sale

GRAND MARAIS, MINN. – Seth Jeffs told a Cook County jury that he doesn’t know if he is a member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints anymore.

Jeffs was ousted from the church in 2016 and hasn’t been baptized back in. He said he continues to live by its guiding principles on a small farm in Menomonie, Wis., where he grows his own food, keeps cows and raises chickens.

Jeffs said it has been years since he has talked to his brother, Warren Jeffs, the infamous head of the religious sect that broke away from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to continue with its polygamist beliefs.

Warren Jeffs is imprisoned in Texas, where he is serving a life sentence for child sexual abuse.

“I would love to talk to him,” Seth Jeffs said on the stand Thursday.

Jeffs, his company Emerald Industries LLC, and his brother, who is considered a prophet in the FDLS church, are co-defendants in a lawsuit in Grand Marais brought by Elissa Wall, a Utah woman and former FDLS Church member who is owed $10 million from a 2017 judgment against Warren Jeffs.

Seth Jeffs bought 40 acres in Cook County in 2018, then sold the property on Pike Lake Road in 2023 without building on it. Wall said she believes the money he used for the purchase came from Warren Jeffs and that money is due to her as part of her award for which she hasn’t been paid a dime.

Warren Jeffs isn’t participating in this trial and is considered in default, just like he was in the last suit Wall filed against him.

Seth Jeffs was a tricky witness for prosecutors, who provided writings by Warren Jeffs about the way all members’ money and belongings are communal. The money is divvied up by church leadership. Food and belongings are kept in storehouses and accessed by members as needed.

Grand Marais-based prosecuting attorney Richard Furlong asked Jeffs to read from the writings, described as “revelations,” and Jeffs refused. Jeffs said he couldn’t be sure the writings came from his brother and it would be against his religion to read them if they weren’t.

The prosecution tapped into Jeffs’ 12 years of unemployment, a period in which he tended to his large families’ needs with money and supplies from the church leadership. He didn’t see some of his bills.

Jeffs, dressed in brown tones with a tie and sporty vest, is tall with thin features. He was calm and quiet and dropped religious doctrine into his testimony.

In Warren Jeffs’ alleged revelations, he wrote of church members moving east from Utah and finding wilderness areas to settle.

On direct examination from his attorney William Paul, Seth Jeffs had more room for a narrative. He told of relocating to Minnesota, where he worked as a handyman before building up his own base of clients.

He showed a ledger of jobs and payments totaling more than $400,000. This, he claimed, is how he bought the land for $55,000.

“I had plenty of money,” he told the jury, adding that he made it all on his own doing all of the work. “I wasn’t receiving anything from anyone except my customers.”

Earlier in the day, the prosecution called Wall’s former attorney and a private investigator as witnesses, both who understand the FDLS hierarchy, with Warren Jeffs at the top. They testified of the unconventional way money trickles down to church members — often large sums of cash tucked into an envelope.

Both described the church leaders as criminals adept at finding new ways to hide money.

“They operate as a criminal organization,” testified Alan Mortensen, Wall’s Utah-based attorney. “They operate in the criminal world using God to do it.”

Wall sat next to her attorneys, golden hair tied back in a low bun and dressed in black pants, a dusty pink blouse and black suit coat. She occasionally whispered with Furlong and gave Mortensen a forearm bump after he testified.

There have been few spectators for the proceedings at the tip of northeastern Minnesota, far from the national intrigue Wall’s initial trial stirred.