The Mormon church is being sued by three men who claim it received $348,000 in donations they believed were for charities and then used the money for its own investments.
The trio, who filed a federal lawsuit on Tuesday, are seeking to make their case a class action lawsuit and want an independent entity to oversee the collection and use of donations to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints .
Their lawsuit is separate from but similar to that of James Huntsman, the scion of a prominent Mormon family whose brother Jon was governor of Utah and presidential candidate, and U.S. ambassador to Russia, China and Singapore.
James Huntsman told DailyMail.com in August that the institution is “in serious trouble” as followers begin to question the integrity of its leadership.
The three men behind Tuesday’s lawsuit — Daniel Chappell, of Virginia, and Masen Christensen and John Oaks, both of Utah — are challenging the church’s spending of tithes, the 10 percent donation that all members are required to make.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, based in Salt Lake City, Utah, is believed to be worth $236 billion. The country is now facing lawsuits over the way it handles donations
The lawsuit filed by the three included images that the church used to solicit donations
Church members are required to submit “tithe slips” and donate one-tenth of their income
Chappell said he has donated $108,000 since Jan. 1, 2013.
Christensen, who states in court papers that he will remain a member of the church and continue to tithe provided the structure is changed, says he has donated $120,000 plus $46,000 through “donor-advised funds” – a tax-efficient way of giving.
Oaks says he gave $74,000.
The church does not make its finances public, but a group calling itself The Widow’s Mite estimates that the church had a fortune of $236 billion in 2022, including $175 billion in cash.
The Widow’s Mite’s reports are produced by “current and former Church members whose professional and educational backgrounds include business, finance, law, investment management, economics, journalism and history,” and were developed through an analysis of “publicly available sources’.
A report from The Widow’s Mite estimates that the Mormon Church has amassed a cash reserve of $175 billion, more than the world’s largest tech giants
It is expected that the tithes will go to charity work, and not to an investment fund
James Huntsman, a California-based filmmaker who left the church in 2020, claims the church used more than $1 billion in member donations to keep one of its ailing companies afloat, despite leaders promising they wouldn’t doing.
James Huntsman’s brother, Jon Huntsman Jr., was a Utah governor, presidential candidate, and ambassador to Russia, China, and Singapore
The trio says the tithes are intended for charitable work, but state in court documents that the tithe is “permanently invested in accounts that it never uses for charitable work.”
They allege that the church “has gone to great lengths to conceal the actual disposition of donations from the public and its members.”
Their case, and Huntsman’s, was sparked by a 2019 whistleblower who alleged that the church “channeled billions of dollars in donations into secret permanent investments through Ensign” — the church’s affiliated investment manager.
Ensign Peak, considered a rainy day fund, has issued money only twice in its 26-year history, according to both lawsuits.
In 2009, Ensign Peak spent $600 million bailing out Beneficial Life, a failing for-profit insurance company owned by the church.
From 2010 to 2014, it spent $1.4 billion building the City Creek Center mall near Temple Square in downtown Salt Lake City.
In February, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said fined the church and Ensign Peak Advisors a total of $5 million for using shell companies to obscure the size of the investment portfolio under church control.
The church agreed to pay $1 million and Ensign Peak $4 million.
The whistleblower, David Nielsen, a former Ensign Peak investment manager, filed a 90-page memorandum this year with the U.S. Senate Finance Committee demanding a congressional investigation into the church’s finances.
DailyMail.com has reached out to the church for comment but has not yet heard back.