Brother Charged With Concealing Warren Jeffs
 
By Jacques Billeaud
The Associated Press
KUTV Channel 2
Seth Jeffs

(KUTV) The younger brother of a fugitive polygamist leader was charged in Colorado with harboring a wanted person after the younger sibling was found with $140,000 in cash and prepaid credit and cell phone cards -items that authorities say are generally used to help wanted people evade capture.

Seth Steed Jeffs, 32, of Hildale, Utah, was charged in federal court in Denver with harboring and concealing his brother, Warren Jeffs, president of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, officials said Monday.

Warren Jeffs has been a fugitive since his June indictment in Arizona on charges of arranging a marriage between a 16-year-old girl and a man who was already married. The FBI added a charge of unlawful flight against Jeffs and joined the search for him.

When questioned by authorities, Seth Jeffs said he didn't know his brother's whereabouts and wouldn't help investigators find him, according to an affidavit filed by an FBI agent in Colorado.

"It would be stupid to tell anyone where he is because he would get caught," the affidavit quotes Seth Jeffs as saying.

The money and prepaid credit and cell phone cards were found Friday after Seth Jeffs and another man were pulled over in traffic stop in Pueblo, Colo.

Seth Jeffs was arrested for prostitution and solicitation after the other man told authorities that Jeffs hired him for sex.

Inside the vehicle, authorities found cash, prepaid credit and cell phone cards, hundreds of letters addressed to Warren Jeffs and a donation jar bearing a photo of the church leader and a label that read: "Pennies for the Prophet," the affidavit said.

In an interview with authorities, Seth Jeffs said he was told to deliver the money from a church headquarters in Hildale, Utah, to another church headquarters in Texas, the affidavit said.

Jeff Dorschner, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Denver, declined to name those churches or say whether Seth Jeffs' arrest is related to reported sightings of Warren Jeffs in Utah more than a week ago.

"It's a positive development," Dorschner said of the younger Jeffs' arrest.

Polygamy is practiced openly in Colorado City, a remote enclave in Arizona on the state line with Utah. The area is dominated by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a sect that split from mainstream Mormonism after the broader church renounced polygamy more than a century ago.

Associated Press reporter Jennifer Dobner in Salt Lake City contributed to this story.
 
KUTV.com
Originally broadcast October 31, 2005
 
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