Wanted fugitive polygamist has valley ties, raking in valley tax dollars Part 2 - Your tax dollars could be funding a wanted fugitive

By Darcy Spears KVBC News 3 - Las Vegas

A number of construction companies affiliated with a controversial polygamous sect operate in southern Nevada. None of them wants to talk about who they are and where their money goes, and one of them is raking in millions of our tax dollars. News 3 Investigator Darcy Spears has been following the money trail from Las Vegas construction sites to the twin cities of Colorado City, Arizona and Hildale, Utah. She's tells us how our tax dollars may be funding an oppressive culture and a federal fugitive's flight from the law. Members of the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints are followers of fugitive prophet Warren Jeffs. He's responsible for arranging marriages between underage girls and older men. He's on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List for having sex with a minor and being an accomplice to rape. He counts on his loyal followers to make money to fund his flight from the law, and much of that money is coming from Las Vegas government contracts. From government construction sites like one at the Las Vegas Springs Preserve to one at the Clark County Wetlands Park, a river is running. But it's not water that flows from these places. It's money, taxpayers' money. And a whole lot of it is going to JNJ Engineering. The company has nearly $10.5 million in government contracts with the City, County and Water District. Spokesperson J.C. Davis says $9.6 million of that is with the Water District alone. "They keep getting contracts because they keep bidding on contracts." JNJ is run by its namesake, Jacob Nathan Jessop. His cousin Flora Jessop spoke to us from Phoenix. "He's one of the guys that runs the construction companies and makes the money for the FLDS, which enables Warren Jeffs to continue his flight from law enforcement." Isaac Wyler was ex-communicated from FLDS, but still lives in the heart of it in Colorado City. He says all the money goes back to Warren Jeffs. Isaac: It is a little like organized crime. Darcy: Like a different kind of mafia? Isaac: Yeah. Only instead of breaking your legs, they'll take your wife and children and business and home and family and extended family and everything. JNJ Engineering's Jacob Jessop and his family live in a million-dollar home on Gilbert Lane in northwest Las Vegas and another one in Hildale, Utah. Darcy: Good afternoon. Do you know if Jake is here? Or is he in Vegas? Jessop's wife: Who are you? Darcy: I'm Darcy Spears. I'm with Channel 3 in Las Vegas. Jessop's wife: What do you want? Darcy: We're doing a story on all the construction companies that are in Vegas that are based out of Hildale. And we're trying to speak with Jake. Jessop's wife: I have no comment. Neither did Jake. Jessop hung up the phone on us when we tried asking about how he spends our tax dollars. So, with contractors supporting a federal fugitive, how do they get so much of our government's money? "Their bids come in substantially lower than other companies, so that's why they're getting it," explains Davis. Nevada law requires government to award its contracts to the lowest responsive and responsible bidder. JNJ often undercuts the next lowest bidder by tens or hundreds of thousands, and their bids are also often hundreds of thousands less than the government engineer's own estimate. Flora Jessop says there's a reason for that. "A lot of what happens in these corporations is they use their children as the labor force and so they don't have to pay wages. And each one of those boys, while collecting a paycheck, never see that paycheck. That money is sent directly to the prophet." "I used to work for construction companies, too, and we'd get paid one check, and then we'd turn another check over to them after we'd sign it back over to them," said Isaac. "So, their records showed like it should be even though that's not how it was." "In terms of any of the other things about their labor practices, frankly, we don't know, because we're not in the enforcement agency business," said Davis. Neither the Water District, nor the County, nor the City, have any mechanism in place to check on contract compliance. They don't require employee lists, dates of birth, or social security numbers, so they don't know whether proper wages are being paid, and they don't know how old the workers are. The only way that would be checked out is if someone complained to the Labor Department. That's something Flora Jessop says will likely never happen because of the oppressive culture that FLDS members grow up in. "Every one of the people working for JNJ Engineering were born into this group. They own them." And by hiring them, she says our government is using our money to support that. "They continue to fund not only a fugitive that's on the 10 Most Wanted, but they're funding the trafficking of children for sexual slavery, the child labor violations; the crimes and abuses against children are being funded by our government, by continuing to hire these guys." Paragon Contractors Corporation, another Hildale, Utah FLDS construction company, was fined more than $10,000 by the U.S. Department of Labor for employing minors aged 12, 13 and 15, and failing to pay them for their work. Eight FLDS members stand charged with sex offenses involving plural marriages to underage girls. A member of the Jessop family is among those charged. One man has already been found guilty and the seven others are pending trial in Mohave County, Arizona.

KVBC.com Originally broadcast July 26, 2006

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