Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes & Tim Ballard Targets of Joint Criminal Probe by Salt Lake and Davis County District Attorneys

Amidst growing controversy and pressure from the Governor’s office, Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes and excommunicated LDS hero Tim Ballard now face a joint criminal investigation by Salt Lake and Davis County District Attorneys, ACJ has confirmed

This article is now part of ACJ’s comprehensive investigative series Derailed: Operation Underground Railroad

Tim Ballard and Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes at the O.U.R. “Command Center” August 1, 2020

For the past four months, we’ve been following the joint criminal probe launched by the Salt Lake County and Davis County District Attorney Offices into Tim Ballard, Operation Underground Railroad (O.U.R.), and Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes. Despite our persistent efforts to contact Davis County District Attorney Troy Rawlings and Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill’s offices, we faced silence. However, two months ago, we spotted a familiar face leaving Sim Gill’s office, confirming our suspicions. Additionally, we recently learned that someone closely affiliated with O.U.R. met with the prosecutors’ investigators.

While we could not get in touch with either prosecutors’ offices to confirm that such a meeting had indeed taken place, the Salt Lake County District Attorney’s office did confirm to ACJ there was an on going investigation back in April. This morning, we did speak with an additional witness who originally met with DA Rawlings back during the first investigation in 2020, and he confirmed, he had been summonsed by both prosecutor offices to meet with their investigators to discuss Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes, Operation Underground Railroad and Tim Ballard’s suspected criminal activity.

Two of the witnesses declined comment, and do not wish to be identified, however, they are familiar faces from the previous investigations.

A Federal Investigation May Be Underway

Celeste Borys was Tim Ballard’s executive assistant from March 2023, until last fall as news of the Ballard and O.U.R. scandals were breaking. To date not only has she filed a lawsuit with a group of women allegedly abused and sexually assaulted by Ballard, but publicly came forward, all of them to share their heartbreaking story. Criminal complaints for sexual misconduct has been filed with at least four other agencies:

Linden Police Department
San Clemente Police Department
Campbell Police Department
Los Angeles Airport Police

Due to the crimes taking place across state lines, automatically some federal statutes may have been violated. This alone could also be grounds for federal authorities to re-engage their original criminal investigation, perhaps taking it out of the hands of Utah based special agents.

Meager Donations and Possible Kickbacks

Previously, Davis County District Attorney Troy Rawlings had been investigating Tim Ballard and O.U.R. for fraud for over three years. VICE’s release of over 75 documents obtained through a FOIA request from the Davis County DA’s office revealed an organization in disarray. As of 2021, O.U.R. had amassed over $82 million in assets, a stark contrast to the $10 million it had just two years prior in 2017.

According to O.U.R. Form 990 filings from 2015 to 2021, one of the largest benefactors of O.U.R.’s donations was White Mountain Research, a non-profit controlled by longtime Ballard and Glenn Beck associate Rudy Atallah, who served as their partner in several ventures, including the Nazarene Fund.

In 2019, alone, Atallah controlled White Mountain Research received nearly $2.5 million from Operation Underground Railroad:

In 2018, White Mountain Research received just over $2.3 million:

Meanwhile, O.U.R. controlled organizations used in fundraiser pushes, were left in a dire need of cash, most were unpaid and left to fend for themselves or paid pittance, such as acclaimed Guesno Mardy owned and operated Haitian orphanage, Foyer de Sion. They were given a paltry $15,000, despite the fact the building was in complete disrepair with roaches and rodents and did not have electricity or running water.

In 2020, Jeff Frazier was appointed to direct O.U.R.’s support of the orphanage. Rather than O.U.R. cover the expenses to get an orphanage reportedly with 200 orphans living inside up to code, Frazier had to plea for donations from the public on his own. In a video (pictured on the left) Frazier stands in front of the Foyer de Sion building, which was bankrolled by Utah donors through the LDS Church for Guesno Mardy.

Frazier said, “the generator quit, there’s no electricity”. He went on to say, “the water pump [has also] quit, there’s no running water. There’s no working washing machines to wash clothes for almost 200 orphans”.

Here is the itemization from O.U.R.’s 2017 Form 990:

Despite his long and troubled history at O.U.R. with Tim Ballard at the helm, Frazier remained a Ballard loyalist, and was appointed CEO of Operation Underground Railroad following Ballard’s exile after damning allegations of sexual misconduct surfaced. Frazier was recently replaced by Tammy Lee, another upper class white woman who has exploited the fears of Americans and made a career out of the anti-human trafficking industrial complex.

Other organizations that helped legitimize O.U.R. and made Ballard a hero also received meager donations, when actually combating sexual predators, but not human traffickers.

Washington State Patrol’s (WSP) Operation Net Nanny was Operation Underground Railroad’s claim to fame. It would be the case that gave them “the numbers” of the pedophiles they claim to have arrested, “over 200” O.U.R. and Tim Ballard often touted. Except Ballard has spent all his time in Haiti and other foreign countries then later used Net Nanny as their claim to legitimacy. Yet according to O.U.R.’s Form 990 in 2017, O.U.R. donated just $39,999 to the Washington State Patrol Missing and Exploited Children Task Force (MECTF).

It wasn’t even enough money to pay for half the salary for an incoming cadet at the academy.

The following year, in 2018, according to O.U.R.’s 2018, Form 990, they donated just $52,500.

Again, O.U.R. financials reveal the same little care or concern with the WSP’s Operation Net Nanny just like Foyer de Sion- including underwhelming donations to the organization. Despite Tim Ballard and O.U.R.’s claims of funding Operation Net Nanny and training and developing staff to combat human trafficking, the financials don’t lie.

The donations were paltry and by all accounts of those involved both on the WSP side and O.U.R. side, their contributions had little to no effect on the human trafficking front. In fact, their donations were more trouble than it was worth, that WSP refused donations from Operation Underground Railroad in the subsequent years. After receiving donations for five years and receiving a pathetic $250,000, WSP pulled the plug. O.U.R. would publicly claim to have been the ones to take “traffickers” off the streets, when in reality the stings performed by Washington State Patrols Missing and Exploited Children Task Force was rather rudimentary and performed by members of the task force, not O.U.R. as both WSP and former operatives of O.U.R. have confirmed- repeatedly.

The busts were in the style of To Catch a Predator with Chris Hansen on MSNBC, that are now conducted regularly by Youtubers for clicks and views. Still, no traffickers are being taken off the streets. It has been around for over ten years and by 2015 over 500 agencies and task forces had employed the typical strategy of posing as minors online and luring suspected pedophiles over with the promise of possible sexual relations to a particular address with police officers. While billions of dollars are being dumped into the anti-human trafficking apparatus, there is little more than suspected pedophiles and teen prostitutes (who are arrested and prosecuted) to show for it.

In the end, no traffickers were arrested and the night before Carlos Rodriguez gave his deposition to prosecutors in Utah, I had the chance to interview him and ask, “how many children were rescued during these sting operations?’

His answer? “Not one”.

Then I asked him point blank, “how many traffickers did you guys rescue during the Net Nanny stings?”

His answer, “we didn’t arrest known traffickers, no. That was not the intent. We arrested pedophiles and dangerous sex offenders, just as they[the stings] were designed and intended to do”

None of this charade, prevented O.U.R. from fundraising by personally claiming they had arrested over 200 human traffickers and having saved dozens of children during the Net Nanny stings, which did not produce a single trafficking arrest or child rescue according to WSP’s former head of MECTF, Carlos Rodriguez.

Similarly, Breaking Chains, a non-profit run by Steven Cass, received minimal support compared to O.U.R.’s reported assets. Steven Cass aka “Batman” or better known as “Vampiro” in the Sound of Freedom propaganda film. He received just $60,000 and as far as we can tell, there is legitimacy in what he does, just not how he presents it, as in this video O.U.R. decided to release in the midst of Ballard’s downfall.

Breaking Chains received just $60,000 from the $100 million non-profit empire.

Cass, like so many other in what I call the anti-human trafficking industrial complex, like to conflate “teen prostitution” and “survival sex” with “human trafficking”. Largely, using the terminology brings about more fear, concerns and most important of all, better funding. Cass, like Ballard comes from a deeply religious purview in their so-called mission, which already has a distorted perception of sex and teen prostitution, it being unholy and this idea that women “must be forced or seduced” in order for the sex industry to operate, however, that is the attitude of pimps and traffickers themselves. In recent surveys, less than 5% of sex workers (compared to nearly 26% in 1999) have been the victims of “forced prostitution” . This is due to the rise of the internet, which has allowed women to work safely in home and afford their own security and drivers either themselves, or through an agency.

What I can make clear, is that Cass is actually on the streets trying to help these women and has a lot more to show for it than O.U.R., and has done so with just a fraction of just one percent of the funding that O.U.R. has received this past decade. Cass introduced Tim Ballard and Paul Hutchinson to this game, during a time Ballard thought he and a group of elite commandos would enter foreign countries and rescue kidnapped children.

Aside from a few other worthless donations that most could blow during a bad weekend in Vegas, majority of the paid funds go to Tim Ballard’s reported salary, other director reported salaries, legal fess such as having the prestigious LDS law firm, Kirton McConkie on retainer as well as California attorney Adam Becker among others.

We also cannot forget Katherine Ballard’s $182,000 salary. For what? We don’t know.

Notably, O.U.R.’s financial records raised questions about Tim Ballard’s reported earnings, with estimates ranging from $14 million to $17 million since 2013. The Whiteboard meeting is a perfect example of how Ballard detailed just how to launder money through a series of Ballard controlled non-profits and for profits to his company, Slave Stealers, LLC. There are suspicions of kickbacks, particularly the $5 million paid to Rudy Atallah, all which underscores the need for further investigation.

Despite the lengthy fraud investigation by Troy Rawlings and a Department of Justice grand jury probe, both efforts ended quietly, casting doubt on their effectiveness. O.U.R.’s close ties to Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes and the apparent interference in the grand jury probe raise concerns about accountability and justice in Utah’s legal system.

Troy Rawlings and Sim Gill owes it to the people of Utah to pursue justice without bias or influence of the LDS Church or Attorney General Reyes. Tim Ballard and O.U.R.’s alleged fraudulent activities demand transparency and accountability, regardless of political affiliations, connections, or fears of upsetting the LDS Church.

The long-standing principle of separation between church and state in the United States underscores the gravity of Utah’s reputation as the global epicenter of fraud. Utah’s disturbing label as a theocracy is glaringly evident, and the world is watching. It’s imperative that those responsible are brought to justice and held accountable- without further delay.