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Much can be discovered about a man by observing the type of company he keeps. In his position as court-appointed special fiduciary for the UEP, Bruce Wisan has affiliated himself closely with two men who are experts at stealing the assets of a company for their personal gain and defrauding the stockholders of millions of dollars—Richard Holm and Jethro Barlow.

 

For years, in Colorado City and elsewhere, Richard Holm has engaged in business transactions which, while they may have been legal in a strict sense of the word, were highly questionable when viewed from the standpoint of ethics or morality. Almost everyone who has done business with this man has found himself a victim of Richard’s clever salesmanship and manipulative financial practices, which seem to turn every deal to his advantage.

 

  Richard Holm 

Richard Holm’s sale of the Red Hills Service Station in Colorado City is typical of his pattern of doing business. He became golfing buddies with a man who recently had moved to town from Salt Lake City, where he had sold out his interest in a business for about $175,000. Richard persuaded him to buy the service station lease for about $600,000, considerably more than the business was worth. The man invested his $175,000 as a down payment, and after pocketing this sum, Richard arranged for the balance to be financed through the Bank of Ephraim. 

 

Not long after this, the man had to turn the service station back for debt because he was unable to generate sufficient profit to keep the business operating and to meet the payments on the loan. Richard inflated the price $100,000 and resold the business to two other men in Colorado City, thus making himself a profit of $175,000 or more on the first sale and $100,000 on the second.

 

Richard used a similar practice of inflating the price of a business above its actual value then financing it through the Bank of Ephraim to sell several other businesses in Colorado City, Arizona, and Hildale, Utah: Hildale Automotive, the Mark Twain Restaurant, Village Truss, Village Transportation, and the Mark Twain Inn. Again, many of those who purchased the businesses were unable to meet the payments and lost their investments.

 

Richard also sold numerous modular homes in Colorado City and Hildale, buying decrepit units cheap and selling them for top dollar with financing again arranged through the Bank of Ephraim.

                                         Bruce Wisan

The above business transactions refer only to some of Richard’s activities in Colorado City and Hildale. He has been involved in many similar business deals elsewhere.

 

All of these transactions might be considered just shrewd business deals except by the men who wound up holding the short end of the stick. They are on a small scale, however, compared to what Richard Holm and Jethro Barlow did in defrauding over 3,400 stockholders of Dynamic American Corporation by siphoning all of the assets from the company in just over a year and replacing them with equity in worthless mine tailings, which were misrepresented as ore concentrates and said to be worth $4.3 million.

Details of this fraud are contained in the following public documents, all available on the Internet:

 

 

 

Richard Holm used Tumurru Trades, Inc., a company he controlled, to purchase Dynamic American Corporation from its former owner on May 15, 1990, in exchange for a $700,000 promissory note and other consideration. The sec news digest of May 31, 1990, reports this transaction. The net worth of the company at the time was $2.6 million. Over the following 14 months, Richard engaged in a complex series of transactions whereby the bulk of the assets were transferred to other companies that he controlled. The largest part of the $700,000 was paid through materials and labor used by Tumurru Trades, to remodel and complete a home for the former owner. Of course, he used his customary practice of inflating the cost of materials and labor to determine the charges for this work.

 

After just over a year, Dynamic American was little more than a shell with a net worth of $1,981,326; Richard had replaced the assets with a worthless promissory note. There remained, however, enough real value to interest Richard’s friend Jethro Barlow, a CPA in Colorado City. As reported in the sec news digest of August 14, 1991, ownership of Dynamic American Corporation was transferred to Jethro J. Barlow on July 31, 1991. Jethro took over control of the company with the understanding that he would do something to make things look right on the books and in the reports that had to be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

 

  Jethro Barlow

 Jethro traded a piece of valuable real estate near St. George, Utah, as well as stock in the company to William Black for equity in some worthless mine tailings near Pioche, Nevada, which he misrepresented on Dynamic American’s balance sheets in the company’s Form10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission as “precious metal ore concentrates” worth about $4.3 million. He then proceeded to remove any remaining assets from the company for his personal gain.

 

A history of these transactions is contained within the 21-page Amended Form 10-K report referenced above:

 

“The Company packaged for sale the various assets being held for resale consisting of its modular housing inventory, long-term notes receivable, real estate held for resale and a partially completed real estate project together with related equipment. This sale was made to TLM Investments, Inc. (TLM) [a company controlled by Richard Holm] and was completed April 1, 1991 with an effective date of December 31, 1990.

 

“In 1991, the Company exchanged the note receivable for TLM for 10,000 tons of precious metal ore concentrates and entered into production arrangements with a third party (Century 2000 Corporation) to recover the precious metals from the ore concentrates using new techniques to break complex ores.” [The “new techniques” referred to a “secret formula” of William Black’s, which proved impractical in actual application.]      

 

The same Form 10-K shows the Company’s balance sheet for 1994 with ore concentrates valued at $4,345,968 and every other asset, including cash, at zero. Jones, Jensen & Company, which prepared the Independent Auditors’ Report accompanying the balance sheets, included the following comment: “[T]he Company’s recurring losses from operations and net accumulated deficit raise substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern.”

 

In June 1995, Jethro Barlow surrendered control of Dynamic American to Robert G. Weeks, David A. Hesterman, and Kenneth L. Weeks, who still found the company attractive as a “shell corporation” and proceeded to baselessly inflate its assets by claiming $40 million worth of mineral deposits in Bolivia. Barlow continued as a figurehead officer of the company.

 

On August 2, 1999, the Securities and Exchange Commission instituted proceedings against Jethro Barlow for his involvement with Dynamic American. Their report of February 14, 2000, includes the following findings:

 

“Barlow… obtained money or property by means of, and made use of untrue statements of material fact or omitted to state material facts necessary in order to make the statements made, in light of the circumstances under which they were made, not misleading; or engaged in acts, transactions, practices, or courses of business which operated as a fraud or deceit upon purchasers or sellers of securities, namely Dynamic American stock.”

 

“Baselessly valued the Bolivian mineral properties at approximately $40 million, and then later at approximately $38.6 million, in Dynamic American’s balance sheets included in the company’s Forms 10-Q filed with the Commission…”

 

“Baselessly valued certain U.S. mineral assets at approximately $4.3 million in Dynamic American’s balance sheets included in the company’s Forms 10-K filed with the Commission…”

 

As a result of their findings, the Commission imposed the following sanctions against Jethro Barlow:

 

“Accordingly, it is ORDERED that Respondent Jethro J. Barlow, CPA, cease and desist from committing or causing violations of and any future violations of [Sections of the Securities Act and the Exchange Act]…

 

“It is further ORDERED that Respondent Jethro J. Barlow, CPA, is permanently denied the privilege of appearing or practicing before the Commission as an accountant…”

 

When Jethro Barlow failed to disclose the disciplinary action of the Securities and Exchange Commission in his CPA renewal application, the Utah Board of Accountancy demanded the surrender of his CPA license. Arizona and Nevada followed suit, based on Utah’s action.

 

Such is the experience and the character of the men that Mark Shurtleff and Dan Fischer have recruited, along with Bruce Wisan, to wage sociological and psychological warfare against the FLDS people. In destroying the UEP Trust and selling its assets, these men are going far beyond just defrauding 3,400 stockholders of their investment in Dynamic American. They are stealing the lifetime earnings of 8,000 UEP beneficiaries.

 

In his affidavit that influenced the Third Judicial District Court in Utah to suspend the former trustees of the UEP, Richard Holm claimed that there was a pattern of liquidating Trust assets at below market value. That is exactly the practice currently being engaged in by Wisan with the help of Richard Holm and Jethro Barlow. Consider the following completed or pending transactions:

 

►In February 2007, Wisan sold the $6 million dollar Western Precision Building in Hildale on auction to Northwest Land Company for $1.65 million.

 

►In June and September of 2007, Wisan purchased Harker Farms for $4.3 million at sheriff’s auctions. An inventory by the former managers of the farm just prior to Wisan’s takeover placed the net worth at $9,589,138.

 

►Wisan is currently trying to sell a rich tract of UEP farmland known as Berry Knoll for $3 million. The Salt Lake Tribune of August 25, 2008, reported that the value is as much as $9 million.

 

In pursuing the litigation involved in liquidating these assets, Wisan charges for his own time and for that of his attorney firm. The more litigation he can instigate, the more he benefits personally from his position as special fiduciary. Thus the assets of the UEP are being dissipated by the very man who was supposedly appointed by the Court to protect them.