I am thrilled that Tom has done this, and I hope it causes as much damage as possible.....but how can this really stick?

Bizarre religious claims are a dime a dozen, and many are easy to refute. How is this case any different?

I mean, in the Religulous documentary there is a guy who claims he is actually Jesus Christ!! And he's making some sweet cash. Is he liable?

British law must be completely different because my understanding is that this behavior, no matter how fraudulent, is protected in the US.

Am I missing something?

This in answered in a lot of threads, I'd suggest you read some of them instead of starting yet another fresh one.

I think a key difference is that tithing doesn't have the same status in most other religions as it does in mormonism.

It's really simple. Prior to 2006 there wasn't a law on the books in the UK to prosecute people who knowing swindle money out of people including churches. Now there is. That's what makes it different.

There's a difference between, for example:

Spiritual Claim: The Flying Spaghetti Monster holds objects, including humans, to the ground with his holy noodly appendages (intelligent falling)

vs.

The book of abrhamam is a literal translation of ancient papyri we have in our possession that ALL egyptologists agree are simple burial documents and nothing to do with abraham.

That's the difference...

Exactly what Kolobian said. The church has in their possession a tangible, physical object which proves that Joseph Smith's book of Abraham was a hoax. They have known it was a hoax since at least 1967, when a museum found the actual scrolls that joseph Smith had, and returned them to the church. Yet they continue to hold teh BofA up as scripture, and present it as evidence that we are here on earth as a test of obedience to god's commandments, including tithing.