My dad was a pretty liberal Mormon. He enjoyed the social aspect of the church. He never climbed the church ladder beyond being on the high council and I never saw the man ever reading his scriptures. My dad was generous though. He helped lot’s of people in and out of the church. My dad really was a workaholic businessman who did well but never let that go to his head. He liked people and liked to give people a hand up. He helped put a lot of people through college or help pay for additional training so people could get a better job.

I would often hear my dad say don’t trust anyone just because they are a member of the church. Our stake president stiffed my dad on some work one of his construction companies did on his house. We had a member of the ward take others in a ponzi scheme.

I thought it was amusing you could trust these people as lay clergy but you couldn’t trust them when money was involved. I think the funniest Mormon screw up I ever witnessed was my mom and me running into the Elder’s Quorum president with his mistress staying in the room next to ours at a hotel in a popular weekend destination 150 miles away. My mom was calling him an idiot because he picked a vacation place many members of the ward had vacation homes and went to recreate.

A religiously antagonistic individual I worked with years ago was speaking of a Christian Business Listing publication and remarked how convenient it was that the list of people never to do business was all in one place. The company we worked for was Mormon owned and operated (as you would expect a Mormon company to be). The same company cheated my brother out of $20K. The management had some righteous reason. Staying the hell away from Mormon businesses owners seems to be a good idea from my experience.

Never do business with the brotheren. True 75 years ago, true today. And I agree, if someone is advertising their riotousness, worry.

Anywhere you have a congregation of people, you will have grifters. As I got more involved in things you really start to learn there are a huge number of these opportunists. They don’t really care about any kind of cause. They are there to enrich themselves off of what’s grabbing people’s interest.

That's why Mormonism is so odd. These vultures never are called to repentance, publicly called out on their crimes. In fact, they seem to be promoted up the Mormon leadership ladder.

Other churches will protect their members and drive away those who attempt to con and mislead them.

LDS Corp cannot risk pulling back the curtain too much to expose similar fraudsters.

I knew of a guy in the 90's in south east TX who had Brigham's last name. That maggot always had a scam going of some sort and he knew it and would not conceal it much from people who knew him. Some one at church in the lobby was talking to him about his business ethics and when the guy gave the fraudster some push back, the fraudster admitted that the market was there and if he didn't take advantage of these susceptible and gullible people, someone else would. My guess is that might be a more prevalent attitude than one might think in the scam industry.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/20/2021 12:24AM by cheezus.

In the 1961 sociological novel “The Children of Sanchez” a common daily prayer is mentioned, “Please god, only have me confronted by people dumber than me so that I can take advantage of them.”

Since such people exist, why not ask your caring ghawd for such a boon?

For a while I worked for a man who was a bishop in his ward. He ran a construction company and I worked for him as an employee. He supplied all of the tools which was nice.

One day I heard him ordering lumber from a supply house and he said to add two skilsaws and two nail guns and bury their costs in the lumber pricing. The salesman was familiar with this practice even though it was unethical.

Essentially, he got less lumber but the unsuspecting client paid for the tools without knowing a thing. Extra "lumber" was added to the invoice and nobody was the wiser.

This employer also shorted me on my time card every once in a while but I never said anything because I needed the job, if you catch my drift.

Him being a bishop meant nothing. He was dishonest and he knew it. But, he was a businessman and ran his business in a way to make money by using other people.

Our ward had a ponzi schemer, too —-$250,000,000. He was second counselor to the bishop.

Rubicon, were we in the same ward?

I think our ponzi huxster made off with more than that. He actually moved out of the ward and moved to Salt Lake but ward members were still investing in his shell companies.

Right away I got numerous requests to link up with people who list their church mission at the top of their resume.

Kiss of death for me as a service provider - especially in California. I'll take a gay client (who generally is cooperative, truthful and pays their bills ) over an LDS member who is, more often than not, the opposite.

So I deleted myself.

The best renters I ever had were a gay couple. I rented to some good members of the church who were a nightmare.

I love seeing members screw each other in business deals. I could write a book on what I’ve seen. Then they see each other at church and pretend to be fellow brothers and sisters in Zion. I called it showtime.

When I moved to another city and got a job as medical tech for an eye doctor (ophthalmologist)...
I did not know the doctor and his office manager were Mormon/LDS. I had become inactive many years prior to my move. (This was in CA).
I was hired and started noticing tell tale signs of LDS:
the Dr's Family GIANT Portrait with the 5 children in the hallway. Jesus statues similar to the temple ones displayed in the waiting room.
The Ensign in the waiting room and so on.

All seemed well and good. Dr was a good surgeon
and employed a fairly skilled staff.

Then I noticed that the time card machine was a little off. It seemed to shave time off on every shift.
I thought I was late but in truth I was not late as I arrived 5-10 minutes early and entered the building with all the other staff who were also checking in.
Then there were the added staff meetings before we clocked in that were said to be paid but were not.
No one but the nurses
and the office manager received 40 hours
and all the promised benefits.
The techs and office customer service people
never could get the needed 40 hours for benefits.

That was one of the 'perks' the job claimed in the beginning. Health benefits, gym membership
& paid vacations after so many months of employment.
No one received them because they never had the 40 hours. Even 'overtime' was fishy.
We had many days, if not all days--
where we had to stay past closing
because Dr was over-scheduled/over-booked.

We stayed but were not paid overtime.
Because we did not meet the 40 hours.
The hours were long for
surgery days and often times we had to
take a 2-3 hour break from surgery mornings till appointments in the afternoon.
Unpaid. Days started 5:45am & ran till 6:30pm
(with the long unpaid break).
My husband had me quit after 4 months
because he said something was fishy with their payroll.

They had a high turnover of techs and customer service
going to the other eye surgeon group in town.
I now avoid LDS doctors--if I can/know-- which is not because of their skill but because of the way they run their businesses and treat their staff.

I wonder how true this is most of the time?

During my tenure with my ex-TBM wife, the bishop getting people involved in buying diamonds. This may have been a deal during the 80s, don't know. It ended badly and people lost money.

First experience dealing with a Mormon business was when the crew I was working with needed to rent a portable generator and few other related tools to do some repair work.

When I turned in the receipts for the rentals, the boss, who was 100% LDS, asked if we had gotten the usual Mormon discount?

I said I didn't know, in fact I had never heard of such a discount.

The boss just casually said, "Retail plus 15%".



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/19/2021 02:42PM by tumwater.

I have a friend who was a real estate agent, first in San Diego, then in SLC. She said that in SD, if the person on the other side of the deal was LDS, you damn well better write an iron-clad contract, and still expect to get jerked around.

In SLC, things were more normal. Some people were devious creeps, some were good to work with, just like anywhere.

I may not be remembering correctly but in the Bountiful Area in the late 70s and early 80s there were two stake presidents who owned or ran large car dealerships who ran off with young female employees. I know one of them turned up in Salt Lake a few years later and was a very successful.

I hired a Mormon crew to build my house. I was the general contractor for the build. They were mostly very TBM. I of course was not. But...I always paid my guys on time and my suppliers.
I heard enough about Mormons stiffing other Mormons on builds and I didn't want to get that reputation.

My employer had an overtly evangelical Christian-run financial business for a client. Among other things, there was a 6-foot high engraved plaque in the lobby professing devotion to God and Jesus, and claiming high moral standards. They ended up stiffing my employer for over $100,000. My boss said, "I knew better than to do business with people like that, but..."