End-Times Doom Belief Contributed to Demise of Ephraim Bank
by Sterling D. Allan
Greater Things News Service
Copyright © 2004
EPHRAIM, UTAH
Believing that the end was nigh in 1999, several Hilldale polygamist
customers took out loans with no ability or intent to repay, creating bad loans
that contributed to the collapse of the Bank of Ephraim Friday June 25.
On May 5, the Salt Lake Tribune ran a story titled: 'FLDS church
teachings lead members into financial mire' reporting that as the year 2000
approached, "many followers of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter Day Saints felt encouraged to max out their credit cards and exhaust
their personal loans. The end was near, FLDS leaders said, and the bills would
never come due."
On the same day, in a concurrent story, the Tribune reported: "The
Bank of Ephraim has poured its trust and money into a polygamist enclave on the
Utah-Arizona border since the 1950s, approving high-risk business and consumer
loans often backed by questionable collateral. The bank's faith in this
Arizona Strip community added to the toll on its bottom line last year -- it
lost more than three quarters of a million dollars -- and bank officials
acknowledge they are working to rectify problems."
Today, the Tribune reported that the Bank of Ephraim has folded, bought
up by Far West Bank of Provo.
The bank could have recovered from the bad loans. What rung the death
knell was a multi-million dollar embezzlement scheme.
Far West Bank is closing the Hilldale branch, leaving the community with no
local bank.
Many in the polygamist community live off the government dole as part of their
"sack the Gentiles" belief. Now they have contributed to the
demise of a bank in which the city of Ephraim and Snow College are major
depositors, susceptible to the FDIC limits of insurance.
The Hilldale enclave church leaders live in hotel-size homes while the people in
general live below the poverty level, with $1,000 per month tithes levied to the
Fundmentalist Church.
The Bank of Ephraim is the first bank to fail in Utah since 1988.
###
SOURCES
Bank of
Ephraim's collapse is bad news for big depositors
http://www.sltrib.com/2004/Jun/06272004/utah/179148.asp
FLDS church
teachings lead members into financial mire
http://www.sltrib.com/2004/May/05052004/utah/163398.asp
'Very
unique' ties with FLDS spell trouble for bank
http://www.sltrib.com/2004/May/05052004/utah/163511.asp
SLTrib Special: Living the
Principle: Inside Polygamy
http://www.sltrib.com/specials/polygamy/
See also
