× Thanks for reading! Log in to continue. Enjoy more articles by logging in or creating a free account. No credit card required. Log in Sign up {{featured_button_text}}

Film, people say church is like organized crime.

HOT SPRINGS --According to Sam Brower, the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) is not religious organizations but a criminal syndicate.

“It’s not about religion,” Brower told a huge crowd of people from Hot Springs and Custer, tightly packed into the Mueller Center theatre last Thursday evening, May 5, to learn more about FLDS and its compound north of town, in Pringle, “it’s about being a criminal syndicate. The law should purge this idea of this being about religion from their prosecutions. It’s not about religion – although FLDS wants people to think this way. They’re really an organized crime syndicate.”

Brower ought to know something about FLDS.

He’s the private investigator who was instrumental in helping to take down Warren Jeffs, the self-proclaimed “prophet” of FLDS, who is currently serving a sentence of life in prison plus 20 years, for his conviction on two felony counts of child sexual assault. Jeffs was found guilty of these charges in 2011 in Texas.