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Home /Articles/ News/ News Articles i News ( The $50,000 Question: Utah'sAttorney

General explains campaign donations received from company his office brought fraudcharges against

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Ig print C~l Send i etterto Editor ts Share +Comment T Font VX F ont . i z e Wednesday, June 18,2008

News! The $50,000 Question: Utah's AttorneyGeneral explains campaign donations receivedfrom company his office brought fraud chargesagainstBy Eric S. Peterson

Jean Welch Hill, Democratic challenger to Republican

heavyweight Mark Shurtleff, believes it's time she took over

as the state's attorney general. Hill counts many reasons

why she should get the seat, including Shurtlefi"s courtship

of the payday-loan industry and his conflict of interest in Mzss W' "/ -t.

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investigating the alleged bribery charges of political ally

Mark Walker in the treasurer's race and now she can

count at least 50,000 more reasons.

That's one for each dollar Shurtleff accepted in campaignv POST YOUR

donations from Jeremy Johnson, president of the St.

George company IWorks. While Shurtleff maintains that he FREE ADonly knew Johnson from meeting him once at a fund-raiser

last March, several attorneys at the attorney general's office have known of Johnson for much longer. 24/7 @That's because they'd been involved in taking legal actions against his company for more than a year CWListings.cornfor allegations of fraud.

"If you' ve been involved in litigation with some company," says Hill. "Then you ought to have the

discipline to say this isn't the best donation for me to accept."

Shurtleff maintains he had no knowledge of his office's investigation of Johnson. He says the onlyFREE CONCERTconnection he shares with Johnson was support for the Utah "lost boys" group, a charity that helps

displaced former members of polygamist communities. Shurtleff was impressed that Johnson had Thriving IvoryWednesday, June 23

donated a home to the cause, known as the "house off of Bluff" in St. G eorge.Keys on Main242 S. Main Street''We just talked about the lost boys, really," Shurtleff says. "Clearly, there was no conflict." A few daysSalt Lake City

after this casual meeting at a John McCain fund-raiser on March 21 and 27, 2008 Shurtleff received CLICK HERE for moretwo $25,000 donations from Johnson making up nearly a third of Shurtleffs $161,625 campaign war info

chest.

Johnson failed to mention that last July about the same time he generously financed the building ofthe "house off of Bluff" he had also been served with citations from the Utah Division of Consumer

Protection for 49 counts of charging a consumer for non-consensual transactions and for six counts in

violation of the Telephone Fraud Prevention act. These charges were brought on behalf of the state by

Jeffrey Buckner of the Utah Attorney General's Commercial Enforcement Division.

All charges revolved around Johnson's company IWorks which court documents alleged offered a

service selling a kind of "how-to" program for people seeking government grants. Individuals signed up

for free information only to find that they were being charged for what they considered to be hidden

monthly fees.

The fraud counts alleged IWorks telemarketers promised approval for sizeable Small Business

Administration (SBA) loans to customers from across the nation. The complaint filed by the attorney

general's office alleges that salesmen misrepresented the facts and made false guarantees to

customers bout their eligibility for government grants. One woman from Alabama was told that because

she was black, she would receive $200,000 out of which she could pay off the $10,000 IWorks

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program fee. Later, she could get it taken off her taxes. The charges allege that the woman felt she

was dealing with someone associated with the government program because the person described

himself or herself as "SBA Express Funding."

Complaints alleged a frustrating runaround as different grant "coaches" would redirect customers'

questions and promise to compose business plans for them. Many individuals' phone calls weren' t

returned and several were denied refunds, according to documents.

The case saw motions flying back and forth between IWorks' attorneys and the attorney general' s

office throughout the summer and up till December of 2007.

The case was dismissed after IWorks argued that some sales tactics were perhaps aggressive but not

criminal and that the transaction charges were not deceptive but rather cases of some customers

failing to read the fine print.

Shurtleff was unaware of any of this when he met IWorks owner Jeremy Johnson three months later

and received $50,000 in campaign donations. "There was never anything nefarious going on I never

knew he was under investigation until now," Shurtleff says.

Jeremy Johnson did not respond to numerous phone calls made by City Week/y seeking his

comments.

Shurtleff pointed out that with hundreds of cases being worked on by his staff, not every investigation

comes to his attention. "I have 200 attorneys," Shurtleff says. "Not every single investigation

percolates up to my attention. This one didn't come to my attention, and I didn't call to see if they

were under investigation."

Shurtleff says with contributions from unfamiliar sources, he usually does an Internet search and

maybe checks with his office but says nothing came up on his radar with IWorks.

But that's not to say Johnson has always been off the radar. In 2001, he was busted by the Securities

and Exchange Commission for allegedly running a Website called RumourSearch.corn that gave

subscribers tips on stock trading. According to SEC allegations, Johnson had received 95,000 shares

from a company that he touted as a hot tip on his Website, and then sold his stock for a $315,848

profit. In a settlement, Johnson returned profits and paid a fine without admitting to or denying the

allegations.

Shurtleff denies any wrongdoing and disagrees that this incident or others lobbed at him by challenger

Hill constitute a conflict of interest. "If there is an actual case where somebody gave me money and I

did something favorable for them, that would be a conflict," Shurtleff says. "On several occasions, I' ve

received donations from somebody, and then sued them afterwards."

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For Hill, the issue is about running the attorney general's office by an ethical standard. "The key is

that, if you are getting a large contribution from somebody, you should know who they are," Hill says.

Hill says that since the attorney general's office is essentially a law firm, it ought to use the common

legal practice of circulating conflict-of-interest forms to avoid situations like this. "It's not like

reinmnting the wheel here," Hill says. "They just need to run the office like a law firm."

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This story paid for by the Hill for Attorney General Campaign. nnl'm Jean Welch Hill,and I approved this message, and acknow ledge that I don't understand w hatconflict of interest means in legal terms.

Anonymous

FOR CLASSIFIED

ClassiTieds RATE INFO CONTACTDirectory c lessIIIedsg0ett y wee Idy.net ecacn.ski.vms

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Shurtleff maintains he had no know ledge of his office' investigation of Johnson...His answer doesn't make me feel any better. So his defense against a conflict of CITY WEE KLYinterest charge is that he is incompetent??? hn't know ing w hat your office is PROUDLY SUPPORTSdoing and w ho they are investigating kind of a MAJOR portion if not the main pointof the job??? Anonymous

local ~ punnedFIRST HUMANESOCIETY

UTAH

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DowntownDid you miss it Duke? They have thousands of cases in the AG's office. What you Allianceare asking of Shurtleff is like asking Governor Huntsman to track the response ofevery individual constituent request and to remember names and the nature of theproblem. That's not reasonable.nnNow, if Mr. Shurtleff w ere first chair at courtproceedings, yeah, I'd expect him to recall. Anonymous

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Salt Lake City Weekly New today: Geeks and beer, ttoo

Pub QuizzesTo Jeff James:nnaty Weekly reporter Eric Peterson found this story through no

w w w.cityw eekly.nethelp or influence from Jean Welch Hill. Actually, he found it through good oldfashioned shoe leather reporting w hile checking candidates' backgrounds and Six months ago, you w ouldn't have b

searching out information for another story altogether. nnBecause it's a political faster than you can name both of Ha

year, and because this is likely to become a hotly contested campaign, Eric Anonymouscontacted both Hill and Shurtleff for corrwnent.nn That's called good and completejournalism. I resent your absolutely incorrect implication that somehow Hill bought 5 rnnutes ago

the story. Perhaps it's just your w eak stab at humor, but it's plain w rong.nnl alsoexpect Mark Shurtleff's issues w ith problematic donors like Iw orks to nag at him a Salt Lake City Weekly New Ocho today: "Forgotten" igood bit in the cornng months, and for these stories to show up in more frequentlyin local media outlets. So fasten your s