On Feb. 3, 2016, Jacob Kingston was in a meeting with a brother and their father. Then a cousin came into the office.
The cousin— an information technology worker for Washakie Renewable Energy, Kingston’s company — had received a phone call from an Ogden phone number. He relayed a message to Kingston.
“There would be a raid on our office the next Wednesday, February 10,” Kingston told a jury Tuesday.
When Kingston called back that number — the caller had rung his cellphone and his brother Isaiah’s minutes earlier, and they both ignored it — it went to a main line at the IRS office in Ogden.
That wasn’t enough to keep Jacob Kingston and his one-time co-defendant, Lev Aslan Dermen, out of legal trouble. Kingston has pleaded guilty to fraud and other charges related to Washakie — where he was CEO — and was on the witness stand for the fourth day Tuesday to testify against Dermen.
Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune IRS agents raid the property of several Kingston Group businesses, including the offices at 2950 S. Main Street in Salt Lake City on Wednesday, Feb. 10, 2016.
Much of the day’s testimony focused on public corruption — or what Kingston saw as public corruption. Then, in the afternoon, when defense attorney Mark Geragos had a chance to cross-examine the witness, the Los Angeles lawyer focused on Kingston’s polygamous family.
“You have three wives, is that right?” Geragos asked.
“That’s right,” Kingston replied.
Geragos pressed Kingston on how many wives his father has (14, he said) how many siblings he has (he doesn’t know) and how many times he has met with government lawyers (he couldn’t remember).
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“More or less than the number of kids you have?” Geragos replied.
Kingston said he has 20 children but that it doesn’t help him remember how many times he met with the government.
(Courtesy Davis County jail) Lev Aslan Dermen, also known as Levon Termendzhyan, a suspect in a fraud scheme, poses for this mug shot from 2018
Dermen, who has gone by the name Levon Termendzhyan, is charged with 10 counts: two counts of conspiracy and eight counts of money laundering. Kingston has said under oath that he and Dermen operated a fraud that sought biofuel tax credits. Prosecutors say they illegally received $470 million.
Kingston and his family associate with the polygamous Davis County Cooperative Society, also known as the Kingston Group or The Order. Dermen allegedly operated what Kingston has called an “umbrella” of protection by making payments to law enforcement — called “the boys” — in the United States and abroad.
Kingston testified Monday that his mother, Rachel Kingston, had told him in 2014 about a grand jury investigation into C.W. Mining, a coal operation near Huntington that had been associated with the cooperative society. Jacob Kingston believed federal prosecutors looking at the mine were pursuing sect leaders, including his uncle and the group’s top man, Paul Kingston, and Bill Stoddard, then the head of sect’s incorporated church.
On Tuesday, Jacob Kingston, told jurors how he informed Dermen of the federal inquiry into that company and the mining operation. To stop the grand jury from scrutinizing the mine, Dermen “said I had to pay $4 million,” Kingston testified.
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