DH & I just returned from from meeting nine friends for four lovely days of wine tasting along the Central CA Coast. Two of the couples have a brother/in-law bishop married to an extremist TBM with many children and a lifetime of stories.

This trip we heard about how the housewife got free nearly expired food from Phoenix area markets and turned a huge profit on it for many years.

She told them she represented the LDS Church and was collecting for the "needy." The stores assumed that meant she and her mormon friends distributed the food to help the homeless, disabled, orphaned or elderly destitute. The stores could write off the "donations."

In reality, the lady sold the food she got free from her home to her mormon friends at bargain prices over many years. She was eventually able to purchase a mobile-store unit for the back yard. Her bishop hubby put in shelving and the kids helped carry, price, and stock their store.

She included more and more store pickups and attracted increasing numbers of mormon shoppers from additional wards.

Of course she had very little overhead, no licenses, no permits, no insurance, no tax of any kind. It was just a mormon lady earning hundreds of dollars every Thursday for her pet projects and for spending sprees on herself and family.

She saw it as win/win because she she made good money, involved her children, taught them about the work ethic and meeting the public, and she never had to leave them with babysitters as most working moms do.

The trouble came because her buisness grew to enormous proportions. The US mail carrier could not deliver the mail on the street on Thursdays because of the double curbbed vehicles and mormon crowds milling up and down the block with kiddies and bags of cheap groceries.

That's when the whole scheme came tumbling down. The mail lady turned the mormon in to the authorities.

The neighborhood wasn't zoned as retail. Of course there were no permits, and no taxes were charged or paid or other legalities honored.

At least the lady did make big bucks for many years and paid a full tithe on it, so she feels it was worth it. I assume the markets have had to find others ways to distribute nearly expired food to the "poor" for their writeoffs.

Always so STRAIGHTFORWARD in their dealings with others...

::rolls eyes::

Wasn't it illegal to lie to the stores? Did they sue her or have her arrested?

One thing I have found about Mormons is that a LOT of them can rationalize ANYTHING...and I do mean ANYTHING!

jbug Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
> One thing I have found about Mormons is that a LOT
> of them can rationalize ANYTHING...and I do mean
> ANYTHING!

Agreed - anything they do is justified or justifiable because they are God's Chosen. They can't sin so they rationalize why, when they do something, it's not a sin.

? Is food subject 2 sales tax where U live?
some states Yes, some No.
If she was in a sales tax state, they can go retro back x years, require that she Pony Up...



Overall, You're SPOT ON; Mormons are 'Above' the 'minor details'.

Same with scamway, Avon, etc. The glossy Mormon recruiters usually will 'mention' that their recruits need to get a business license, etc; The honest ones will insist that their underlings do it.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/12/2012 12:48PM by guynoirprivateeye.

Most of them don't even realize they don't need a business license or to collect sales tax, because their upline never mentioned it either. A real mess.

What would be the up-side? It would be trouble for anyone involved.

I'd bet the mormon actually thought she was helping "needy" mormons because they have such large families, one income, and must spend so much on tithes and such. She just didn't see a need to tell that to the donating super markets who were glad to report their community involvement. Fulltime workers rush all day every day to stay on top of their duties. They don't have time to investigate cleancut looking church ladies who say they're doing good works.

They probably could have pressed charges.

My husband said, "Do you mean The Salvation Army or some other large charity?"

"No," he was told, "a lady comes in and picks it up and distributes it."

Mormon? DH said he didn't ask the manager if the charity lady was dressed modestly with garments showing at the neck or knees.

If you paid sales tax, were upfront about what you were doing, donated a certain amount of profits to charity, and had a shop in a properly zoned area, this would basically be the Goodwill model for food.

THAT was the criminal part. She should have told the truth about what the donations were for.

1. Operating a business in a strictly residential zone.

2. Not reporting or paying income tax on earnings.

3. Not collecting or turning over sales tax if any of the products required it.

4. Not filing for permits or paying necessary fees.

5. Defrauding supermarkets.

6. Not having normal insurance to cover possible injury.

7. Not having the "store" inspected by the health department or other necessary agencies.

8. Not providing for hadicapped parking or access.

9. Blocking traffic and preventing mail delivery in the area.

10. Possibly breaking laws on residential noise limits or street litter.

Others?

Some of the above might be stretching the point, but the lady didn't check into any of these or other restrictions on her business.

This LDS guy, i used to know, used a similar scheme after convincing nuskin warehouse staff to give him donations. Very little product, if any, went to his charity.

http://www.heraldextra.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/judge-sets-august-trial-date-in-nu-skin-case/article_e64f2f38-88c9-11e1-897f-0019bb2963f4.html

That's because to a mormon it isn't dishonest if it is "business".

Isn't that dishonest?
Nah, that's just business.