It took the help of a Utah teenager to take down a powerful polygamist and Armenian fuel dealer, working together to carry out a $1 billion renewable fuel tax credit fraud scheme.
Mary Jacobs Nelson, who had grown up the Salt Lake City area as part of a polygamist group known as The Order, woke up the morning of June 15, 2013 knowing she’d be leaving her old life behind her, according to a new episode of CNBC’s “American Greed.”
Nelson, then just 17 years old, snuck out of her Taylorsville home in the pre-dawn hours to flee The Order just two days before she says she would be forced to marry her first cousin.
The dramatic escape, aided by Bryan Nelson, a man she met at community college and would later marry, would pave the path for Mary to create a new life on her own terms, but it also meant she took with her powerful secrets damaging enough to take down a massive biofuel scheme.
Mary had worked since she was a child in The Order’s accounting office and had intimate knowledge of a financial fraud being run by one of its members.
After leaving the group, Mary met with the FBI and gave them the financial details necessary to unravel the years-long con.
“They met with them for hundreds of hours, hundreds, to detail what the operations were, who the players were, what their role was and how the Washakie energy scam was being run,”…
