Polygamist has 149 kids, 27 wives, but lost fortune
Winston Blackmore , father to 149 Children, was “grossly negligent” when filing taxes
There is a good reason some of the 149 children of convicted polygamist Winston Blackmore took to online fundraising and t-shirt sales to raise money for his legal fees.
Their father has squandered their inheritance over the past two decades.
The children’s efforts use the somewhat witty, but definitely politically incorrect #BlackmoreLivesMatter. So far, the fundraising has not been all that successful. After a month, the GoFundMe campaign had raised only $2,650 of the $25,000 goal.
As for the logo’d sweatshirt sales being sold on Amazon ($5 from each was to go to the legal fund), it’s not clear what happened. The page suddenly disappeared last week.
At one time, Blackmore was the millionaire bishop of the fundamentalist Mormon community of Bountiful, B.C., and claimed $6 million in assets. He had dozens of businesses in which congregants worked for less than minimum wage. He also had airplanes, fancy cars and progressively younger wives (a total of 27, according to his kids’ social media posts).
Now, Blackmore is a convicted polygamist awaiting sentencing. The last of his Canadian assets were seized last year by Revenue Canada in partial repayment for his more than $2.3 million in unpaid income taxes, penalties and accrued interest.
What was left had a total appraised value of only $634,000. It was comprised of the property and assets of the Church of Jesus Christ (Original Doctrine) Inc. valued at $518,000, and his onethird of Blackmore Farms Ltd. valued at $116,000. (His brothers, Guy and Kevin Blackmore, are the other shareholders.)
However, at his sentencing hearing Tuesday, Blackmore told the judge that he owns a sawmill in Kitchener, near Bountiful, that employs eight or nine people.
In response to the judge’s questioning, Blackmore said he has three wives living in the United States and continues to do business in the United States. In order for him to continue doing business while he awaits sentencing, the judge has not required Blackmore to surrender his passport. One of the American companies is J.R. Blackmore & Sons. Its affiliate, S&L Underground, owns two airplanes.
By March 25, 2015, Blackmore owed Canada $2,069,501.59 in back taxes, penalties and interest that was compounding daily. A month later, the Federal Court granted Revenue Canada’s request for the B.C. Sheriffs Services to seize and sell Blackmore’s “real property or immoveables and the personal property of moveables.”
It’s not clear exactly what, if anything, was seized and sold because no list of properties and assets was attached to the order, and Revenue Canada refuses to say, citing privacy legislation.
Revenue Canada went back to Federal Court in July 2017. By then, his debt had ballooned to $2,387,766.01 — four times more than the value of the assets seized.
His Canadian tax troubles — along with those of several of his 27 wives and followers — began in 2000. Blackmore claimed that the property, assets and businesses related to Bountiful are held in trust.
Based on that, Blackmore’s individual tax burden plus that of the companies that he controlled were distributed among various members of the community in the years 2000 to 2004, 2006 and 2012.
Revenue Canada disagreed with that approach. In 2013, a Federal Tax Court judge resoundingly agreed with Revenue Canada, and the Federal Court of Appeal backed the tax judge in 2014, even though Blackmore had some of Vancouver’s priciest lawyers working for him.
In her 2013 ruling, Judge Diane Campbell wrote that Blackmore was “grossly negligent” in claiming income that was 884 to 1,326 per cent less than what he really earned.
On one return, Blackmore claimed income of $51,773. Revenue Canada said he earned $805,146.
It’s expensive having such a large family — 149 children and 27 wives. But over the past two decades, Blackmore has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on legal fees — much of which hasn’t been related to polygamy or religious freedom.
It’s been about money, property and how Blackmore lost both in an internecine battle with the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints that excommunicated him.
He had been a bishop, head of the Bountiful ElementarySecondary School Society, and a trustee of the United Effort Plan overseeing millions of dollars worth of assets in Canada and the United States.
The UEP owned most of the land in Bountiful, including the 350 acres that Blackmore’s mother had signed over to the trust in 1985 at Winston’s urging and over the strong objections of his older brothers, Macrae and Brandon.
On the advice of British Columbia’s independent school inspector, Blackmore transferred the 10-acre school site that he had purchased to the society he set up after the independent school inspector advised him that it would save on property taxes.
In 2002, Blackmore was excommunicated and stripped of his positions. He formed his own church that attracted about half of Bountiful’s members — notable exceptions included his brothers, Macrae and Brandon, who stuck with the FLDS.
(Brandon’s loyalty to FLDS prophet Warren Jeffs is the reason he is currently serving a year-long jail sentence. On the prophet’s orders, Brandon took his 13-year-old daughter to the United States in 2004 to marry Jeffs.)
In the past two decades, Blackmore has spent tens and possibly even hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to regain that property. He sued the school society for the property in 2003 and lost.
He attempted to regain a seat on the United Effort Plan in 2005 after that trust was seized by the Utah and Arizona governments and a fiduciary and advisory board of former FLDS members was struck. Despite numerous trips to Utah, Blackmore was not one of the chosen.
Over the past few years, the court-appointed fiduciary and trustees have been winding down the trust, distributing property to former FLDS members whose tithes supported it.
A separate advisory board oversees the Canadian property. Blackmore isn’t on it, but family members and supporters are. They include: Marjorie Johnson, one of Blackmore’s wives; his daughter, Mary Jayne Blackmore, principal of the Mormon Hills School that Blackmore set up after losing control of BESS; and Blackmore’s son, Hyram.
In March, the UEP lost its attempt to have the Bountiful Elementary-Secondary School Society’s property transferred to its control.
B.C. Supreme Court Justice Mark McEwan rejected the application, even though no classes have been held since 2012 and the society’s directors include a dead man and a convicted polygamist whose acquittal for unlawful removal of a child is being appealed.
He said the UEP failed to show that the society was fulfilling its mandate of advancing the education of FLDS members.
And there was another strange case: In 2015, Blackmore was sued by the mainstream Mormon church after he registered the name Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. He lost in B.C. Supreme Court and was forbidden from using any variation of the mainstream church’s name, or the word Mormon.
Which is how Blackmore — however, briefly — became the only shareholder of the Church of Jesus Christ (Original Doctrine) Inc.