SALT LAKE CITY — Mention the Mormon church to someone who isn’t familiar with it, and you’ll likely find they know essentially three things: Members don’t drink, their missionaries wear white shirts and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (it’s unlikely they’ll know the church’s full name) has over $100 billion.

And the only reason why people know that last fact, law professor and Latter-day Saint Nathan Oman said, is because the church tried so hard for many years to hide the fact that it had that much money.

The church’s furtive investment strategy ultimately resulted in it being fined by the SEC earlier this year. The move likely stemmed from a deeply rooted belief that by keeping a low profile and minimizing how much it shared about its inner workings, the church could avoid criticism from hostile outside forces looking to attack it.

READ: Religion And National Identity Linked In Southeast Asian Countries

After Latter-day Saints experienced severe religious persecution, experts say it makes sense the church came to this conclusion. But a culture of secrecy and sensitivity to public shame not only got the church into trouble with the SEC — they’re also key factors that make its members far more likely to fall victim to financial crimes such as Ponzi schemes.

According to the FBI, fraud and financial crimes are especially prevalent among members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and in Utah, where the church is headquartered. The state is home to several of the FBI’s most significant financial crimes each year. The problem is so serious that in 2015, Utah established a white-collar crime registry — think how sex-offender registries work — that publishes the names and photographs of convicted fraudsters. Yet fraud cases persist.

It could seem that Mormons are naive or even greedy, but experts on the psychology of fraud say it’s not so simple. Many of these so-called affinity frauds — schemes in which the scammer uses affiliation with a shared group or identity in order to target victims — are premeditated and far more sophisticated than they appear on the surface. Throw in a cultural suspicion of outsiders, a desire for social acceptance and a history of trauma, and you have yourself a flock that is ripe for predation by scammers who know exactly what they are doing when they target minority churches and religions.

The psychology of fraud

Studying fraud — especially the demographics and psychology of it — is not for the faint of heart. Absent an easy way to gather data, researchers like Hamline University’s Stacie Bosley have had to rely on crime reports, demographic statistics and accounts from victims.

But there is a longstanding association between a person’s religiosity and their propensity to become a victim of fraud, Bosley said. When you look at county-level statistics, she said, communities with more religious adherents also tend to see more cases of fraud. 

It’s not really clear why this is, but there are some theories, Bosley said. Religious people spend routine time together bonding and creating a shared sense of trust. And Latter-day Saints spend even more time with fellow members of their congregation than most other faith traditions — beyond weekly church services on Sundays, they engage with other breakout groups and volunteer activities on a regular basis.  

Outside in-person meetings, Bosley said would-be scammers can also take advantage of religious directories such as prayer lists or contact information for Bible study groups.

Across religious denominations, she added, scammers use infrastructure designed to help the faithful meet one another to identify potential victims.

The Mormon church has similar mechanisms, including a website that allows the public to search for local congregations and contact the congregation’s volunteer leadership. The volunteer structure itself may unwittingly help fraudsters out, said Patrick Mason, the Arrington Chair of Mormon History and Culture at Utah State University.

The church does not have a professional clergy, so the bishops who lead local congregations hold day jobs of all sorts. They have varying degrees of financial need and training themselves. This can make them targets or, unfortunately, even perpetrators of financial crime—Bosley estimates that less than half of Americans could accurately identify a Ponzi scheme if presented with one. 

“The issue with a Ponzi scheme is we tell people, why didn’t you do your due diligence, and that is where affinity fraud rears its ugly head,” said Rich Brody, a professor emeritus from the University of New Mexico, where he studies fraud and develops anti-fraud curriculum. “A lot of people don’t know how to do their research, and when it’s a trusted member of the church, they often feel they don’t have to do any research.”

This is where lay bishops play a key role in the frequency of Mormon affinity fraud. Regardless of what a bishop does for a living or how much financial training he may have, there is a sense that he is a special individual chosen by God to lead a congregation — and thus the position comes with a certain sense of trust. If you can get the bishop or other volunteer leaders to invest, Brody said, a larger percentage of the general membership will invest in the scam with fewer questions.

And bishops and other church leaders are often involved in financial crime among Mormons, including a recent $500 million scheme in Las Vegas. Bishops may be used as “songbirds” — a term used by fraudsters for insiders who are used to promote a scam to the targeted group, Bosley said. Sometimes the songbird is in on the deal, but other times they don’t realize they are being used because the scammers ensure the songbird gets paid, leading them to believe that a scam is in fact a legitimate investment opportunity. Once the songbird is convinced, he can be trotted out to give testimonials to other prospective victims.

Using religious leaders as songbirds can be a particularly insidious strategy. The bishop is not only someone the congregants trust but an individual with authority whom many congregants will want to build social rapport with, making it harder for members to decline. And that can intermingle with other ideological factors — including beliefs that a higher being will confer wealth and prosperity on the most faithful followers, Bosley said. 

These kinds of beliefs are common among Mormons, whose holy texts assure followers that they are a chosen people and that God will reward righteous people with prosperity. It is entirely feasible, Mason said, that a Latter-day Saint could misinterpret a scammer’s offer as a blessing sent by God.

Brody warned that scammers are often very good at convincing people that this is an exclusive opportunity intended just for them or people like them. Many will tell victims that the details of their investment opportunity are confidential and should not be shared with people outside the target group — a request Brody warned should be seen as a red flag.

But this kind of sales pitch may not trigger the same warning signals in certain religious contexts, especially those in which people have been subjected to marginalization and trauma.

Connection between Jews, Mormons and trauma

Brody, who is Jewish, said he feels a particular connection to his Mormon friends, even though they do not share the same faith.

“There’s this connection in that we do have similar pasts and we are discriminated against more than other religions, and we have realized the importance of sticking together,” he said. “I grew up in Philadelphia, and you had to stick with your own kind or you would get the crap beaten out of you. And when you grow up that way and that is what your religion is telling you ... I do see a lot of similarities.”

Beyond sharing a connection with becoming victims of high-dollar financial crimes — Bernie Madoff, who orchestrated the largest Ponzi scheme in history in part by exploiting the trust of investors, was Jewish, as were many of his victims — Jews and Mormons also share a deep sense of community and a history of a very specific type of trauma, Mason said.

While the scale of atrocities committed against Mormons in no way compares to the Holocaust, he added, both religious communities have faced government-sanctioned ostracism and murder. 

In addition to the trauma of having to flee the threat of extermination by the government of Missouri, Mason noted, many of these early Mormon families would have lost their homes and their entire savings multiple times in the course of a few years — piling on an extra helping of financial trauma. After the bulk of the church attempted to escape the United States by emigrating to what was then Mexico, the U.S. military pursued them into foreign territory. Throughout the 1880s and ‘90s, Mormons continued to experience opposition, cultural prejudice and outright persecution from the U.S. federal government.

“These are two communities whose stories and histories can be told in such a way as to be suspicious of outsiders — we can’t trust the outside; they might turn their backs on us,” Mason said. “And so we look to ourselves. And a skilled person could take advantage of that.”

This is not, to be clear, a phenomenon that is exclusive to the Mormon or Jewish communities. It’s not even exclusive to religious communities, Bosley said, because there is a persistent relationship between marginalized communities and fraud.

Long-running pyramid scams have also targeted, for example, African Americans, Bosley said.

Scammers can turn a person’s sense of loyalty and belonging against them by convincing them that if they do not buy into one of these targeted scams, that they are failing to support the broader group.

But the Mormons’ specific history with trauma has led to another cultural phenomenon that increases their risk of becoming victims of fraud. After having failed to achieve security by means of isolation, Mason said, the church and its members did a complete turnaround when Utah was made a state in 1896. They abandoned polygamy, which had been the source of friction between them and their non-Mormon neighbors, and became fervently patriotic Americans.

“This is the story of 20th century Mormonism — it wants nothing more than respectability,” Mason said.

And by the mid-20th century, some of the most powerful and respected entities in the world were American corporations. So that, he said, is what the church began to model itself after.

“This American culture of sales, salesmanship and entrepreneurship gets brought into the church,” Mason said. “The missionary force becomes the sales force, and a lot of the techniques missionaries use are pulled straight out of salesmen tools. It was not accidental; it was intentional.”

Cultures that emphasize proselytizing and evangelism are strongly associated with increased rates of fraud, Bosley added, likely because frequent exposure to high-pressure sales techniques normalizes the experience. 

But Mormons’ desire for respectability— and for success in the business world — could play another role in the prevalence of fraud in their community. A reluctance among victims to speak up about their experience and admit they were defrauded can  allow scammers to infiltrate communities for decades without resistance.

Being a target and stopping fraud

Based on their cultural history, Latter-day Saints — and church leaders in particular — can be extremely sensitive to the perception that they have made a mistake or have done something socially untoward. There’s a general sense, Oman said, that keeping a low profile will prevent the church from being targeted by attacks from outsiders.

Beyond that, Brunson said there’s the cultural need for respectability and a specific history of having been embarrassed by poor financial moves in the past.

In the 1950s — well before the fame of Ensign Peak’s success — The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints made a series of bad investments that ultimately caused it to run a financial deficit for many years. While the church eventually managed to fix its financial problems, that episode caused the church to close up its books and become extremely hesitant to discuss money or finances.

“It was embarrassed,” Brunson said of the church.

Beside the fear of criticism from outsiders, there was a concern that if word got to the rank-and-file that members might lose respect for, and faith in, the church.

“That kind of touchiness led to the opacity that led to … Ensign Peak happening,” Brunson added.

Bosley said talking openly about financial failure in general — and potentially illegal activities in particular — is crucial to stopping fraud. 

 ”I worry about the silence around outcomes,” she said. “If no one talks about the outcomes, you won’t gain the collective knowledge.”

To Brody, the solution is simple: the church already has an extensive offering of extracurricular classes on topics such as budgeting and preparing for emergencies. Why not simply expand the curriculum to include identifying and preventing fraud?

Once members know the signs, he said, it seems it should be easy for the church to remove offenders from its ranks.

“You would think the church would have some kind of policy that says if someone in a congregation is offering an investment opportunity, that they’ll get one of their forensic accounting guys to come in and check it out,” Brody said. “That would end it immediately.”

While the church has issued warnings to members to be cautious of affinity fraud, Mason said the culture and structure of the church means it would be very difficult for the church to discipline offenders.

“This is where some of the social cohesion comes in — if members are committing white collar crimes, they may be buddies with other church leaders,” Mason said. Disciplinary action falls to local, all-volunteer leaders who may be hesitant to punish their friends or who may even feel sympathetic. “They’ll say yeah he made some bad choices, but he’s really a good guy.”

Bosley said it’s also not clear whether marginalized groups like Mormons are more likely to fall victim to scams because of their own internal foibles or because scammers are more likely to target groups they know lack institutional and societal support.

Brunson suspects it’s a mix of both — and possibly something of a feedback loop. It’s safe to assume, he said, that scammers are not honest, industrious people. So once they realize a particular group of people makes an easy target, they’re likely to hit that group time and time again.

Emma Penrod is a journalist based in Salt Lake City, Utah, who covers science, technology, business and environmental health.