Jeremy Johnson's Two Faces 

The No Filter Show is an irreverent video blog hosted by two goofballs who spotlight local businesses and events on the St. George News website (StGeorgeUtah.com). An editor's note below the Dec. 24, 2014, episode titled "Jeremy Johnson Rides the Short Bus," acknowledges the St. George businessman is facing multiple lawsuits from the federal government and that the site was not taking a position "in favor of or against Johnson's guilt or innocence."

The hosts of the show, wearing Santa Claus hats, are filmed cruising around St. George in a short, yellow school bus. They drive up to a man standing beside the road—who, by coincidence, also is wearing a Santa hat. "This guy looks like he's down on his luck," the driver says as they pull over to discover that this sad traveler is, in fact, Jeremy Johnson. They don't mention why he might be down on his luck, and, unless the viewer knows about the Federal Trade Commission's civil suit alleging he defrauded hundreds of thousands of Americans out of more than $275 million, they can only wonder.

According to a 2011 Department of Justice federal indictment, Johnson's Internet-marketing business, I Works, lured customers—many reeling from the 2008 recession—into signing up for a program to help them get government grants to establish businesses or pay for cell phones. Most customers would discover only too late that one of Johnson's more than 60 shell companies had ambushed their credit-card bills with hidden fees. Johnson is currently prohibited from speaking to the media about the pending FTC charges after a judge placed a gag order on him in May 2013.

On the short bus, at least, Johnson was given a hero's welcome by the show's co-host, Paul Ford, who introduced Johnson saying: "One thing I know about Jeremy Johnson—he knows how to spread Christmas cheer!" Johnson then accompanies the men as they visit a local charity, and he even helps to load boxes of donations onto a delivery truck while a jazzy rendition of "Joy to the World" plays.

• Spreading good cheer in St. George: Jeremy Johnson dons a Santa Claus hat in a December 2014 No Filter Show video posted on StGeorgeUtah.com

In the mid-2000s, Johnson was a wildly successful Internet entrepreneur, and locals of St. George and Washington County knew him mostly through his impressive philanthropic efforts. As a helicopter pilot, he ferried stranded residents from the wrath of the 2005 Santa Clara river flood that washed away 30 homes. He supported a charity for children fleeing from polygamous communities, and documents in his federal case show he gave more than $1 million to the LDS Little Valley Fifth Ward in St. George. Johnson also made his helicopter and plane available to the Washington County Sheriff's Search & Rescue team to help search for missing hikers or take law enforcement to scout out illegal marijuana grows or search for polygamist compounds in the desert.

In addition, he was a big political giver, and perhaps it was his propensity to give so generously to politicians that brought the most scrutiny to Johnson's case. In 2013, he told The Salt Lake Tribune that he'd enlisted former Utah Attorney General John Swallow in a scheme to bribe Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., hoping Reid would derail the FTC's investigation into his company. Swallow has long denied the charge, and it's one Swallow will have the chance to fight in court, as both he and another former attorney general, Mark Shurtleff, will face down 19 combined felony corruption charges, several of which are tied to claims made by Jeremy Johnson.

Much of Johnson's good works and philanthropy were donated prior to the government's 2011 criminal indictment. "He was a local," says the now-retired Sheriff Kirk Smith. "He was a good kid that had done good, and he had money, and it wasn't a difficult thing for him to donate to a worthy cause," Smith says.

"He was a local celebrity almost," Washington County Attorney Brock Belnap says of Johnson's good deeds. He had no idea what Johnson's business was about until the indictments came down. "I didn't personally know him."

There were some, however, who claimed to know Johnson's dark side. As early as 2007, Johnson was on the radar of federal investigators after the FBI began investigating an allegation centered on Johnson who, along with several associates, were said to have unlawfully detained—kidnapped, if you will—a man named Wayne Reed Ogden. Ogden, a convicted felon currently serving time in a Colorado prison on fraud charges, claimed Johnson and his associates were upset because they'd lost a half-million dollars investing in a company operated partly by Ogden.

According to an FBI report that is part of Ogden's public court file, Ogden says he was blindsided when he walked into a meeting set up by Johnson only to be slammed against a wall by unidentified men, which, he says, knocked him out. When he awoke, he said he was handcuffed and zip-tied to a chair. That's when he learned just how much Johnson and his associates wanted their money back.

Had the case been further investigated, had charges been filed and had Johnson been convicted of kidnapping, Johnson might have been behind bars long before the FTC began investigating his company.

But Johnson's charitable good deeds meant that the local county attorneys had to take a "hands off" approach to avoid the appearance of impropriety and instead had to search for another agency to handle the investigation. Even the Utah Attorney General's Office had too many conflicts of interest to take on the Johnson investigation because of Johnson's campaign donations and friendship with Shurtleff. So, despite the fact an FBI investigator concluded in 2007 that Ogden had been unlawfully detained, allegedly by Johnson and his associates, no charges were ever filed, and the investigation was finally abandoned in 2010.

• The Washington County Children’s Justice Center: Johnson donated $91,500 toward the construction of the center.

EATING PUMPKIN

With a curly mop of red hair and a Grinch-like smile, friends and supporters have come to see Johnson as a quirky philanthropist.

In 2006, when Washington County was raising funds for the Children's Justice Center, a place where minors can heal from abuse and tell their stories, Jeremy Johnson came to the county's aid. According to documents obtained through an open-records request by City Weekly, Johnson, both individually and through I Works, donated $91,500 toward the construction of the center.

Washington County Sheriff Corey Pulsipher considers Johnson a friend and knows him through his help with the Sheriff's Search & Rescue Team, an almost completely volunteer contingent that searches for missing and injured hikers and others in the county's wilderness. "If he had the ability, he would always help me out," Pulsipher says.

In a February 2015 interview with City Weekly, Johnson said he didn't think such civic generosity should raise any eyebrows. "I've been doing stuff for the Search & Rescue guys forever, because those guys are awesome," Johnson says.

Few of Johnson's friends understood how he had earned his millions or how his allegedly corrupt empire has spread its digital tentacles to pull in hundreds of thousands of victims. According to charges in the FTC case, Johnson's enterprise is alleged to have netted him $50 million in profits. In order to hide his assets, Johnson's minions, as of 2012, were said to have set up at least 180 companies spread across a portfolio of stocks, bank accounts, a 5,000-acre ranch in Idaho, muscle cars, planes, choppers, a 2,200-square-foot mansion in St. George and a string of businesses clustered in Washington County but spread out as far as Belize and the Philippines.

Johnson has long maintained that the "negative option marketing" clause with which the FTC took issue was well advertised in the subscription services that I Works sold, and that people had every opportunity to understand the ongoing charges they would receive.

While his public persona was that of a do-gooder, Johnson began collecting business associates over the years who saw another side of him. Chad Elie was one of Johnson's partners in the world of online-poker-payment processing between 2009 and 2011 who has since served time for bank fraud and money laundering. At the time Elie knew Johnson, he says Johnson bragged openly about "owning" former Attorney General Shurtleff (campaign documents have shown Johnson and his friends and family donated well over $100,000 to Shurtleff).

Elie recalls walking into the lounge of a Las Vegas casino once to find a friend of Johnson's sitting on top of a pool table, his legs spread open while another man smacked the cue ball into his groin—an indignity the man was willing to suffer in order to get a loan from Johnson. Elie saw another friend of Johnson's eat the raw innards of a pumpkin in order to be approved for a friendly loan.

"And he was allergic to pumpkin," Elie says.

To the people and causes he respected, Jeremy Johnson was, without a doubt, generous to a fault. But, on June 29, 2006, just a few months before he donated to the county-operated Children's Justice Center, a man named Wayne Ogden became unconvinced of Jeremy Johnson's heart of gold. He claims he was detained, assaulted and threatened with violence by members of Jeremy Johnson's entourage.

MR. GORILLA AND MR. IN CHARGE

To be clear, Wayne Ogden is no saint. With a rap sheet that includes convictions for Ponzi-scheme frauds, he is currently serving a 10-year sentence in a federal penitentiary. Among other crimes in his court file was an FBI report that was made available to City Weekly. And, in that report, Ogden was described as not so much the perpetrator, but the victim. In fact, Ogden complained about being knocked out by unknown assailants and then tied up over a debt owed to Jeremy Johnson and his associates.

What would end as a very bad day for Ogden started with some very good news—that Jeremy Johnson wanted to invest $1 million in a company that Ogden ran with his brother. The weekend before July 4, 2006, Ogden drove to the city of Santa Clara, cruising past the pockmarked black lava-rock boulders along the hills of Lava Flow Drive. He arrived at a small nondescript sand-colored home where Johnson told Ogden to meet him, thinking he was just going to pick up a check and then be on his way.

According to Ogden's account from the FBI report, he was greeted by an imposing figure, a large man—at around 6-foot-5-inches tall—whose powerful build filled the doorway. Ogden reached out to shake the man's hand when another figure just inside the door grabbed him and slammed him against the wall, bouncing Ogden's head against it.

After what he guessed may have been a few hours, Ogden regained consciousness with his feet zip-tied together and his hands cuffed behind his back while seated in a chair. Ogden would never learn the identities of the two unknown men, nor would the FBI.

The FBI's report simply identifies the men as "Unknown Subject 1" and "Unknown Subject 2." In an e-mail from his new home in a Colorado federal penitentiary, Ogden would dub Unknown Subject 1 as "Mr. Gorilla." Ogden remembers the other man as someone who had the bearing and commanding tone of a cop. He called this man "Mr. In Charge."

According to the FBI report, Mr. In Charge introduced himself by saying that Ogden needed to get $500,000 to them within the hour. When Ogden said it was his brother who managed the company's money, Mr. In Charge told him simply, "You better make a fucking call."

Ogden was involved with his brother in a company called Paradigm Acceptance, a debt-negotiation company that also refinanced second mortgages to keep banks from foreclosing upon clients' homes. According to the FBI's investigation, Ogden's business at this time was also on the FBI's radar for fraudulent activity. Ogden himself was on parole, having been convicted in the late '90s for his role in a house-flipping Ponzi scheme.

After regaining consciousness, Ogden says a group filed into the room, including Johnson, who lingered in the background during the four or five hours that Ogden was restrained.

Ogden says he learned at this point that Johnson had already invested in Ogden's company, with the investment funneled through a company called Horizon Financial. Moreover, Ogden said that Johnson and his associates were upset the company had lost $500,000, with at least $200,000 coming directly from Johnson. They wanted their money back.

According to Ogden, after hours of negotiation, the men agreed that Ogden would square his debt by signing over to Johnson a trailer park that Ogden's parents owned in Beaver Dam, Ariz.

Ogden claimed he was then released of his restraints and allowed to leave the meeting under threats of violence should he speak to police about the incident.

Six months later, on Dec. 13, 2006, Ogden landed in the Washington County Jail on a check-kiting charge. While he was there, he wrote a complaint about the kidnapping to Washington County Attorney Brock Belnap, who said he knew immediately his office couldn't get involved. The Children's Justice Center that Johnson had helped fund was under the jurisdiction of the county attorney's office, and that connection would present the appearance of a conflict of interest if Belnap's office got involved with any potential prosecution. With Ogden's allegation that local law enforcement was involved in his kidnapping, he knew the FBI should investigate Ogden's case. (Note: The FBI would eventually rule out that local law enforcement was involved.)

City Weekly interviewed Jeremy Johnson in February 2015 about his recollection of Ogden's alleged detention. He admits to being in the room with Ogden—but, he points out, he wasn't the only one, and that he was joined by as many as eight others who had also lost money to Ogden. He says Ogden was already handcuffed and bound when he arrived, but that Ogden was soon released from his restraints. The men simply then talked through the problem, and Ogden was free to leave the house at any time, Johnson says.

Johnson recalls it wasn't until the next day that he met with Ogden, and that Ogden volunteered to give Johnson and his associates the trailer park as collateral on their investments.

"He said, 'I'll give you the title to this trailer park, just please don't call my parole officer,'" Johnson says. In the end, Johnson says, Ogden's investment didn't pan out, and the trailer park was "worthless," given all the liens that were on the property. Regardless, Johnson denies there were any threats of violence against Ogden to keep him from speaking out.

According to the FBI report, Johnson said he didn't know Unknown Subject 1 (aka Mr. Gorilla), but said he knew who arranged to have him there. He refused to tell the FBI who that was, nor would he provide contact information for other people who may have been present. In an interview with City Weekly, Johnson also declined to identify them.

While Ogden's statement made it clear that Mr. Gorilla and Mr. In Charge dealt in threats and violence, Johnson told the FBI that he, personally, did not engage in that behavior.

Ogden, in a recent interview from prison, says that after the trailer park was signed over, associates of Johnson made it clear that Johnson was essentially untouchable. Ogden says that he delayed going to authorities out of fear it would get him in trouble with his parole officers, since, as a condition of his parole, he was not supposed to be collecting money for the business. But mostly, he says, he kept quiet out of fear for his safety. "These guys were ruthless," Ogden says. "They also were very clear—they and Johnson owned the law."

A DISJOINTED INVESTIGATION

Perhaps most frustrating for Ogden is that, at the time of his alleged kidnapping, authorities seemed to consider him a bigger fish than Johnson, the local philanthropist. Ogden did have a criminal record at the time of his complaint against Johnson, and his FBI case file was active over a five-year-long investigation. Ultimately, he would plead guilty in 2013 to a Ponzi-scheme fraud involving house flipping, while also being convicted of fraud charges in the business he was in that sank the investment of Johnson and his associates.

But the kidnapping case is the one various authorities were quick to distance themselves from.

After Washington County received the FBI investigation report in 2007 that said: "At this time, logical investigation has determined that an unlawful detention of Mr. Ogden occurred," the FBI then bowed out, as it determined no law-enforcement officers were involved. The investigation was then turned over to Santa Clara City Police Det. Mark Simpson in July 2007. By then, not only had the FBI agent who investigated Ogden's complaints relocated to an East Coast office, but Simpson wasn't even able to locate Ogden until 2008. The detective then took up the investigation in earnest, though he struggled to gather accounts from witnesses and sources.

One man, Arden Oliphant, said he was with Ogden's brother when the brother received a call from Johnson looking to square the debt. While Oliphant didn't have first-hand knowledge of the alleged kidnapping, he told Det. Simpson that Johnson had offered him money not to talk about the incident.

Johnson scoffs at the idea of paying hush money to someone who wasn't even at the alleged detention. "Why him? He wasn't even there," Johnson says.

Oliphant has since passed away, along with another key witness, Jason Lambeth, who confirmed he was on the receiving end of a conference call that Johnson made during which he admitted that Ogden was tied up, and Johnson wasn't letting him go—another claim Johnson denies.

Simpson noted in his file, however, that Lambeth would sign an official statement that he heard Johnson say he wasn't letting Ogden go until they got their money back, and Simpson even noted that he felt Lambeth was being truthful.

Simpson forwarded his findings onto Washington County in December 2008. In 2009, because of the earlier stated conflicts of interest, the case then was handed off to Iron County. Soon after that, Simpson himself left the force and wasn't able to provide additional information to Iron County's investigators.

In April 2010, Iron County sent a letter to Washington County explaining it could not prosecute the case because of the disjointed investigation and witnesses lost over time. It also noted that Simpson "attempted to get assistance from [the Washington County Attorney's Office] and other county agencies with little success."

Iron County Attorney Scott Garrett says his office declined to prosecute for several reasons, one being Ogden's credibility, especially since he waited more than six months to complain about the kidnapping. "There was some concern he was just trying to work off the [federal charges] he currently had," Garrett says.

The Utah Attorney General's Office wasn't much help, either. As City Weekly previously reported in its June 14, 2012, cover story "Dialing for Dollars," then-Assistant Attorney General Kirk Torgensen told a Washington County investigator that his office shouldn't get involved in Johnson's local investigation. "Strictly confidential, this guy is a campaign contributor to Mark [Shurtleff] and pretty good friends with him," Torgensen wrote in an e-mail to the investigator. "We should really not take it over. ..."

Johnson insists now that Ogden is trying to sensationalize the alleged kidnapping to try and get a new trial for the serious fraud conviction for which he's incarcerated. "I'm curious to see what people's reactions are to poor Wayne Ogden, the guy that has ripped off millions from people," Johnson says. "Because, guess what? The government doesn't even have one witness willing to testify that I ripped them off."

CASH BOMB

By the time the kidnapping investigation officially folded in 2010, Johnson had bigger worries—namely the FTC's investigation into his company. Johnson was first sued by the FTC in a Las Vegas civil court in December 2010 prior to his indictment in Utah in January 2011.

In 2010, Johnson was also famously behind a deal with then-Assistant Attorney General Swallow to pay Sen. Reid $600,000 to spike the FTC investigation—an incident which Swallow insists was a deal meant simply to lobby Reid, not bribe him. Reid has previously claimed no knowledge of the deal, and says he received no money from Johnson or his associates on this matter.

Johnson's attempt at bribery, as Johnson characterizes the money paid to Swallow, did little to halt the federal investigation. On the local and state level, however, his charitable donations and civic involvement made it difficult for authorities to investigate and prosecute any alleged criminal misdeeds. Johnson now awaits his five-week trial slated to begin in federal court on Sept. 14, 2015, where he hopes to prevail over the 86 criminal counts of fraud and money-laundering.

Attorney Jason Jones is a former Utahn and consumer watchdog who takes special interest in get-rich-quick schemes and Internet businesses like Johnson's. He has covered the industry since 2009 from his blog The Salty Droid, and Johnson has long been on his radar. He says he's dumbfounded by how Johnson's philanthropy won over government officials so easily.

"What scares me is how comparatively cheap it was for Jeremy to buy himself up to untouchable hero status with Utah's elite. These fraudsters crash cars worth more than it took to buy Mark Shurtleff," Jones writes via e-mail. "Jeremy's frauds were not complicated, I can't believe that any competent law enforcement official was ignorant as to the origin of his splashy riches."