Jeremy Johnson's Two Faces 

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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."