The SEC fined the LDS Church and Ensign Peak $5 million for hiding its stock portfolio behind 13 shell companies

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints created Ensign Peak Advisors in 1997 to invest reserves built from excess tithing. It began with about $7 billion. In December 2019 former senior portfolio manager David Nielsen filed an IRS whistleblower complaint saying Ensign Peak held more than $100 billion and that the church misled members about the use of tithes^†. On 21 February 2023 the SEC found that from 1997 to 2019 Ensign Peak failed to file the Forms 13F that would have shown the size of the church's stock holdings. Instead the church and Ensign Peak created 13 limited liability companies, 12 of them "Clone LLCs" with addresses across the US, to file in their names, falsely stating that each LLC had investment discretion. In May 2018 a website linked the LLCs to holdings of about $32 billion. Ensign Peak's first consolidated filing, in February 2020, listed 1,659 securities worth about $37.8 billion. The SEC fined Ensign Peak $4 million and the church $1 million. Former member James Huntsman sued for the return of $5 million in tithes; on 31 January 2025 an 11-judge Ninth Circuit panel ruled unanimously for the church.