David Nielsen: Ensign Peak Whistleblower, Complaint, and SEC Findings

David Nielsen is the former senior portfolio manager at Ensign Peak Advisors who became the Ensign Peak whistleblower in 2019, filing an IRS complaint that alleged the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had amassed roughly $100 billion in tax-exempt investment accounts while spending little of it on charity and had used shell companies to hide the portfolio from regulators. His disclosures led to a $5 million SEC settlement in February 2023. The IRS has taken no publicly known action on the tax-exemption side of his complaint.¹²

Who David Nielsen Is

Nielsen worked as a money manager on Wall Street in New York before moving to Utah. A devout member of the church, he said he “felt a calling to serve his church and community” and was drawn to work that was “really going to make a difference.”¹ He spent nine years as a senior portfolio manager at Ensign Peak Advisors, the investment arm the church established in 1997 to manage surplus tithing and other funds.

He said he filed the complaint after concluding he was “unable to fix things from inside the firm.” Speaking publicly for the first time on CBS’s 60 Minutes in May 2023, he described his reasoning simply: “This is too big a deal… this is not an example for how we should be.”¹

What the 2019 Complaint Alleged

Nielsen’s formal IRS whistleblower complaint, filed in late 2019, made four core allegations.³

First, that the church had accumulated roughly $100 billion in accounts intended for charitable purposes and had not spent the money on charity.⁴ The fund, he said, took in about $1 billion in excess tithing each year, invested it, and made no charitable distributions from the reserve itself.⁵

Second, that the fund had been used to bail out church-affiliated for-profit businesses, including $1.4 billion directed to a mall project on church-owned land and $600 million to prop up Beneficial Life, a for-profit insurance company.⁶

Third, that Ensign Peak was operating as what he called a “clandestine hedge fund” while claiming charitable status, putting its tax exemption at risk.⁶

Fourth, that Ensign Peak had created shell companies specifically to conceal the size of its holdings from regulators and the public.⁵

How the Complaint Became Public

The complaint reached the press through Nielsen’s twin brother, Lars, who had helped compile documents before either brother knew about the IRS whistleblower program. Lars was not an Ensign Peak employee. When David chose to pursue the IRS process quietly, Lars provided the documents to media outlets in the fall of 2019 without his brother’s consent.⁷

David stated publicly in December 2019 that no one, including Lars, was authorized to speak for him, and that he had made “repeated attempts to dissuade my brother, Lars Nielsen, from making public disclosures.” Lars said he had “a different value system” and wanted to protect both his brother and church members.⁷ The Washington Post reported the episode tore the brothers apart.⁸

What the SEC Found

The shell-company piece of Nielsen’s complaint was substantiated by federal regulators. On February 21, 2023, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced settled charges against Ensign Peak Advisors and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for disclosure violations under the Securities Exchange Act.²

The SEC found that from 1997 through 2019, Ensign Peak did not file the quarterly Form 13F reports required of institutional investment managers. Instead, with the church’s knowledge and approval, it created thirteen shell limited liability companies at scattered addresses, including Glendale, California, and Wilmington, Delaware, and filed the forms in those companies’ names. The LLCs conducted no real business at those locations.⁹

Each LLC signed an agreement that purported to give it discretion over a slice of the portfolio, but Ensign Peak retained full control over all investment and voting decisions. The filings falsely said the LLCs held sole discretion. The SEC found that the purpose was to prevent financial markets and the media from connecting the reporting entities to Ensign Peak or the church. By the time the arrangement ended, the equity portfolio had grown to roughly $37.8 billion.⁹

Ensign Peak agreed to pay a $4 million civil penalty and the church agreed to pay $1 million, for a combined $5 million settlement.¹⁰ Both parties consented to the order without admitting or denying the findings, except as to jurisdiction.⁹ Gurbir Grewal, then head of SEC enforcement, said the Form 13F filing requirement “applies to all institutional investment managers, including non-profit and charitable organizations.”²

The church’s own statement said it had cooperated with the government over an extended period and noted that after the SEC first raised concerns in June 2019, Ensign Peak moved to a single aggregated report and filed thirteen such quarterly reports before the settlement.¹¹ On the broader misuse allegations, Bishop Christopher Waddell said Nielsen did not have a “full grasp on the situation.”¹

What Happened to the Tax-Exemption Claim

The SEC settlement addressed the concealment, not the underlying question of whether Ensign Peak deserved its tax exemption. That was the heart of Nielsen’s IRS complaint. He asked the agency to strip the exemption, arguing that a $1 billion annual inflow of tithing had been invested rather than spent on charity.⁵

Legal observers were skeptical the IRS would act. The Christian Century reported that much of the accumulation likely fell outside the statute of limitations, that the IRS had been chronically underfunded, and that the potential revenue relative to the investigative burden made action unlikely.¹² As of 2026, no IRS action on the complaint has been publicly reported.

In early 2023, around the time of the SEC settlement, Nielsen submitted a 90-page memo to the U.S. Senate Finance Committee requesting congressional oversight. Fox 13 News contacted several committee members, including Senators Catherine Cortez Masto, John Barrasso, and Mike Crapo, and received no response. Loyola University law professor Sam Brunson said the committee was “under no obligation to have anything to do with the complaint.”¹³

Where Things Stand Now

Since the settlement, Ensign Peak has filed Form 13F in its own name.¹⁴ Those filings give the public a regular view of the equity portfolio that Nielsen said had been hidden.

As of the first quarter of 2026, the publicly disclosed stock holdings stood at about $53.7 billion, with Nvidia the top position at over $4 billion and Apple and Alphabet each near $3 billion.¹⁵ Public equities are only part of the picture. The Widow’s Mite Report, an independent tracker of church finances, estimated in early 2025 that total investment reserves had passed $200 billion for the first time, reaching roughly $206 billion, and put total church wealth including operating assets and landholdings at about $321 billion at the end of 2025. Investment earnings, the same analysis said, now exceed the church’s total yearly operational costs, meaning the fund could sustain church programs indefinitely even if tithing stopped.¹⁶

The church has maintained that its financial stewardship is consistent with its religious mission and protected by religious freedoms.¹⁷ Nielsen’s complaint remains the reason those numbers are visible to the public at all.

1
CBS News. Whistleblower David Nielsen Speaks Out After Reporting Mormon Church to IRS
2
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. SEC Charges Ensign Peak Advisors and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
3
The Washington Post. Mormon Church Has Misled Members on $100 Billion Tax-Exempt Investment Fund, Whistleblower Alleges
4
Salt Lake Tribune. IRS Whistleblower Breaks His Silence
5
NPR. Whistleblower Says Mormon Church Abuses Its Tax-Exempt Status
6
CBS News. Mormon Church Ensign Peak Whistleblower David Nielsen Allegations
7
Religion Unplugged. Former Employee of Ensign Peak Advisors Submits Document to Senate Finance Committee
8
The Washington Post. These Mormon Twins Worked Together on an IRS Whistleblower Complaint Over the Church’s Billions
9
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. SEC Administrative Proceeding File No. 3-21306
10
CNBC. Mormon LDS Church, Nonprofit to Settle SEC Charges
11
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Newsroom. Church Issues Statement on SEC Settlement
12
The Christian Century. LDS Church Unlikely to Face Action From IRS for Use of Donations
13
Fox 13 Salt Lake City. LDS Church $100 Billion Whistleblower Asks U.S. Senate for Oversight
14
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Ensign Peak Advisors Inc. Form 13F-HR Filing
15
Salt Lake Tribune. LDS Church Is Buying Up Stocks
16
Salt Lake Tribune. LDS Church Wealth One Day Soon May Reach a Staggering Milestone
17
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Newsroom. Stewardship of Tithing Funds: Court Ruling Acknowledges Church Integrity