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PROVO — A preliminary hearing has been scheduled for a woman charged with embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from her nonprofit.
Candace Lierd is the founder and former CEO of a Lehi anti-human trafficking nonprofit Exitus, but is accused of using money donated to the organization for personal expenses. Investigators say she made false claims that she was a nurse or physician, had a position with the United Nations and founded several multimillion-dollar companies.
The two-day preliminary hearing was set Thursday for June 18 and 19. Assistant Utah attorney general Craig Barlow said even with many of the witnesses submitting statements before the hearing instead of testifying, there is enough evidence to need more than one day. He said he anticipates the investigator in the case will be on the witness stand for multiple hours to give background and an overview of the case.
Lierd has a stack of 42 charges filed against her, with 40 of those filed by the Utah Attorney General's Office. Those include engaging in a pattern of unlawful activity, two counts of theft of services and 10 counts of communications fraud, second-degree felonies; 10 counts of theft, eight second-degree felonies and two third-degree felonies; two counts of identity fraud, a second-degree felony and a third-degree felony; plus seven counts of forgery and seven counts of unprofessional conduct, third-degree felonies; and engaging in unlawful activity, a class A misdemeanor.
Lierd appeared virtually on Thursday from the Utah County Jail, but the judge asked for her to be transported to the courthouse for the preliminary hearing. She was denied bail during a hearing in September, shortly after the charges were filed.
Deputy Utah County attorney David Brown asked that the two charges brought by Utah County, both for issuing a bad check, one a second-degree felony and the other a third-degree felony, not be set for a preliminary hearing yet. He said his cases are small compared to the other cases and there is a lot of discussion that still needs to happen.
"If the (state attorney general's) case settles, mine will settle as well," he said.
Those two cases are scheduled for a hearing on June 20 to decide the next steps based on the outcome of the preliminary hearing in the other case.
Lierd was the CEO of Exitus from August 2020 to December 2022. Investigators said the organization did not renew its business license after it expired in 2022, but continued to seek donations on Facebook and Instagram.
"Both social media pages appeared to document the organization's work in orphan rescues in Europe and solicited donations toward that effort," a police booking affidavit states.
It said Exitus raised over $1,697,000 through misleading representations. Investigators said the money was used to buy a used car for Lierd's son and to purchase a new home. Police said much of the money is still unaccounted for.
