For the past several years, the media has routinely sought to debunk, dismiss, or downplay President Donald Trump's insistent warnings about the dire risks that fraudulent activities pose to election integrity.

Yet, on a fairly routine basis, Trump is seemingly vindicated with election fraud-related reports, including most recently in Utah, where 11 individuals were just criminally charged with dozens of felony counts for forging signatures on political candidate petitions, Fox affiliate KSTU reported.

The criminal charges issued on Monday by the Utah Attorney General's Office stemmed from a joint investigative effort led by the state auditor along with the Elections Office and county clerks.

Dozens of felony and misdemeanor charges

Per the Utah AG's Office, most of the 11 charged individuals hail from outside of the state and several worked for a signature collection company known as "Gather," while the rest were independent contractors or worked for other companies that collect signatures for petitions, and all of the alleged fraud occurred in just five counties.

Collectively, they were charged with 60 felony counts of 3rd-degree forgery or 3rd-degree communications fraud, along with 21 misdemeanor counts of Violation of Certificate of Nomination Procedures.

According to the Deseret News, the forgery counts can be punished with up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine per each charge, if convicted, while the communications fraud and procedures violation charges can each receive up to one year in prison and a $2,500 fine.

Forged and fraudulent signatures gathered

Per prosecutors, the defendants ignored the training they'd received to avoid criminal activity while gathering signatures and instead engaged in fraudulent activities to boost the number of signatures gathered, likely to boost the pay they received for their door-to-door work, per Deseret.

Some of those fraudulent activities included forging signatures on petitions themselves or seeking to "kill two birds with one stone" by having one person sign a petition multiple times on behalf of a spouse or other family members.

For at least one of the defendants, prosecutors alleged, "Of the 176 signatures in the packets Defendant turned in, only 71 were valid. 36 signatures, approximately twenty percent, did not match the signatures on file with the election officials."

The indictments were praised by a spokesperson for Republican Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, who said, "The Attorney General’s office should be applauded for its actions today, and those employed by this company or any other that engaged in this behavior should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."

Company working with authorities to punish lawbreakers

The Salt Lake Tribune noted that several of the charged individuals worked for a company called "Gather," and the owner of that company, Tanner Leatham, insisted that all of his employees had been trained on the state's laws regarding the collection of signatures for petitions.

"When individuals choose to break the rules we do everything we can to help the state go after these people," he said in a statement. "These individuals made poor and dishonest choices, completely ignoring the law and their training."

He further suggested that part of the problem was the incentive structure for gathering large numbers of signatures and suggested that if the state's threshold was reduced then candidates wouldn't have to hire professional signature gatherers who might be tempted to break the laws.