Behind the Bastards - Part Two: Bishop David E. Taylor: Jesus Christ's Best Friend

Episode Date: October 30, 2025

David E. Taylor's cult truly had it all: enslaved workers using plagiarism machines to generate AI ads to rob cancer patients, welfare fraud, and heinous sex crimes! In Part 2, we conclude his horrifi...c story.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Coalzo Media Oh, welcome back to Behind the Bastards. That's the podcast that this is right now. And yeah, we're talking about the kingdom of God. Not the kingdom of God is in the things that people believe exists, but the kingdom of God is in the cult that the FBI just rated. Back with me as my guest, Jake Hanrahan, the host of Popular Front and a podcast on our.
Starting point is 00:00:30 network, sad oligarch. Jake, how are you doing? Good, I'm good. I'm ready to learn again about Jesus and his pretend best mate. And his pretend best friend, David E. Taylor, yes. That is, I've never heard anyone claim to be Jesus' best friend. So he's at least, he's at least, you know, creative, you know, a thinker. Yeah, not since like the Bible, you know. Right. I don't even think anyone of the Bible had the balls to be like, no, he's my best friend, for sure. That is true. This is an I-Heart podcast. Johnny Knoxville here.
Starting point is 00:01:08 Check out Crimeless, Hillbilly Heist, my new true crime podcast from Smartless Media, Campside Media, and Big Money Players. It's the true story of the almost perfect crime and the Nimrods who almost pulled it off. It was kind of like the perfect storm in a sewer. That was dumb. Do not follow my example.
Starting point is 00:01:28 Listen to Crimless Hillbilly Heist on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. The murder of an 18-year-old girl in Graves County, Kentucky went unsolved for years until a local housewife, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story. America, y'all better work the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns. Listen to Graves County on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season ad free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. On this podcast in cells, we unpack an emerging mindset. I am a loser.
Starting point is 00:02:24 If I was a woman, I wouldn't day me either. A hidden world of resentment, cynicism, anger against women at a deadly tipping point. Tomorrow is the day of retribution. The day in which I will have my revenge. This is Incells. Listen to Season 1 of InCells on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2020, a group of young woman found themselves in an AI-fueled, nightmare. Someone was posting photos. It was just me naked. Well, not me, but me with someone else's
Starting point is 00:03:01 body parts. This is Levitown, a new podcast from IHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg and Collidercope, about the rise of deep fate pornography and the battle to stop it. Listen to Levitown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So, by 2019, David E. Taylor's ministry had found and thoroughly explored its sweet spot, finding desperate people who were either sick themselves or who had ailing loved ones and promising to convince God to solve their problems for a price. He had a different courses of lectures in which he would walk, and these are like, you know, one of his big money-making things is he'll have these huge, he'll fill out like a stadium or whatever,
Starting point is 00:03:47 or one of these like, almost like an MLM, right, where they'll rent out these huge public speaking spaces. And he and like his top, he has a couple of pastors that work under him, will teach you, right? For like a, they'll do like a three-day lecture series, you know, on how to make personal contact with Jesus and then how to use your newfound friendship with Jesus to get stuff, primarily to cure and save your sick or dying or dead loved ones, right?
Starting point is 00:04:16 Like, that is the entire grift here is that I will teach you how to meet Jesus so you can get favors from him. And specifically, like, saving your loved one favors. David's marketing people who are, again, all unpaid cold members working and living together in these giant warehouse spaces that he's bought across the country, managed his social media. And they would draw people to the call in line with posts like this. And this is a July 2019 Twitter post from David E. Taylor's account. Thousands are being healed of cancer through the life and ministry of David E. Taylor. Call 1-877-843-4567 for more information. You'd think, I don't know, this is the part that I have trouble getting my head into,
Starting point is 00:05:02 is somebody who's like, well, yeah, this must be how getting cured works. Like, this must be how God works. It's like, I have to call a call in line to get in good with this one dude who has like the connection to the on high, that's the part where I'm like, man, I just don't, I just don't get that. I don't get believing that. That's, that's such a stretch. He doesn't even really come across as particularly charismatic. Like, you know, there's, other than his like, I mean, let's be honest, pretty dapper outfit, there doesn't seem to be like that much new to what they're doing other than maybe the aesthetics of it. But yeah, no, it's, it's, I guess it's just
Starting point is 00:05:44 preying on, you know, very people at a very loose end, but still, plenty of cults do that, but I guess this one took off. Yeah, I mean, that's really what it comes down to, is that, like, this is, and it's just, it's just so blatant. Yeah, yeah. To an extent that it is sometimes funny. It's usually more sad than funny, but when you go through kind of the post that this dedicated PR team is putting together, they're throwing together advertisements for, like,
Starting point is 00:06:11 big in-person events, one of which was called Miracles for the Mamed. And I'm just going to show you the ad image that they had here, because it's a special one. Look at that. It's a photo of David E. Taylor holding like 30 different, like, walking canes and crutches. Like, he's just got dozens of them in his hands. Yeah. I mean, he's inventive, if nothing else, you know?
Starting point is 00:06:38 Yeah, he's got like a white suit that's chased with gold. Philigree. And yeah, it's miracles for the maimed with David E. Taylor, for with God, nothing shall be impossible. I think we're meant to take from this is that, like, well, all these people who came in needing crutches and walkers and canes don't need him anymore. He cured the maimed. So David E. Taylor's just got to take care of all this trash now. I mean, the thing is though, like, maimed is pretty heavy. Like, if you're like, oh, I can't walk very well, like, to be maimed, you've been pretty fucking badly, huh? You've been maimed. Yeah. Yeah, it's like, he went in really heavy with that, man.
Starting point is 00:07:14 Very fun. Well, not funny for the people, but the image is fucking incredible. I'm not going to lie, I really, really like the aesthetic of it. It's very like 2000s era, but just with the added caveat of being like a weird god cult, it's great. Right. Yeah, it's a special picture. And when I saw that beautiful image, I had to know more. So I found one of David's YouTube channels that still hosted the Miracles for the maimed video.
Starting point is 00:07:40 A lot of his stuff's been taken offline since the FBI raid. And so I found this is like a stream of one of his like speeches, right? Like that or one of his like events, you know, I told you that he goes up on stage and he'll do these like multi-hour long talks. And this like you can find this whole video online on YouTube. It's called Miracles for the Mamed with David E. Taylor from his miracles, David E. Taylor Miracles in America stream. This one has 741 views. It was streamed eight months ago. So we're not talking about a massive channel.
Starting point is 00:08:13 But clearly, I think he's filling these in-person rooms because he's got, like, the image I just showed you of him with all the crutches. That was like a billboard advertising this thing for weeks. And so people who just didn't know much about David E. Taylor showed up to see him speak and give his, like, because this is part of his global miracles in America, crusade against cancer. Um, so it's, yeah, he's, he's, this is appealing to some number of people who are like desperate as a result of their fucking horrible cancer, um, and they show up in person and this is how, I think this is a, like, in the YouTube video, this is just like, what starts the stream off is there's this weird AI generated intro video. I'm guessing it was also the intro video that played at the, um, symposium or whatever it was, like before David got off. on stage and started talking, but let's just watch this piece of AI-generated coach-locked together, Jake. America, a nation formed by God, destined to be a light to the world. But for centuries, darkness has fought to claim its soul.
Starting point is 00:09:26 I've kept them bound, chasing wealth, power, and pleasure. The guy talking just looks like a ring race. It's like Assassin's Creed is mine. Yet, in the hour of her greatest peril, heaven. Not sure what president that's supposed to be. From the throne of eternity, the king of kings beheld the plight. Now, I'm going to stop us right here. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:09:55 Because this is, I mean, it's just weird AI schlock. What's interesting to me is Jesus's room, because at the point at which we stopped it, Jesus is, like, walking around in this, like, gold-chaced room. Yeah. And there's, like, 30 beds in it that are just empty. Yeah. Like, Jesus, the dozens of beds is weird to me. Like, why does Jesus need that many beds in his room?
Starting point is 00:10:18 What is Jesus doing that requires all of those bits? Does Jesus keep a harem? Yeah, because I don't know why else you'd have that many beds. Also, like, everything is gold-plated, gold-gilded. I mean, like... It does all look like... Donald Trump's living room, yes. Yeah, like, think what you want about religion.
Starting point is 00:10:36 Like, I mean, if you go by the book or whatever, if you believe it or you like the story or whatever, Jesus was a pretty fucking cool guy. Like, he did some pretty cool shit. He wasn't into gold. Right. He was not into, like, loads of gold. He was into, like, looking after lepers and, like, you know, helping people. Yeah, he wasn't like, get me gold everywhere.
Starting point is 00:10:54 Like, it's so silly, man. Fuck. Yeah, definitely. One of the, I think, unargued things of the text of the Bible is Jesus was not a huge fan of fucking palaces, not a big palace guy. Yeah, yeah, Jesus, not known to be a palace guy. Definitely not. So, yeah, and what's fun here is obviously that's all AI generated, right?
Starting point is 00:11:17 Like, it's very obviously AI generated. So what you've got here is unpaid human trafficking victims using a plagiarism machine to make Hollywood-style trailers in order to scam sick people out of their money. It's pretty cool. It's pretty cool It's like I mean I always say the reason That well in my opinion
Starting point is 00:11:38 That I feel like black mirrors is terrible now Is because real life And I know there's such a hack thing to say But it is so true Like these real life scenarios Are just pure black mirror episodes really You know And here we are
Starting point is 00:11:52 I've had the same problem Where like when I first started watching the show 10 years ago or whatever It was like oh wow This seems like Incredible that could happen Yeah And now it's like
Starting point is 00:12:00 Well this is I mean yeah we're here, this is actually slightly less upsetting than the real thing. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. What I wouldn't give for a San Juan Apparo. That's not what we're getting at all. Yeah, right? Instead, we have like Jesus gold-plated harum room to corned cancer patients out with their money.
Starting point is 00:12:20 Yeah, Jesus is gold-placed, yeah. Yeah, exactly that. Yeah, it sucks. Yeah. Now, again, I also think it's kind of interesting. And there's part of me that's like, should I analyze Jesus having all those best? more because David E. Taylor also owns a mansion with a lot of beds in it and was definitely running a sex cult. But also, there's no way they prompted it to look. That's just what the
Starting point is 00:12:42 AI thing came up with, I'm guessing. I'm sure they didn't specify he should have dozens of weird beds in his mansion. They were just like Jesus in a palace looking at a window or something. That would be my assumption. But I don't know, it's weird how directly again it graphs to the actual cult that David E. Taylor is running, which has a bunch of things. of mansions with dozens of beds in them. Right. And sometimes they do do this thing where they kind of, you know, hide in plain sight, like, oh, yeah, put that in there.
Starting point is 00:13:10 Or maybe it's to make people, when they watch that, they're not so shocked when they actually find not the real thing because he's obviously not in heaven and he's not Jesus. But, you know, something similar, maybe make them not so shocked, I don't know. Yeah, I can't tell you for certain. What I can show you is what the actual living spaces in his cult facility looked like, what the actual beds that his cult members are in these giant warehouses where dozens of them are living at a time. And it looks like a homeless shelter, right? Like,
Starting point is 00:13:41 they're not, it's, you can see here, they're not living well. Yeah. That is horrible. What is that? Yeah. So for anyone listening, it's just like tents inside, like people sleeping on, oh, that's horrible. That tent was like a medical tent. If it were a homeless shelter, I'd say like, that looks like maybe an okay homeless shelter. Or like, yeah, like a FEMA shelter. People just got forced out of their home. and you're quickly making space for them. It's that white tent, though. Like, that is creeping me out. That was like some kind of weird medical.
Starting point is 00:14:09 I don't know. Yeah, it looks weird. Yeah, it's like, for a homeless shelter, like it wouldn't be bad at all. But like that medical tent is creeping me the fuck out. But yeah. Right. The AI is definitely, yeah, definitely a lot different.
Starting point is 00:14:20 And these people are, again, they're bringing in millions of dollars a year for him. Like tens of millions over the course of the time they're doing this. The cult had the money to give them. them at least separate little rooms, right? Like, even if you're not wanting to pay these people because you're an evil cult leader, they didn't have to live like this. But this is part of the point. Keeping them in a situation that is like a homeless shelter is part of the point, because one of the threats he has against them is leverage is, I will make you fully homeless
Starting point is 00:14:49 if you don't do what I say, right? Like, we're building to that, but that is kind of what's going on here. So thanks to the federal indictment, we also have full records of several years worth of text messages from Taylor to his followers and to his top lieutenants who were helping to run the Colt. So we do actually know directly how he incentivized and managed his PR team, the guys who created that crutch image in the video we just watched, when they fell behind on producing stuff like that. For example, on October 6th of 2020, Taylor's second in command sent a text message to the media team, which warmed, media team no going to sleep until the mosaic video was done. That was another ad for like one of these events that they were doing.
Starting point is 00:15:33 No going to sleep. No going to sleep. The grammar is not great. That's so dark. No, no, it's just like the, whenever like people are restricting sleep, it's like always the lowest wrong of like just nightmare shit. Yeah, because like that is the, I mean, the things that I have been willing to do because I've been exhausted and unwilling to like, I don't have the energy to fight you anymore.
Starting point is 00:15:56 I think it's, that's why sleep deprivation is like. probably like top of the cult leader tactics out there, or at least tied with cutting off your family and shit for number one. Like it's really big. It's why like, you know, the CIA were doing it when they were torturing people and I'd be great, you know. Of course. Same diff.
Starting point is 00:16:15 Same thing. Like, because it's just, if you're that exhausted, you'll be like, yeah, whatever. Like, sure, I did this. Whatever. Please let me sleep. It's just so harsh. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:16:23 And that does explain a lot of the, God, why are people putting up with us? Well, because they're exhausted and starving. and, like, they, that you've gotten them to a point where they're not making anything that can be even, like, sort of described as a rational choice. Now, I have not found the mosaic video that he was talking about in that text message, but the indictment gives a very clear idea of how the cult was organized. At the top of the slave hierarchy, where Taylor's so-called armor bearers, this is the title he gave to his, like, top slaves, these are not the loot. Because he also has some people who are getting money, who are sharing in the top of, the cult, right, including like his romantic partner and a couple of these pastors working for
Starting point is 00:17:03 him. And they're at the top top of the hierarchy, but kind of the top of the slave hierarchy are the armor bearers. And here's how the FBI describes them in their indictment. Armor bearers were Taylor's personal servants who fulfilled Taylor's demands around the clock. Taylor and Brannon, Brandon being his like number one, controlled every aspect of the daily living of their victims. They are not allowed to go anywhere without permission, and they sleep in the facilities where they work or in a ministry house. Armor bearers handled everything from the standard waiting on hand and foot of Taylor and Brannon and the other couple of people leading it to the actual nuts and bolts
Starting point is 00:17:38 sex trafficking work that David E. Taylor required of them. Per the DOJ, Taylor demanded that his armor bearers transport women from ministry houses, airports, and other locations to Taylor's location, and insured the women transported to Taylor took Plan B emergency contraceptives. So not only are these armor bears trafficking women for him from different cult compounds or like bringing them in when he manages to ensnare a young woman online or something, because he has these people, it looks like they're flirting for him sometimes. Some of it he must be doing himself. And these are women maybe who are more prominent in the evangelical community, like Christian female musicians and stuff who have like a degree of so that's a big target. but also just a lot of when a female colt member fancies his eye he'll bring them in
Starting point is 00:18:28 and these guys are trafficking them and giving the morning after pills right which seems to be the standard is that anytime you sleep with him you take a morning after pill just to be sure right I'm guessing both because he refuses to wear condoms and because the cult just wasn't didn't want to take any chances it always gets so disgusting done it yeah I mean and I don't even feel like it's worth bringing up I'm sure these people this cult had a hypocritical attitude on whether or not morning after pill should be legal, like, but like that's, it almost feels like pointless to bring that up when we're talking about crimes of this magnet. Like, of course, they're hypocrites, right?
Starting point is 00:19:03 Of course, yeah, of course, yeah. The women brought to Taylor seemed to have mostly been female cult members, but again, he flirted heavily with these female like Christian pop musicians and recording artists. We'll talk more about that later, but in order to keep any of these ladies from speaking up and doing damage to his ministry, Taylor and his top, lieutenants also operated what can be accurately described as a revenge porn ring, right? That's how they, like, kept these women from coming out. And I'm going to quote now from an article on Detroit Local Foreign News.
Starting point is 00:19:35 Court documents claim that Taylor frequently solicited and received sexually explicit photos and videos from multiple female workers for the organization. There were thousands of sexually explicit photos and videos, officials said. One of set of photos found on the phone of Taylor's second in command were sent by a female worker, an unpaid worker, mind you, who cried when she handed them over and apologized for having been late in completing the assignment, which she said she understands that she needed to do and can't delay, right? This is your assignment, is you need to take, like, naked photos of yourself or whatever
Starting point is 00:20:06 and send them to me so that, like, I have, yeah, the ability to, yeah, I have revenge porn on you. Yeah, that's so dark to, to frame it as the assignment. like you're going to basically get yourself in a position that's going to be, you know, you're going to be even more malleable and it's your assignment, like, from God. Like, oh, it's just, yeah, evil. Yeah, I mean, evil's the right word for it. And you know what's not evil, though?
Starting point is 00:20:34 I mean, they might be. I can't promise that one way or the other. But here's some ads. All I know is what I've been told. And that's a half-truth is a whole lie. For almost a decade, the murder of an 18-year-old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved. Until a local homemaker, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story. I'm telling you, we know Quincy killed her. We know.
Starting point is 00:21:10 A story that law enforcement used to convict six people and that got the citizen investigator on national TV. Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran. My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, producer, and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find. I did not know her and I did not kill her, or rape or burn or any of that other stuff that y'all said. They literally made me say that I took a match and struck and threw it on her. They made me say that I poured gas on her. From Lava for Good, this is Graves County, a show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame.
Starting point is 00:21:59 America, y'all better work the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns. Listen to Graves County in the Bone Valley feed on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season ad-free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. From the studio who brought you the Pikedin Massacre and Murder 101, this is Incells. I am a loser. If I also women, I wouldn't date me either.
Starting point is 00:22:40 From the dark corners of the web, an emerging mindset. If I can't have you, girls, I will destroy you. A kind of subculture, a hidden world of resentment, cynicism, anger against women. A seed of loneliness explodes. I just hate myself. I don't know why you girls aren't attracted to me, but I will punish you all for it. At a deadly tipping point. Incells will be added to the terrorism guide.
Starting point is 00:23:10 Police say a driver intentionally drove into a crowd killing 10 people. Tomorrow is the day of retribution. I will have my revenge. This is InCells. Listen to Season 1 of InCels on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2020, a group of young woman in a tidy suburb of New York City found themselves in an AI-fueled nightmare. Someone was posting photos. It was just me naked.
Starting point is 00:23:43 Well, not me, but me with someone else. It bounced as body parts on my body parts that looked exactly like my own. I wanted to throw up. I wanted to scream. It happened in Levittown, New York. But reporting this series took us through the darkest corners of the internet and to the front lines of a global battle against deep fake pornography. This should be illegal, but what is this? This is a story about a technology that's moving faster than the law
Starting point is 00:24:10 and about vigilantes trying to stem the tide. I'm Margie Murphy. And I'm Olivia Carvel. This is Levitown, a new podcast from IHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg and Collidercope. Listen to Levittown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Cheryl McCollum, host of the podcast Zone 7. Zone 7 ain't a place.
Starting point is 00:24:38 It's a way of life. I've worked hundreds of cold cases you've heard of, and thousands you haven't. We started this podcast to teach the importance of teamwork and solving these crazy crimes. Come join us in learning from detectives, prosecutors, authors, canine handlers, forensic experts, and most importantly, victims' family members. Listen to Zone 7 with Cheryl McCollum on the IHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcast. and we're back okay so uh we're talking about the sex trafficking um david's most prominent alleged victim and the woman who's given us the most details about how this process worked was a gospel singer named vicky yohi uh and prior she this is like she was she was she was she was fairly
Starting point is 00:25:36 prominent within like the world of Christian pop music. Prior to meeting Taylor, Yohe was a Dove Award nominated musician. And you probably haven't heard of the Dove Award because it's not like, it's not a big deal in like the real world, but within this kind of community of like Christian, like musicians and stuff like that who like specifically make like worship music and stuff. It's a pretty big deal. It's like their Grammy. Right. So she's not like a celebrity in normal world terms, but she's famous within. in like the Evangelical, like the Pentecostal and the charismatic, like, chunks of the evangelical community.
Starting point is 00:26:12 Right. So she had a lot going on before she got caught up with this maniac, which is important because it means that when she decides to leave, when she realizes what he's doing, she has the resources and clout to actually escape. And that's why she's able to, she gives us a lot of details about this guy, because she's able to, like she is not leaving the cult and having absolutely nothing being completely broke basically homeless, so she has some ability to actually fight back openly. And she has been for years, by the way.
Starting point is 00:26:41 She came out a while ago and was one of the people who was first kind of detailing the actual extent of his abuse beyond just like tax fraud. Right. So he and Yohei met at a church event in 2017. And Taylor immediately, this appears to be part of his flirtation technique. He starts calling her his spiritual daughter. that isn't appealing, doesn't seem like it should be appealing, right? That's pretty upsetting fundamentally, but she feels drawn to him.
Starting point is 00:27:14 And she does consent to starting a sexual relationship with him, which lasts about 16 months. So this does start consensually. They're both adults. She has the ability to say yes or no, she's not in the cult. And since coming out against Taylor, Yohei has repeatedly talked. hold reporters that this was a thing, like describing women he wanted to fuck as his spiritual daughters was a tactic Taylor used. He used it repeatedly on the women that he went after. She claimed he prays on women. He does not honor women. Women are just a vagina. And that seems
Starting point is 00:27:50 true, sure. Like that's, I don't, I don't, I don't doubt her at all. No, no, it's such a horrible, you know, just disgusting, like. And I just don't get how calling someone a spiritual, your spiritual daughter works as a flirtation method. Well, no, unless you're, like, as depraved as he is. It's appraved. Or, again, you've drank so much of the Kool-Aid of this, like, weird extreme trunk of the religion, that that's appealing to you. Like, I don't know if we can fully get it not being part of this community.
Starting point is 00:28:20 Like, you have to almost have had, right. Have you seen dog tooth? Like, it's been a long time, but there's, like, kind of a, I mean, I guess, kind of a cult vibe amongst the family there, but they, they re-contextualized words. It's a little absurd to the point where like words mean completely different things there. But like a lot of cults do that, right? Like, you know, in their world, it's like, no, it doesn't mean daughter like that. It means daughter like this. And it's like, look, no matter what way you look at it, it's fucked up. But in their world, like you say, it's just everything is on a different planet by that
Starting point is 00:28:53 stage. Yeah. And I think that that's exactly it, right? And what you're talking about, that is another a common cult tactic is the reframing of words, in part because it creates a bond. It's the same, I've brought this up a lot, but it's the same way, like, if you and your friends are really into MMA or really into something like Warhammer or some video game, there's like different terms that, like, are used within the community or like you're part of an online forum or something, and that creates a sense of bonding that, like, I know what this means when I say, and so do you. That's not unhealthy inherently, but the extreme version of that is.
Starting point is 00:29:29 is an effective cult tactic, both because it makes people bond, and it also cuts people off from the, when you do it extremely enough, and you're fundamentally, you can't understand what other people are saying, and they can't understand you, that creates this kind of, that furthers this sense of isolation that's necessary for cults to work the way they work, you know? In-group thinking and all that. Right. Exactly. Now, we've talked about the spiritual daughter flirtation method. his other way of appealing to the women that he wanted to go after was much simpler. And I'm going to quote again from the news herald. According to Yohe, Taylor made a habit of buying her expensive gifts, including Lobotene red-bottom shoes, a fur coat, and a jaguar sedan during their relationship.
Starting point is 00:30:15 She said some of the money for gifts came from J.M.MI, that's the church accounts. He said God just spoke to him to bless me with a car, she said. So that money for my car actually came from Joshua Media Ministries. Absolutely. He says that. He doesn't deny that. He says, yes, our ministry blesses other ministries with vehicles sometimes. Now, if you're wondering, is that tax fraud to give your mistress a card using church money? The answer is yes.
Starting point is 00:30:42 Although, in a way that isn't easy necessarily to prove or get done, right? This isn't the thing that gets caught easily. And in fact, most of the shit like this happens all the time with a bunch of different churches in the U.S. And it usually does not get caught, right? churches are tax exempt, so they don't have to pay taxes on donations for the church to use to conduct its normal business of existing as a church. But that doesn't mean that churches and church pastors or other kinds of church leaders just don't ever have to pay taxes. For example, if your church pays a salary to the pastor or priest or whatever, they have to, they still have to pay payroll taxes, right? It's the same if they pay taxes to their workers.
Starting point is 00:31:28 They still pay payroll taxes, right? Churches are not exempt from that sort of thing. Interesting. Like, that's just the way, right. Like, it's one thing, the church should, the church, for example, shouldn't have to pay. This is the way the law works. I'm not saying I agree with this or disagree with this. But the church does not have to pay like a property tax for their church to continue to exist as a church.
Starting point is 00:31:50 But once the money is going into people's accounts as like a salary, that you pay money. on as normal, right? And so if you're paying the pastor millions of dollars to buy luxury cars in a private jet and live in mansions, that money's supposed to be taxed. But if the church just buys luxury cars and a private jet that are the church's property, then they can get away without paying taxes. It just so happens that the cult leader is the only one who gets to use them, right? And this is, it works usually.
Starting point is 00:32:25 I think there's a degree to which, and this is Taylor has probably crossed the line because the IRS is after him. But you can get away with a lot in this regard, right? Like churches often do get away with a lot. No, that's not my private jet. It's the ministry's private jet, right? But once you're buying your mistress a car, well, that's not the same. That's not a church expense. And so she is expected to pay, you should be paying taxes on that, right?
Starting point is 00:32:59 Someone should be paying taxes on these gifts, right? Because you can't give gifts over a certain amount and not have them be taxed, you know? So there is a bunch of tax fraud going on here, right? I'm both pointing out that there's a lot you can get away with as a church in terms of tax-exempt stuff. And Taylor is constantly exceeding that remit. Like, he is absolutely committing tax crimes. It's just, it takes a while for this to get caught because, for one thing, the IRS is kind of scared of going after churches in the U.S., right?
Starting point is 00:33:31 Because why is that? Well, for one thing, it's really bad PR. Whenever a Republican is in office, it becomes a lot easier for them to get away with this, but the Democrat, like, administrations don't really want that kind of fight either because the church will always say, oh, this is an important. this is discrimination. This is anti-Christian discrimination. They're coming after me because of my faith, right? And it's just easier to ignore it. And that is usually what happens, right? And this is a part of the massive problem we have because these churches often, I mean, there's a lot that
Starting point is 00:34:04 they often do. Like, it's incredibly common for churches to basically, like, expressly give political orders or tell the congregation, this is how you should vote. This is who you should. This is who you should support politically, and churches aren't supposed to be able to do that and keep their tax exempt status. But they do all the time because everyone's scared of pissing these people off. Not to go too off track, but it just obviously you know about this. So would that be something that like, for example, the evangelicals are doing with Trump? Obviously they, you know, they're very pro genocide in Gaza. And I was just the whole time, I was like, why the, what the fuck is like, how do they have this much power? It's something like that, is it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:34:49 because these churches have huge amounts of money, and they put that money towards different. Like, that is a lot of, like, the right, a lot of the money that comes from the right does come from these mega churches and these megachurches and these megachurches who have just buckets of cash. And it's also just, that's why it's such a fertile grifting ground
Starting point is 00:35:11 is like creating a quote-unquote church or calling yourself a pastor is you can get away with a lot and they're usually scared to come after you. You know, this is not what the episode is about, but this happens constantly. Like, Taylor, Taylor is weird because he crossed the line enough that he gets in trouble for tax fraud, right? Which very rarely happens to these guys. Now, for his part, like a certain president, Taylor claimed to have refused any salary at all, right? That he's not getting any money for what he's doing.
Starting point is 00:35:40 And this is the kind of thing that sounds good when you say it on stage to an adoring audience who aren't going to question you. but it's also the kind of thing that looks like tax fraud because it is. There's an organization called the Trinity Foundation, which monitors religious fraud and actually looks for stuff like this. And they published an investigation into tax fraud by David E. Taylor and the Joshua Media Ministries International in 2018, right? So this, there has been evidence, and this is extremely detailed. I would call this like a smoking gun, inarguable report, what they put out.
Starting point is 00:36:14 I've read through the entire thing. It is excellent work. It's very, it's kind of wonkish, because it's more focused. We're focusing on all of the fucked up abuse of human beings. They are focused on, here is something he said, here's an expense we know that was made. Here are the exact tax laws it violates, right? So it's kind of dry reading. But like how to get, like, I guess it's kind of in the way of like, I guess it's not a bad idea.
Starting point is 00:36:39 Like, you know, like Al Capone and they went after his tax. Right. It's like, yeah, it's easier to get him on this, right? Right. And it's provable, too, right? And without anyone, you don't need, yeah, it's black and white and you don't need someone who is like an abuse victim and traumatized to be willing to testify, which is hard to do, right?
Starting point is 00:36:57 You know, not making a moral judgment, it's just difficult to get people to talk when they've been through something like this for a variety of reasons. And you don't need that with tax fraud, right? And in that report, the Trinity Foundation says that, like, they consider whenever you hear that the head of a church is going without salary, that is a huge red flag. That's like one of their big warnings that fraud is going on. Quote, Taylor lives in an apparent lavish lifestyle and appears to use the church account as his personal piggy bank.
Starting point is 00:37:27 In his deposition, he says that he lives off gifts that are personally donated to him, which do not count as a salary. And that deposition was from a 2014. He gets charged with tax fraud in 2014, and his church loses its tax exempt status for like a year and then gets it back almost immediately. But this part has been going on for a while. The tax fraud has been known for about a decade before he actually gets in any serious trouble, which shows you how hard it is even when they know there's tax fraud to the extent that the IRS comes after you for it and takes away your tax exempt status.
Starting point is 00:37:59 You can get it back the next year and nothing will happen, right? Because we just don't take these kind of crimes seriously in the United States. It's like legal crime. Yeah, exactly. If you do it with a church, it's not a crime. Now, that report also goes into one of David Taylor's grifts from November of 2018, a praise-a-thon where he asked his followers to donate to sponsor 300 new students who would be trained and brought into his ministries as volunteers. And I think the idea was that he would personally instruct these people in the art of talking to Jesus so that they could learn how to heal people with prayer. The Trinity Foundation notes, quote, students, and this is them describing the pitch that Taylor was making, students will be taught to do things even.
Starting point is 00:38:42 medical doctors and surgeons can't do. Oh, dear. They go on, oh dear. They want to summarize, he claims he provided housing, meals, clothing, hygiene, and training for them at a cost of about 150K for each student's first year, more of their entire family relocated with them. That comes to a total of $45 million requested for that project alone. Taylor claims that they will be provided more than even an accredited Bible college
Starting point is 00:39:05 would, and that many would receive a salary after completing their training. Now, this doesn't ever seem to have happened. No money was actually devoted to this program. I have found zero evidence that any of his followers were ever paid a salary after finishing their training. This was a grift at both ends. The donated money was not being used for the promised purpose. And the people that he did sign up as students weren't being given degrees. And they weren't being given salaries and jobs.
Starting point is 00:39:30 They were made to work at a call center and abused, right? Right. Now, I know some of you may be wondering at this point. Robert, you said none of the donated money went to feeding or sheltering these unusual. paid volunteer students. But that can't be true, right? They had to have been, we saw where they were living. It can't be expensive, but clearly the cult was paying for beds and paying for food because these people weren't allowed to have jobs or money on their own. They would have starved if none of the donation money went to supporting them, right? And all I have to say to that
Starting point is 00:40:01 is, my dear friends, you've forgotten the sublime joy of welfare fraud, because that's how he's feeding these people. One of the main whistleblowers against JMMI is a former of Taylor's named Chris Sorensen. And we'll talk about Chris's journey a little later, but he's one of three former members who have alleged to the Tennessee News Herald that Taylor's cult fed its worker followers, not using the tens of millions and donations, but via EBT fraud, right? That's our, the car, if you're poor enough, you get these electronic benefits transfer cards that allow you to buy certain kinds of food and drink, right?
Starting point is 00:40:38 It's for people who will starve otherwise, you know? that's what EBT is for. Yeah, I wondered for a long time what that was, actually. So it's like essentially like benefits so you can live if you lose your job or whatever. Yes. Right, right. Exactly. It's supposed to be.
Starting point is 00:40:52 And, you know, the program doesn't work nearly as well as it should. It's gotten much worse in the last year because of cuts to it. But what it is supposed to be is that if you are, if you can't, basically you can't feed yourself otherwise, this gets you the benefits you need to keep you and your family from starving. And this is how the Colt made sure that they didn't have to pay even a dime. of their money to keep their people making the money, working the call center alive. Quote, from the News Herald, JMMI instructed church members to claim homelessness with the state of Michigan in order, sorry, not, I said Tennessee earlier as Michigan, in order to get electronic benefits transfer cards.
Starting point is 00:41:27 Members then allegedly pooled the cards to an appointed designee who would shop for everyone at nearby stores. Every person had to have an EBT card, a food stamp card, so instance said. They said, if you don't get one, you're not going to eat. So you have 50 people to feed and one card will last one day. You'll totally empty one card on the whole entire staff. And it's not for you personally. It's to spend on the whole entire group.
Starting point is 00:41:47 So you're not using your own card. I was in charge of it. I had to make an Excel spreadsheet of the status of everyone's card. And we kept them all in this little trapper keep or plastic box. It's just, and again, this cult, he brings in $50 million in less than a decade just from donations to the, you can feed people. What I don't get is, like, you're already so fucking rich. why even risk getting into this trouble for this kind of thing, you know? It's just like beyond me.
Starting point is 00:42:16 Do they think they're untouchable? I mean, they were for a very long time. Yeah, true. It gets away with this for closing it on 20 years. And I think it's also, with people like this, I think they almost feel a sense of disgust at the idea that they might spend any of their money on other people. Yeah. You know, I really, I think that there's something pathological going on.
Starting point is 00:42:36 Yeah, definitely. I may be, maybe I'm kind of reading into it a little bit, but like I just, I don't know what else it could be, you know. And it's probably worth talking about here how food and shelter were both used as weapons by David E. Taylor to keep his workforce functioning without complaint. His first line of defense was, of course, threatening to damn people to hell or even have God harmed them or their loved ones. But when the power of those threats started to wane, his reliable backup was promising to make people homeless if they resisted or failed to hit quotas. and I'm going to quote directly from the federal indictment here. Honor about May 5th, 2021 at 1226 a.m., Taylor texted to D.G., his current armor bear, tasked with communicating his orders to staff, whose identity is known to the grand jury,
Starting point is 00:43:20 you'll have to raise $164,000 today. Each hour you fall behind consequences will start. We will mess with the food. You will fast from the regular food or abstain for a while normally. As of now, there's a 21-day peanut butter and jelly regiment like before. Those who do not push their calls individually, and as a team with the right amount of people in closing numbers at 6 p.m., they don't eat dinner at all. If they do good afterward this time, and then at the end of the night, they may get a snack before bed, but not much, and this regiment will go on every day for 21 days until they obey. Take away the food. There will be other consequences. We must make them fast and pray.
Starting point is 00:43:56 He uses two exclamation points at the end of each of those sentences. I don't know why. He's, you can clearly, I think if you, if you're in the mindset where you'll, you'll abuse people so much to the point where you're saying, yeah, like, I can make your mother with cancer get better or your dad with AIDS or whatever. And then you get really, really rich anyway. It's like, I think the whole psychotic element just gets compounded. And that's what it sounds like there.
Starting point is 00:44:22 It's like he thinks he's God. Yeah, yeah, with the devil maybe, I don't know. Yeah, with that, yeah. On other occasions, he enforced multi-day fasts when call center workers couldn't make his impossible quotas. Sleep was also commonly withheld as a punishment, although it might be more accurate to say that Taylor structured his quotas in such a way that no one could make them, which was automatically punished by being made to work until 4 a.m. In addition, whenever the cold had trouble making its numbers, which was always, he'd schedule mandatory meetings, which ran from three to six hours long. So if you're keeping track, this meant that any time the money, wasn't as much as he wanted, and it was never as much as he wanted, the staff was basically
Starting point is 00:45:04 banned from sleeping, almost entirely, right? This is presented as a mix of punishment and strategy, but the overall goal is to make sure none of his full-time workers ever get sleep, because that keeps them in the state, well, he'll do whatever he says. Like zombies. Like zombies. Here's the indictment again. Honor about September 19th at 1021 p.m., Taylor texted to victim D.G. Michelle and Kia, make them all stand and tell them if the punishment to 4 a.m. don't work, I'm going to make it worseer and worseer. They are going to get their beds out of my house and sleep in the garage. Everyone piled in there. This ruthless boot camp is going to get worse and worse until they do what we are telling them. There will only be soup, bread, and water for all the degenerates every day.
Starting point is 00:45:46 Oh, the degenerates. Is that what he called them? The degenerates. Yes, yes, because they're not, they couldn't make $164,000 in a day like God demanded. Wow. It's what Jesus would want. It's what Jesus would want. About a month after this, he sent another message complaining, I can't be kind to you, letting you start later and sleep in, because members of the team had fallen behind again on his impossible quotas. All caps, now I don't care if you are tired. You've crossed the line.
Starting point is 00:46:13 You're going to work all night and get up in the morning. I want the names of those who are not helping with this push or doing their work or showing change. All caps, they are going to the homeless shelter. Right? Again, this is directly the threat is. I have already reduced you to near homelessness. If you cross the line, you're out on your ass, right? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:46:32 After taking everything you had anyway. You can't even get EBT because we have your EBT card, right? Like you're already on it. Because you don't get that forever, right? That's the other thing is that like these people are so comprehensively fucked. I know like, obviously this is a cult and that's how it is. But it's also, I guess the two go hand in hand. But it's also like turning into a pretty evident,
Starting point is 00:46:56 kind of human trafficking ring, if they're like moving people around just to kind of be in what is essentially slave labor, taking all their identity, their rights, making money off them. Like, it's a serious criminal enterprise at this stage. Yep, yep, absolutely. Now, in the federal indictment, former cult members alleged that Taylor would often threaten his victims by explaining the power God gave him, rebuking them for disobedience, and cursing those who stopped working for him or spoke negatively about him. In addition, quote, the defendants required the victims to request permission to leave their housing or the call centers and controlled their access to transportation.
Starting point is 00:47:32 The defendants rarely permitted victims to seek outside medical attention. The defendants often denied victims medical attention altogether. In some instances, the defendants physically abused victims when Taylor was displeased with the actions or behavior of victims. Now, I noted at the top of these episodes that this cult was one of the ones that I have some trouble really understanding. So we should look into a couple of case studies, a former member who found themselves wrapped up in Taylor's group and ultimately escaped.
Starting point is 00:47:59 One local Houston news station, KPRC2, interviewed a friend of a woman who joined the colt because she was groomed as a bride for Taylor. Quote, from the beginning, it was great, exciting as they usually are, the woman said, but I kept warning her that something sounded like a cult. Her friend eventually cut off all communication, but returned a year later, revealing the mental and psychological abuse she endured. She said they starved her, mentally and psychologically abused her, and used scripture in hell to condemn her, the woman said.
Starting point is 00:48:27 It was almost like a loyalty program. They had to defend the top person and their ministry. And when her friend ultimately escaped, quote, she didn't know what to believe, who to trust, what churches to trust. And this is where, like, she says that her friend restored her faith, despite her trauma and found another church,
Starting point is 00:48:43 which is depicted as a positive end in the article. I can't help feeling maybe you needed a break from religion for a while. Long while. Maybe, like, maybe a little while out there, you know? Yeah, maybe for the rest of your life. A couple months off of a religion. Yeah. And it's, you know, outside of, because we're talking, again, about how crazy all of this seems on the inside, I need to emphasize, unless you are paying attention to, like, the Trinity Foundation's reporting on their tax fraud and stuff, none of this is super obvious.
Starting point is 00:49:16 There's not any mainstream news articles for a while. You get, starting like a year, a couple of years ago, you do get some local press. about some of the allegations, but there's very little to find on these people. And they also seem to have some, like, fairly high-profile backers. From July 31st to August 4th of 2019, David Taylor held a miracle crusade against cancer in Taylor, Michigan, and it featured, like, one of the people who spoke at the event was Andre Gesslerowski, who's the chairman of an Israeli nonprofit called the Helping Hand Coalition that supports Holocaust survivors, right?
Starting point is 00:49:55 And I'm going to quote from the Trinity Foundation's right up here. Gessarowski co-founded the conglomerate Art B, which looted the Polish banking system. Then Gassierowski fled the country. He moved to Israel to avoid extradition in 1991. The Washington Post explained the criminal enterprise. The company's founders discovered that a helicopter could move cash around Poland faster than the antiquated banking system could clear checks. Art B shuffled about $18 billion through the bank.
Starting point is 00:50:22 banking system, picking up an estimated $360 million on interest on money that was in several accounts at the same time. A Polish court convicted Gassiarowski's business partner, Boguslaw Bogzik. Radio Free Europe reported, Bogzik was found guilty of cheating the Polish banking system out of 424 million Zlottis, $94 million, $94 million, defrauding a bank, bribing bank clerks and carrying out financial misdeeds connected with his company, Art B. As of the year 2000, Polish investigators estimated that Bagsek may still have some $40 million abroad, and Gassierowski twice that amount. After moving to Israel, Gassierowski reinvented
Starting point is 00:50:54 himself as a philanthropist, but failed to pay back the people he defrauded. J.MMI is raising money for a partnership with Gassiarowski's Helping Hand Coalition, claiming to bring aid to thousands of impoverished Holocaust Survivor Jews in desperate need, but it is impossible to know how much money is actually going to the Helping Hand Coalition. So on paper, this guy is working with a foundation that helps an Israeli nonprofit that helps Holocaust survivors. Then you look into it and it's like, no, So this guy defrauded the Polish banking system to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. And whatever he's doing now, this coalition, now that he's fled to Israel to avoid prosecution, is some kind of con, right?
Starting point is 00:51:32 It's a Holocaust survivor con. Like, he is stealing money from Holocaust survivors. It doesn't get much lower. And David Taylor's helping. Yeah. That's about as bad as it gets. Yeah, it's really bad. it's like the worst side hustle ever after already doing all the worst things he ever did you know what I mean
Starting point is 00:51:51 yeah and I'd love to know how that conversation started like hey I hear you in some really fucked up shit David E Taylor you know you're trafficking people committing all sorts of sex crimes how would you like to defraud some Holocaust survivors yeah you know and he was like fuck yeah and it's weird this fucking Gassirowski this weirdo is at least I mean he's in good enough odor with the Israeli government that they're not extraditing him and it also I think it's through him. David E. Taylor gets commissioned as an official ambassador for Israel to America. It's not like the Legally an Ambassador.
Starting point is 00:52:23 It's like an honorary thing, right? But like he gets stuff like this, you know? And he's working. He has this, all these different on paper humanitarian enterprises, the Refuge Homes Project, which is supposed to rescue and find homes for children who have been sold. into human sex trafficking, and there's all these different, you know, feeding the poor charities. He's supposed to be the money that gets donated to him, supposed to go to, like, dig water wells
Starting point is 00:52:54 and poor places overseas, providing Thanksgiving and Christmas gifts to thousands of families. There's this disaster aid charity that's real called the Convoy of Miracles that he just, like, lied and pretended to be donating money to. They eventually, like, went to court because they were like, he's not, he's just using our name to steal from people. it's cool stuff so yeah let's talk about well actually let's throw to ads first
Starting point is 00:53:20 because that's probably time for that and then we'll close out this story all I know is what I've been told and that's a half truth is a whole lie for almost a decade the murder of an 18-year-old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky went unsolved, until a local homemaker, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story.
Starting point is 00:53:51 I'm telling you, we know Quincy Kilder, we know. A story that law enforcement used to convict six people, and that got the citizen investigator on national TV. Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran. My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, producer, and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find. I did not know her and I did not kill her, or rape or burn or any of that other stuff that y'all said.
Starting point is 00:54:25 They literally made me say that I took a match and struck and threw it on her. They made me say that I poured gas on her. From Lava for Good, this is Graves County, a show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame. America, y'all better work the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns. Listen to Graves County in the Bone Valley feed
Starting point is 00:54:55 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season ad-free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. From the studio who brought you the Puyton Masker and Murder 101, this is Incells. I am a loser. If I also a woman, I wouldn't date me either.
Starting point is 00:55:25 From the dark corners of the web, an emerging mindset. If I can't have you, girls, I will destroy you. A kind of subculture, a hidden world of resentment, cynicism, anger against women. Seed of Loneliness explodes. I just hate myself. I don't know why you girls aren't attracted to me, but I will punish you all for it. At a deadly tipping point. Incells will be added to the terrorism guide.
Starting point is 00:55:55 Police say a driver intentionally drove into a crowd killing ten people. Tomorrow is the day of retribution. I will have my revenge. This is Incells. Listen to season one of Incells on the I Heart Range. Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2020, a group of young woman in a tidy suburb of New York City found themselves in an AI-fueled nightmare.
Starting point is 00:56:23 Someone was posting photos. It was just me naked. Well, not me, but me with someone else's body parts on my body parts that looked exactly like my own. I wanted to throw up. I wanted to scream. It happened in Levittown, New York. But reporting this series took us through the darkest corners of the internet
Starting point is 00:56:44 and to the front lines of a global battle against deep fake pornography. This should be illegal, but what is this? This is a story about a technology that's moving faster than the law and about vigilantes trying to stem the tide. I'm Margie Murphy. And I'm Olivia Carval. This is Levitown, a new podcast from IHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg and Collidoscope. Listen to Levittown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast.
Starting point is 00:57:11 Find it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Cheryl McCollum, host of the podcast Zone 7. Zone 7 ain't a place. It's a way of life. I've worked hundreds of cold cases you've heard of, and thousands you haven't. We started this podcast to teach the importance of teamwork and solving these crazy crimes. Come join us in learning from detectives, prosecutors, authors, canine handlers, forensic experts, and most importantly, victims' family members. Listen to Zone 7 with Cheryl McCollum on the IHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcast.
Starting point is 00:57:59 And we're back. So the most detailed account we have from a former member is a guy named Chris Sorensen, who I chatted about a little earlier. Chris talked to the News Herald in 2019 after escaping, and he found the cold. He got involved with David E. Taylor's JMMI as a direct result of reading Taylor's 2009 book, face-to-face appearances from Jesus, The Ultimate Intimacy. Sorensen claims, I got associated with Taylor. I know, right? That's such a fucking title.
Starting point is 00:58:25 It rises his head again. Uh-huh. Sorensen claims, I got associated with Taylor's ministry in January of 2015. That's when I very first heard of the guy. And I saw ads for his book saying, if you buy this book in, you read it, you'll see Jesus. So I took the gamble. I bought it and I read it. And Chris's story is valuable because it illustrates the technical means by which Taylor utilized his followers to reach out and entrap new worker drones. Within days of finishing reading the book, Sorensen wakes up.
Starting point is 00:58:52 He's just finished this and there's a Facebook message from JMMI, from Taylor's Colt, written by someone, and he doesn't know at the time, is written by someone living in a warehouse owned by the cold in Michigan. And the message said, Jesus told me to reach out to you. I was in prayer last night, and I was drawn to your page to contact you. And Sorensen is like,
Starting point is 00:59:12 oh, wow, I just read your book and now you're reaching out to me. I was so honored. You see why this would be effective, right? Right. Someone has just, and it feels like, well, how could they have known
Starting point is 00:59:21 unless God told them, right? Now, Sorensen, on the strength of this, because he's so overwhelmed by what's happened, and I was in a vulnerable point in his life, he joins the cult, gives himself up entirely, he starts working on their Michigan property full time. And in short order, he's the one sending spam messages to people on Facebook. And so he realizes, oh, God didn't tell them to reach out to me, right?
Starting point is 00:59:48 What's actually happening here is that these call center workers who are expected to reach out to hundreds of people a day, they're just going through the Facebook pages of David Taylor and a bunch of other prominent televangelists like Billy Graham or Joel Olstein and they're seeing who is liking each of the posts and then they're just messaging people who have recently liked posts. So Sorensen must have liked the post about the book that he bought and read and they see that and they reach out to him directly. That's the actual way in which they're kind of like picking people to cold call is like whoever's liking these posts from other evangelists, there's a better chance that they're going to be vulnerable
Starting point is 01:00:29 to our shtick, and they're just messaging these people. Each individual, like, call center worker is expected to send something like a thousand messages a day, most of which are copy-pasted from a script. And even though these people are more likely to respond, most recipients of these messages ignore what they're being sent. But every now and then, someone like Sorensen would get a message at just the right time that it feels like something's happening. Like cold calling for G.
Starting point is 01:00:59 Jesus basically. Right. It's like a cold reading kind of technique, but applied to like using social media and kind of some of these other dynamics. Sorensen told the News Herald, quote, during his six months with Joshua Media Ministries, Sorensen also said that he was repeatedly told to leave his wife, who was skeptical of Taylor and J.MMI. He said he also witnessed Taylor physically assault other J.MMI members at their building. He recalled Taylor coming in late at night and yelling and screaming at seven men. He just started going off on the one guy and just started slapping him, Sorensen said. He slapped him two or three times, knocked him to the ground, and then just grab him by the collar and shook him. He went after another, slapped them across the face, pushed them to the ground, sit over them. Sorensen said that four of the men were being corrected for smoking weed and two of them for interactions with females. The seventh happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. So, you know, this is just a guy who feels secure, just physically abusing at random members of the cult. This is probably another part of like what keeps people in line is just like
Starting point is 01:02:01 this fear of being beaten, of being targeted like this. Now, as is usually the case with Colts, there were, as I've said, numerous red flags and signs that shit was wrong well before the raids. In 2014, they were audited for massive tax fraud. They lost their tax exempt status at least twice over the years and in both instances got it back after less than a year. Groups like Trinity published and directly mailed detailed reports about suspected fraud to the IRS, but this did not create any kind of public outrage or knowledge of what was going on, in spite of the fact that by 2016, local police in Taylor, Michigan, had received at least 30 calls about JMMI. Some of these were non-issues, but others were complaints from friends and family of cult members. And in one case,
Starting point is 01:02:45 there was a bomb threat made by a former member against the organization. According to the police report, the man was, quote, angry that God created him, but he could couldn't kill God, so he would kill the pastor of J.M.I. I mean, go for it. Go for it. Fine, man. In this case, you pick the right guy. But there was no, like, there was no evidence that he actually did anything. And when the police responded, they're like, do you want us to search the church for anything suspicious or bring in a bomb dog? And church officials like, no, you don't need to come inside. We're good. Don't worry about it. Um, don't worry about it.
Starting point is 01:03:24 Um, in June of 2018, a former Jamie, my member reported an assault at the church. Uh, this woman said that she had been there five days earlier to see her father and sister who were both members. And once she was entered, she was confronted by, uh, church members about her bad attitude and told to leave the church and then was forcibly pushed and pulled from the property. A few months after that, a father requested help from the police and getting his son out of the building. He told them that his son worked at the church. but he wasn't sure in what capacity. And police agreed to help and they classified it as a mental health commitment. So several officers, like, showed up and waited for the son to come to his father's vehicle.
Starting point is 01:04:03 And when they did, the officers, like, handcuffed him and put him in the back of a patrol car. While this happened, several men in suits were filming outside of the buildings. Like, there's stuff like this going on for years. In 2017, a guy in his late 50s dies of natural causes during a prayer group at JMMI. and when police and firefighters arrived at like 2.15 at a.m., they, quote, observed a group of people chanting and singing, touching and pressing down on the body. One witness told the police that when people prayed at the church, all of them faint under the light of God. She told police officers that the dead man was sleeping and God will wake him up soon.
Starting point is 01:04:39 Police took the body, obviously. They found a stack of credit cards and ID and turned them over to his wife. And the cause of death was, you know, just heart disease. but like, yeah, it's just one of these like, oh, weird that instead of calling an ambulance, they're just like standing around this guy and trying to bring him back to life through prayer, right? That's a little bit sketchy. Yeah, it's like first responders, but they're just praying. Yeah, right.
Starting point is 01:05:06 So, anyway, that kind of stuff is around for a while until a little bit earlier this year, just really a couple of weeks ago, an FBI raid cracks down on multiple properties, including the mansion in Tampa, where one of the leaders lived, his second in command lived, that was carried out in August. And then later there's raids on their Taylor, Michigan facility and a bunch of other different call centers, like five or six all around the country. The FBI raid revealed 57 victims of forced labor living in the Florida mansion, so that's just one of the buildings. I don't think we know entirely how many victims have been found yet, and I don't think they're fully done with the raids. Um, at this moment right now, David Taylor and Michelle Brannon, his second, are accused of running a forced labor and money laundering scheme through their church. Uh, they have, are being charged with, uh, quite a few different felonies right now. Uh, so we'll see what actually happens. Like, I don't know how much it's worth kind of going into the details of the, the, the legal case against them. Um, but they're like, they're, they're looking at some pretty serious charges, right? Uh, And hopefully they won't be free again, I guess.
Starting point is 01:06:22 It's one of those things that it does seem like they flew too close to the sun. And the FBI has them kind of dead to rights here. Like, I'm not optimistic about their chances of getting out of any of this. Jesus is definitely not his friend anymore for fucking sure. No, not his friend anymore. So at least we've got kind of a happy ending, right? It's crazy though. When you look at this, like, okay, this is obviously huge.
Starting point is 01:06:48 making loads of money, just horrible levels of abuse. But it's not even one of the, like, big ones. You know, like how many more of these are going on right now? That is what worries me, man. And I will say as well, I do, I'm not religious. Like, I'm not an atheist, but I'm not religious. But I do hate how these cults use religion always to, like, write it into the wall and just do the most crazy stuff.
Starting point is 01:07:12 Because there are loads of people who are very religious, who are doing the nicest stuff ever, you know. Not because they're religious, but they just, they do nice stuff and they're religious. And yeah, it's like, well done, guys. You've just completely fucking purposely misinterpreted and ruin something for your own gains. I mean, they all do it. I mean, whether it's, you know, some kind of horrible sex scandal in whichever religion or whatever, it's like there's always someone that is cynically just going, yeah, let's just use this, what should be a good thing, and then just absolutely do evil with it.
Starting point is 01:07:45 It's, yeah, it's very, it's not exactly, there's very few redeeming qualities to come out of this story other than eventually they got caught. Eventually they got caught, right? And they got caught. I mean, the level of success these people saw, the primary church banking account had over $41 million in it, right? So, like, these people are doing really well. And, like, the indictment has reported a bunch of transactions. These are just between 2018 and 2025 from Taylor and Brewery. Brannon, that included 125 pounds of super colossal Red King crab legs, six seafood shears and
Starting point is 01:08:22 30 crab cutters, $10,353.44. A Mercedes Binns for $63,000, a Bentley Continental, $70,000 down payment, a crown-line boat, $105,000. Two jet skis and one jet ski trailer, $24,000. Five ATVs, $31,000. dollars. Rolls-Royce Colon-an, $123,000 lease signing payment, and then at least four bulletproof automobiles, or at least bulletproofing on automobiles. It's a little unclear which to me, based on how the indictments written. But yeah, do you ever think? Great stuff. Like, I hear all that, and I'm like, wow, like, you know, I'm breaking my ass to do all these projects and, you know, be an independent journalist. It's like, just start a cult. I could just be an evil cult guy, and I'll literally be able to buy, like.
Starting point is 01:09:09 I think it every day. I think it every day. I get like bulletproof cars and fucking crab's legs and yeah. Oh my gosh. Shit, that's the grift. Fuck. That is the grift. What am I doing?
Starting point is 01:09:20 If only we were completely evil, you know? Right. If only I gave up my soul entirely, the amount of money I could be making. Holy shit. Well, that's a good retirement plan at least. Jake. Yeah, thanks for that. Mm-hmm.
Starting point is 01:09:34 Well, all right, you got any plugables to plug before we roll out here? That is part two. Honestly, mostly. Sad oligarch too As I said in the last episode I'm really really happy with this We've had to really scrape At the research on this
Starting point is 01:09:50 Even people we've reached out to Are just like it's like brick wall You know and it's very hard to get Right information but we've really made it work in a way That I think is It's kind of come out even better The limitations actually Because you kind of have to go around the houses
Starting point is 01:10:04 To get there and on the way you find a lot of interesting stuff So yeah Sad oligarch too definitely check that out and popular front is always booming but also I've got a new documentary series I can plug that away days that is
Starting point is 01:10:18 it's gonna it's we've got the first episode is out but it's a very very big big project which you know we haven't bit enough more than we can chew but almost it's like we almost did but yeah people go to you know YouTube.com
Starting point is 01:10:35 slash at away days TV obviously it's the video version of a lot of the stuff they would have heard in the doc here, in the podcast that we did. Excellent. We'll fucking check that out. Sad oligarch, away days, and popular front, all of Jake Hanrahan's vast media empire.
Starting point is 01:10:53 And yeah, join us Colt when he finally starts one. Yes, soon. Unless I've started a cult by then, in which case. We can just, we can just collapse. We'll have a cult fight. Yeah, yeah. There we go. All right, everybody.
Starting point is 01:11:05 This has been behind the bastards. next week we'll be back with maybe a slightly different cult. Brilliant. Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com. Or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Starting point is 01:11:25 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the Bastards is now available on YouTube, new episodes every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel, YouTube.com, slash at Behind the Bastards Johnny Knoxville here Check out Crimeless Hillbilly Heist
Starting point is 01:11:43 My new true crime podcast From Smartless media Campside Media and Big Money Players It's the true story Of the almost perfect crime And the Nimrods who almost pulled it off It was kind of like the perfect storm in a sewer That was dumb
Starting point is 01:11:57 Do not follow my example Listen to Crimless Hillbilly Heist On the IHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. The murder of an 18-year-old girl in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved for years. Until a local housewife, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story. America, y'all better work the hell up.
Starting point is 01:12:28 Bad things happens to good people in small towns. Listen to Graves County on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season ad-free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. On this podcast in cells, we unpack an emerging mindset. I am a loser. If I also will not want to tame me either. A hidden world of resentment, cynicism, anger against women at a deadly tipping point. Tomorrow is the day of retribution, the day in which I will have my revenge. This is InCells.
Starting point is 01:13:15 Listen to Season 1 of InCells on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2020, a group of young woman found themselves in an AI-fueled nightmare. Someone was posting photos. It was just me naked. Well, not me, but me with someone else's body party. This is Levitown, a new podcast from IHeart Podcasts, Bloomberg and Colliderscope about the rise of deep fate pornography and the battle to stop it. Listen to Levitown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast.
Starting point is 01:13:48 Find it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.