Part Two: Bishop David E. Taylor: Jesus Christ's Best Friend

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 horrific story.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also 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 isn't the thing that people believe exists. But the
Kingdom of God is in the cult that the FBI

(00:22):
just rated. Back with me as my guest, Jake Hanrahan,
the host of Popular Front and a podcast on our network,
sad Oligarch.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
Jake, Yeah, you doing good. I'm good. I'm ready to
learn again about Jesus and his pretend best mate.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
And his pretend best friend. DAVIDY.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
Taylor.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
Yes, that is. I've never heard anyone claim to be
Jesus his best friend. So he's at least he's at
least you know, creative, Yeah, a thinker.

Speaker 2 (00:50):
Yeah, not since like the Bible, you know.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
Right, I don't even think anyone of the Bible had
the balls to be like, no, he's my best No,
that's true.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
Like you.

Speaker 1 (01:05):
So, by twenty nineteen, David E. Taylor's ministry had found
and thoroughly explored it's 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 or
a price. He had a different courses of lectures in
which he would walk and these are like you know,

(01:26):
one of his big money making things is he'll have
these huge he'll fill out like a stadium or whatever
or one of these like almost like an MLM right
where they'll they'll rent out these huge public speaking spaces
and he'll he and like his top. He has a
couple of pastors that work under him. Will we'll teach
you right for like they'll do like a three day
lecture series, you know, on how to make personal contact

(01:48):
with Jesus and then how to use your newfound friendship
with Jesus to get stuff primarily to cure you and
save you're sick or dying or dead loved ones. Right
like that is the 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

(02:13):
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 twenty nineteen Twitter post from David Taylor's account. Thousands
are being healed of cancer through the life and ministry
of David D. Taylor. Call one eight seven seven eight

(02:35):
four three four five six seven for more information. It's
you'd think, I don't know. This is the part that
I have trouble getting my head into. Is somebody who's like, well, yeah,
this must be how getting cured works, like this must
be how God works. Is like I have to call
a call in line to get in good with this

(02:57):
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.

Speaker 2 (03:08):
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 dap outfit that doesn't seem to be
like that much new to what they're doing other than
maybe the esthetics of it. But yeah, no, it's it's
I guess it's just praying on you know, very people

(03:30):
are very loose end but still plenty of colts do that,
but I guess this one took off.

Speaker 1 (03:35):
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, to an extent that is sometimes funny.
It's 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
big in person events, one of which was called Miracles

(03:58):
for the Maimed. And I'm just gonna show you the
ad image that they had here because it's it's a
special one.

Speaker 2 (04:05):
Look at that.

Speaker 1 (04:06):
It's a photo of David E. Taylor holding like thirty
different like walking canes and crutches like he's just got
dozens of them in his hands.

Speaker 2 (04:17):
Yeah, I mean he's inventive. If nothing else, you know.

Speaker 1 (04:21):
He's a Yeah, he's got like a white suit that's
chased with gold filigree, and yeah, it's Miracles for the
Maimed with David E. Taylor. 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.

Speaker 2 (04:43):
I mean he's so like, Maimed is pretty heavy. Like
if you're like, oh, I can't work very well to
be maimed. You've been bringing fucking badly up.

Speaker 1 (04:53):
You've been maimed.

Speaker 2 (04:53):
Yeah. Yeah, it's like he went in really heavy with that.

Speaker 3 (04:57):
Man.

Speaker 2 (04:57):
Yeah, very fun well, not funny for the people, but
the image fucking incredible. I'm not very fun I really
really like like the isthetic of it. It's it's very
like two thousands era, but just with the added caveat
of being like a weird god call.

Speaker 1 (05:11):
It's great, right, yeah, it's it's it's 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. 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 like speeches, right like, or one

(05:35):
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 Named with David E. Taylor from his Miracles David
Taylor Miracles in America stream. This one has seven hundred
and forty one views. It was streamed eight months ago,
so we're not talking about a massive channel. But clearly

(05:57):
I think he's filling these in person rooms because he's
got like what I 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 Taylor showed up to
see him speak and give his like because this is
part of his global Miracles in America crusade against cancer.

(06:19):
So it's yeah, he's this is appealing to some number
of people who are like desperate as a result of
their fucking horrible cancer 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.

(06:41):
I'm guessing it was also the intro video that played
at the symposium or whatever it was like before David
got on stage and started talking. But let's just watch
this piece of AI generated Colt Schlock together.

Speaker 3 (06:54):
Take America, a nation formed by God, destined to be
a light to the world, but for centuries darkness has
fought to claim its soul.

Speaker 1 (07:09):
I've kept them about chasing wealth power and the guy
talking just looks like a ring race.

Speaker 2 (07:18):
It's like Assassin's creed is.

Speaker 3 (07:20):
Yeah, yet in the hour of her greatest peril, heaven.

Speaker 1 (07:26):
Not sure what president that's supposed to be.

Speaker 3 (07:28):
From the throne of eternity. The king of Kings beheld
the light.

Speaker 1 (07:35):
Now I'm going to stop us right here, yeah, because
this is I mean, it's just weird Ai Schlock. Well,
what's interesting to me is Jesus's room because at the
point at which we stopped at, Jesus is like walking
around in this like gold chased room. Yeah, and there's
like thirty beds in it that are just empty. Yeah,
Like Jesus, the dozens of beds is weird to me, Like,

(07:58):
why does Jesus need that many beds in his room?
What is Jesus doing that requires all of those bets?
Does Jesus keep a hair up, because I don't know
why you would have that many bets.

Speaker 2 (08:11):
Also, like everything is gold plated, gold gilded.

Speaker 1 (08:14):
I mean, like it does all look like Donald Trump's
living room.

Speaker 2 (08:17):
Yes, yeah, Like think what you want about religion, 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.

Speaker 1 (08:26):
He was into gold, right, he was not.

Speaker 2 (08:29):
Into like loads of gold. He was into like looking
after lepers and like people. Yeah, he wouldn't like get
me gold everywhere, Like it's so silly man.

Speaker 1 (08:38):
Fuck yeah. Definitely. Like 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 palace guy.

Speaker 2 (08:50):
Yeah, Jesus not known to be a palace guy. Definitely not.

Speaker 3 (08:56):
So.

Speaker 1 (08:56):
Yeah. And what's fun here is obviously that's all AI general, right,
like that, 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.

Speaker 2 (09:15):
It's yeah, it's pretty cool. It's like I mean, I
always say the reason that, well, in my opinion, that
I feel like Black Mirror is terrible now is because
real life and I know there's such an act 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.

Speaker 1 (09:35):
I've had the same prop where like when I first
started watching the show ten years ago or whatever, it
was like, oh, wow, this seems like incredible, it could happen,
And now it's like, well this is I mean, yeah,
we're here, and it's just slightly less upsetting than the
real thing.

Speaker 2 (09:49):
Yeah exactly.

Speaker 1 (09:50):
Yeah, I oh what I wouldn't give for a sand Junipero.
That's not what we're getting at all.

Speaker 2 (09:56):
Yeah. Right, Instead we have like Jesus gold plate, Harrem
room to Christations fuck palace. Yeah yeah exactly that. Yeah
that sucks.

Speaker 4 (10:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (10:09):
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 beds more? Because David E. Taylor also
owns a mansion with a lot of beds in it
and was definitely running a sex colt. But also there's
no way they prompted it to look that's just what
the AI thing came up with. I'm guessing. I'm sure
they didn't specify he should have dozens of weird beds

(10:30):
in his mansion. They were just like Jesus in a
palace looking out a window or something. That would be
my assumption, but I don't know. It's weird how directly again,
it grafts to the actual cult that David E. Taylor
is running, which has a bunch of mansions with dozens
of beds in them.

Speaker 2 (10:46):
Right, And sometimes they do do this thing where they
kind of you know, hide in plain side, like oh yeah,
put that in there. Well, 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 in heaven
and he's not Jesus, but you know, something similar maybe
make them not not so shocked. I don't know.

Speaker 1 (11:07):
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 they're not it's you see here,
they're not living.

Speaker 2 (11:27):
Well, yeah, it's horrible. What is that? Yeah, so for
anyone listening, it's just like tents inside like people sleeping on. Oh,
it's horrible.

Speaker 1 (11:36):
That tent was like a homeless shelter. I'd say, like
that looks like maybe an okay, homeless shelter or like, yeah,
like a femaus shelter. People just got forced out of
their homes and you're quickly making space for them.

Speaker 2 (11:47):
It's that white tent though, Like that's creeping me out
that it's like some kind of weed medical I don't know. Yeah,
it looks weird. Yeah, it's like for a homeless sheller,
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 judging it.

Speaker 1 (12:04):
Out 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 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

(12:26):
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 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 are helping

(12:47):
to run the cult. 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
watch when they fell behind on producer stuff like that.
For example, on October sixth of twenty twenty, Taylor's second
in command sent a text message to the media team

(13:08):
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, and I
go my sleep, No going to sleep. The grammar's not great.

Speaker 2 (13:21):
That's so dark. No, No, it's just like the whenever
like people are restricting sleep, it's like always yop the
lowest rung of like just nightmas shit.

Speaker 1 (13:30):
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. I feel like 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

(13:51):
really big.

Speaker 2 (13:52):
It's why like you know, the CIA would doing it
when they were torturing people. And I'll be right, of course,
same deff, 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.

Speaker 1 (14:06):
Yeah, 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 that you've gotten to 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

(14:27):
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 him, and they're at the top top of

(14:49):
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 Tailor's demands around the clock. Taylor and
brann and Brannon 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

(15:09):
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 Brannan and the other couple
of people, leading it to the actual nuts and bolt
sex trafficking work that David E. Taylor required of them.
For the DOJ. Taylor demanded that his armor bearers transport
women from ministry houses, airports, and other locations to Taylor's

(15:32):
location and ensured the women transported to Taylor took Plan
B emergency contraceptives. So not only are these armor bearers
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

(15:55):
he must be doing himself. And these are women maybe
who are more prominent in the 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 cult member fancies his eye,
he'll bring them in. And these guys are trafficking them
and giving them morning after pills, right, which seems to

(16:16):
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 didn't want to take any chances.

Speaker 2 (16:27):
It always gets so disgusting, don't it.

Speaker 1 (16:30):
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, 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. The
women brought to Taylors seem to have mostly been female

(16:53):
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 kept these women from coming out. And I'm going

(17:15):
to quote now from an article on Detroit Local four news.
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

(17:36):
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 and send them to me so that like
I have, yeah, the ability to I have revenge porn
on you.

Speaker 2 (17:56):
Yeah, that's sort doctor to frame as the assignment, Like
you're gonna basically get yourself in a position that's gonna
be you know, you're gonna be even more malleable, and
it's your assignment like from God, Like oh, it's just.

Speaker 1 (18:12):
Yeah, right, yeah, I mean evil's the right word for it.
And you know what's not evil though, I mean they
might be. I can't promise that one way or the other.
But here's some ads and we're bad. Okay, So we're

(18:35):
talking about the sex trafficking. David's most prominent alleged victim,
and the woman who's given us most details about how
this process worked was a gospel singer named Vicki Yohe
and prior this is like she was she was she
was is fairly prominent within like the world of Christian
pop music. Prior to meeting Taylor Yohe was a Dove

(18:57):
Award nominated musician. And you probably haven't heard of the
Devil Ward 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 they're Grammy, right.
So she's not like a celebrity in normal world terms,

(19:20):
but she's famous within like the evangelic like the Pentecostal
and the charismatic chunks of the evangelical community. So she
had like 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 cloud to actually escape, and
that's why she's able to. She gives us a lot

(19:41):
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 some
ability to actually fight back openly, and she she has
been for years by the way. She came out a
while ago and has was one of the people who
was first kind of detailing the actual extent of his

(20:02):
abuse beyond just like tax fraud. So he and Yohey
met at a church event in twenty seventeen, 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

(20:25):
upseting fundamentally, But she feels drawn to him, and she
does consent to starting a sexual relationship with him, which
which lasts about sixteen 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, Yohe has repeatedly told reporters that this

(20:48):
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 true. Sure,
Like that's I don't I don't doubt her at all.

Speaker 2 (21:08):
Understand horrible, right, No, just disgusting, Like and I just.

Speaker 1 (21:11):
Don't get how calling someone a spiritual your spiritual daughter
works as a flirtation method.

Speaker 2 (21:18):
No, unless you're like as he is is a.

Speaker 1 (21:21):
Praved or again you're you've 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 like you have to almost have had, right.

Speaker 2 (21:38):
They have you seen dog tooth Like it's been a
long time. But there's a there's like kind of a
I mean, I guess kind of a cult vibe amongst
the family there. But they they recontextualize words. It's 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 door like that, it means like this,

(22:01):
And it's like look, no matter what way you look
at it's fucked up. But in there will let you say,
it's just everything is on a different planet by that stage.

Speaker 1 (22:09):
Yeah, and I yeah, I think that that's exactly it, right,
And what you're talking about that is another common cult
tactic is the reframing of words, in part because it
creates a bond. It's the same I 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

(22:29):
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
is an effective cult tactic, both because it makes people
bond and it also cuts people off from the app.

(22:50):
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 I that furthers
this sense of isolation that's necessary for cults to work
the way they work.

Speaker 2 (23:03):
You know, in in group thinking and all that.

Speaker 1 (23:05):
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 Yohi,
Taylor made a habit of buying her expensive gifts, including
lobitine red bottom shoes, a fur coat, and a Jaguar

(23:27):
Sedan during their relationship. She said, some of the money
for gifts came from JMMI 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,

(23:51):
give your mistress a card using church bundy. The answer
is yes, yes, although in a way that isn't easy
necessarily to prove or get do 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 US, and it usually
does not get caught right. Churches are tax exempt, so

(24:14):
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

(24:36):
they have to there, they still have to pay payroll taxes. Right,
It's the same if they pay taxes to their workers,
they still pay payroll taxes. Right. Churches are not exempt
from that sort of thing. Like that's just the way, right,
Like it's it's 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.
I disagree with this. But the church does not have

(24:58):
to pay like a property tax for their church to
continue to exist as a church. But once the money
is going into people 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

(25:19):
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. I think there's a degree to

(25:41):
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.

Speaker 2 (25:59):
Right.

Speaker 1 (26:01):
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, Someone should be paying taxes on these gifts, right,
because you can't give that. You can't give gifts over
a certain amount and not have them be taxed, you know.

(26:21):
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

(26:44):
in the US, right because 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 Democrat like administrations don't really want that
kind to fight either, because the church will always say, oh,
this is this is discrimination, this is anti Christian discrimination.

(27:06):
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 probably have because these churches often, I mean, there's
a lot that they often do. Like it's incredibly common
for churches to basically like expressly give political orders or

(27:30):
tell the congregation this is how you should vote, this
is who you should support politically. And churches aren't supposed
to be able to do that and keep their taxes
in status, but they do all the time because everyone's
scared of pissing these people off.

Speaker 2 (27:44):
Let's 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 be 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?

Speaker 1 (28:02):
Yeah? Yeah, because these 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 these megachurches and these megachurch leaders who have just
buckets of cash. And it's it's also just that's why

(28:22):
it's such a fertile grifting ground. 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

(28:45):
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.
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

(29:08):
fraud and actually looks for stuff like this, and they
published an investigation into tax fraud by DAVIDY. Taylor and
the Joshua Media Ministries International in twenty eighteen. Right, so
this there has been evidence, and this is extremely detailed.
I would call this like a like smoking gun inarguable
report what they put out. I've read through the entire thing.

(29:30):
It is excellent work. It's 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.

Speaker 2 (29:46):
But like how the like I sorry, but like I
guess it's kind of in the way of like, I
guess it's a not a bad idea, Like you know,
like al Capone, they went after his tax It's like, yeah,
it's easy to get him on this right.

Speaker 1 (29:58):
Right, And it's it's proof write 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, you know,
not making it 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

(30:20):
that with tax fraud.

Speaker 2 (30:21):
Right.

Speaker 1 (30:22):
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.

Speaker 2 (30:34):
Is going on. Quote.

Speaker 1 (30:36):
Taylor lives in an apparent lavish lifestyle and appears to
use the church account as his personal piggybank. 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 twenty fourteen He gets
charged with tax fraud in twenty fourteen and his church
loses its taxi status for like a year and then

(30:56):
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 even when they know there's tax fraud
to the extent that the IRS comes after you for
it and takes away your taxis and status, you can
get it back the next year and nothing will happen, right,

(31:17):
because we just don't take these kind of crimes seriously
in the United States.

Speaker 2 (31:22):
It's like legal crime.

Speaker 1 (31:24):
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 twenty eighteen, a
praise a thon where he asked his followers to donate
to sponsor three hundred new students who would be trained
and brought into his ministries volunteers. And I think the
idea was that he would personally instruct these people in

(31:45):
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 medical doctors insurgents can't do. Damn they go
what oh dear? They want to summarize, he claims he
provided housing, meals, clothing, hygien and training for them at

(32:07):
a cost of about one hundred and fifty k for
each student's first year more if their entire family relocated
with them. That comes to a total of forty five
million requested for that project alone. Taylor claims that they
will be provided more than even an accredited Bible college
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

(32:29):
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. They were made
to work at a call center and abused. Right now,

(32:51):
I know some of you may be wanting to get
this point, Robert. You said none of the donated money
went to feeding her sheltering these unpaid 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,

(33:13):
and well, all I have to say to that 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 follower of Tailor's
named Chris Sorenson. 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

(33:36):
fed its worker followers not using the tens of millions
in donations, but via EBT fraud. Right, that's our the car.
If you're poor enough, you get these electronic benefits transfer
cards that'll let you allow you to buy certain kinds
of food and drink. Right, it's for people who will
starve otherwise. You know, that's what EBT is for.

Speaker 2 (33:57):
Yeah, I wondered for a long time what that was at.
So it's like essentially like benefits so you can live
if you lose your job or whatever.

Speaker 1 (34:04):
Yes, right, right, exactly it's supposed to be. It's 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 give gets you
the benefits you need to keep you and your family
from starving. And this is how the cult made sure
that they didn't have to pay even a dime of

(34:25):
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 to, I said Tennessee earlier's
Michigan in order to get electronic benefits transfer cards. Members
then allegedly pooled the cards to an appointed designatee who
would shop for everyone at nearby stores. Every person had

(34:48):
to have an EBT card, a food stamp card. Sore
instance said. They said, if you don't get one, you're
not going to eat. So you have fifty 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, 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.

(35:11):
It's just this cult. He brings in fifty million dollars
in less than a decade just from donations to the
you can Feed people.

Speaker 2 (35:19):
Why those gait 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. I
get Do they think they're untouchable?

Speaker 1 (35:33):
I mean they were for a very long time. Gets
away with this for closing it on twenty 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.
You know, I really I think that there's something pathological
going on. I maybe maybe I'm kind of reading into

(35:55):
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 harm them or their loved ones. But when
the power of those threats started to wane, his reliable

(36:17):
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 fifth,
twenty twenty one, at twelve twenty six am, Taylor texted
to DG, his current armor bearer tasked with communicating his
orders to staff whose identity is known to the Grand jury.
You'll have to raise one hundred and sixty four thousand
dollars today. Each hour you fall behind, consequences will start.

(36:40):
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 twenty one 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 and closing numbers at six pm, they don't
need dinner at all if they do good afterward this time,
and then at the end of the night they may
get a snack for bed, but not much. And this

(37:01):
regiment will go on every day for twenty one days
until they obey take away the food. There will be
other consequences. We must make them fast and pray. He
does two exclamation points at the end of each of
those sentences. I don't know why.

Speaker 2 (37:15):
You can clearly, I think if you are in the
mindset where 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 aides or whatever,
and then you get really, really rich. Anyway, It's like,
I think the whole psychotic element just gets compounded, and

(37:35):
that's what it sounds like there. It's like he thinks he's.

Speaker 1 (37:37):
God, yeah yeah, with a devil maybe yeah 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

(37:59):
punished by being made to work until four am. 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
anytime the money wasn't as much as he wanted, and
it was never as much as he wanted, the staff
was basically banned from sleeping almost entirely right. This is

(38:22):
presented as a mix of punishment and strategy, but the
overall goal was to make sure none of his full
time workers ever get sleep, because that keeps them in
the state. Well, they'll do whatever he says, like zombies.
Like zombies. Here's the indictment again, Honor. About September nineteenth,
at ten twenty one pm, Taylor texted to victim DG, Michelle,
and Kia make them all stand and tell them if

(38:43):
the punishment to four am. Don't work. I'm going to
make it worser and worser. 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.

Speaker 2 (39:00):
The degenerates. Is that what he called them.

Speaker 1 (39:02):
The degenerates? Yes, yes, because they're not. They couldn't make
one hundred and sixty four thousand dollars in a day
like God demanded.

Speaker 2 (39:08):
Wow, you know, it's what Jesus would want.

Speaker 1 (39:11):
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. 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

(39:32):
doing their work or showing change, All Caps. They are
going to the homeless shelter. Right again, this is directly
the threat is I've already reduced you to near homelessness.
If you cross the line, you're out on your ass right.

Speaker 2 (39:47):
Off to take in everything you add anyway.

Speaker 1 (39:49):
You can't even get EBT because we have your EBT
card right, like you're already on it. Your are because
you don't get that forever.

Speaker 2 (39:55):
Right.

Speaker 1 (39:56):
That's the other thing is that like these people are
so comprehensively fucked.

Speaker 2 (40:00):
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 kind of human trafficking ring. If they're
like moving people around just to kind of be in
what was essentially slave labor, taking all their identity, their rights,
making money off them, Like it's a serious criminal enterprise

(40:22):
at this stage.

Speaker 1 (40:23):
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

(40:43):
call centers, and control their access to transportation. 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

(41:07):
we should look into a couple of case studies of
former members who found themselves wrapped up in Taylor's group
and ultimately escaped. One local Houston news station KPRC two
interviewed a friend of a woman who joined the cult
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

(41:28):
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 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

(41:49):
what to believe, who to trust, what churches to trust.
And this is where she says that her friend restored
her faith despite her trauma and found another church, which
is depicted as a positive end in the artic. I
can't help feeling maybe you needed a break from religion
for a while. Maybe maybe like maybe a little while
out there, you know, the rest of your all the

(42:10):
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 Foundations
reporting on their tax fraud and stuff, none of this
is super obvious. There's not any mainstream news articles for

(42:32):
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 thirty first to
August fourth of twenty nineteen, David Taylor held a miracle

(42:54):
crusade against cancer in Taylor, Michigan, and it featured like
One of the people who spoke at the event dent
was Andre Gslarowski, who's the chairman of an Israeli nonprofit
called the Helping Hand Coalition that supports Holocaust survivors. Right
and I'm going to quote from the Trinity Foundations right
up here. Gasarowski co founded the conglomerate art B, which

(43:16):
looted the Polish banking system. Then Gasiroowski fled the country.
He moved to Israel to avoid extradition. In nineteen ninety one,
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 eighteen billion through the banking system, picking up

(43:37):
an estimated three hundred and sixty million an interest on
money that was in several accounts. At the same time,
a Polish court convicted Gasierowski's business partner, Bogoslaw Bogsik. Radio
Free Europe reported Bogsik was found guilty of cheating the
Polish banking system out of four hundred and twenty four
millions lotties ninety four million US dollars, defrauding a bank,
bribing bank clerks, and carrying out financial misdeeds connected with

(43:58):
his company art B. As of the year two thousand,
Polish investigators estimated that Bagsick may still have some forty
million abroad, and Gasierowski twice that amount. After moving to Israel,
Gasiroowski reinvented himself as a philanthropist, but failed to pay
back the people he defrauded. JMMI is raising money for
a partnership with Gasiorowski's Helping Hand Coalition, claiming to bring
aid to thousands of impoverished Holocaust survivors use in desperate need,

(44:21):
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, 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

(44:42):
he's fled to Israel to avoid prosecution is some kind
of con right. It's a Holocaust survivor con like he
is stealing buddy from holocaust SFI it doesn't get and
David Taylor's helping. Yeah, that's about as bad as it gets.

Speaker 2 (44:58):
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?

Speaker 1 (45:06):
Yeah, And I'd love to know how that conversation start.
Was like, hey, I hear you're in some really fucked
up shit, DAVIDY. Taylor. You know you're trafficking people, committing
all sorts of sex crimes. How would you like to
defraud some Holocaust survivors?

Speaker 3 (45:17):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (45:18):
You know, And he was like fuck ya.

Speaker 1 (45:20):
And it's weird, this fucking Gasierowski, this weirdo is at least,
I mean, he's in good enough odor with the Israeli
government that they're not extraditing him. And also I think
it's through him. David E. Taylor gets commissioned as an
official ambassador for Israel to America. It's not like a
like the legally an ambassador. It's like a an honorary thing, right,

(45:41):
But like he's he gets stuff like this, you know,
and he's 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

(46:03):
different you know, feeding the poor charities he's supposed to be.
The money that gets donated him is supposed to go
to like dig water wells in 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

(46:24):
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 because that's
probably time for that, and then we'll close out this
story and we're back. So the most entailed account we

(46:48):
have from a former member is a guy named Chris Sorenson,
who I chatted about a little earlier. Chris talked to
the News Herald in twenty nineteen after escaping and he
found the cold. He got involved with David E. Taylor's
JMA my as a direct result of reading Taylor's two
thousand and nine book Face to Face Appearances from Jesus
The Ultimate Intimacy. Sorenson claims, I got associated with Taylor,

(47:09):
I know, right right.

Speaker 2 (47:11):
Off his head again. Uh huh.

Speaker 1 (47:14):
Sorenson claims, I got associated with Taylor's ministry in January
of twenty fifteen. That's when I very first heard of
the guy, and I saw ads for his book saying
if you buy this book and 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

(47:35):
days of finishing reading the book, Sorenson wakes up, He's
just finished this and there's a Facebook message from JMMI
from Taylor's cult written by someone and he doesn't knows
at the time. It is written by someone living in
a warehouse owned by the Colt 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 Sorenson is like,

(47:58):
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?

Speaker 3 (48:03):
Right?

Speaker 1 (48:04):
Someone has just and it feels like, well, how could
they have known 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

(48:26):
people on Facebook, and so he realizes, oh, God didn't
tell them to reach out to me, right. 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

(48:49):
er 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

(49:10):
posts from other evangelists, there's a better chance that they're
going to be vulnerable 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

(49:33):
every now and then, someone liked Sorensen would get a
message at just the right time that it feels like
something's happening.

Speaker 2 (49:42):
Yeah, cold calling for Jesus basically right.

Speaker 1 (49:46):
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, sorens And also
said that he was repeatedly told to leave his wife,
who was skeptical of Taylor and JMMI. He said he
also witnessed Taylor physically assault other JMMI members at their building.

(50:09):
He recalled Taylor coming in late at night and yelling
and screaming at seven men. He just started going off
on one guy and just started slapping him. Sorenson said.
He slapped him two or three times, knocked him to
the ground, and then just grabbed him by the collar
and shook him. He went after another, slapped them across
the face, pushed them to the ground, sit over them.
Sorenson said that four of the men were being corrected
for smoking weed and two of them for interactions with females.

(50:32):
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 COLT. And this is probably another part of
like what keeps people in line is just like this
fear of being beaten, of being targeted like this. Now,
as is usually the case with colts, there were, as

(50:54):
I've said, numerous red flags and signs that shit was
wrong well before the raids. In twenty fourteen, they were
audited for massive tax fraud. They lost their taxi 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
of the irs, but this did not create any kind

(51:14):
of public outrage or knowledge of what was going on,
in spite of the fact that by twenty sixteen, local
police and Taylor, Michigan had received at least thirty calls
about JMMI. Some of these were non issues, but others
were complaints from friends and family of cult members, and
in one case there was a bomb threat made by
a former member against the organization. According to the police report,

(51:37):
the man was quote angry that God created him, but
he couldn't kill God, so he would kill the pastor
of JMMI.

Speaker 2 (51:43):
I mean go.

Speaker 1 (51:45):
For hid by fine man. In this case. You picked
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 a bomb dog? And
church officials like, no, you don't need to come inside.
We're good.

Speaker 2 (52:06):
Don't worry about it.

Speaker 1 (52:07):
Don't worry about it. In June of twenty eighteen, a
former jam My member reported an assault at the church.
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 church
members about her bad attitude and told to leave the church,
and then was forcibly pushed and pulled from the property.

(52:29):
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 sharing with capacity, and police agreed to
help and call 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, and when they did,

(52:50):
the officers like handcuffed him and put him in the back
of a patrol car. While this happened, several minute suits
were filming outside of the buildings, like there's stuff like
this going on for years. And twenty seventeen, a guy
in his late fifties dies of natural causes during a
pro group at JMMI, and when police and firefighters arrived
at like two fifteen am, they quote observed a group

(53:11):
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.
Police took the body obviously, they found a stack of
credit cards and ID and turned them over to his wife,

(53:32):
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.

Speaker 2 (53:46):
Yeah, it's like first responders, but they're just praying.

Speaker 1 (53:50):
Yeah, right, 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 live.
That was carried out in August, and then later there's

(54:11):
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 fifty seven victims of
forced labor living in the Florida Mansions. 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 at this moment. Right now,

(54:35):
David Taylor and Michelle Brannon, his second, are accused of
running a forced labor and money laundering scheme through their church.
They have are being charged with quite a few different
felonies right now, 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 legal case against them, but

(54:58):
they're like they're looking at some pretty serious charges right
and hopefully they won't be free again. I guess 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.

Speaker 2 (55:21):
Jesus is definitely not his friend anymore, for fucking sure.

Speaker 1 (55:24):
No, not his friend anymore. So at least we've got
kind of a happy ending, right.

Speaker 2 (55:29):
It's crazy though when you look at this, like, Okay,
this is obviously huge, making loads of money, just horrible
levels of abuse, but it's not even one of the
big ones, you know, Like how many more of these
are going on right now? That is what worries me, man.
And yeah, I will say as well, I do. I'm
not religious, like I'm not an atheist, but I'm not religious.

(55:51):
But I do hate how these cults use religion always
to like ride it into the wall and just do
the most crazy stuff, 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

(56:13):
ruined 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. It's yeah,
it's very It's not exactly there's very few redeeming qualities

(56:38):
to come out of this story other than eventually they
got caught.

Speaker 1 (56:41):
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 forty one million dollars in it, right,
So like whilst people are doing really well, and like
the the indictment has reported a bunch of transactions you're
just between twenty eighteen and twenty twenty from Taylor and
Brannon that included one hundred and twenty five pounds of

(57:04):
super colossal red king crab legs, six seafood shears and
thirty crab cutters, ten thousand, three hundred and fifty three
dollars and forty four cents, a Mercedes Bins for sixty
three thousand dollars, a Bentley Continental seventy thousand dollars down payment,
a Crown Line boat one hundred and five thousand dollars,
two jet skis and one jet ski trailer, twenty four

(57:24):
grand five ATVs, thirty one thousand dollars, rolls, Royce cullin
an one hundred and twenty three thousand dollars least signing payment,
and then at least four bulletproof automobiles or at least
bulletproofing on automobiles. It's a little unclear witch to me
based on how they're the indictment's written. But yeah, did
you have that great stuff?

Speaker 2 (57:43):
Like I hear all that and I'm like wow, like,
you know, on break my ass to do all these projects,
and you know, be an independent journalist.

Speaker 1 (57:51):
Is just start a cold.

Speaker 2 (57:52):
That should just be an evil colt guy and I'll
literally be able to buy it.

Speaker 1 (57:55):
I think it every day, think it. Every day.

Speaker 2 (57:57):
I get like bulletproof cars and fuckings like, yeah, oh my.

Speaker 1 (58:02):
Gosh it, that's the grift. Fuck, that is the what
am I doing?

Speaker 2 (58:05):
If only we were completely evil, you know.

Speaker 1 (58:08):
Right, if only I gave up my soul entirely, the
amount of money I could be making.

Speaker 2 (58:12):
Holy shit.

Speaker 1 (58:13):
Well that's a good retirement plan at least.

Speaker 2 (58:17):
Yeah, thanks for that.

Speaker 1 (58:18):
M Well, all right, you got any pluggables to plug
before we roll out here? That is Part two.

Speaker 2 (58:24):
Honestly mostly sad oligarch too. As I said in the
last episode, I'm really really happy with this. We've we've
had to really scrape at the research on this, even people,
we've reached out to are just like it's like brick wall,
you know, and it's very hard to get information. But
we've we've really made it work in a way that
I think has it's kind of come out even better

(58:47):
the limitations actually because you kind of have to go
around the houses to get there, and on the way
you find a lot of interesting stuff. So yeah, sad
Oligarch too definitely checked that out. And Popular Front is
always booming. But also I've got a new documentary series
you can plug that Await Days that is it's gonna
it's it's we've got the first episode is out, but

(59:07):
it's you know, it's a very very big, big project,
which you know, we haven't been enough more than we
can tube almost it's like we almost did. But yeah,
if people go to uh, you know, YouTube dot com
slash at Awahite Days TV, obviously it's the video version
of a lot of the stuff they would have heard
in the doc here in the in the podcast that

(59:28):
we did excellent.

Speaker 1 (59:29):
Well fucking check that out, sad Oligarch, Away Days and
Popular Front all of Jake Hanrahan's vast media empire, and yeah,
join us cult when he finally starts one. Yeah, soon
us I've started a cult by then, in which case.

Speaker 2 (59:45):
We can just we can just call that a cult fight.

Speaker 1 (59:47):
Yeah yeah, uh, there we go. All right, everybody, this
has been Behind the Bastards. Next week we'll be back
with maybe a slightly different cult brilliant.

Speaker 4 (01:00:01):
Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
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(01:00:22):
at Behind the Bastards