Speaker 1: Also media. Oh, welcome back to Behind the Bastards. That's
Speaker 1: the podcast that this is right now. And yeah, we're
Speaker 1: talking about the Kingdom of God. Not the Kingdom of
Speaker 1: God isn't the thing that people believe exists. But the
Speaker 1: Kingdom of God is in the cult that the FBI
Speaker 1: just rated. Back with me as my guest, Jake Hanrahan,
Speaker 1: the host of Popular Front and a podcast on our network,
Speaker 1: sad Oligarch.
Speaker 2: Jake, Yeah, you doing good. I'm good. I'm ready to
Speaker 2: learn again about Jesus and his pretend best mate.
Speaker 1: And his pretend best friend. DAVIDY.
Speaker 2: Taylor.
Speaker 1: Yes, that is. I've never heard anyone claim to be
Speaker 1: Jesus his best friend. So he's at least he's at
Speaker 1: least you know, creative, Yeah, a thinker.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not since like the Bible, you know.
Speaker 1: Right, I don't even think anyone of the Bible had
Speaker 1: the balls to be like, no, he's my best No,
Speaker 1: that's true.
Speaker 2: Like you.
Speaker 1: So, by twenty nineteen, David E. Taylor's ministry had found
Speaker 1: and thoroughly explored it's sweet spot, finding desperate people who
Speaker 1: were either sick themselves or who had ailing loved ones,
Speaker 1: and promising to convince God to solve their problems or
Speaker 1: a price. He had a different courses of lectures in
Speaker 1: which he would walk and these are like you know,
Speaker 1: one of his big money making things is he'll have
Speaker 1: these huge he'll fill out like a stadium or whatever
Speaker 1: or one of these like almost like an MLM right
Speaker 1: where they'll they'll rent out these huge public speaking spaces
Speaker 1: and he'll he and like his top. He has a
Speaker 1: couple of pastors that work under him. Will we'll teach
Speaker 1: you right for like they'll do like a three day
Speaker 1: lecture series, you know, on how to make personal contact
Speaker 1: with Jesus and then how to use your newfound friendship
Speaker 1: with Jesus to get stuff primarily to cure you and
Speaker 1: save you're sick or dying or dead loved ones. Right
Speaker 1: like that is the the entire grift here is that
Speaker 1: I will teach you how to meet Jesus so you
Speaker 1: can get favors from him and specifically like saving your
Speaker 1: loved one favors. David's marketing people, who are again all
Speaker 1: unpaid cold members, working and living together in these giant
Speaker 1: warehouse spaces that he's bought across the country, managed his
Speaker 1: social media and they would draw people to the call
Speaker 1: in line with posts like this and this is a
Speaker 1: July twenty nineteen Twitter post from David Taylor's account. Thousands
Speaker 1: are being healed of cancer through the life and ministry
Speaker 1: of David D. Taylor. Call one eight seven seven eight
Speaker 1: four three four five six seven for more information. It's
Speaker 1: you'd think, I don't know. This is the part that
Speaker 1: I have trouble getting my head into. Is somebody who's like, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: this must be how getting cured works, like this must
Speaker 1: be how God works. Is like I have to call
Speaker 1: a call in line to get in good with this
Speaker 1: one dude who has like the connection to the on high.
Speaker 1: That's the part where I'm like, man, I just don't
Speaker 1: I just don't get that. I don't get believing that
Speaker 1: that's that's such a stretch.
Speaker 2: He doesn't even really come across as particularly charismatic, Like
Speaker 2: you know, there's other than his Like I mean, let's
Speaker 2: be honest, pretty dap outfit that doesn't seem to be
Speaker 2: like that much new to what they're doing other than
Speaker 2: maybe the esthetics of it. But yeah, no, it's it's
Speaker 2: I guess it's just praying on you know, very people
Speaker 2: are very loose end but still plenty of colts do that,
Speaker 2: but I guess this one took off.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's really what it comes down to,
Speaker 1: is that like this is and it's just it's just
Speaker 1: so blatant. Yeah, to an extent that is sometimes funny.
Speaker 1: It's it's usually more sad than funny. But when you
Speaker 1: go through kind of the post that this dedicated PR
Speaker 1: team is putting together, they're throwing together advertisements for like
Speaker 1: big in person events, one of which was called Miracles
Speaker 1: for the Maimed. And I'm just gonna show you the
Speaker 1: ad image that they had here because it's it's a
Speaker 1: special one.
Speaker 2: Look at that.
Speaker 1: It's a photo of David E. Taylor holding like thirty
Speaker 1: different like walking canes and crutches like he's just got
Speaker 1: dozens of them in his hands.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean he's inventive. If nothing else, you know.
Speaker 1: He's a Yeah, he's got like a white suit that's
Speaker 1: chased with gold filigree, and yeah, it's Miracles for the
Speaker 1: Maimed with David E. Taylor. With God, nothing shall be impossible.
Speaker 1: I think we're meant to take from this is that, like, well,
Speaker 1: all these people who came in needing crutches and Walkers
Speaker 1: and Canes don't need him anymore. He cured the maimed.
Speaker 1: So David E. Taylor's just got to take care of
Speaker 1: all this trash now.
Speaker 2: I mean he's so like, Maimed is pretty heavy. Like
Speaker 2: if you're like, oh, I can't work very well to
Speaker 2: be maimed. You've been bringing fucking badly up.
Speaker 1: You've been maimed.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's like he went in really heavy with that.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 2: Yeah, very fun well, not funny for the people, but
Speaker 2: the image fucking incredible. I'm not very fun I really
Speaker 2: really like like the isthetic of it. It's it's very
Speaker 2: like two thousands era, but just with the added caveat
Speaker 2: of being like a weird god call.
Speaker 1: It's great, right, yeah, it's it's it's it's a special picture.
Speaker 1: And when I saw that beautiful image, I had to
Speaker 1: know more. So I found one of David's YouTube channels
Speaker 1: that still hosted the Miracles for the Maimed video. A
Speaker 1: lot of his stuff's been taken offline since the FBI raid,
Speaker 1: and so I found this is like a stream of
Speaker 1: one of his like like speeches, right like, or one
Speaker 1: of his like events. You know, I told you that
Speaker 1: he goes up on stage and he'll do these like
Speaker 1: multi hour long talks and this like. You can find
Speaker 1: this whole video online on YouTube. It's called Miracles for
Speaker 1: the Named with David E. Taylor from his Miracles David
Speaker 1: Taylor Miracles in America stream. This one has seven hundred
Speaker 1: and forty one views. It was streamed eight months ago,
Speaker 1: so we're not talking about a massive channel. But clearly
Speaker 1: I think he's filling these in person rooms because he's
Speaker 1: got like what I the image I just showed you
Speaker 1: of him with all the crutches that was like a
Speaker 1: billboard advertising this thing for weeks and so people who
Speaker 1: just didn't know much about David Taylor showed up to
Speaker 1: see him speak and give his like because this is
Speaker 1: part of his global Miracles in America crusade against cancer.
Speaker 1: So it's yeah, he's this is appealing to some number
Speaker 1: of people who are like desperate as a result of
Speaker 1: their fucking horrible cancer and they show up in person.
Speaker 1: And this is how I think this is a like
Speaker 1: in the YouTube video, this is just like what starts
Speaker 1: the stream off is there's this weird AI generated intro video.
Speaker 1: I'm guessing it was also the intro video that played
Speaker 1: at the symposium or whatever it was like before David
Speaker 1: got on stage and started talking. But let's just watch
Speaker 1: this piece of AI generated Colt Schlock together.
Speaker 3: Take America, a nation formed by God, destined to be
Speaker 3: a light to the world, but for centuries darkness has
Speaker 3: fought to claim its soul.
Speaker 1: I've kept them about chasing wealth power and the guy
Speaker 1: talking just looks like a ring race.
Speaker 2: It's like Assassin's creed is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yet in the hour of her greatest peril, heaven.
Speaker 1: Not sure what president that's supposed to be.
Speaker 3: From the throne of eternity. The king of Kings beheld
Speaker 3: the light.
Speaker 1: Now I'm going to stop us right here, yeah, because
Speaker 1: this is I mean, it's just weird Ai Schlock. Well,
Speaker 1: what's interesting to me is Jesus's room because at the
Speaker 1: point at which we stopped at, Jesus is like walking
Speaker 1: around in this like gold chased room. Yeah, and there's
Speaker 1: like thirty beds in it that are just empty. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like Jesus, the dozens of beds is weird to me, Like,
Speaker 1: why does Jesus need that many beds in his room?
Speaker 1: What is Jesus doing that requires all of those bets?
Speaker 1: Does Jesus keep a hair up, because I don't know
Speaker 1: why you would have that many bets.
Speaker 2: Also, like everything is gold plated, gold gilded.
Speaker 1: I mean, like it does all look like Donald Trump's
Speaker 1: living room.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, Like think what you want about religion, Like,
Speaker 2: I mean, if you go by the book or whatever,
Speaker 2: if you believe it or you like the story or whatever.
Speaker 2: Jesus was a pretty fucking cool guy. Like he did
Speaker 2: some pretty cool shit.
Speaker 1: He was into gold, right, he was not.
Speaker 2: Into like loads of gold. He was into like looking
Speaker 2: after lepers and like people. Yeah, he wouldn't like get
Speaker 2: me gold everywhere, Like it's so silly man.
Speaker 1: Fuck yeah. Definitely. Like one of the I think unargued
Speaker 1: things of the text of the Bible is Jesus was
Speaker 1: not a huge fan of fucking palaces. Not a palace guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Jesus not known to be a palace guy. Definitely not.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And what's fun here is obviously that's all AI general, right,
Speaker 1: like that, it's very obviously AI generated. So what you've
Speaker 1: got here is unpaid human trafficking victims using a plagiarism
Speaker 1: machine to make Hollywood style trailers in order to scam
Speaker 1: sick people out of their money. It's pretty cool.
Speaker 2: It's yeah, it's pretty cool. It's like I mean, I
Speaker 2: always say the reason that, well, in my opinion, that
Speaker 2: I feel like Black Mirror is terrible now is because
Speaker 2: real life and I know there's such an act thing
Speaker 2: to say, but it is so true, like these real
Speaker 2: life scenarios are just pure Black Mirror episodes really, you know,
Speaker 2: and here we are.
Speaker 1: I've had the same prop where like when I first
Speaker 1: started watching the show ten years ago or whatever, it
Speaker 1: was like, oh, wow, this seems like incredible, it could happen,
Speaker 1: And now it's like, well this is I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're here, and it's just slightly less upsetting than the
Speaker 1: real thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I oh what I wouldn't give for a sand Junipero.
Speaker 1: That's not what we're getting at all.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Right, Instead we have like Jesus gold plate, Harrem
Speaker 2: room to Christations fuck palace. Yeah yeah exactly that. Yeah
Speaker 2: that sucks.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now again, I also think it's kind of interesting and
Speaker 1: there's part of me that's like, should I analyze Jesus
Speaker 1: having all those beds more? Because David E. Taylor also
Speaker 1: owns a mansion with a lot of beds in it
Speaker 1: and was definitely running a sex colt. But also there's
Speaker 1: no way they prompted it to look that's just what
Speaker 1: the AI thing came up with. I'm guessing. I'm sure
Speaker 1: they didn't specify he should have dozens of weird beds
Speaker 1: in his mansion. They were just like Jesus in a
Speaker 1: palace looking out a window or something. That would be
Speaker 1: my assumption, but I don't know. It's weird how directly again,
Speaker 1: it grafts to the actual cult that David E. Taylor
Speaker 1: is running, which has a bunch of mansions with dozens
Speaker 1: of beds in them.
Speaker 2: Right, And sometimes they do do this thing where they
Speaker 2: kind of you know, hide in plain side, like oh yeah,
Speaker 2: put that in there. Well, maybe it's to make people
Speaker 2: when they watch that they're not so shocked when they
Speaker 2: actually find not the real thing, because he's in heaven
Speaker 2: and he's not Jesus, but you know, something similar maybe
Speaker 2: make them not not so shocked. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can't tell you for certain. What I can
Speaker 1: show you is what the actual living spaces in his
Speaker 1: cult facility looked like. What the actual beds that his
Speaker 1: cult members are in these giant warehouses where dozens of
Speaker 1: them are living at a time, and it looks like
Speaker 1: a homeless shelter, right, like they're not it's you see here,
Speaker 1: they're not living.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, it's horrible. What is that? Yeah, so for
Speaker 2: anyone listening, it's just like tents inside like people sleeping on. Oh,
Speaker 2: it's horrible.
Speaker 1: That tent was like a homeless shelter. I'd say, like
Speaker 1: that looks like maybe an okay, homeless shelter or like, yeah,
Speaker 1: like a femaus shelter. People just got forced out of
Speaker 1: their homes and you're quickly making space for them.
Speaker 2: It's that white tent though, Like that's creeping me out
Speaker 2: that it's like some kind of weed medical I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it looks weird. Yeah, it's like for a homeless sheller,
Speaker 2: like it wouldn't be bad at all, but like that
Speaker 2: medical tent is creeping me the fuck out. But yeah, right,
Speaker 2: the AI is definitely yeah, definitely a lot judging it.
Speaker 1: Out and these people are again they're bringing in millions
Speaker 1: of dollars a year for him, like tens of millions
Speaker 1: over the course of the time they're doing this. The
Speaker 1: cult had the money to give them at least separate
Speaker 1: little rooms, right Like, even if you're not wanting to
Speaker 1: pay these people because you're an evil cult leader, they
Speaker 1: didn't have to live like this. But this is part
Speaker 1: of the point. Keeping them in a situation that is
Speaker 1: like a homeless shelter is part of the point because
Speaker 1: one of the threats he has against them is leverage.
Speaker 1: Is I will make you fully homeless if you don't
Speaker 1: do what I say, right Like, we're building to that,
Speaker 1: but that is kind of what's going on here. So
Speaker 1: thanks to the federal indictment, we also have full records
Speaker 1: of several years worth of text messages from Taylor to
Speaker 1: his followers and to his top lieutenants who are helping
Speaker 1: to run the cult. So we do actually know directly
Speaker 1: how he incentivized and managed his PR team, the guys
Speaker 1: who created that crutch image in the video we just
Speaker 1: watch when they fell behind on producer stuff like that.
Speaker 1: For example, on October sixth of twenty twenty, Taylor's second
Speaker 1: in command sent a text message to the media team
Speaker 1: which warmed media team, no going to sleep until the
Speaker 1: Mosaic video was done. That was another ad for like
Speaker 1: one of these events that they were doing, and I
Speaker 1: go my sleep, No going to sleep. The grammar's not great.
Speaker 2: That's so dark. No, No, it's just like the whenever
Speaker 2: like people are restricting sleep, it's like always yop the
Speaker 2: lowest rung of like just nightmas shit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because like that is the I mean the things
Speaker 1: that I have been willing to do because I've been
Speaker 1: exhausted and unwilling to like I don't have the energy
Speaker 1: to fight you anymore. I feel like it's that's why
Speaker 1: sleep deprivation is like probably like top of the cult
Speaker 1: leader tactics out there, or at least tied with cutting
Speaker 1: off your family and shit for number one, Like it's
Speaker 1: really big.
Speaker 2: It's why like you know, the CIA would doing it
Speaker 2: when they were torturing people. And I'll be right, of course,
Speaker 2: same deff, same thing, like because it's just if you're
Speaker 2: that exhausted, you'll be like yeah, whatever, like sure I
Speaker 2: did this, whatever, please let me sleep. It's just so harsh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that does explain a lot of the God,
Speaker 1: why are people putting up with us? Well, because they're
Speaker 1: exhausted and starving and like that you've gotten to them
Speaker 1: to a point where they're not making anything that can
Speaker 1: be even like sort of described as a rational choice. Now,
Speaker 1: I have not found the mosaic video that he was
Speaker 1: talking about in that text message, but the indictment gives
Speaker 1: a very clear idea of how the cult was organized.
Speaker 1: At the top of the slave hierarchy where Taylor's so
Speaker 1: called armor bearers, this is the title he gave to
Speaker 1: his like top slaves. These are not the loot because
Speaker 1: he also has some people who are getting money who
Speaker 1: are sharing in the top of the cult, right, including
Speaker 1: like his romantic partner and a couple of these pastors
Speaker 1: working for him, and they're at the top top of
Speaker 1: the hierarchy. But kind of the top of the slave
Speaker 1: hierarchy are the armor bearers. And here's how the FBI
Speaker 1: describes them in their indictment. Armor bearers were Taylor's personal
Speaker 1: servants who fulfilled Tailor's demands around the clock. Taylor and
Speaker 1: brann and Brannon being his like number one, controlled every
Speaker 1: aspect of the daily living of their victims. They are
Speaker 1: not allowed to go anywhere without permission, and they sleep
Speaker 1: in the facilities where they work or in a ministry house.
Speaker 1: Armor bearers handled everything from the standard waiting on hand
Speaker 1: and foot of Taylor and Brannan and the other couple
Speaker 1: of people, leading it to the actual nuts and bolt
Speaker 1: sex trafficking work that David E. Taylor required of them.
Speaker 1: For the DOJ. Taylor demanded that his armor bearers transport
Speaker 1: women from ministry houses, airports, and other locations to Taylor's
Speaker 1: location and ensured the women transported to Taylor took Plan
Speaker 1: B emergency contraceptives. So not only are these armor bearers
Speaker 1: trafficking women for him from different cult compounds or like
Speaker 1: bringing them in when he manages to ensnare a young
Speaker 1: woman online or something. Because he has these people, it
Speaker 1: looks like they're flirting for him. Sometimes some of it
Speaker 1: he must be doing himself. And these are women maybe
Speaker 1: who are more prominent in the the evangelical community, like
Speaker 1: Christian female musicians and stuff, who have like a degree
Speaker 1: of So that's a big target, but also just a
Speaker 1: lot of when a female cult member fancies his eye,
Speaker 1: he'll bring them in. And these guys are trafficking them
Speaker 1: and giving them morning after pills, right, which seems to
Speaker 1: be the standard, is that anytime you sleep with him,
Speaker 1: you take a morning after pill just to be sure, right,
Speaker 1: I'm guessing both because he refuses to wear condoms and
Speaker 1: because the cult just didn't want to take any chances.
Speaker 2: It always gets so disgusting, don't it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, and I don't even feel like it's
Speaker 1: worth bringing up. I'm sure these people, this cult had
Speaker 1: a hypocritical attitude on whether or not morning after pill
Speaker 1: should be legal, but like that's it almost feels like
Speaker 1: pointless to bring that up when we're talking about crimes
Speaker 1: of this magnet, Like, of course they're hypocrites, right. The
Speaker 1: women brought to Taylors seem to have mostly been female
Speaker 1: cult members, But again, he flirted heavily with these female
Speaker 1: like Christian pop musicians and recording artists. We'll talk more
Speaker 1: about that later. But in order to keep any of
Speaker 1: these ladies from speaking up and doing damage to his ministry,
Speaker 1: Taylor and his top lieutenants also operated what can be
Speaker 1: accurately described as a revenge porn ring. Right, That's how
Speaker 1: they kept these women from coming out. And I'm going
Speaker 1: to quote now from an article on Detroit Local four news.
Speaker 1: Court documents claim that Taylor frequently solicited and received sexually
Speaker 1: explicit photos and videos from multiple female workers for the organization.
Speaker 1: There were thousands of sexually explicit photos and videos officials
Speaker 1: said one of set of photos found on the phone
Speaker 1: of Taylor's second in command were sent by a female worker,
Speaker 1: an unpaid worker, mind you, who cried when she handed
Speaker 1: them over and apologized for having been late in completing
Speaker 1: the assignment, which she said she understands that she needed
Speaker 1: to do and can't delay. Right, this is your assignment.
Speaker 1: Is you need to take like naked photos of yourself
Speaker 1: or whatever and send them to me so that like
Speaker 1: I have, yeah, the ability to I have revenge porn
Speaker 1: on you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's sort doctor to frame as the assignment, Like
Speaker 2: you're gonna basically get yourself in a position that's gonna
Speaker 2: be you know, you're gonna be even more malleable, and
Speaker 2: it's your assignment like from God, Like oh, it's just.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, yeah, I mean evil's the right word for it.
Speaker 1: And you know what's not evil though, I mean they
Speaker 1: might be. I can't promise that one way or the other.
Speaker 1: But here's some ads and we're bad. Okay, So we're
Speaker 1: talking about the sex trafficking. David's most prominent alleged victim,
Speaker 1: and the woman who's given us most details about how
Speaker 1: this process worked was a gospel singer named Vicki Yohe
Speaker 1: and prior this is like she was she was she
Speaker 1: was is fairly prominent within like the world of Christian
Speaker 1: pop music. Prior to meeting Taylor Yohe was a Dove
Speaker 1: Award nominated musician. And you probably haven't heard of the
Speaker 1: Devil Ward because it's not like it's not a big
Speaker 1: deal in like the real world, but within this kind
Speaker 1: of community of like Christian like musicians and stuff like
Speaker 1: that who like specifically make like worship music and stuff,
Speaker 1: it's a pretty big deal. It's like they're Grammy, right.
Speaker 1: So she's not like a celebrity in normal world terms,
Speaker 1: but she's famous within like the evangelic like the Pentecostal
Speaker 1: and the charismatic chunks of the evangelical community. So she
Speaker 1: had like going on before she got caught up with
Speaker 1: this maniac, which is important because it means that when
Speaker 1: she decides to leave, when she realizes what he's doing,
Speaker 1: she has the resources and cloud to actually escape, and
Speaker 1: that's why she's able to. She gives us a lot
Speaker 1: of details about this guy because she's able to, Like
Speaker 1: she is not leaving the cult and having absolutely nothing,
Speaker 1: being completely broke, basically homeless, so she has some some
Speaker 1: ability to actually fight back openly, and she she has
Speaker 1: been for years by the way. She came out a
Speaker 1: while ago and has was one of the people who
Speaker 1: was first kind of detailing the actual extent of his
Speaker 1: abuse beyond just like tax fraud. So he and Yohey
Speaker 1: met at a church event in twenty seventeen, and Taylor
Speaker 1: immediately this appears to be part of his flirtation technique.
Speaker 1: He starts calling her his spiritual daughter. That isn't appealing.
Speaker 1: Doesn't seem like it should be appealing, right, That's pretty
Speaker 1: upseting fundamentally, But she feels drawn to him, and she
Speaker 1: does consent to starting a sexual relationship with him, which
Speaker 1: which lasts about sixteen months, So this does start consensually.
Speaker 1: They're both adults, she has the ability to say yes
Speaker 1: or no. She's not in the cult, and since coming
Speaker 1: out against Taylor, Yohe has repeatedly told reporters that this
Speaker 1: was a thing like describing women he wanted to fuck
Speaker 1: as his spiritual daughters was a tactic Taylor used. He
Speaker 1: used it repeatedly on the women that he went after.
Speaker 1: She claimed he prays on women, He does not honor women.
Speaker 1: Women are just a vagina. And that seems true. Sure,
Speaker 1: Like that's I don't I don't doubt her at all.
Speaker 2: Understand horrible, right, No, just disgusting, Like and I just.
Speaker 1: Don't get how calling someone a spiritual your spiritual daughter
Speaker 1: works as a flirtation method.
Speaker 2: No, unless you're like as he is is a.
Speaker 1: Praved or again you're you've you've drank so much of
Speaker 1: the kool aid of this like weird extreme trunk of
Speaker 1: the religion that that's appealing to you. Like, I don't
Speaker 1: know if we can fully get it not being part
Speaker 1: of this community like you have to almost have had, right.
Speaker 2: They have you seen dog tooth Like it's been a
Speaker 2: long time. But there's a there's like kind of a
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess kind of a cult vibe amongst
Speaker 2: the family there. But they they recontextualize words. It's it's
Speaker 2: a little absurd to the point where like words mean
Speaker 2: completely different things there. But like a lot of cults
Speaker 2: do that, right, like you know in their world it's like, no,
Speaker 2: it doesn't mean door like that, it means like this,
Speaker 2: And it's like look, no matter what way you look
Speaker 2: at it's fucked up. But in there will let you say,
Speaker 2: it's just everything is on a different planet by that stage.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I yeah, I think that that's exactly it, right,
Speaker 1: And what you're talking about that is another common cult
Speaker 1: tactic is the reframing of words, in part because it
Speaker 1: creates a bond. It's the same I brought this up
Speaker 1: a lot, but it's the same way. Like if you
Speaker 1: and your friends are really into MMA or really into
Speaker 1: something like Warhammer or some video game, there's like different
Speaker 1: terms that like are used within the community, or like
Speaker 1: you're part of an online forum or something, and that
Speaker 1: creates a sense of bonding that like I know what
Speaker 1: this means when I say, and so do you. That's
Speaker 1: not unhealthy inherently, but the extreme version of that is
Speaker 1: is an effective cult tactic, both because it makes people
Speaker 1: bond and it also cuts people off from the app.
Speaker 1: When you do it extremely enough and you're fundamentally you
Speaker 1: can't understand what other people are saying and they can't
Speaker 1: understand you. That creates this kind of I that furthers
Speaker 1: this sense of isolation that's necessary for cults to work
Speaker 1: the way they work.
Speaker 2: You know, in in group thinking and all that.
Speaker 1: Right exactly, now we've talked about the spiritual daughter flirtation method.
Speaker 1: His other way of appealing to the women that he
Speaker 1: wanted to go after was much simpler. And I'm going
Speaker 1: to quote again from the News Herald. According to Yohi,
Speaker 1: Taylor made a habit of buying her expensive gifts, including
Speaker 1: lobitine red bottom shoes, a fur coat, and a Jaguar
Speaker 1: Sedan during their relationship. She said, some of the money
Speaker 1: for gifts came from JMMI that's the church accounts. He said,
Speaker 1: God just spoke to him to bless me with a car.
Speaker 1: She said, so that money for my car actually came
Speaker 1: from Joshua Media ministries. Absolutely, he says that he doesn't
Speaker 1: deny that. He says, yes, our ministry blesses other ministries
Speaker 1: with vehicles sometimes. Now, if you're wondering, is that tax fraud,
Speaker 1: give your mistress a card using church bundy. The answer
Speaker 1: is yes, yes, although in a way that isn't easy
Speaker 1: necessarily to prove or get do right. This isn't the
Speaker 1: thing that gets caught easily. And in fact, most of
Speaker 1: the shit like this happens all the time with a
Speaker 1: bunch of different churches in the US, and it usually
Speaker 1: does not get caught right. Churches are tax exempt, so
Speaker 1: they don't have to pay taxes on donations for the
Speaker 1: church to use to conduct its normal business of existing
Speaker 1: as a church. But that doesn't mean that churches and
Speaker 1: church pastors or other kinds of church leaders just don't
Speaker 1: ever have to pay taxes. For example, if your church
Speaker 1: pays a salary to the pastor or priest or whatever
Speaker 1: they have to there, they still have to pay payroll taxes. Right,
Speaker 1: It's the same if they pay taxes to their workers,
Speaker 1: they still pay payroll taxes. Right. Churches are not exempt
Speaker 1: from that sort of thing. Like that's just the way, right,
Speaker 1: Like it's it's it's one thing the church should the church,
Speaker 1: for example, shouldn't have to pay. This is the way
Speaker 1: the law works. I'm not saying I agree with this.
Speaker 1: I disagree with this. But the church does not have
Speaker 1: to pay like a property tax for their church to
Speaker 1: continue to exist as a church. But once the money
Speaker 1: is going into people accounts as like a salary that
Speaker 1: you pay money on as normal. Right, And so if
Speaker 1: you're paying the pastor millions of dollars to buy luxury
Speaker 1: cars in a private jet and live in mansions, that
Speaker 1: money's supposed to be taxed. But if the church just
Speaker 1: buys luxury cars and a private jet that are the
Speaker 1: church's property, then they can get away without paying taxes.
Speaker 1: It just so happens that the cult leader is the
Speaker 1: only one who gets to use them, right, And this
Speaker 1: is it works usually. I think there's a degree to
Speaker 1: which and this is Taylor has probably crossed the line
Speaker 1: because the IRS is after him. But you can get
Speaker 1: away with a lot in this regard, right, like churches
Speaker 1: often do get away with a lot. No, that's not
Speaker 1: my private jet, it's the ministry's private jet.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: But once you're buying your mistress a car, well that's
Speaker 1: not the same. That's not a church expense, and so
Speaker 1: she is expected to pay. You should be paying taxes
Speaker 1: on that, right, Someone should be paying taxes on these gifts, right,
Speaker 1: because you can't give that. You can't give gifts over
Speaker 1: a certain amount and not have them be taxed, you know.
Speaker 1: So there is a bunch of tax fraud going on here, right.
Speaker 1: I'm both pointing out that there's a lot you can
Speaker 1: get away with as a church in terms of tax
Speaker 1: exempt stuff, and Taylor is constantly exceeding that remit like
Speaker 1: he is absolutely committing tax crimes. It's just it takes
Speaker 1: a while for this to get caught because, for one thing,
Speaker 1: the irs is kind of scared of going after churches
Speaker 1: in the US, right because well, for one thing, it's
Speaker 1: really bad pr Whenever a Republican is in office, it
Speaker 1: becomes a lot easier for them to get away with this.
Speaker 1: But the Democrat Democrat like administrations don't really want that
Speaker 1: kind to fight either, because the church will always say, oh,
Speaker 1: this is this is discrimination, this is anti Christian discrimination.
Speaker 1: They're coming after me because of my faith, right, and
Speaker 1: it's just easier to ignore it. And that is usually
Speaker 1: what happens, right, And this is a part of the
Speaker 1: massive probably have because these churches often, I mean, there's
Speaker 1: a lot that they often do. Like it's incredibly common
Speaker 1: for churches to basically like expressly give political orders or
Speaker 1: tell the congregation this is how you should vote, this
Speaker 1: is who you should support politically. And churches aren't supposed
Speaker 1: to be able to do that and keep their taxes
Speaker 1: in status, but they do all the time because everyone's
Speaker 1: scared of pissing these people off.
Speaker 2: Let's go too off track, but it just obviously you
Speaker 2: know about this, So would that be something that like,
Speaker 2: for example, the evangelicals are doing with Trump obviously they
Speaker 2: you know, they be pro genocide in Gaza, And I
Speaker 2: was just the whole time, I was like, why the
Speaker 2: what the fuck? Is like, how do they have this
Speaker 2: much power? It's something like that, is it?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, because these these churches have huge amounts of
Speaker 1: money and they put that money towards different like that
Speaker 1: is a lot of like the right, A lot of
Speaker 1: the money that comes from the right does come from
Speaker 1: these these megachurches and these megachurch leaders who have just
Speaker 1: buckets of cash. And it's it's also just that's why
Speaker 1: it's such a fertile grifting ground. Is like creating a
Speaker 1: quote unquote church or calling yourself a pastor, is you
Speaker 1: can get away with a lot, and they're usually scared
Speaker 1: to come after you. You know, this is not what the
Speaker 1: episode is about, but this happens constantly. Like Taylor. Taylor
Speaker 1: is weird because he crossed the line enough that he
Speaker 1: gets in trouble for tax fraud, right, which very rarely
Speaker 1: happens to these guys. Now, for his part, like a
Speaker 1: certain president, Taylor claimed to have refused any salary at all, right,
Speaker 1: that he's not getting any money for what he's doing.
Speaker 1: And this is the kind of thing that sounds good
Speaker 1: when you say it on stage to an adoring audience
Speaker 1: who aren't going to question you. But it's also the
Speaker 1: kind of thing that looks like tax fraud because it is.
Speaker 1: There's an organization called the Trinity Foundation which monitors religious
Speaker 1: fraud and actually looks for stuff like this, and they
Speaker 1: published an investigation into tax fraud by DAVIDY. Taylor and
Speaker 1: the Joshua Media Ministries International in twenty eighteen. Right, so
Speaker 1: this there has been evidence, and this is extremely detailed.
Speaker 1: I would call this like a like smoking gun inarguable
Speaker 1: report what they put out. I've read through the entire thing.
Speaker 1: It is excellent work. It's it's very it's kind of
Speaker 1: wonkish because it's more focused. We're focusing on all of
Speaker 1: the fucked up abuse of human beings. They are focused on.
Speaker 1: Here is something he said, Here's an expense we know
Speaker 1: that was made. Here are the exact tax laws it violates. Right,
Speaker 1: So it's kind of dry reading.
Speaker 2: But like how the like I sorry, but like I
Speaker 2: guess it's kind of in the way of like, I
Speaker 2: guess it's a not a bad idea, Like you know,
Speaker 2: like al Capone, they went after his tax It's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's easy to get him on this right.
Speaker 1: Right, And it's it's proof write without anyone you don't need. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's black and white. And you don't need someone who
Speaker 1: is like an abuse victim and traumatized to be willing
Speaker 1: to testify, which is hard to do, right, you know,
Speaker 1: not making it a moral judgment. It's just difficult to
Speaker 1: get people to talk when they've been through something like
Speaker 1: this for a variety of reasons. And you don't need
Speaker 1: that with tax fraud.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: And in that report, the Trinity Foundation says that like
Speaker 1: they consider whenever you hear that the head of a
Speaker 1: church is going without salary, that is a huge red flag.
Speaker 1: That's like one of their big warnings that fraud.
Speaker 2: Is going on. Quote.
Speaker 1: Taylor lives in an apparent lavish lifestyle and appears to
Speaker 1: use the church account as his personal piggybank. In his deposition,
Speaker 1: he says that he lives off gifts that are personally
Speaker 1: donated to him, which do not count as a salary,
Speaker 1: and that deposition was from a twenty fourteen He gets
Speaker 1: charged with tax fraud in twenty fourteen and his church
Speaker 1: loses its taxi status for like a year and then
Speaker 1: gets it back almost immediately. But this part has been
Speaker 1: going on for a while. The tax fraud has been
Speaker 1: known for about a decade before he actually gets in
Speaker 1: any serious trouble, which shows you how hard it is
Speaker 1: even when they even when they know there's tax fraud
Speaker 1: to the extent that the IRS comes after you for
Speaker 1: it and takes away your taxis and status, you can
Speaker 1: get it back the next year and nothing will happen, right,
Speaker 1: because we just don't take these kind of crimes seriously
Speaker 1: in the United States.
Speaker 2: It's like legal crime.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. If you do it with a church, it's
Speaker 1: not a crime now. That report also goes into one
Speaker 1: of David Taylor's grifts from November of twenty eighteen, a
Speaker 1: praise a thon where he asked his followers to donate
Speaker 1: to sponsor three hundred new students who would be trained
Speaker 1: and brought into his ministries volunteers. And I think the
Speaker 1: idea was that he would personally instruct these people in
Speaker 1: the art of talking to Jesus so that they could
Speaker 1: learn how to heal people with prayer. The Trinity Foundation
Speaker 1: notes quote students and this is them describing the pitch
Speaker 1: that Taylor was making, students will be taught to do
Speaker 1: things even medical doctors insurgents can't do. Damn they go
Speaker 1: what oh dear? They want to summarize, he claims he
Speaker 1: provided housing, meals, clothing, hygien and training for them at
Speaker 1: a cost of about one hundred and fifty k for
Speaker 1: each student's first year more if their entire family relocated
Speaker 1: with them. That comes to a total of forty five
Speaker 1: million requested for that project alone. Taylor claims that they
Speaker 1: will be provided more than even an accredited Bible college
Speaker 1: would and that many would receive a salary after completing
Speaker 1: their training. Now this doesn't ever seem to have happened.
Speaker 1: No money was actually devoted to this program. I have
Speaker 1: found zero evidence that any of his followers were ever
Speaker 1: paid a salary after finishing their training. This was a
Speaker 1: grift at both ends. The donated money was not being
Speaker 1: used for the promised purpose, and the people that he
Speaker 1: did sign up as students weren't being given degrees, and
Speaker 1: they weren't being given salaries and jobs. They were made
Speaker 1: to work at a call center and abused. Right now,
Speaker 1: I know some of you may be wanting to get
Speaker 1: this point, Robert. You said none of the donated money
Speaker 1: went to feeding her sheltering these unpaid volunteer students. But
Speaker 1: that can't be true, right, they had to have been.
Speaker 1: We saw where they were living. It can't be expensive.
Speaker 1: But clearly the cult was paying for beds and paying
Speaker 1: for food because these people weren't allowed to have jobs
Speaker 1: or money on their own. They would have starved if
Speaker 1: none of the donation money went to supporting them, Right,
Speaker 1: and well, all I have to say to that is,
Speaker 1: my dear friends, you've forgotten the sublime joy of welfare fraud,
Speaker 1: because that's how he's feeding these people. One of the
Speaker 1: main whistleblowers against JMMI is a former follower of Tailor's
Speaker 1: named Chris Sorenson. And we'll talk about Chris's journey a
Speaker 1: little later, but he's one of three former members who
Speaker 1: have alleged to the Tennessee News Herald that Taylor's cult
Speaker 1: fed its worker followers not using the tens of millions
Speaker 1: in donations, but via EBT fraud. Right, that's our the car.
Speaker 1: If you're poor enough, you get these electronic benefits transfer
Speaker 1: cards that'll let you allow you to buy certain kinds
Speaker 1: of food and drink. Right, it's for people who will
Speaker 1: starve otherwise. You know, that's what EBT is for.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wondered for a long time what that was at.
Speaker 2: So it's like essentially like benefits so you can live
Speaker 2: if you lose your job or whatever.
Speaker 1: Yes, right, right, exactly it's supposed to be. It's and
Speaker 1: you know, the program doesn't work nearly as well as
Speaker 1: it should. It's gotten much worse in the last year
Speaker 1: because of cuts to it. But what it is supposed
Speaker 1: to be is that if you are if you can't
Speaker 1: basically you can't feed yourself otherwise, this give gets you
Speaker 1: the benefits you need to keep you and your family
Speaker 1: from starving. And this is how the cult made sure
Speaker 1: that they didn't have to pay even a dime of
Speaker 1: their money to keep their people making the money working
Speaker 1: the call center alive. Quote from the News Herald JMMI
Speaker 1: instructed church members to claim homelessness with the state of
Speaker 1: Michigan in order sorry not to, I said Tennessee earlier's
Speaker 1: Michigan in order to get electronic benefits transfer cards. Members
Speaker 1: then allegedly pooled the cards to an appointed designatee who
Speaker 1: would shop for everyone at nearby stores. Every person had
Speaker 1: to have an EBT card, a food stamp card. Sore
Speaker 1: instance said. They said, if you don't get one, you're
Speaker 1: not going to eat. So you have fifty people to
Speaker 1: feed and one card will last one day. You'll totally
Speaker 1: empty one card on the whole entire staff. And it's
Speaker 1: not for you personally, it's to spend on the whole
Speaker 1: entire group, so you're not using your own card. I
Speaker 1: was in charge of it. I had to make an
Speaker 1: Excel spreadsheet of the status of everyone's card, and we
Speaker 1: kept them all in this little trapper keep or plastic box.
Speaker 1: It's just this cult. He brings in fifty million dollars
Speaker 1: in less than a decade just from donations to the
Speaker 1: you can Feed people.
Speaker 2: Why those gait is like, you're already so fucking rich,
Speaker 2: Why even risk getting into this trouble for this kind
Speaker 2: of thing? You know, it's just like beyond me. I
Speaker 2: get Do they think they're untouchable?
Speaker 1: I mean they were for a very long time. Gets
Speaker 1: away with this for closing it on twenty years. And
Speaker 1: I think it's also with people like this, I think
Speaker 1: they almost feel a sense of disgust at the idea
Speaker 1: that they might spend any of their money on other people.
Speaker 1: You know, I really I think that there's something pathological
Speaker 1: going on. I maybe maybe I'm kind of reading into
Speaker 1: it a little bit, but like I just I don't
Speaker 1: know what else it could be, you know, And it's
Speaker 1: probably worth talking about here. How food and shelter were
Speaker 1: both used as weapons by David E. Taylor to keep
Speaker 1: his workforce functioning without complaint. His first line of defense was,
Speaker 1: of course, threatening to damn people to hell or even
Speaker 1: have God harm them or their loved ones. But when
Speaker 1: the power of those threats started to wane, his reliable
Speaker 1: backup was promising to make people homeless if they resisted
Speaker 1: or failed to hit quotas. And I'm going to quote
Speaker 1: directly from the federal indictment here, Honor. About May fifth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one, at twelve twenty six am, Taylor texted
Speaker 1: to DG, his current armor bearer tasked with communicating his
Speaker 1: orders to staff whose identity is known to the Grand jury.
Speaker 1: You'll have to raise one hundred and sixty four thousand
Speaker 1: dollars today. Each hour you fall behind, consequences will start.
Speaker 1: We will mess with the food. You will fast from
Speaker 1: the regular food. Or abstain for a while. Normally, as
Speaker 1: of now, there's a twenty one day peanut, butter and
Speaker 1: jelly regiment. Like before, those who do not push their
Speaker 1: calls individually and as a team with the right amount
Speaker 1: of people and closing numbers at six pm, they don't
Speaker 1: need dinner at all if they do good afterward this time,
Speaker 1: and then at the end of the night they may
Speaker 1: get a snack for bed, but not much. And this
Speaker 1: regiment will go on every day for twenty one days
Speaker 1: until they obey take away the food. There will be
Speaker 1: other consequences. We must make them fast and pray. He
Speaker 1: does two exclamation points at the end of each of
Speaker 1: those sentences. I don't know why.
Speaker 2: You can clearly, I think if you are in the
Speaker 2: mindset where you'll abuse people so much to the point
Speaker 2: where you're saying, yeah, like I can make your mother
Speaker 2: with cancer get better or your dad with aides or whatever,
Speaker 2: and then you get really, really rich. Anyway, It's like,
Speaker 2: I think the whole psychotic element just gets compounded, and
Speaker 2: that's what it sounds like there. It's like he thinks he's.
Speaker 1: God, yeah yeah, with a devil maybe yeah yeah. On
Speaker 1: other occasions he enforced multi day fasts when call center
Speaker 1: workers couldn't make his impossible quotas. Sleep was also commonly
Speaker 1: withheld as a punishment, although it might be more accurate
Speaker 1: to say that Taylor structured his quotas in such a
Speaker 1: way that no one could make them, which was automatically
Speaker 1: punished by being made to work until four am. In addition,
Speaker 1: whenever the cold had trouble making its numbers, which was always,
Speaker 1: he'd schedule mandatory meetings which ran from three to six
Speaker 1: hours long. So if you're keeping track, this meant that
Speaker 1: anytime the money wasn't as much as he wanted, and
Speaker 1: it was never as much as he wanted, the staff
Speaker 1: was basically banned from sleeping almost entirely right. This is
Speaker 1: presented as a mix of punishment and strategy, but the
Speaker 1: overall goal was to make sure none of his full
Speaker 1: time workers ever get sleep, because that keeps them in
Speaker 1: the state. Well, they'll do whatever he says, like zombies.
Speaker 1: Like zombies. Here's the indictment again, Honor. About September nineteenth,
Speaker 1: at ten twenty one pm, Taylor texted to victim DG, Michelle,
Speaker 1: and Kia make them all stand and tell them if
Speaker 1: the punishment to four am. Don't work. I'm going to
Speaker 1: make it worser and worser. They are going to get
Speaker 1: their beds out of my house and sleep in the garage.
Speaker 1: Everyone piled in there. This ruthless boot camp is going
Speaker 1: to get worse and worse until they do what we
Speaker 1: are telling them. There will only be soup, bread and
Speaker 1: water for all the degenerates every day.
Speaker 2: The degenerates. Is that what he called them.
Speaker 1: The degenerates? Yes, yes, because they're not. They couldn't make
Speaker 1: one hundred and sixty four thousand dollars in a day
Speaker 1: like God demanded.
Speaker 2: Wow, you know, it's what Jesus would want.
Speaker 1: It's what Jesus would want. About a month after this,
Speaker 1: he sent another message complaining I can't be kind to
Speaker 1: you letting you start later and sleep in because members
Speaker 1: of the team had fallen behind again on his impossible
Speaker 1: quotas All Caps now, I don't care if you are tired.
Speaker 1: You've crossed the line. You're going to work all night
Speaker 1: and get up in the morning. I want the names
Speaker 1: of those who are not helping with this push, or
Speaker 1: doing their work or showing change, All Caps. They are
Speaker 1: going to the homeless shelter. Right again, this is directly
Speaker 1: the threat is I've already reduced you to near homelessness.
Speaker 1: If you cross the line, you're out on your ass right.
Speaker 2: Off to take in everything you add anyway.
Speaker 1: You can't even get EBT because we have your EBT
Speaker 1: card right, like you're already on it. Your are because
Speaker 1: you don't get that forever.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: That's the other thing is that like these people are
Speaker 1: so comprehensively fucked.
Speaker 2: I know, like obviously this is a cult and that's
Speaker 2: how it is. But it's also I guess the two
Speaker 2: go hand in hand. But it's also like turning into
Speaker 2: a pretty evident kind of human trafficking ring. If they're
Speaker 2: like moving people around just to kind of be in
Speaker 2: what was essentially slave labor, taking all their identity, their rights,
Speaker 2: making money off them, Like it's a serious criminal enterprise
Speaker 2: at this stage.
Speaker 1: Yep, yep, absolutely now. In the federal indictment, former cult
Speaker 1: members alleged that Taylor would often threaten his victims by
Speaker 1: explaining the power God gave him, rebuking them for disobedience,
Speaker 1: and cursing those who stopped working for him or spoke
Speaker 1: negatively about him. In addition, quote the defendants required the
Speaker 1: victims to request permission to leave their housing or the
Speaker 1: call centers, and control their access to transportation. The defendants
Speaker 1: rarely permitted victims to seek outside medical attention. The defendants
Speaker 1: often denied victims medical attention altogether. In some instances, the
Speaker 1: defendants physically abused victims when Taylor was displeased with the
Speaker 1: actions or behavior of victims. Now I noted at the
Speaker 1: top of these episodes that this cult was one of
Speaker 1: the ones that I have some trouble really understanding. So
Speaker 1: we should look into a couple of case studies of
Speaker 1: former members who found themselves wrapped up in Taylor's group
Speaker 1: and ultimately escaped. One local Houston news station KPRC two
Speaker 1: interviewed a friend of a woman who joined the cult
Speaker 1: because she was groomed as a bride for Taylor. Quote
Speaker 1: from the beginning, it was great, exciting, as they usually are,
Speaker 1: the woman said, but I kept warning her that something
Speaker 1: sounded like a cult. Her friend eventually cut off all communication,
Speaker 1: but returned a year later, revealing the mental and psychological
Speaker 1: abuse she endured. She said they starved her, mentally and
Speaker 1: psychologically abused her, and used scripture in hell to condemn her.
Speaker 1: The woman said it was almost like a loyalty program.
Speaker 1: They had to defend the top person and their ministry,
Speaker 1: and when her friend ultimately escaped, quote, she didn't know
Speaker 1: what to believe, who to trust, what churches to trust.
Speaker 1: And this is where she says that her friend restored
Speaker 1: her faith despite her trauma and found another church, which
Speaker 1: is depicted as a positive end in the artic. I
Speaker 1: can't help feeling maybe you needed a break from religion
Speaker 1: for a while. Maybe maybe like maybe a little while
Speaker 1: out there, you know, the rest of your all the
Speaker 1: months off of a religion. Yeah, and it's you know,
Speaker 1: outside of Because we're talking again about how crazy all
Speaker 1: of this seems on the inside. I need to emphasize
Speaker 1: unless you are paying attention to like the Trinity Foundations
Speaker 1: reporting on their tax fraud and stuff, none of this
Speaker 1: is super obvious. There's not any mainstream news articles for
Speaker 1: a while. You get starting like a year, a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago. You do get some local press about
Speaker 1: some of the allegations, but there's very little to find
Speaker 1: on these people, and they also seem to have some
Speaker 1: like fairly high profile backers. From July thirty first to
Speaker 1: August fourth of twenty nineteen, David Taylor held a miracle
Speaker 1: crusade against cancer in Taylor, Michigan, and it featured like
Speaker 1: One of the people who spoke at the event dent
Speaker 1: was Andre Gslarowski, who's the chairman of an Israeli nonprofit
Speaker 1: called the Helping Hand Coalition that supports Holocaust survivors. Right
Speaker 1: and I'm going to quote from the Trinity Foundations right
Speaker 1: up here. Gasarowski co founded the conglomerate art B, which
Speaker 1: looted the Polish banking system. Then Gasiroowski fled the country.
Speaker 1: He moved to Israel to avoid extradition. In nineteen ninety one,
Speaker 1: The Washington Post explained the criminal enterprise. The company's founders
Speaker 1: discovered that a helicopter could move cash around Poland faster
Speaker 1: than the antiquated banking system could clear checks. Art B
Speaker 1: shuffled about eighteen billion through the banking system, picking up
Speaker 1: an estimated three hundred and sixty million an interest on
Speaker 1: money that was in several accounts. At the same time,
Speaker 1: a Polish court convicted Gasierowski's business partner, Bogoslaw Bogsik. Radio
Speaker 1: Free Europe reported Bogsik was found guilty of cheating the
Speaker 1: Polish banking system out of four hundred and twenty four
Speaker 1: millions lotties ninety four million US dollars, defrauding a bank,
Speaker 1: bribing bank clerks, and carrying out financial misdeeds connected with
Speaker 1: his company art B. As of the year two thousand,
Speaker 1: Polish investigators estimated that Bagsick may still have some forty
Speaker 1: million abroad, and Gasierowski twice that amount. After moving to Israel,
Speaker 1: Gasiroowski reinvented himself as a philanthropist, but failed to pay
Speaker 1: back the people he defrauded. JMMI is raising money for
Speaker 1: a partnership with Gasiorowski's Helping Hand Coalition, claiming to bring
Speaker 1: aid to thousands of impoverished Holocaust survivors use in desperate need,
Speaker 1: But it is impossible to know how much money is
Speaker 1: actually going to the Helping Hand Coalition. So on paper,
Speaker 1: this guy is working with a foundation that helps an
Speaker 1: Israeli nonprofit that helps Holocaust survivors. Then you look into
Speaker 1: it and it's like, no, this guy defrauded the Polish
Speaker 1: banking system to the tune of hundreds of millions of
Speaker 1: dollars and whatever he's doing now this coalition, now that
Speaker 1: he's fled to Israel to avoid prosecution is some kind
Speaker 1: of con right. It's a Holocaust survivor con like he
Speaker 1: is stealing buddy from holocaust SFI it doesn't get and
Speaker 1: David Taylor's helping. Yeah, that's about as bad as it gets.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really bad. It's like the worst side hustle
Speaker 2: ever after already doing all the worst things he ever did,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I'd love to know how that conversation start.
Speaker 1: Was like, hey, I hear you're in some really fucked
Speaker 1: up shit, DAVIDY. Taylor. You know you're trafficking people, committing
Speaker 1: all sorts of sex crimes. How would you like to
Speaker 1: defraud some Holocaust survivors?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: You know, And he was like fuck ya.
Speaker 1: And it's weird, this fucking Gasierowski, this weirdo is at least,
Speaker 1: I mean, he's in good enough odor with the Israeli
Speaker 1: government that they're not extraditing him. And also I think
Speaker 1: it's through him. David E. Taylor gets commissioned as an
Speaker 1: official ambassador for Israel to America. It's not like a
Speaker 1: like the legally an ambassador. It's like a an honorary thing, right,
Speaker 1: But like he's he gets stuff like this, you know,
Speaker 1: and he's he's working. He has this all these different
Speaker 1: on paper, humanitarian enterprises, the refuge Homes Project, which is
Speaker 1: supposed to rescue and find homes for children who have
Speaker 1: been sold into human sex trafficking, and there's all these
Speaker 1: different you know, feeding the poor charities he's supposed to be.
Speaker 1: The money that gets donated him is supposed to go
Speaker 1: to like dig water wells in poor places overseas, providing
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving and Christmas gifts to thousands of families. There's this
Speaker 1: disaster aid charity that's real called the Convoy of Miracles
Speaker 1: that he just like lied and pretended to be donating
Speaker 1: money to. They eventually like went to court because they
Speaker 1: were like, he's not He's just using our name to
Speaker 1: steal from people. It's cool stuff. So yeah, let's talk
Speaker 1: about well, actually let's throw to ads first because that's
Speaker 1: probably time for that, and then we'll close out this
Speaker 1: story and we're back. So the most entailed account we
Speaker 1: have from a former member is a guy named Chris Sorenson,
Speaker 1: who I chatted about a little earlier. Chris talked to
Speaker 1: the News Herald in twenty nineteen after escaping and he
Speaker 1: found the cold. He got involved with David E. Taylor's
Speaker 1: JMA my as a direct result of reading Taylor's two
Speaker 1: thousand and nine book Face to Face Appearances from Jesus
Speaker 1: The Ultimate Intimacy. Sorenson claims, I got associated with Taylor,
Speaker 1: I know, right right.
Speaker 2: Off his head again. Uh huh.
Speaker 1: Sorenson claims, I got associated with Taylor's ministry in January
Speaker 1: of twenty fifteen. That's when I very first heard of
Speaker 1: the guy, and I saw ads for his book saying
Speaker 1: if you buy this book and you read it, you'll
Speaker 1: see Jesus. So I took the gamble, I bought it,
Speaker 1: and I read it. And Chris's story is valuable because
Speaker 1: it illustrates the technical means by which Taylor utilized his
Speaker 1: followers to reach out and entrap new worker drones. Within
Speaker 1: days of finishing reading the book, Sorenson wakes up, He's
Speaker 1: just finished this and there's a Facebook message from JMMI
Speaker 1: from Taylor's cult written by someone and he doesn't knows
Speaker 1: at the time. It is written by someone living in
Speaker 1: a warehouse owned by the Colt in Michigan, and the
Speaker 1: message said, Jesus told me to reach out to you.
Speaker 1: I was in prayer last night and I was drawn
Speaker 1: to your page to contact you. And Sorenson is like,
Speaker 1: oh wow, I just read your book and now you're
Speaker 1: reaching out to me. I was so honored. You see
Speaker 1: why this would be effective? Right?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: Someone has just and it feels like, well, how could
Speaker 1: they have known unless God told them? Right now, Sorensen,
Speaker 1: on the strength of this, because he's so overwhelmed by
Speaker 1: what's happened and I was in a vulnerable point in
Speaker 1: his life, he joins the cult, gives himself up entirely.
Speaker 1: He starts working on their Michigan property full time, and
Speaker 1: in short order, he's the one sending spam messages to
Speaker 1: people on Facebook, and so he realizes, oh, God didn't
Speaker 1: tell them to reach out to me, right. What's actually
Speaker 1: happening here is that these call center workers who are
Speaker 1: expected to reach out to hundreds of people a day,
Speaker 1: they're just going through the Facebook pages of David Taylor
Speaker 1: and a bunch of other prominent televangelists like Billy Graham
Speaker 1: er Joel Olstein, and they're seeing who is liking each
Speaker 1: of the posts, and then they're just messaging people who
Speaker 1: have recently liked posts, So Sorensen must have liked the
Speaker 1: post about the book that he bought and read, and
Speaker 1: they see that and they reach out to him directly.
Speaker 1: That's the actual way in which they're kind of like
Speaker 1: picking people to cold call, is like, whoever's liking these
Speaker 1: posts from other evangelists, there's a better chance that they're
Speaker 1: going to be vulnerable to our shtick. And they're just
Speaker 1: messaging these people. Each individual, like call center worker, is
Speaker 1: expected to send something like a thousand messages a day,
Speaker 1: most of which are copy pasted from a script. And
Speaker 1: even though these people are more likely to respond, most
Speaker 1: recipients of these messages ignore what they're being sent. But
Speaker 1: every now and then, someone liked Sorensen would get a
Speaker 1: message at just the right time that it feels like
Speaker 1: something's happening.
Speaker 2: Yeah, cold calling for Jesus basically right.
Speaker 1: It's like a cold reading kind of technique but applied
Speaker 1: to like using social media and kind of some of
Speaker 1: these other dynamics. Sorensen told The News Herald quote during
Speaker 1: his six months with Joshua Media Ministries, sorens And also
Speaker 1: said that he was repeatedly told to leave his wife,
Speaker 1: who was skeptical of Taylor and JMMI. He said he
Speaker 1: also witnessed Taylor physically assault other JMMI members at their building.
Speaker 1: He recalled Taylor coming in late at night and yelling
Speaker 1: and screaming at seven men. He just started going off
Speaker 1: on one guy and just started slapping him. Sorenson said.
Speaker 1: He slapped him two or three times, knocked him to
Speaker 1: the ground, and then just grabbed him by the collar
Speaker 1: and shook him. He went after another, slapped them across
Speaker 1: the face, pushed them to the ground, sit over them.
Speaker 1: Sorenson said that four of the men were being corrected
Speaker 1: for smoking weed and two of them for interactions with females.
Speaker 1: The seventh happened to be in the wrong place at
Speaker 1: the wrong time. So you know, this is just a
Speaker 1: guy who feels secure just physically abusing at random members
Speaker 1: of the COLT. And this is probably another part of
Speaker 1: like what keeps people in line is just like this
Speaker 1: fear of being beaten, of being targeted like this. Now,
Speaker 1: as is usually the case with colts, there were, as
Speaker 1: I've said, numerous red flags and signs that shit was
Speaker 1: wrong well before the raids. In twenty fourteen, they were
Speaker 1: audited for massive tax fraud. They lost their taxi status
Speaker 1: at least twice over the years, and in both instances
Speaker 1: got it back after less than a year. Groups like
Speaker 1: Trinity published and directly mailed detailed reports about suspected fraud
Speaker 1: of the irs, but this did not create any kind
Speaker 1: of public outrage or knowledge of what was going on,
Speaker 1: in spite of the fact that by twenty sixteen, local
Speaker 1: police and Taylor, Michigan had received at least thirty calls
Speaker 1: about JMMI. Some of these were non issues, but others
Speaker 1: were complaints from friends and family of cult members, and
Speaker 1: in one case there was a bomb threat made by
Speaker 1: a former member against the organization. According to the police report,
Speaker 1: the man was quote angry that God created him, but
Speaker 1: he couldn't kill God, so he would kill the pastor
Speaker 1: of JMMI.
Speaker 2: I mean go.
Speaker 1: For hid by fine man. In this case. You picked
Speaker 1: the right guy. But there was no like, there was
Speaker 1: no evidence that he actually did anything. And when the
Speaker 1: police responded, they're like, do you want us to search
Speaker 1: the church for anything suspicious or a bomb dog? And
Speaker 1: church officials like, no, you don't need to come inside.
Speaker 1: We're good.
Speaker 2: Don't worry about it.
Speaker 1: Don't worry about it. In June of twenty eighteen, a
Speaker 1: former jam My member reported an assault at the church.
Speaker 1: This woman said that she had been there five days
Speaker 1: earlier to see her father and sister, who were both members,
Speaker 1: and once she was entered, she was confronted by church
Speaker 1: members about her bad attitude and told to leave the church,
Speaker 1: and then was forcibly pushed and pulled from the property.
Speaker 1: A few months after that, a father requested help from
Speaker 1: the police and getting his son out of the building.
Speaker 1: He told them that his son worked at the church
Speaker 1: but he wasn't sharing with capacity, and police agreed to
Speaker 1: help and call They classified it as a mental health commitment.
Speaker 1: So several officers like showed up and waited for the
Speaker 1: son to come to his father's vehicle, and when they did,
Speaker 1: the officers like handcuffed him and put him in the back
Speaker 1: of a patrol car. While this happened, several minute suits
Speaker 1: were filming outside of the buildings, like there's stuff like
Speaker 1: this going on for years. And twenty seventeen, a guy
Speaker 1: in his late fifties dies of natural causes during a
Speaker 1: pro group at JMMI, and when police and firefighters arrived
Speaker 1: at like two fifteen am, they quote observed a group
Speaker 1: of people chanting and singing, touching and pressing down on
Speaker 1: the body. One witness told the police that when people
Speaker 1: prayed at the church, all of them faint under the
Speaker 1: light of God. She told police officers that the dead
Speaker 1: man was sleeping and God will wake him up soon.
Speaker 1: Police took the body obviously, they found a stack of
Speaker 1: credit cards and ID and turned them over to his wife,
Speaker 1: and the cause of death was, you know, just heart disease.
Speaker 1: But like, yeah, it's just one of these like oh
Speaker 1: weird that instead of calling an ambulance, they're just like
Speaker 1: standing around this guy and trying to bring him back
Speaker 1: to life through prayer. Right, that's a little bit sketchy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like first responders, but they're just praying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, So anyway, that kind of stuff is around
Speaker 1: for a while until a little bit earlier this year.
Speaker 1: Just really a couple of weeks ago, an FBI raid
Speaker 1: cracks down on multiple properties, including the mansion in Tampa
Speaker 1: where one of the leaders lived, his second in command live.
Speaker 1: That was carried out in August, and then later there's
Speaker 1: raids on their Taylor, Michigan facility, and a bunch of
Speaker 1: other different call centers like five or six all around
Speaker 1: the country. The FBI raid revealed fifty seven victims of
Speaker 1: forced labor living in the Florida Mansions. That's just one
Speaker 1: of the buildings. I don't think we know entirely how
Speaker 1: many victims have been found yet, and I don't think
Speaker 1: they're fully done with the raids at this moment. Right now,
Speaker 1: David Taylor and Michelle Brannon, his second, are accused of
Speaker 1: running a forced labor and money laundering scheme through their church.
Speaker 1: They have are being charged with quite a few different
Speaker 1: felonies right now, so we'll see what actually happens. Like,
Speaker 1: I don't know how much it's worth kind of going
Speaker 1: into the details of the legal case against them, but
Speaker 1: they're like they're looking at some pretty serious charges right
Speaker 1: and hopefully they won't be free again. I guess it's
Speaker 1: one of those things that it does seem like they
Speaker 1: flew too close to the sun and the FBI has
Speaker 1: them kind of dead to rights here. Like, I'm not
Speaker 1: optimistic about their chances of getting out of any of this.
Speaker 2: Jesus is definitely not his friend anymore, for fucking sure.
Speaker 1: No, not his friend anymore. So at least we've got
Speaker 1: kind of a happy ending, right.
Speaker 2: It's crazy though when you look at this, like, Okay,
Speaker 2: this is obviously huge, making loads of money, just horrible
Speaker 2: levels of abuse, but it's not even one of the
Speaker 2: big ones, you know, Like how many more of these
Speaker 2: are going on right now? That is what worries me, man.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I will say as well, I do. I'm
Speaker 2: not religious, like I'm not an atheist, but I'm not religious.
Speaker 2: But I do hate how these cults use religion always
Speaker 2: to like ride it into the wall and just do
Speaker 2: the most crazy stuff, because there are loads of people
Speaker 2: who are very religious who are doing the nicest stuff ever,
Speaker 2: you know, not because they're religious, but they just they
Speaker 2: do nice stuff and they're religious, and yeah, it's like,
Speaker 2: well done, guys, you've just completely fucking purposely misinterpreted and
Speaker 2: ruined something for your own gains. I mean they all
Speaker 2: do it. I mean, whether it's you know, some kind
Speaker 2: of horrible sex scandal in whichever religion or whatever, it's
Speaker 2: like there's always someone that is cynically just going, yeah,
Speaker 2: let's just use this what should be a good thing
Speaker 2: and then just absolutely do evil with it. It's yeah,
Speaker 2: it's very It's not exactly there's very few redeeming qualities
Speaker 2: to come out of this story other than eventually they
Speaker 2: got caught.
Speaker 1: Eventually they got caught, right, and they got caught. I
Speaker 1: mean the level of success these people saw. The primary
Speaker 1: church banking account had over forty one million dollars in it, right,
Speaker 1: So like whilst people are doing really well, and like
Speaker 1: the the indictment has reported a bunch of transactions you're
Speaker 1: just between twenty eighteen and twenty twenty from Taylor and
Speaker 1: Brannon that included one hundred and twenty five pounds of
Speaker 1: super colossal red king crab legs, six seafood shears and
Speaker 1: thirty crab cutters, ten thousand, three hundred and fifty three
Speaker 1: dollars and forty four cents, a Mercedes Bins for sixty
Speaker 1: three thousand dollars, a Bentley Continental seventy thousand dollars down payment,
Speaker 1: a Crown Line boat one hundred and five thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: two jet skis and one jet ski trailer, twenty four
Speaker 1: grand five ATVs, thirty one thousand dollars, rolls, Royce cullin
Speaker 1: an one hundred and twenty three thousand dollars least signing payment,
Speaker 1: and then at least four bulletproof automobiles or at least
Speaker 1: bulletproofing on automobiles. It's a little unclear witch to me
Speaker 1: based on how they're the indictment's written. But yeah, did
Speaker 1: you have that great stuff?
Speaker 2: Like I hear all that and I'm like wow, like,
Speaker 2: you know, on break my ass to do all these projects,
Speaker 2: and you know, be an independent journalist.
Speaker 1: Is just start a cold.
Speaker 2: That should just be an evil colt guy and I'll
Speaker 2: literally be able to buy it.
Speaker 1: I think it every day, think it. Every day.
Speaker 2: I get like bulletproof cars and fuckings like, yeah, oh my.
Speaker 1: Gosh it, that's the grift. Fuck, that is the what
Speaker 1: am I doing?
Speaker 2: If only we were completely evil, you know.
Speaker 1: Right, if only I gave up my soul entirely, the
Speaker 1: amount of money I could be making.
Speaker 2: Holy shit.
Speaker 1: Well that's a good retirement plan at least.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks for that.
Speaker 1: M Well, all right, you got any pluggables to plug
Speaker 1: before we roll out here? That is Part two.
Speaker 2: Honestly mostly sad oligarch too. As I said in the
Speaker 2: last episode, I'm really really happy with this. We've we've
Speaker 2: had to really scrape at the research on this, even people,
Speaker 2: we've reached out to are just like it's like brick wall,
Speaker 2: you know, and it's very hard to get information. But
Speaker 2: we've we've really made it work in a way that
Speaker 2: I think has it's kind of come out even better
Speaker 2: the limitations actually because you kind of have to go
Speaker 2: around the houses to get there, and on the way
Speaker 2: you find a lot of interesting stuff. So yeah, sad
Speaker 2: Oligarch too definitely checked that out. And Popular Front is
Speaker 2: always booming. But also I've got a new documentary series
Speaker 2: you can plug that Await Days that is it's gonna
Speaker 2: it's it's we've got the first episode is out, but
Speaker 2: it's you know, it's a very very big, big project,
Speaker 2: which you know, we haven't been enough more than we
Speaker 2: can tube almost it's like we almost did. But yeah,
Speaker 2: if people go to uh, you know, YouTube dot com
Speaker 2: slash at Awahite Days TV, obviously it's the video version
Speaker 2: of a lot of the stuff they would have heard
Speaker 2: in the doc here in the in the podcast that
Speaker 2: we did excellent.
Speaker 1: Well fucking check that out, sad Oligarch, Away Days and
Speaker 1: Popular Front all of Jake Hanrahan's vast media empire, and yeah,
Speaker 1: join us cult when he finally starts one. Yeah, soon
Speaker 1: us I've started a cult by then, in which case.
Speaker 2: We can just we can just call that a cult fight.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, uh, there we go. All right, everybody, this
Speaker 1: has been Behind the Bastards. Next week we'll be back
Speaker 1: with maybe a slightly different cult brilliant.
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