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. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Robert Evans?

  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, the kingdom of God is in the thing that people believe exists, but the kingdom of God is in the cult that the FBI just raided. Back with me as my guest, Jake Hanrahan, the host of Popular Front and a podcast on our network, Sad Oligarch. Jake, how are you doing?

• 0:35Speaker 01

  Good, I'm good. I'm ready to learn again about Jesus and his pretend best mate.

• 0:40Robert Evans?

  And his pretend best friend, David E. Taylor. Yes, that is, I've never heard anyone claim to be Jesus's best friend. So he's at least, he's at least, you know, creative, you know, a thinker.

• 0:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, not since like the Bible, you know?

• 0:53Robert Evans?

  Right. I don't even think anyone in the Bible had the balls to be like, no, he's my best friend.

• 0:57Speaker 01

  No, that is true.

• 0:58Robert Evans?

  Like, yeah.

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• 1:36Robert Evans?

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• 2:20Robert Evans?

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• 3:04Robert Evans?

  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 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, will teach you, right? For like, they'll do like a three-day lecture series, you know, on how to make personal contact with Jesus, and then how to use your newfound friendship with Jesus to get stuff, primarily to cure and save your sick or dying or dead loved ones, right? 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.

• 3:48Robert Evans?

  David's marketing people, who are again, all unpaid cult members, working and living together in these giant warehouse spaces that he's bought across the country, managed his social media, and they would draw people to the call-in line with posts like this. And this is a July 2019 Twitter post from David E. Taylor's account. Thousands are being healed of cancer through the life and ministry of David E. Taylor. Call 1-877-843-4567 for more information.

• 4:16Robert Evans?

  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 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.

• 4:45Speaker 01

  He doesn't even really come across as particularly charismatic. Like, you know, there's, other than his like, I mean, let's be honest, pretty dapper outfit. That doesn't seem to be like that much new to what they're doing, other than maybe the aesthetics of it. But yeah, no, it's, it's, I guess it's just preying on, you know, very people at a very loose end. But still, plenty of cults do that. But I guess this one took off.

• 5:12Robert Evans?

  Yeah. I mean, that, that's really what it comes down to is that like, this is, and it's just, it's just so blatant. Um, to an extent that is, is sometimes funny. It's, it's usually more sad than funny. But when you go through kind of the posts, this dedicated PR team is putting together, they're, they're throwing together advertisements for like big in-person events, uh, one of which was called miracles for the maimed. And I'm just gonna show you the ad image that they had here. Cause it's, it's a special one. Um, look at that. It's a, a photo of David E. Taylor, holding like 30 different, like walking canes and crutches. Like he's just got dozens of them in his hands.

• 5:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, he's, he's inventive, if nothing else, you know?

• 5:59Robert Evans?

  He's, 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, for with God, nothing shall be impossible. I think we're meant to take from this is that like, well, all these people who came in needing crutches and walkers and canes don't need him anymore. He cured the maimed. So David E. Taylor's just got to take care of all this trash now?

• 6:20Speaker 01

  I mean, the thing is though, like maimed is pretty heavy. Like if you're like, oh, I can't walk very well. Well, to be maimed, you've been pretty fucking badly hurt.

• 6:29Robert Evans?

  You've been maimed, yeah.

• 6:32Speaker 01

  It's like, he went in really heavy with that, man. Very funny. Well, not funny for the people, but the image is fucking incredible. I'm not gonna lie, I really, really liked the aesthetic of it. It's very like 2000s era, but just with the added caveat of being like a weird god cult. It's great.

• 6:49Robert Evans?

  Right, yeah. It's a special picture. And when I saw that beautiful image, I had to know more. So I found one of David's YouTube channels that still hosted the miracles for the maimed video. A lot of his stuff's been taken offline since the FBI raid. And so I found this is like a stream of one of his like speeches, right? Like, or one of his like events, you know? I told you that he goes up on stage and he'll do these like multi-hour long talks. And this, like, you can find this whole video online on YouTube. It's called Miracles for the Maimed with David E. Taylor from his Miracles, David E. Taylor Miracles in America stream. This one has 741 views. It was streamed eight months ago.

• 7:31Robert Evans?

  So we're not talking about a massive channel, but clearly I think he's filling these in-person rooms. Because he's got, he's got, like, the image I just showed you of him with all the crutches, that was like a billboard advertising this thing for weeks. And so people who just didn't know much about David E. Taylor showed up to see him speak and give his like, because this is part of his Global Miracles in America crusade against cancer.

• 7:57Robert Evans?

  So it's, yeah, 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. 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 cult schlock together, Jake.

• 8:34Speaker 03

  A nation formed by God, destined to be a light to the world. But for centuries, darkness has fought to claim its soul.

• 8:47Speaker 04

  I've kept them bound, chasing wealth, power, and pleasure.

• 8:52Robert Evans?

  And the guy talking just looks like a ring race. It's like Assassin's Creed. Yeah.

• 8:59Speaker 03

  Yet, in the hour of her greatest peril, heaven.

• 9:04Robert Evans?

  Not sure what president that's supposed to be.

• 9:06Speaker 03

  From the throne of eternity, the king of kings beheld the plight.

• 9:12Robert Evans?

  Now, I'm gonna stop us right here.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:15Robert Evans?

  Uh, because this is, I mean, it's just weird AI schlock. What's interesting to me is Jesus's room, because at the point at which we stopped it, Jesus is like walking around in this like gold-chased room.

• 9:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:27Robert Evans?

  Uh, and there's like 30 beds in it that are just empty.

• 9:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:32Robert Evans?

  Like Jesus, the dozens of beds is weird to me. Like, why does Jesus need that many beds in his room? What is Jesus doing that requires all of those beds? Does Jesus keep a harem?

• 9:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:45Robert Evans?

  Because I don't know why else you would have that many beds.

• 9:48Speaker 01

  Also, like, everything is gold-plated, gold-gilded.

• 9:51Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 9:52Speaker 01

  I mean, like.

• 9:52Robert Evans?

  It does all look like Donald Trump's living room, yes.

• 9:54Speaker 01

  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, whatever, Jesus was a pretty fucking cool guy. Like, he did some pretty cool shit.

• 10:04Robert Evans?

  He wasn't into gold.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  Right, he was not into like loads of gold. He was into like looking after lepers and like, you know, like helping people. Yeah, he wasn't like, get me gold everywhere. Like, it's so silly, man, fuck.

• 10:17Robert Evans?

  Yeah, definitely. One of the, I think, unargued things of the text of the Bible is Jesus was not a huge fan of fucking palaces.

• 10:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:26Robert Evans?

  Not a big palace guy.

• 10:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:29Robert Evans?

  Anyway.

• 10:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, Jesus, not known to be a palace guy, definitely not.

• 10:33Robert Evans?

  Um, so yeah, and what's fun here is obviously that's all AI generated, right? Like that's 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.

• 10:52Speaker 01

  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 is terrible now is because real life, and I know there's such a hack thing to say, but it is so true. Like these real life scenarios are just pure Black Mirror episodes, really, you know? And here we are.

• 11:13Robert Evans?

  I've had the same problem where like when I first started watching the show 10 years ago or whatever, it was like, oh, wow, this seems like something that could happen.

• 11:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:20Robert Evans?

  And now it's like, well, this is, I mean, yeah, we're here.

• 11:23Speaker 01

  And it's worse.

• 11:24Robert Evans?

  Slightly less upsetting than the real thing.

• 11:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 11:28Robert Evans?

  Yeah. I, I, oh, what I wouldn't give for a San Junipero. That's not what we're getting at all.

• 11:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, right? Instead, we have like Jesus gold plated harem room to con cancer patients out with their money.

• 11:41Robert Evans?

  Fuck palace?

• 11:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, exactly that. Yeah, it sucks.

• 11:45Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Now, again, I also think it's kind of interesting and I, there's a 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 cult. 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 in his mansion. They were just like Jesus in a palace, looking out a window or something. That, that would be my assumption.

• 12:15Robert Evans?

  But I don't know, it's weird how directly again, it graphs to the actual cult that David E. Taylor is running, which has a bunch of mansions with dozens of beds in them.

• 12:24Speaker 01

  Right. And sometimes they do do this thing where they kind of, you know, hide in plain sight like, oh yeah, put that in there. Or maybe it's to make people, when they watch that, they're not so shocked when they actually find not the real thing, because he's obviously not in heaven and he's not Jesus. But you know, something similar, maybe make them not, not so shocked. I don't know.

• 12:45Robert Evans?

  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 can see here, they're not living well.

• 13:05Speaker 01

  That is horrible. What is that? Yeah, so for anyone listening, it's just like tents inside, like people sleeping on, oh, it's horrible. That tent looks like a medical tent.

• 13:15Robert Evans?

  If it were a homeless shelter, I'd say like, that looks like maybe an okay homeless shelter. Or like, yeah, like a FEMA shelter, people just got forced out of their homes and you're quickly making space for them.

• 13:24Speaker 01

  It's that white tent, though. Like, that is creeping me out. That was like some kind of weird medical, I don't know. Yeah, it looks weird. Yeah, it's like, for a homeless shelter, like, it wouldn't be bad at all. But like, that medical tent is creeping me the fuck out. But yeah.

• 13:37Robert Evans?

  Right.

• 13:37Speaker 01

  The AI is definitely, yeah, definitely a lot different.

• 13:41Robert Evans?

  Shushing it up. 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. He, 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 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

• 14:25Robert Evans?

  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 watched, when they fell behind on producing stuff like that. For example, on October 6th of 2020, Taylor's second-in-command sent a text message to the media team, which warned, "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 tried to find- No going to sleep. The grammar's not great.

• 14:58Speaker 01

  That's so dark. No, no, it's just like the, whenever like people are restricting sleep, it's like always

• 15:04Robert Evans?

  Yup.

• 15:05Speaker 01

  The lowest wrong of like just nightmare shit.

• 15:08Robert Evans?

  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 really big.

• 15:29Speaker 01

  It's why, um, like, you know, the CIA were doing it when they were torturing people and I'd be great, you know?

• 15:34Robert Evans?

  Of course, same diff.

• 15:35Speaker 01

  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.

• 15:44Robert Evans?

  Yeah, and that does explain a lot of the, "God, why are people putting up with this?" Well, because they're exhausted and starving. And like, they, you've gotten them to a point where they're not making anything that can be even, like, sort of described as a rational choice. Now, I have not found the mosaic video that he was talking about in that text message, but the indictment gives a very clear idea of how the cult was organized. At the top of the slave hierarchy were 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, his romantic partner and a couple of these pastors working for him. And they're

• 16:25Robert Evans?

  at the top, top of the hierarchy, but kind of the top of the slave hierarchy are the armor bearers. And here's how the FBI describes them in their indictment. Armor bearers were Taylor's personal servants who fulfilled Taylor's demands around the clock. Taylor and Brandon, Brandon being his, like, number one, controlled every aspect of the daily living of their victims. They are not allowed to go anywhere without permission, and they sleep in the facilities where they work or in a ministry house. Armor bearers handled everything from the standard waiting on hand and foot of Taylor and Brandon and the other couple of people leading it, to the actual nuts and bolts sex trafficking work that David E. Taylor required of them. Per the DOJ, Taylor demanded that his armor bearers transport

• 17:06Robert Evans?

  women from ministry houses, airports, and other locations to Taylor's location, and ensured the women transported to Taylor took Plan B emergency contraceptives.

• 17:16Robert Evans?

  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 he must be doing himself. And these are women, maybe who are more prominent in the evangelical community, like Christian female musicians and stuff who have like a degree of, so that's a big target. But also just a lot of when a female 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 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

• 17:59Robert Evans?

  because he refuses to wear condoms and because the cult just wasn't, didn't want to take any chances.

• 18:04Speaker 01

  It always gets so disgusting, doesn't it?

• 18:07Robert Evans?

  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 pills should be legal, like, but like, that's, it almost feels like pointless to bring that up when we're talking about crimes of this magnitude, like, of course, they're hypocrites, right?

• 18:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course, yeah.

• 18:27Robert Evans?

  The women brought to Taylor seemed to have mostly been female cult members, but again, he flirted heavily with these female, like, Christian pop musicians and recording artists. We'll talk more about that later. But in order to keep any of these ladies from speaking up and doing damage to his ministry, Taylor and his top lieutenants also operated what can be accurately described as a revenge porn ring, right? That's how they like kept these women from coming out. And I'm going to quote now from an article on Detroit local foreign news. 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,

• 19:11Robert Evans?

  an unpaid worker, mind you, who cried when she handed them over and apologized for having been late in completing the assignment, which she said she understands that she needed to do and can't delay. Right? This is your assignment, is you need to take like naked photos of yourself or whatever and send them to me, so that like, I have, yeah, the ability to, yeah, I have revenge porn on you.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's so dark to, to frame it 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, yeah.

• 19:49Robert Evans?

  Right, 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.

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• 21:32Robert Evans?

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• 21:42Robert Evans?

  And we're back. Okay, so we're talking about the sex trafficking. David's most prominent alleged victim, and the woman who's given us the most details about how this process worked, was a gospel singer named Vicky Yehi. And prior, she, this is like, she was, she was, she was, is fairly prominent within like the world of Christian pop music. Prior to meeting Taylor, Yehi was a Dove Award nominated musician. And you probably haven't heard of the Dove Award because it's not like, it's not a big deal in like, the real world, but within this kind of community of like, Christian, like musicians and stuff like that, who like specifically make like worship music and

• 22:27Robert Evans?

  stuff, it's a pretty big deal. It's like their Grammy, right? So she's not like a celebrity in normal world terms, but she's famous within like the evangel, like the Pentecostal and the charismatic like chunks of the evangelical community. Right. So she had a lot going on before she got caught up with this maniac, which is important because it means that when she decides to leave, when she realizes what he's doing, she has the resources and clout to actually escape. And that's why she's able, she gives us a lot of details about this guy because she's able to, like she is not leaving the cult and having absolutely nothing, being completely broke, basically homeless. So she has some, some ability to actually fight back openly. And she, she has been for years, by the way.

• 23:09Robert Evans?

  She came out a while ago and has, was one of the people who was first kind of detailing the actual extent of his abuse beyond just like tax fraud. Right. So he and Yehi met at a church event in 2017. And Taylor immediately, this appears to be part of his flirtation technique, he starts calling her his spiritual daughter. That isn't appealing, doesn't seem like it should be appealing, right? That's pretty upsetting fundamentally, but she feels drawn to him. And she does consent to starting a sexual relationship with him, which, which lasts about 16 months. So this does start consensually. They're both adults. She has the ability to say yes or no.

• 23:54Robert Evans?

  She's not in the cult.

• 23:57Robert Evans?

  And since coming out against Taylor, Yohai has repeatedly told reporters that this was a thing, like describing women he wanted to fuck as his spiritual daughters was a tactic Taylor used. He used it repeatedly on the women that he went after. She claimed, "He preys 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.

• 24:21Speaker 01

  No, no, it's just such a horrible, you know, just disgusting, like.

• 24:25Robert Evans?

  And I, I just don't get how calling someone a spiritual, your spiritual daughter works as a flirtation method?

• 24:32Speaker 01

  No, unless you're like, it's depraved as he is.

• 24:34Robert Evans?

  It is depraved, 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?

• 24:52Speaker 01

  They, uh, have you seen Dog Tooth? Like, uh, it's been a long time, but there's, 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 daughter like that. It means daughter like this. And it's like, look, no matter what way you look at it, it's fucked up. But in their world, like you say, it's just, everything is on a different planet by that stage.

• 25:23Robert Evans?

  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, 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 terms that like, are used within the community, or like, you're part of an online forum or something, and it creates a sense of bonding, that like, I know what this means when I say it, 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, when you do it extremely enough, and you're fundamentally,

• 26:07Robert Evans?

  you can't understand what other people are saying, and they can't understand you, that creates this kind of, that furthers this sense of isolation that's necessary for cults to work the way they, they work, you know? In, in-group thinking and all that. Right, exactly.

• 26:23Robert Evans?

  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 gonna quote again from the News Herald. According to Yohe, Taylor made a habit of buying her expensive gifts, including lobotene red-bottom shoes, a fur coat, and a Jaguar sedan during their relationship. 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? To give your mistress a card using church money?

• 27:08Robert Evans?

  The answer is yes. Yes. Although, in a way that isn't easy necessarily to prove or get, right? This isn't a thing that gets caught easily, and in fact, most, 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 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...

• 27:50Robert Evans?

  They have to, they're, 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. Interesting. 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 or disagree with this, but the church does not have to pay like, a property tax for their church to continue to exist as a church. But, once the money is going into people's accounts as like a salary, that you pay money on as normal, right? And so, if you're paying the pastor millions of dollars to buy luxury cars and a private jet and live in mansions, that money's supposed to be taxed.

• 28:34Robert Evans?

  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 which, and, and this is, Taylor has probably crossed the line, because the IRS is after him, but you can get away with a lot, in this regard, right? Like, churches often do get away with a lot. No, that's not my private jet, it's the ministry's private jet, right?

• 29:15Robert Evans?

  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, you can't give gifts over a certain amount and not have them be taxed, you know? So, there is a bunch of tax fraud going on here, right? I'm both pointing out that, there's a lot you can get away with, as a church, in terms of tax exempt stuff, and Taylor is constantly exceeding that remit. Like, he is absolutely committing tax crimes. It's just, it takes a while for this to get caught, because, for one thing, the IRS is kind of scared, of going after churches in the US, right?

• 30:00Robert Evans?

  Why is that? Well, for one thing, it's really bad PR.

• 30:05Robert Evans?

  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 of fight either. Because the, the church will always say, oh, this is, this is discrimination. This is anti-Christian discrimination. They're coming after me because of my faith, right? And it's just easier to ignore it. And that is usually what happens, right? And this is a part of the massive problem we have because these churches often, I mean, there's a lot that they often do, like it's incredibly common for churches to basically like expressly give political orders or, or tell the congregation, this is how you should vote. This is who you should support politically.

• 30:49Robert Evans?

  And churches aren't supposed to be able to do that and keep their tax exempt status, but they do all the time because everyone's scared of pissing these people off.

• 30:58Speaker 01

  Not to go too off track, but I just, obviously you know about this. So would that be something that like, for example, the evangelicals are doing with Trump? Obviously they, you know, they're very pro genocide in Gaza. And I was just, the whole time I was like, why the, what the fuck is like, how do they have this much power? It's something like that, is it?

• 31:16Robert Evans?

  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 mega churches and these mega church leaders who have just buckets of cash. And it's, it's also just, that's why 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, this happens constantly. Like Taylor, Taylor is weird because he crossed the line enough that he gets in trouble for tax fraud, right? Which very rarely happens to these guys.

• 32:02Robert Evans?

  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 fraud and actually looks for stuff like this. And they published an investigation into tax fraud by David E. Taylor and Joshua Media Ministries International in 2018. 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. It is excellent work.

• 32:45Robert Evans?

  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.

• 33:00Speaker 01

  A bit like how they get, like, I'm sorry, sorry. But like, I guess it's kind of in the way of like, I guess it's not a bad idea. Like, you know, like Al Capone, they went after his tax.

• 33:09Robert Evans?

  Right.

• 33:09Speaker 01

  It's like, yeah, it's easy to get him on this, right?

• 33:12Robert Evans?

  Right. And it's provable too, right? And without anyone, you don't need, yeah, it's black and white. And you don't need someone who is like an abuse victim and traumatized to be willing to testify, which is hard to do, right? You know, not making a moral judgment. It's just difficult to get people to talk when they've been through something like this.

• 33:32Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 33:32Robert Evans?

  For a variety of reasons, and you don't need that with tax fraud, right? And in that report, the Trinity Foundation says that like, they consider whenever you hear that the head of a church is going without salary, that is a huge red flag. That's like one of their big warnings that fraud is going on. Quote, "Taylor lives in an apparent lavish lifestyle and appears to use the church account as his personal piggy bank. In his deposition, he says that he lives off gifts that are personally donated to him, which do not count as a salary." And that deposition was from a 2014. He gets charged with tax fraud in 2014 and his church loses its tax exempt status for like a year and then gets it back almost immediately. But this part has been going on for a while. The tax fraud has been known for about a decade

• 34:17Robert Evans?

  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 tax exempt status, you can get it back the next year and nothing will happen, right? Because we just don't take these kinds of crimes seriously in the United States. It's like legal crime. Yeah, exactly. If you do it with a church, it's not a crime. Yeah. Now, that report also goes into one of David Taylor's grifts from November of 2018, a praise-athon, where he asked his followers to donate to sponsor 300 new students who would be trained and brought into his ministry as volunteers. And I think the idea was that he would personally instruct these people in the art of talking to Jesus so that they

• 35:00Robert Evans?

  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 and surgeons can't do." Oh dear. They go, what? Oh dear. They go on to summarize, "He claims he provided housing, meals, clothing, hygiene, and training for them at a cost of about 150K for each student's first year, more if their entire family relocated with them. That comes to a total of 45 million requested for that project alone. Taylor claims that they will be provided more than even an accredited Bible college 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.

• 35:42Robert Evans?

  I have found zero evidence that any of his followers were ever paid a salary after finishing their training. This was a grift at both ends. The donated money was not being used for the promised purpose, and the people that he did sign up as students weren't being given degrees and they weren't being given salaries and jobs. They were made to work at a call center and abused, right? Right. Now-

• 36:05Robert Evans?

  I know some of you may be wondering at this point, Robert, you said none of the donated money went to feeding or sheltering these 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?

• 36:27Speaker 01

  Well.

• 36:28Robert Evans?

  And 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 Taylor's named Chris Sorensen. And we'll talk about Chris's journey a little later, but he's one of three former members who have alleged to the Tennessee News Herald that Taylor's cult fed its worker followers, not using the tens of millions 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.

• 37:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I wondered for a long time what that was, actually. So it's like, essentially like benefits so you can live if you lose your job or whatever.

• 37:18Robert Evans?

  Yes.

• 37:19Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 37:20Robert Evans?

  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, if you can't feed yourself otherwise, this gets you the benefits you need to keep you and your family from starving. And this is how the cult made sure that they didn't have to pay even a dime of their money to keep their, their people making the money, working the call center alive. Quote, from the News Herald, "JMMI instructed church members to claim homelessness with the state of Michigan in order," sorry, not, I said Tennessee earlier, it's Michigan, "in order to get electronic benefits transfer cards. Members then allegedly pooled the cards to an appointed designee who would shop for everyone at nearby stores. Every person had to have an EBT card, a food stamp card, Sorensen said. They said, if

• 38:05Robert Evans?

  you don't get one, you're not going to eat. So you have 50 people to feed and one card will last one day. You'll totally empty one card on the whole entire staff, and it's not for you personally, it's to spend on the whole entire group. 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 keeper, plastic box." It's just, and again, this cult, he brings in $50 million in less than a decade, just from donations to the, you can feed people.

• 38:33Speaker 01

  What I don't get is, like, you're already so fucking rich. Why even risk getting into this trouble for this kind of thing? You know, it's just like, beyond me, I get, do they think they're untouchable?

• 38:47Robert Evans?

  They, I mean, they were for a very long time.

• 38:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, true.

• 38:49Robert Evans?

  He gets away with this for closing in on 20 years. And I think it's also with people like this, I think they almost feel a sense of disgust at the idea that they might spend any of their money on other people.

• 39:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:01Robert Evans?

  You know, I, I really, I think that there's something pathological going on.

• 39:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely.

• 39:06Robert Evans?

  I maybe, maybe I'm kind of reading into it a little bit, but like, I, I, I just, I don't know what else it could be, you know?

• 39:14Robert Evans?

  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 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. On or about May 5th, 2021, at 12:26 a.m., 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 $164,000 today. Each hour you fall behind, consequences will start. We will mess with the food. You will fast from the regular food or abstain for a while normally.

• 39:59Robert Evans?

  As of now, there's a 21-day peanut butter and jelly regiment like before. Those who do not push their calls individually and as a team with the right amount of people and closing numbers at 6 p.m., they don't eat dinner at all. If they do good afterward this time, then at the end of the night, they may get a snack before bed, but not much, and this regiment will go on every day for 21 days until they obey. Take away the food. There will be other consequences. We must make them fast and prey." He uses two exclamation points at the end of each of those sentences. I don't know why.

• 40:28Speaker 01

  He, he's, you can clearly, I think, if you, if you're in the mindset where you'll, you'll abuse people so much to the point where you're saying, yeah, like, I can make your mother with cancer get better, or your dad with AIDS or whatever, and then you get really, really rich anyway. It's like, I think the whole psychotic element just gets compounded, and that's what it sounds like there. It's like he thinks he's God.

• 40:52Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah. Or the devil, maybe? Yeah. Or that, yeah. On other occasions, he enforced multi-day fasts when call center workers couldn't make his impossible quotas. Sleep was also commonly withheld as a punishment, although it might be more accurate to say that Taylor structured his quotas in such a way that no one could make them, which was automatically punished by being made to work until 4:00 a.m. In addition, whenever the cult 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?

• 41:36Robert Evans?

  This is presented as a mix of punishment and strategy, but the overall goal is to make sure none of his full-time workers ever get sleep, because that keeps them in the state where they'll do whatever he says. Like zombies. Like zombies. Here's the indictment again. On or about September 19th at 10:21 p.m., Taylor texted to victim DG, "Michelle and Kia, make them all stand and tell them if the punishment to 4:00 a.m. don't work, I'm gonna 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." The degenerates, is that what he called them? The degenerates, yes, yes, because they're not, they couldn't make $164,000 in a day

• 42:21Robert Evans?

  like God demanded. Wow. You know? It's what Jesus would want. It's what Jesus would want. About a month after this, he sent another message complaining, "I can't be kind to you, letting you start later and sleep in, because members of the team had fallen behind again on his impossible quotas." All caps, "Now I don't care if you are tired. You've crossed the line. You're going to work all night and get up in the morning. I want the names of those who are not helping with this push or doing their work or showing change." All caps, "They are going to the homeless shelter." Right? Again, this is directly, the threat is, "I have already reduced you to near homelessness. If you cross the line, you're out on your ass," right? Yeah. After taking everything you had, anyway. You can't even get EBT because we have your EBT card, right?

• 43:06Robert Evans?

  Like, you're already on it, you're on, because you don't get that forever, right? That's the other thing, is that like, these people are so comprehensively fucked.

• 43:14Speaker 01

  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 is essentially slave labor, taking all their identity, their rights, making money off them, like, it's a serious criminal enterprise at this stage.

• 43:37Robert Evans?

  Yep, yep, absolutely. Now, in the federal indictment, former cult members alleged that Taylor would often threaten his victims by explaining the power God gave him, rebuking them for disobedience, and cursing those who stopped working for him or spoke negatively about him. In addition, quote, "The defendants required the victims to request permission to leave their housing or the call centers and controlled their access to transportation. 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.

• 44:21Robert Evans?

  So 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 2, 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 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 what to believe, who to trust, what churches to trust."

• 45:06Robert Evans?

  And this is where like, she says that her friend restored her faith despite her trauma and found another church, which is depicted as a positive end in the article. I can't help feeling, maybe you needed a break from religion for a while. Long while. Maybe like, maybe a little while out there, you know? Maybe for the rest of your life. Take a couple of months off of a religion. Yeah.

• 45:28Robert Evans?

  And it's, you know, outside of, because we're talking again about how crazy all of this seems on the inside, I need to emphasize, unless you are paying attention to like the Trinity Foundation's reporting on their tax fraud and stuff, none of this is super obvious. There's not any mainstream news articles for a while. You get, starting like a year, a couple of years ago, you do get some local press about some of the allegations, but there's very little to find on these people. And they also seem to have some like fairly high-profile backers. From July 31st to August 4th of 2019, David Taylor held a miracle crusade against cancer in Taylor, Michigan. And it featured, like, one of

• 46:13Robert Evans?

  the people who spoke at the event was Andre Gasslerowski, 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 Foundation's right up here. "Gasslerowski co-founded the conglomerate Art B, which looted the Polish banking system. Then Gasslerowski fled the country. He moved to Israel to avoid extradition in 1991." The Washington Post explained the criminal enterprise. "The company's founders discovered that a helicopter could move cash around Poland faster than the antiquated banking system could clear checks. Art B shuffled about 18 billion through the banking system, picking up an estimated 360 million in interest on money that was in several accounts at the same time.

• 46:56Robert Evans?

  A Polish court convicted Gasslerowski's business partner, Bogoslaw Bogcik. Radio Free Europe reported Bogcik was found guilty of cheating the Polish banking system out of 424 million złoty, 94 million US dollars, defrauding a bank, bribing bank clerics, and carrying out financial misdeeds connected with his company, Art B." As of the year 2000, Polish investigators estimated that Baksik may still have some 40 million abroad and Gassierowski twice that amount. After moving to Israel, Gassierowski reinvented himself as a philanthropist, but failed to pay back the people he defrauded. JMMI is raising money for a partnership with Gassierowski's Helping Hand Coalition, claiming to bring aid to thousands of impoverished Holocaust survivor Jews in desperate need. But it is impossible to know how much money is actually going to the Helping Hand Coalition.

• 47:39Robert Evans?

  So on paper, this guy is working with a foundation that helped an Israeli nonprofit that helps Holocaust survivors. And 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 he's fled to Israel to avoid prosecution, is some kind of con, right? It's a Holocaust survivor con. Like, he is stealing money from Holocaust survivors.

• 48:07Speaker 01

  It doesn't get much lower.

• 48:08Robert Evans?

  And David Taylor's helping. Yeah. That's about as bad as it gets.

• 48:12Speaker 01

  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?

• 48:20Robert Evans?

  Yeah, and I'd love to know how that conversation started. I was like, hey, I hear you're into some really fucked up shit, David E. Taylor. You know, you're trafficking people, committing all sorts of sex crimes. How would you like to defraud some Holocaust survivors?

• 48:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:33Robert Evans?

  You know?

• 48:33Speaker 01

  And he was like, fuck yeah.

• 48:34Robert Evans?

  And it's weird, this fucking Gassierowski, 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 the legally an ambassador, it's like an honorary thing, right? But like, he gets stuff like this, you know? And he's working, he has this, all these different, on paper, humanitarian enterprises, the Refuge Homes Project, which is supposed to rescue and find homes for children who have been sold into human sex trafficking. And there's all these different, you know, feeding the poor charities. He's

• 49:19Robert Evans?

  supposed to be, the money that gets donated to him is supposed to go to like, dig water wells and pour Places overseas, providing Thanksgiving and Christmas gifts to thousands of families. There's this disaster aid charity that's real called the Convoy of Miracles that he just like lied and pretended to be donating money to. They eventually like went to court because they were like, he's not, he's just using our name to steal from people. It's cool stuff. So yeah, let's talk about, well, actually, let's throw to ads first because that's probably time for that. And then we'll, we'll, we'll close out this story.

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• 51:24Robert Evans?

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• 51:34Robert Evans?

  And we're back. So the most detailed account we have from a former member is a guy named Chris Sorensen, who I chatted about a little earlier. Chris talked to the News Herald in 2019 after escaping, and he found the cult. He got involved with David E. Taylor's JMMI as a direct result of reading Taylor's 2009 book, Face-to-Face Appearances From Jesus: The Ultimate Intimacy. Sorensen claims, "I got associated with Tayl..." I know, right? That's such a fucking title. It rises his head again. Uh huh. Sorensen claims, "I got associated with Taylor's ministry in January of 2015. That's when I very first heard of the guy, and I saw ads for his book saying, 'If you buy this book and you read it, you'll see Jesus.' So I took the gamble. I bought it and I read it."

• 52:16Robert Evans?

  And Chris's story is valuable because it illustrates the technical means by which Taylor utilized his followers to reach out and entrap new worker drones. Within days of finishing reading the book, Sorensen wakes up, he's just finished this, and there's a Facebook message from JMMI, from Taylor's cult, written by someone, and he doesn't know it at the time, it's written by someone living in a warehouse owned by the cult in Michigan, and the message said, "Jesus told me to reach out to you. I was in prayer last night, and I was drawn to your page to contact you." And Sorensen is like, "Oh, wow. I just read your book, and now you're reaching out to me? I was so honored." You see why this would be effective, right? Right. Someone has just, and it feels like, well, how could they have known unless God told them, right?

• 52:59Robert Evans?

  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, starts working on their Michigan property full-time. And in short order, he's the one sending spam messages to people on Facebook. And so he realizes, "Oh, God didn't tell them to reach out to me," right? What's actually happening here is that these call center workers, who are expected to reach out to hundreds of people a day, they're just going through the Facebook pages of David Taylor and a bunch of other prominent televangelists like Billy Graham or Joel Olsteen, and they're seeing who is liking each of the posts.

• 53:43Robert Evans?

  And then they're just messaging people who have recently liked posts. So Sorenson must have liked the post about the book that he bought and read. And they see that and they reach out to him directly. That's the actual way in which they're kind of like picking people to cold call is like whoever's liking these posts from other evangelists. There's a better chance that they're going to be vulnerable 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.

• 54:22Robert Evans?

  But every now and then someone like Sorenson would get a message at just the right time that it feels like something's happening.

• 54:32Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Like a cold calling for Jesus, basically. It's right. It's like a cold reading kind of technique, but applied to like using social media and kind of some of these other dynamics. Sorenson told the News Herald, quote, "During his six months with Joshua Media Ministries, Sorenson 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. 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.

• 55:16Robert Evans?

  Sorenson said that four of the men were being corrected for smoking weed and two of them for interactions with females. The seventh happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. So, you know, this is just a guy who feels secure, just physically abusing at random members of the cult. This is probably another part of like what keeps people in line is just like this fear of being beaten, of being targeted like this. Now, as is usually the case with cults, there were, as I've said, numerous red flags and signs that shit was wrong well before the raids. In 2014, they were audited for massive tax fraud. They lost their tax exempt status at least twice over the years, and in both instances, got it back after less than a year. Groups like Trinity published

• 55:59Robert Evans?

  and directly mailed detailed reports about suspected fraud to the IRS, but this did not create any kind of public outrage or knowledge of what was going on, in spite of the fact that by 2016, local police in Taylor, Michigan, had received at least 30 calls about JMMI. Some of these were non-issues, but others were complaints from friends and family of cult members. And in one case, there was a bomb threat made by a former member against the organization. According to the police report, the man was, quote, "angry that God created him, but he couldn't kill God, so he would kill the pastor of JMMI." I mean, go for it. Go for it. Fine, man. In this case, you picked the right guy. Yeah.

• 56:40Robert Evans?

  But there was no, like, he, there was no evidence that he actually did anything. And when the police responded, they're like, "Do you want us to search the church for anything suspicious or bring in a bomb dog?" And church officials are like, "No, you don't need to come inside. We're good." Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. In June of 2018, a former JMMI 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. A few months after that, a father requested help from

• 57:22Robert Evans?

  the police in getting his son out of the building. He told them that his son worked at the church, but he wasn't sure in what capacity. And police agreed to help and called, 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, the officers, like, handcuffed him and put him in the back of a patrol car. While this happened, several men in suits were filming outside of the buildings. Like, there's, there's stuff like this going on for years. In 2017- A guy in his late 50s dies of natural causes during a prayer group at JMMI. And when police and firefighters arrived at like 2:15 a.m., they quote, "observed a group of people chanting and singing, touching and pressing down on the body."

• 58:05Robert Evans?

  "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. Uh, and the cause of death was, you know, just heart disease, but like, yeah, it just one of these like, "Oh, weird that instead of calling an ambulance, they're just like standing around this guy and, and trying to bring him back to life through prayer, right?" That's a little bit sketchy.

• 58:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like first responders, but they're just praying.

• 58:39Robert Evans?

  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 lived, that was carried out in August. And then later there's raids on their Taylor, Michigan facility, uh, and a bunch of other different call centers, like five or six all around the country. Uh, the FBI raid revealed 57 victims of forced labor living in the Florida mansion. So that's just one of the buildings. I don't think we know entirely how many victims have been found yet, and I don't think they're, they're fully done with the raids.

• 59:23Robert Evans?

  Um, at this moment right now, David Taylor and Michelle Brannon, his second, are accused of running a forced labor and money laundering scheme through their church. Uh, they have, are being charged with, uh, quite a few different felonies right now. Uh, so we'll see what actually happens. Like, I don't know how much it's worth kind of going into the details of the, the, the legal case against them. Um, but they're like, they're, they're looking at some pretty serious charges, right? Uh, and hopefully they won't be free again, I guess. I, it's one of those things that it does seem like they, they flew. Too close to the sun and the FBI has them kind of dead to rights here like I'm not

• 1:00:07Robert Evans?

  optimistic about their chances of getting out of any of this.

• 1:00:11Speaker 01

  Jesus is definitely not his friend anymore for fucking sure.

• 1:00:14Robert Evans?

  No, not his friend anymore. So at least we've got kind of a happy ending, right?

• 1:00:19Speaker 01

  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 like big ones, you know, like how many more of these are going on right now? That is what worries me, man. And I will say as well, I do, I'm not religious, like I'm not an atheist, but I'm not religious, but I do hate how these cults use religion always to like 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

• 1:01:01Speaker 01

  misinterpreted and 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, uh, yeah, it's very, it's not exactly, there's very few redeeming qualities to come out of this story, other than eventually they got caught.

• 1:01:31Robert Evans?

  Eventually they got caught, right? And they got caught. I mean, the level of success these people saw, the primary church banking account had over $41 million in it, right? So like, these people are doing really well. And like, the indictment has reported a bunch of transactions, these are just between 2018 and 2025 from Taylor and Brannon, that included 125 pounds of super colossal Red King crab legs, six seafood shears and 30 crab cutters, $10,353.44, a Mercedes Benz for $63,000, a Bentley Continental, $70,000 down payment, a Crown Line boat, $105,000, two jet skis and

• 1:02:13Robert Evans?

  one jet ski trailer, 24 grand, five ATVs, $31,000, Rolls Royce Cullinan, $123,000 lease signing payment, and then at least four bulletproof automobiles, or at least bulletproofing on automobiles. It's a little unclear which to me, based on how the indictment's written, but yeah.

• 1:02:31Speaker 01

  Do you ever think-

• 1:02:32Robert Evans?

  Uh, great stuff.

• 1:02:33Speaker 01

  Like, I hear all that and I'm like, wow, like, you know, I'm breaking my ass to do all these projects and, you know, be an independent journalist. It's like-

• 1:02:41Robert Evans?

  You should just start a cult.

• 1:02:41Speaker 01

  I could just be an evil cult guy and I'll literally be able to buy like-

• 1:02:45Robert Evans?

  I think it every day. I think it every day.

• 1:02:47Speaker 01

  I get like bulletproof cars and fucking crabs legs and yeah. Oh my god.

• 1:02:52Robert Evans?

  Shit, that's the grift. Fuck.

• 1:02:53Speaker 01

  That is the grift.

• 1:02:54Robert Evans?

  What am I doing?

• 1:02:55Speaker 01

  If only we were completely evil, you know?

• 1:02:58Robert Evans?

  Right. If only I gave up my soul entirely, the amount of money I could be making. Holy shit. Well, that's a good retirement plan at least. Jake?

• 1:03:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, thanks for that.

• 1:03:08Robert Evans?

  Mm-hmm. Well, all right. You got any pluggables to plug before we roll out here? That is part two.

• 1:03:13Speaker 01

  Uh, honestly, mostly, um, Sad Oligarch 2. As I said in the last episode, um, really, really happy with this. We've, we've had to really scrape at the, uh, 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, 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 2, um, definitely check that out. And Popular Front is always booming, but also I've got a new documentary series, uh, if I can plug that, Away Days.

• 1:03:53Speaker 01

  That is, it's gonna, it's, we've got, the first episode is out, but it's, you know, it's a very, very, um, big, big project, which, you know, we haven't bitten off more than we can chew, but almost, it's like we almost did. But yeah, if people go to, uh, you know, youtube.com slash at Away Days TV. Obviously, it's the video version of, uh, a lot of the stuff they would have heard in the docu, in the, in the podcast that we did.

• 1:04:19Robert Evans?

  Excellent. Well, fucking check that out. Sad Oligarch, Away Days, and Popular Front. Uh, all of Jake Hanrahan's vast media empire. And yeah, join us cult when he finally starts one.

• 1:04:31Speaker 01

  Yes, soon.

• 1:04:32Robert Evans?

  Unless I've started a cult by then, in which case-

• 1:04:34Speaker 01

  We can just, we can just collab.

• 1:04:36Robert Evans?

  We'll have a cult fight. 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.

• 1:04:47Speaker 01

  Brilliant.

• 1:04:51Speaker 07

  Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedi.com, or check us out on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the Bastards is now available on YouTube. New episodes every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel, youtube.com slash at Behind the Bastards.

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