A religious leader who ran a Houston call center used threats of God’s punishment to induce young female workers to send him sexually explicit photos, according to text messages released in new court filings.
Last August, the FBI raided a Kingdom of God Global Church call center in Houston and accused leader David E. Taylor of forcing people to work there without pay. Nearly a year later, federal prosecutors have released new text messages in an updated indictment that alleges Taylor used sexual images from workers to “control and exploit” them.
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Taylor wrote to female workers that “your body belongs to me” and said Satan would “destroy you if you don’t surrender,” according to the messages. He also shared explicit images of workers online to punish them for criticizing him publicly, the indictment alleged.
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Attorneys for Taylor, 54, have vehemently denied that he broke the law. They said the people who worked at his call centers were free to leave and were not being physically harmed or restrained. Defense lawyers accused prosecutors of trying to discredit Taylor’s sincere religious belief — that those who disobeyed him would be punished by God.
“The government may not treat a pastor’s sincere religious teaching about spiritual consequences as the mechanism of criminal coercion,” a court filing from defense lawyers stated. They argued the government couldn’t say those “spiritual consequences” weren’t real.
Taylor was arrested last August and remains in custody. His ministry operated call centers in states including Michigan, Florida, and Missouri, where workers aimed to solicit monetary donations. The Houston facility on the 14300 block of North Freeway was formerly a hotel.
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Taylor’s ministry has received about $50 million in donations since 2014, according to court filings. Prosecutors said Taylor and a co-defendant, Michelle Brannon, spent donations on luxury properties, cars, and jet skis. He and Brannon have also been charged with conspiring to launder money.
Kathleen Klein, a third Kingdom of God Global Church leader known as “Prophetess,” was indicted in February and accused of conspiring to force people to work at the call centers.
The new indictment included messages from Taylor to young call center workers who were 18 and 19 at the time.
Mugshot of Kingdom of God Global Church leader David E. Taylor after his arrest on federal charges in August 2025.
Durham County Sheriff’s Office
In 2022, Taylor sent text messages to an 18-year-old church member demanding sexually explicit photos of herself, according to the new federal indictment. The woman told him she was “not attracted or in love,” and “it is taking me long to see you as my husband.” In another 2022 message, she asked him if she would “go to hell if I didn’t want you.” He responded that she would.
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That November, Taylor warned her that lying to him “can cost you your life.”
“There has already been 5 people who has actually died from lying to me and it was instant on the spot !!” he wrote. That December, he told her a private part of her body “belongs to me and you should want to surrender that on your own at anytime frequently without me asking.”
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In other messages to a 19-year-old woman in 2020, Taylor instructed her to send him naked pictures, which she eventually did, according to the indictment. In one text, he said God would bring “sickness and death” upon her because she refused to be happy with him.
Taylor’s legal team has not yet responded to the most recent string of text messages the government released last week. However, his lawyers did respond to the allegation, in a February indictment, that he frequently solicited sexual photos and videos from female members of his organization.
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“Those allegations are not charged as a separate sexual offense, are not tied to any specific forced-labor count, and do not explain how any labor or services were allegedly obtained,” his lawyers wrote in a June filing. “They function primarily as inflammatory background.”
Taylor and Brannon were accused last year of controlling “practically every aspect” of the lives of unpaid call center workers, who lived at the centers or on ministry property. Prosecutors said that Taylor and Brannon used physical punishments, like throwing water on workers’ faces, denying them food, or allowing them to eat only peanut butter and jelly, to “force” them to work there.
For their part, Taylor’s attorneys argued that was far below the legal threshold for criminal coercion. They said prosecutors had unlawfully stopped Taylor from practicing the church discipline he believed necessary.
“For a genuine believer in that tradition, the teaching that God disciplines the disobedient and rewards the faithful is not a threatening harm to be avoided,” one filing said. “It is religious truth that motivates service.”
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