A US judge based in Santa Ana, California has ordered the detention of two leaders of Pastor Apollo Quiboloy’s Kingdom of Jesus Christ (KOJC) who are facing conspiracy to commit immigration fraud charges.
Judge Autumn Spaeth ordered the detention of Guia Cabactulan and Marissa Duenas upon the request of government prosecutors who said the two were a flight risk.
Cabactulan, 59, was earlier described as a “top official” of Quiboloy’s church in the Philippines who had direct communications with its Philippine leadership; while Duenas, 41, allegedly handled immigration documents and kept passports of victims of an alleged human trafficking ring.
The duo was nabbed during a raid at the Van Nuys, California compound of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ church.
A third church administrator, Amanda Estopare, 48, reported to have handled “financial aspects” and fund raising of the church, was also arrested in Virginia.
Lawyers for Cabactulan and Duenas unsuccessfully argued that health issues and lack of criminal records would prevent them from fleeing.
Meanwhile, a lawyer of Quiboloy described the arrest of the three church members in the United States as part of a “grand conspiracy” meant to shame the church leader.
Former members of the religious group who allegedly have an “ax to grind” against Quiboloy had supposedly conspired to file a complaint against the Davao-based religious leader, his lawyer Israelito Torreon said.
Federal prosecutors said the three leaders—Cabactulan, Duenas, and Estopare—brought church members to the United States under false pretenses, often telling them that they were invited to be special guests at a concert supporting the church’s ministry which owns a mansion in Calabasas, California.
But once the church members arrived in the United States, their passports were immediately taken away by the three church administrators, who then forced them to collect donations for the Children’s Joy Foundation, a nonprofit run by the church that claims to help impoverished children in the Philippines, according to a criminal complaint.
The complaint sheet said the church raised about $20 million from 2014 through mid-2019, but
most of the money went back into the church’s coffers and to pay for luxury goods for church leaders that included a Bentley, a bulletproof Cadillac Escalade, an Armani suit and real estate.
The complaint added the workers received little to no pay and were required to meet steep fund raising quotas.
Top performers, known as “assets,” were then forced into sham marriages with other church members, or made to obtain student visas so they could stay in the country, prosecutors said.
Investigators said church leaders had arranged 82 such marriages in the past 20 years.
Those who failed to meet quotas faced punishments that included paddling or being forced to spend three to five days in isolation in a walled section of the compound while being denied food and listening to prerecorded sermons by church leaders, according to the complaint.
One victim told investigators that church leaders “shaved her head and made her wear an orange shirt with ‘SOS’ on the back, which stood for ‘Son of Satan,’ ” Anne M. Wetzel, the FBI special agent in charge of the investigation, wrote in the criminal complaint.
The investigation was continuing, and the authorities were focusing on other people associated with the church, a spokesman for federal prosecutors in California said.
All three arrested church leaders were charged with conspiracy to commit immigration fraud, which carries a penalty of up to five years in prison, federal prosecutors said.
Estopare was arrested in Virginia, where she briefly appeared in federal court in Norfolk on Wednesday.
She has appointed a public defender, Suzanne Katchmar, who declined to comment. Estopare remains in custody and is due back in court Monday.