Follower of alleged cult leader is charged with threatening FBI, prosecutors

The latest twist in the criminal case against alleged cult leader David E. Taylor is a wild one, even by the standards of the bizarre saga surrounding the self-described “apostle,” whose organization operated 24/7 prayer call centers out of luxury properties around the country, including in Chesterfield and Wildwood.

Last week, charges against 36-year-old Makeda Charles, described as a “long-time follower” of Taylor’s Kingdom of God Global Church, were unsealed in Michigan. According to the criminal complaint,  Charles sent emails and text messages to an FBI special agent, a federal prosecutor, and a federal judge, threatening harm if the case against Taylor continued. The threatening communiques dated back to at least January 2025 but intensified in tone and frequency last month, according to an FBI affidavit.

In January of last year, according to that affidavit, Charles texted an FBI special agent a photo of herself holding a rifle in front of towering flames. Included with the photo was a text message saying, “You’ll get one bullet and be shot dead if you try that shit again, and General David E. Taylor can choke you to death or pistol beat you to death.” Notably, that threat predated any criminal charges against Taylor, whose indictment was made public in August 2025. 

The pattern of unhinged threats escalated last month. In the course of a few days in April, Charles sent a fax to a U.S. District judge, presumably to the one overseeing the Taylor’s Michigan case, accusing the judge of engaging in human trafficking and “ethnic intimidation.” The next day, she emailed the judge and federal prosecutor saying, “There is a hit on your life.”

The very next day after that she emailed the same individuals again, writing, “Don’t fuck with His excellency General David E Taylor and God’s money, your life will be robbed and you and all your bloody family be together in hell forever.” She also offered to have herself taken to the jail with Taylor, asking to be put in a “couples psych ward” with him. Charles was arrested last week, although she appears unlikely to get her wish when it comes to that placement.

Taylor has, however, been in jail since his indictment. The charges against his acolyte come amid new court filings in the criminal case against him that suggest how the preacher whose visage long adorned a billboard opposite Lambert Airport may have first gotten on the FBI’s radar.  

He and two others are alleged to have run the Kingdom of God Global Church as a forced labor conspiracy, exploiting followers to work grueling hours in call centers across the country, soliciting donations from people who called into a 24/7 “dream interpretation” hotline. Those hotlines were operated out of call centers in multiple states, including several in West St. Louis County, where members rarely left. (A Wildwood mansion previously belonging to rapper Nelly was just one of the sites.) Prosecutors say members who failed to meet aggressive quotas were punished through food and sleep deprivation, humiliation and threats of “divine punishment.”

Taylor, along with his top lieutenant, Michelle Brannon, were indicted in Michigan in August of last year. A third person, Kathleen Klein, who also went by “Prophetess” was charged as part of the forced labor conspiracy in February. 

There was certainly no shortage of red flags surrounding Taylor’s operations. In 2022, neighbors of one house owned by his church in Chesterfield, on Wildhorse Meadow Drive, suspected it was being used as a call center. 

But new court filings in the criminal case indicate that the FBI was being contacted as early as 2024 by people concerned that their elderly and coginitvely-impaired family members were sending large sums of money to Taylor. An FBI document dated January 2024 memorializes an interview an agent conducted with an elderly woman who had been referred to the agency as a “potential financial fraud victim.”

The elderly woman, identified only as K.W., had made multiple large wire transfers to the Kingdom of God Global Church, totalling $263,400. She attempted at one point to send more money, but a bank teller refused to facilitate the transaction. The FBI form states that K.W. had received the money she sent to Taylor from a settlement and that she’d initially reached out to to the church, which operated a 24/7 hotline, because she was suicidal. The woman’s husband, who also spoke to the agent, said that his wife has many medical issues and had been “completely taken advantage of” and “manipulated” by the church. 

Even after the federal charges against Taylor were made public, FBI agents continued to encounter elderly followers of Taylor eager to send their money to him. An FBI interview with a 79-year-old showed that she donated $10,000 to Taylor’s church the month after the indictment was unsealed. She said she was told the money would go toward building a school. She indicated she would be OK if some of the money went toward Taylor’s legal defense, “but not all of it.” 

Court filings in the case also state that agents have uncovered recordings of the calls that came into the church’s call centers and these recordings show that some of the “donors” display a “level of cognition of the donor is notably concerning.”

Taylor and Brannon had originally been represented in the case by noted St. Louis criminal defense attorneys Scott Rosenblum and John Rogers, respectively. However Rosenblum’s firm exited the case in April, with Rogers withdrawing last week. Both Taylor and Brannon are now represented by a firm out of the Detroit metropolitan area. 

The evidence in the case is reportedly massive, including thousands of pages of financial records, 14,000 pages of FBI reports and other documents, and 46 GB of data, including from software used by churches to track donations as well as from Taylor’s iCloud.