Naasón Joaquín García and his associates used La Luz del Mundo Church to traffic women and children and produce and distribute child pornography, New York prosecutors said.
Manhattan federal prosecutors charged on Wednesday that the leader of a Mexico-based church that claims more than one million followers led a criminal enterprise that for decades sexually abused generations of church members and then destroyed the evidence.
A federal racketeering conspiracy indictment unsealed in Manhattan charged that the church leader, Naasón Joaquín García, 56, and five associates used the La Luz del Mundo Church to sex-traffic women and children and produce and distribute child pornography, among other crimes. His 79-year-old mother was among those charged Wednesday.
Mr. García is already serving a 16-year, eight-month state sentence after pleading guilty in California in 2022 to three felony counts of sexual assault involving three different minors.
The federal charges allege that the wrongdoing went far…
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