Idiot of the Week: Longtime head of Megachurch indicted on federal sex trafficking charges

This week's winner is a story we've heard many times before. It's another church leader involved in sex trafficking or sexual abuse. This one led a Mexican megachurch based in Guadalajara, Mexico, and there are church locations throughout the United States (including Milwaukee, WI, as pictured). Here's the story.

(Photo: On July 11, 2019 Residents were upset that a banner featuring megachurch leader Naasón Joaquín Garcia, charged in California with child rape and human trafficking, among other crimes, still hung from the La Luz Del Mundo’s Milwaukee church on South Cesar E. Chavez Drive. (Photo by Edgar Mendez, Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service)

Head of Mexican megachurch is indicted in New York on federal sex trafficking charges

By LARRY NEUMEISTER, Assoc. Press, September 11, 2025

NEW YORK (AP) — The longtime head of a Mexican megachurch who is serving more than 16 years in a California prison for sexually abusing young followers has been charged with racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking for allegedly victimizing members of the church for decades, federal authorities said Wednesday.

A New York grand jury returned the indictment alleging that Naasón Joaquín García, 56, and five others, including his 79-year-old mother, exploited the church for decades, enabling the systemic sexual abuse of children and women for the sexual gratification of García and his father, who died in 2014.

García is the head of La Luz del Mundo (The Light of the World), which claims to have 5 million followers in more than 50 countries. Believers consider him to be the “apostle” of Jesus Christ.

The newly unsealed indictment said the criminal activity included the creation of photos and videos of child sexual abuse and had begun after the church was founded a century ago by Garcia’s grandfather, who died in 1964. Garcia’s father, Samuel Joaquin Flores, led the church from then until his death.

Sexual abuse alleged to have occurred for over 50 years

The indictment said the sexual abuse went on for so many decades that many of the grandfather’s victims were mothers of girls and women abused by García’s father and many of the father’s victims were the mothers of girls and women abused by García.

The indictment listed 13 female victims anonymously and specifically, describing when they were allegedly attacked while they were under the age of consent. Some victims, it said, were as young as 13.

The church is based in Guadalajara, Mexico, and there are church locations throughout the United States, including in California, New York, Nevada, Texas, Georgia, Indiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, New Jersey and Washington, D.C., according to the indictment.

In a court document seeking detention of all indicted without bail, prosecutors said sex trafficking of women and children occurred as a result of the case in the U.S., Mexico, Europe, Asia, Africa and elsewhere.

García was taken into federal custody early Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2025, in Chino, California, where he is serving a sentence after pleading guilty in 2022 to two state counts.