Imprisoned Leader of Egyptian-Themed UFO-Obsessed Cult Seeks Compassionate Release

Chris Harris

AOL

April 10, 2026

The leader of a Black supremacist Egyptian-themed cult is seeking early release from federal prison, claiming in papers filed last month that he suffers from a recurring medical condition that causes parts of his body to swell.

Dwight "Malachi" York, a former writer and musician, founded the UFO-obsessed United Nuwaubian Nation of Moors in 1967. He was arrested on May 8, 2002, after authorities raided the cult’s Georgia “Tama-Re” compound, and was accused of molesting dozens of children.

York, now 80, was convicted of transporting minors across state lines for sexual purposes and financial crimes. He has been in prison since 2004, serving a 135-year sentence at the ADX Florence Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado.

York's petition, filed February 13, claims he suffers from complications caused by hereditary angioedema, a rare condition that causes severe swelling that can kill if it affects the throat and constricts one's airway.

The filing claimed that the medical treatment York receives at the prison is substandard, at best.

"This motion is not about revisiting Mr. York’s past," his attorney, Judith Delus Montgomery, wrote in her client’s petition. "It is about his present reality: an elderly man with a serious and potentially fatal medical condition who requires care the prison system cannot provide."

Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills, who was part of the team that investigated the initial claims against the cult, objects to York's release.

“This man here is a serial rapist, a child molester that committed the most heinous of crimes in our society, short of torturous murder, and did it generationally,” Sills told WMAZ. “You don’t get, in my opinion, much worse than that.”

In addition to his convictions, York has also admitted to 40 counts of aggravated child molestation, 34 counts of child molestation, two counts of influencing witnesses and one count of sexual exploitation of a child.

Former U.S. Attorney Max Wood, who prosecuted York in federal court, told the station the petition mirrors a pattern he observed during the original case.

Wood said the York prosecution stands as “the most significant case in Middle Georgia for the last 50 years,” not only for its scale but for what it revealed about how major cases should be built.

“This was huge,” he said. “York was a master of having either a lawyer or a member of his cult just file something as a citizen. They filed all these things in the court system.”

https://www.aol.com/articles/imprisoned-leader-egyptian-themed-ufo-183829838.html

Inside the Egyptian-themed NYC compound that’s home to ‘extremist’ UFO cult — and could be yours for $6M

Dorian Geiger, Matthew Sedacca and Nicole Rosenthal

NY Post 

August. 30, 2024

This real estate listing is out of this world.

An odd Brooklyn building that’s painted yellow and covered in ancient Egyptian motifs has hit the market — but it has a dark history as the home of a UFO-believing cult whose hateful leader has claimed he’s god from outer space.

The eye-catching temple and attached bookstore at the corner of Bushwick Avenue and Hart Street continues to function as a community center, gathering space and place of worship for the Nuwaubian Nation, who also call themselves Sabaeans.

“We got an offer for $6 million” for one of the buildings, a man who returned The Post’s phone calls from the number listed on newly-planted “For Sale By Owner” signs at the property on an otherwise quiet residential block in Bushwick.

“But we’re selling [the properties] as a bundle, we’re asking $5 to 6 million for both.”

The man, identified as Thomas Smith, said he was acting as a middleman between potential buyers and the Nuwaubian Nation, which has called the mysterious complex home for more than 40 years.

The 5,000-square-foot golden temple sits next to a three-story apartment complex and “All Eyes on Egipt” bookstore – which is also owned by the mystics under the LLC Holy Trinity Seed Ministries, according to property records. 

The sale of the unofficial neighborhood landmark would mark a new chapter for the Nuwaubian Nation – described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a “hate group” which mixes “Black supremacist ideas with worship of the Egyptians and their pyramids, a belief in UFOs and various conspiracies related to the Illuminati and the Bilderbergers.”

At its peak in the 1970s and ‘80s, the group owned dozens of properties on adjacent streets in Bushwick, including 20 apartment buildings that housed 500 people as well as bookstores, a clothing store and a supermarket, according to the SPLC.

The compound at 717 and 719 Bushwick Ave. serves as the final vestige of the movement, according to property records.

The one-story temple itself has since been used as a gathering place for meetings and events, though several complaints to the city Department of Buildings dating back to 2013 allege the owners didn’t have a proper occupancy permit to do so.

A building manager at the temple, who identified himself as 37-year-old Senab York – the son of Nuwaubian Nation leader Malachi Z. York, formerly Dwight York — said it was “sad” to think the property could be sold and possibly knocked down and turned into an upscale condos like others popping up on Bushwick Avenue.

“A lot of people, they love taking pictures of this building,” he said.  “They love it. People love Egypt…To see it in Bushwick, like, ‘this came out of nowhere.'”

The Nuwaubian Nation was helmed around 1970 by the senior York, who reportedly forced followers to give up their possessions and work for free – and those who did not meet their quotas were beaten, according to the SPLC. York also chose his followers’ spouses, “mating” them at his discretion.

“It’s about everything, from extraterrestrials to ancient civilizations to DNA to dark matter — it’s a little bit of everything… it’s a lot to unpack,” Senab York told The Post of his father’s teachings.

The cult leader and many of his followers eventually relocated to Putnam County, Georgia, where he built a massive compound dubbed Tama-Re consisting of two pyramids for $975,000 – in anticipation of a UFO slated to “visit Earth in 2003 and to take with it 144,000 chosen people,” according to news reports. 

But the senior York was behind bars when the supposed time came.

Federal authorities raided the Georgia compound in 2002, and York was later sentenced to over 130 years in federal prison on multiple racketeering and child molestation convictions.

He’s currently living out his days in the ADX Florence supermax prison, which houses other infamous inmates such as Mexican drug lord and former Sinaloa Cartel leader El Chapo.

Their 79-year-old leader’s plight hasn’t stopped his followers in Bushwick from erecting a sign atop the bookstore building calling on the Republic of Liberia to repatriate York.

https://nypost.com/2024/08/30/us-news/extremist-ufo-cults-egyptian-themed-nyc-compound-hits-real-estate-market/

Prosecutors allege 'pervasive' child sexual abuse in ex-Kansas City, Kansas, cult

LUKE NOZICKA
Kansas City Star
SEPTEMBER 14, 2023

Numerous girls were sexually abused by members of a quasi-religious group once headquartered in Kansas City, Kansas, whose alleged leaders stand accused of child labor trafficking, prosecutors say.

Federal prosecutors alleged “systemic and pervasive sexual and physical abuse” of children within the group previously known as the United Nation of Islam, which a federal judge in Kansas labeled a cult.

Of the more than 15 examples of sexual abuse detailed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Kansas, one is attributed to one of the defendants in the child labor case: Daniel Aubrey Jenkins, who allegedly “engaged in sexual relationships” with underage girls, including one of the Justice Department’s witnesses.

Prosecutors said Jenkins and the girl were “married” — arrangements that were allegedly forced by the cult’s leader and were not legal — when she was 15. She gave birth to a child at 16, prosecutors wrote.

Jenkins’ lawyer did not return a call or email seeking comment. The Star could not reach Jenkins, who has not been charged with sex abuse in the federal case.

Eight of the sect’s alleged leaders were indicted in 2021 on accusations that they persuaded parents across the U.S. to send their kids to an unlicensed school they ran in KCK. But instead of education, they forced children as young as 8 to work 16-hour days at their businesses, prosecutors say.

The indictment alleged children were physically beaten, but made no mention of sexual abuse. But in responding to pre-trial motions, prosecutors recently disclosed sexual abuse accusations against other members of the group. That included at least six examples of girls being married off to adult men.

The United Nation of Islam, or UNOI, was founded by a truck driver, Royall Jenkins, after he left Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam. Eventually amassing hundreds of followers, Jenkins moved his group’s headquarters in the late 1990s to Kansas City, Kansas, which he called “Heaven.” The group ran businesses along Quindaro Boulevard with names like Your Diner and Your Service Station.

Jenkins claimed he was abducted in 1978 by angels who showed him how to rule on Earth. Representing himself as Allah, or God, Jenkins also “married” and sexually abused multiple underage girls, prosecutors alleged in court records in May.

One of Jenkins’ many “wives” once told an underage girl that it was her “duty” to have sex with Jenkins, prosecutors said.

Referred to in court documents as an unindicted co-conspirator, Jenkins died of COVID-19 complications in 2021 — weeks before he would have been indicted.

A weeks-long trial is set to begin March 4 for seven defendants who have pleaded not guilty. An eighth, Etenia Kinard, pleaded guilty last month to conspiracy to commit forced labor and faces up to five years in prison.

In court filings, two of the defendants argued that Royall Jenkins and others were more culpable than they were, while others contended the indictment should have been tossed because the statute of limitations had expired. A lawyer for another said he “vigorously denies” the forced labor allegations.

UNOI was dismantled in 2012 or 2013, but turned into two organizations known as the “Value Creators” and “The Promise Keepers.” Whether those groups operate today remains unclear, but the sect reportedly opened a restaurant, the Royall Touch, in 2018 across from the federal courthouse in KCK. A sign on its door last month said it closed in July but would open at a new location.

Prosecutors’ recent filings also reveal that suspicions about the group were reported to authorities. In 2010, for example, a woman told police — though it’s unclear where or which agency — that the group moved her children “from Kansas to New Jersey and Georgia without her permission.”

The FBI briefly looked into a report in 2008 about Jenkins and “potential fraud-related activity regarding welfare proceeds,” prosecutors said, but a case was not pursued.

CHILDHOODS ‘RIPPED’ FROM SURVIVORS

Prosecutors allege the United Nation of Islam controlled all aspects of the children’s lives, which included restricting their meals and refusing them medical attention if they were injured.

Kids were sent to work at businesses across the U.S., including in Newark and Cincinnati, and their parents could go months without knowing where they were, prosecutors said.

Today, some UNOI survivors are advocates in the anti-trafficking movement, such as Kendra Ross, who in 2018 won a nearly $8 million judgment against the sect in federal court in KCK. Their public comments also provide insight into what kind of testimony might be given at trial.

Ross, who could not be reached by The Star, is now a consultant at the Washington, D.C.-based Human Trafficking Legal Center, whose website says she plans to become a lawyer. Among other things, she has briefed D.C.’s attorney general on labor trafficking, it says.

Speaking in 2018 on Megyn Kelly Today, Ross said there was “no age limit” for when girls could be forced into “marriages,” including one girl she heard of who was 13. The cult arranged a marriage between a man, who practiced polygamy, and Ross when she was 20, according to her lawsuit, which centered on the 40,000 hours of labor she said she was forced to do across the U.S.

“I will have to manage this lifetime of trauma,” Ross told Megyn Kelly. “And it’s not fair.”

In court, Ross’ lawyer said Ross, like many men, women and children, was treated “like an unpaid servant, a slave.” After Ross won her lawsuit, a judge in Kansas ordered that Jenkins be arrested for failing to appear in court, but he went into hiding. The FBI was never able to interview him.

Another survivor, Elijah Muhammed, shared his story in a 2020 TEDx Talk in Dayton, Ohio. It was in 2002, he said, that a UNOI official called his parents, who were members of the group, and told them it was time for their sons to begin “their pilgrimage to manhood” and move to Wyandotte County.

The next evening, Muhammed and his brother were taken 600 miles in the back of an 18-wheeler as if they were “packages being sent out for delivery,” he said. Once in KCK, they were packed “like sardines” with dozens of boys and men in an apartment.

Muhammed, who The Star also could not reach, described acts of violence, including when he was struck with a phone book for once being late to work at a UNOI restaurant, sending him to the ground bloody. Kids had their bones broken and faces swollen in beatings, he said.

At the TEDx Talk event, Muhammed also recalled a friend of his being attacked by four men, who kicked him down a flight of stairs. Muhammed was 12 at the time.

“To add insult to injury, one of the guys literally poured salt on (his) wounds,” he said.

Like other survivors, Muhammed said his childhood was “ripped” from him. He also noted that when a friend of his died of an illness, Royall Jenkins claimed she “killed herself by becoming ill.”

In filings this year, prosecutors included the death among dozens of examples of physical abuse within the group. The 14-year-old girl, whose name was Shaquanta Williams, died of cancer after Jenkins “refused to allow” her to go to a hospital, prosecutors said.

An obituary published in The Star said Williams, of Wichita, died April 19, 2009, at Children’s Mercy Hospital.

Speaking to his followers that day, Jenkins claimed the girl “willed herself into extreme illness” because she missed her father, according to a recording of his speech.

“Shaquanta begged to go to the hospital,” Muhammed said in a 2018 interview with the A&E series, Cults and Extreme Belief, which did an episode on UNOI. “And they did not take her.”

Prosecutors, in recent court records, pointed to other times when injured children were refused medical attention. That included when a youth member was allegedly punched in the face, giving him a permanent scar, and vomited blood for days.

All the while, the group received glowing press coverage and recognition from officials for bringing business to Quindaro Boulevard. That members were not paid for work was not a secret; one teenage boy told The Star in 1999 he worked since he was 10, but had “never been paid.”

https://amp-kansascity-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/amp.kansascity.com/news/local/crime/article279305129.html

Man charged with child abuse is son of black supremacist cult leader serving 135 years

Rameses Richardson, 19, appears in court in Jersey City today,
 March 17, 2017, on charges he burned and beat a 5-year-old boy
in his care.

Michaelangelo Conte

The Jersey Journal
March 22, 2017

JERSEY CITY -- A Jersey City man accused of burning and beating a 5-year-old boy is the son of a black supremacist cult leader currently serving 135 years in prison for child molestation, racketeering, and other offenses.

Rameses Richardson, 19, was arrested on March 10 and charged with beating the son of his girlfriend with a belt and leaving "whip marks," as well as burning the boy's hands with hot water and locking him in a bathroom overnight multiple times.

A number of sources have identified Richardson as the son of Dwight D. York, 71, the founder of the United Nuwaubian Nation of Moors. York, who is serving his sentence at the supermax prison in Florence, Colorado, went by several names including "Dr. Malachi Z. York," while leading the Nuwaubian movement, which has its roots in Brooklyn.

Richardson is also known as Quinncy Richardson and Prince York, according to the criminal complaint, Hudson County Prosecutor's Office spokesman Raymond Worrall said this morning.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, a hate/extremist group watchdog, says the Nuwaubian movement "mixes black supremacist ideas with worship of the Egyptians and their pyramids, a belief in UFOs and various conspiracies related to the Illuminati and the Bilderbergers."

"White people are the devil. They say the Nuwaubians are not racist - bullcrap! I am...White people are devils -- always was, always will be," the SPLC quotes Dwight York as saying in a lecture.

Heidi Beirich, director of the Intelligence Project at the SPLC, called the Nuwaubians "probably one of the wackiest groups we have listed as a hate group. They had a compound outside Atlanta, Georgia and they actually built pyramids there."

On his Facebook page Prince York describes himself as "one of the most inspirational public figures in our community. Son of the great Dr. Malachi Z. York who is currently doing 135 years in prison for false charges and legal holding done by the state of Georgia."

A call to Richardson today was not immediately returned. When Richardson appeared in court in Jersey City his attorney said he had no comment on the charges. The extent of Richardson's connection to the movement is not clear, but he appears in a number of Youtube videos discussing his father's case.

The mother of the 5-year-old was also charged. In court, it was said that the boy is now in California.

Dwight York was arrested in 1964 on charges he had sex with a 13-year-old girl and he received probation. A year later he was then charged with possession of a deadly weapon, assault, and resisting arrest and served three years in prison, according to the SPLC.

The group's numbers swelled to 500 people living in various apartments York owned in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn. In 2000, York moved the group to rural Georgia, but he was arrested in 2002 and later pleaded guilty to various state charges, including 40 counts of aggravated child molestation and 34 counts of child molestation, according to the SPLC.

He also pleaded guilty to unlawful transport of minors for the purpose of engaging in sex acts and attempting to evade financial reporting requirements -- both in federal court, according to the SPLC.

"When Dwight York went to prison, it was a very serious blow to the group and the number of chapters we were listing fell precipitously," Beirich said.

On his Facebook page, Richardson describes the Nuwaubian Nation as promoting "knowledge of self, nation building for our people, and unifying once a nation is formed with other African nations."

The Southern Poverty Law Center sees the group's leader in a different way.

"Dwight York was a serious cult leader. He had thousands of people hanging on his frankly bizarre message and in his case, he was able to get away with the abuse of minors for a long time. Cult leaders often get caught up in sexual abuse scandals. ... I'm sure it has a lot to do with having total control."

http://www.nj.com/hudson/index.ssf/2017/03/father_of_jersey_city_man_charged_with_child_abuse.html