One of the co-defendants in the US trafficking case against Pastor Apollo Quiboloy’s Kingdom of Jesus Christ church has entered a plea deal.  

According to court records, Marissa Duenas admitted that from 2015 to 2020, there was an agreement between her and others to commit marriage fraud. She allegedly arranged marriages for certain Kingdom of Jesus Christ workers in order to keep members in the US while evading immigration laws.

“At defendant’s direction, defendant’s co-conspirators caused more than 25 but fewer than 100 I-130 Petitions for Alien Relative and related paperwork on behalf of KOJC members to be submitted to the US government, knowing that the marriages referenced in those petitions were fraudulent and that they were arranged for purposes of securing favorable immigration status for the beneficiary,” a copy of the plea agreement obtained by ABS-CBN News read.

It said Duenas and others made efforts to ensure that KOJC members "who solicited money on behalf of KOJC did not deposit more than $10,000 in cash into a bank account in order to avoid bank reporting requirements, including by instructing workers to deposit cash in increments below $10,000 and at different bank branches."

Duenas was among the three US-based KOJC administrators arrested during the FBI’s initial raid of the Church’s Van Nuys Location in February of 2020.

She along with co-defendants Gia Cabactulan, and Amanda Estopare originally pled not guilty in their initial post indictment arraignments at that time.

The maximum sentence for the offense carries a five-year prison sentence.

A sentencing date for Duenas has not been announced.

Quiboloy, the Davao-based preacher who founded the KOJC, is currently detained on trafficking charges in the Philippines. He recently filed a certificate of candidacy for the 2025 senatorial election.

PASSPORTS TAKEN, FORCED TO COLLECT DONATIONS

In the original indictment, federal prosecutors said the three KOJC 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.

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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.

In the plea agreement, 

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 said. The church also owns a mansion in Calabasas, California.

The workers received little to no pay and were required to meet steep fundraising 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.