YouTube terminates Pastor Quiboloy's channel for violating community guidelines

YouTube has shut down Pastor Apollo Quiboloy’s channel after a netizen flagged the platform of his pending case.

On Tuesday, June 20, Twitter user @OrdinaryGamers alerted the YouTube support team, saying that he is wanted by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) due to human trafficking charges. 

“Yo someone at @TeamYouTube has to help the feds or shut this account down. Actual human trafficking priest is running a channel still reaching out to victims less than 12 hours ago. Dude has an FBI warrant out rn (right now),” the user wrote, attaching screenshots of Quiboloy’s YouTube channel and his record on the FBI’s most wanted list. 

Yo someone at @TeamYouTube has to help the feds or shut this account down. Actual human trafficking priest is running a channel still reaching out to victims less than 12 hours ago.

Dude has an FBI warrant out rn. pic.twitter.com/7f98oFpzws

— Mutahar (@OrdinaryGamers) June 19, 2023

After YouTube acknowledged the tweet with a seemingly automated reply, they posted an update a day after, Wednesday, June 21, saying that the account had been terminated for violating Community Guidelines. 

“Upon review, we've determined that the channel is in violation of Community Guidelines & has been terminated,” they wrote. 

Prior to being terminated, Pastor Apollo Quiboloy's YouTube channel had over 40,000 subscribers. His other YouTube channels, the SMNI News channel and The Kingdom of Jesus Christ, are still up and running.

Quiboloy, a self-proclaimed “Appointed Son of God,” has been on the FBI's most wanted list since February 2022, but is still actively preaching in and outside the Philippines.

According to the FBI, Quiboloy is wanted for his “alleged participation in a labor trafficking scheme” that enabled him to bring church members to the US using fraud visas and solicited for “bogus charity” which has been discovered to fund the “lavish lifestyles” of its church leaders.  

Quiboloy also allegedly recruited female assistants or “pastorals” who are tasked to do house duties like cleaning and preparing his meals. And to save them from "eternal damnation," he is also accused of requiring his victims to give him massages and sex.

A federal grand jury in the US District Court in California indicted Quiboloy for crimes of “conspiracy to engage in sex trafficking by force, fraud and coercion and sex trafficking of children; sex trafficking by force, fraud and coercion; conspiracy; and bulk cash smuggling.” He was issued a federal warrant of arrest on November 10, 2021.