The FBI Knows About 12 Tribes. Yellow Deli Is Still Open.

Added: 2026-05-20

[00:00:00]Cults hidden killers [music] investigates.

[00:00:03]Here now Tony Brusky.

[00:00:07]Right now as you listen to this there are there's approximately 33 Yellow Deli locations operating across the United States, Canada, Australia and beyond. And if you like oh they're great.

[00:00:21]Please watch all five of our videos.

[00:00:24]Start at number one and go to five and by the time you're done you may be thinking twice about ordering food from the Yellow Deli.

[00:00:29]>> [snorts] >> People are walking in right now ordering food made by workers who allegedly receive no paycheck being served by people who reportedly surrender their savings and their legal names to a group that the Southern Poverty Law Center calls a cult. Right now somewhere inside one of the approximately 40 12 Tribes compounds spread across 16 US states and 10 countries there are children.

[00:00:55]And after 50 years of raids, investigations, documenter documentaries, hidden camera footage, court proceedings on two continents and survivor testimony that spans generations, the doors are still open.

[00:01:11]This is the final part of our behind the Yellow Deli over four episodes. We have walked through the front door of the Yellow Deli into the homes where former members say children were struck with a rod kept above every doorway through the life and the scandals of the man who built the system and alongside the survivors who walked out with nothing. This episode asks the only question left. Why is this still happening?

[00:01:36]And I'd love to get your thoughts in the comment section on Substack and YouTube as we work our way through it. The links are in the description.

[00:01:43]This is not a historical case. This is not a story about something that used to happen. The 12 Tribes is operating in the present tense. Its businesses are generating revenue. Its communities are housing members. Its recruitment pipeline is actively bringing new people in. And the question this episode ask is the question that sits underneath the entire series. Why has nobody stopped them?

[00:02:08]Let's start with the scope.

[00:02:10]The 12 Tribes maintains approximately 40 active communities across the globe. In the United States alone they operate at least 16 different ones in 16 different states. They're from Vermont to California, Colorado to Massachusetts, North Carolina to New York.

[00:02:23]Internationally they have a presence in Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Argentina, Japan, Spain, France, the Czech Republic and Germany. The same Germany that removed 40 children from a 12 Tribes compound in 2013 and won a European Court of Human Rights case upholding the decision. Their businesses include the Yellow Deli restaurant chain, uh Matt Factor tea houses, construction firms like Commonwealth Services in Colorado, organic farms like Cloro Fields in Kansas and bakeries.

[00:02:58]All of these businesses are reportedly staffed by members working without pay under a 501d tax designation, a category that allows for-profit organizations with a religious purpose to operate with a commun- a common treasury. The members do the work, the revenue goes to the group, the members receive housing, food and assurance that their labor is service to God.

[00:03:19]Just not a paycheck. Who needs a paycheck when you got you know pastrami and rye and God.

[00:03:27]The founder's dead. Gene Spriggs passed away in 2021. Thank God. The allegations span the entire life of the organization. The group has been raided by American state troopers and German police, hidden camera footage of uh abuse has been broadcast internationally. A European Court has ruled that the group promotes institutionalized violence against minors. The SPLC has classified them as a white supremacist cult. Former members across decades and continents have described the same pattern of control, abuse and exploitation. And yet the infrastructure is not only intact, it is reportedly expanding.

[00:04:06]As recently as April of 2026 the group closed a Yellow Deli in Kingston, Ontario, a location that had drawn controversy for years and immediately opened a new one.

[00:04:16]Drawing immediate community backlash in its new spot from residents who recognized the name and the history.

[00:04:23]They're not retreating. They're not relocating and they're not reforming.

[00:04:28]They're rebranding. Which is why we need to be educating and understanding what the hell is going on over here and not accepting going oh aren't they quaint and neat and they're so loving and they're communal. Isn't that a throwback to the 60s? Isn't that nice? What a great sandwich. No.

[00:04:45]They're cults.

[00:04:47]They're coercively controlling people.

[00:04:48]They're destroying lives. They're brainwashing people. They're not preparing people to actually live in the world.

[00:04:58]And then they're pushing them out the door when they ask questions saying good luck.

[00:05:02]You have no identity anymore.

[00:05:04]We own that, not you.

[00:05:08]Bye-bye. You know things Jesus did. Oh wait, THAT'S NOT AT ALL what he did.

[00:05:14]>> [laughter] >> So why is nobody stopped them? The answer is not simple and anyone who tells you it is has not looked at it closely enough. Let's start with the legal shield. Religious freedom protections in the United States are among the most expansive in the world.

[00:05:26]They are by design meant to prevent the government from intervening in religious communities unless there is a direct, immediate, provable threat to safety.

[00:05:34]That is the principle most Americans agree with in the abstract. But in practice yeah, this is the part most Americans aren't good with looking at things in actual practice. That sounds good on paper. It makes a great bumper sticker.

[00:05:48]What do you mean they do this? I never saw THAT COMING. IT'S EXACTLY WHAT THEY SAID THEY'RE GOING TO DO.

[00:05:54]BUT THEY SAID THE WORD JESUS.

[00:05:57]Is that all you picked up? Is that all you picked up in everything that they said they're doing?

[00:06:01]Well, uh in practice it creates a gap between what is known and what is actionable.

[00:06:10]And the 12 Tribes has allegedly operated inside that gap for 50 years.

[00:06:14]The 1984 Vermont raid set the precedent.

[00:06:17]More than 100 state troopers and social workers removed 112 children from the Island Pond compound and the judge ruled the raid unconstitutional and then all the children were sent back to be abused.

[00:06:29]Wouldn't you love to meet that judge in a back alley with a club?

[00:06:33]That decision did not just affect the 12 Tribes. It reportedly chilled enforcement efforts across the entire landscape of communal religious groups in the United States for decades.

[00:06:45]And then consider what happened after the raid.

[00:06:48]The public defender assigned to represent Eddie Wiseman, the 12 Tribes elder at the center of the case, a woman named Gene Swantko, who was physically present during the raid, later joined the 12 Tribes. She married Wiseman. The system did not just survive the raid. It allegedly absorbed the person who was hired to challenge it. Think about what that means. The legal apparatus meant to hold the group accountable produced an outcome that not only failed to protect the children, but reportedly resulted in the defense attorney being recruited into the organization.

[00:07:18]That's not a failure of law enforcement.

[00:07:19]That is a demonstration of the group's alleged capacity to co-opt the very systems designed to constrain it.

[00:07:27]The sweet seduction of sub sandwiches and our savior.

[00:07:36]And look, I people are they get offended like you're you're you're mocking God and No, I'm not. I'm mocking people who mock him. I'm mocking people who've bastardized God and religion and Jesus for their own self-worth and their own bizarro needs.

[00:07:56]Depraved narcissistic coercive control needs.

[00:08:06]And if you're too ignorant to see that or understand that, I'm sorry.

[00:08:11]If you're feeling a little too close to the fire, if you're being offended by any of this, then you need to take a serious look at whatever your religious beliefs are because they're not sound.

[00:08:20]Because if you're truly practicing it in the way that it actually was intended, none of this should be offended. This should be offensive to you.

[00:08:28]It should be offensive to you that these people exist, that they operate, that they're bastardizing religion.

[00:08:35]And if you're Christian and you subscribe to God and Jesus and that story, and I'm not saying that's bad at all, you should be royally offended by people like this.

[00:08:46]Because they are doing the opposite of what the Bible actually talks about.

[00:08:55]In my opinion.

[00:08:57]>> [snorts] >> Just because somebody wears a cross, talks about being religious or believer doesn't mean they're good.

[00:09:08]In fact, I'd argue probably eight out of 10 times they're bad.

[00:09:13]There's good ones. Sure, there are.

[00:09:17]But far more people bastardize it to push their own agenda. That's just the reality of it. And if we're too ignorant and too closed off to see that and accept that and call it out for what it is, then how good of a Christian are you?

[00:09:37]Not exactly protecting those who need it now, are you?

[00:09:41]If you're just blindly [snorts] going along with people who have good sandwiches and the word without looking any deeper to the damage and the horrific allegations and proof that have come out of the 12 tribes and the Yellow Deli.

[00:10:02]The second layer of durability is the final is the financial model. Unpaid labor generating revenue through legitimate consumer-facing businesses creates a self-sustaining economic engine that does not depend on outside investment, donations, or government subsidies. So, they're pretty self-sufficient. The Yellow Deli's make money, the construction firms make money, the farms make money, the workers do not get paid, the surplus reportedly flows into communal operations. There is no external leverage point.

[00:10:31]You can't cut off their funding because their funding comes from their own labor that they don't have to pay for.

[00:10:37]You cannot regulate their employment practices because they reportedly classify their workers as members of a religious community, not employees. And you can't shut down the businesses without running directly into the same religious freedom protections that have shielded the group since 1984.

[00:10:55]You can do is quench your hunger somewhere else.

[00:10:59]The system is reportedly designed to be legally untouchable, and every element of it, the tax structure, the communal model, the volunteer classification of labor reinforces that invulnerability.

[00:11:14]It's not an empire built on charisma alone, it's an empire reportedly built on paperwork.

[00:11:20]The third layer is the recruitment pipeline, according to former members and cult researchers.

[00:11:30]The Yellow Deli's do not just generate revenue, they reportedly generate new members.

[00:11:35]Every location is, in the words of cult expert Steven Hassan, a place where vulnerable people can walk in and be love bombed by staff trained in warmth and attentiveness, and be guided into the community's orbit. The pipeline is self-replenishing. Members leave, new members come in.

[00:11:52]The system does not depend on any individual staying forever, it depends on the door staying open.

[00:11:58]And the fourth layer, the one that ties all the others together, is is transparency.

[00:12:08]According to former members and law enforcement it's not accidental.

[00:12:15]It's engineering. According to the FBI interviews with former 12 Tribes members, the group provides what has been described as public relations training that specifically discourages members from talking to police.

[00:12:30]Members are reportedly coached in how to present a unified, welcoming front to outsiders. The group's own frequently asked questions pages address criticism with calm, measured, reasonable-sounding language that bears no resemblance to what former members described happening behind the compound walls. This is not a group that stumbled into secrecy because it values privacy. This is reportedly a group that built secrecy into the infrastructure the same way it built the rod above the door deliberately, systematically, and with the expectation that it would be needed constantly.

[00:13:07]Now, consider the international comparison. Germany removed 40 children from a 12 Tribes compound in 2013 based on hidden camera footage and systematic canning.

[00:13:18]The European Court canning, rather. The European Court of Human Rights upheld the decision in 2018 and described the group's practices as inhuman and degrading. The United States has not taken equivalent action, not because the evidence is different, not because the practices are different. The evidence is the same, the practices are the same, the difference is the legal and cultural framework. In the United States the burden of proof required to intervene in a religious community's internal practices is functionally prohibitive without a direct, immediate, provable threat that specifically identifies a child. The 12 Tribes knows this, their structure is reportedly designed around it. The communal model distributes authority so that no single individual is clearly responsible. The discipline is framed as religious practice, which invokes constitutional protections. The children are homeschooled, which limits outside observation. The members are trained not to talk. Every element of the system reportedly serves the same function, making intervention as legally difficult as possible while maintaining the conditions that former members say necessitate intervention.

[00:14:25]The gap between what is known and what is actionable is the gap the 12 Tribes has allegedly operated inside for half a century. It is not a gap in evidence.

[00:14:34]The evidence fills bookshelves. It spans hidden camera footage, court records, SPLC reports, FBI interviews, investigative journalism, survivor memoirs, and the group's own published materials. It is not a gap in testimony.

[00:14:47]Dozens of former members have spoken publicly at personal cost about what they experienced inside. It is a gap in institutional will. In the willingness of governments, legal systems, and communities to confront the possibility that a group with a warm storefront and homemade bread and smiling staff might be, according to the people who have been inside it, something very different from what it appears.

[00:15:09]And the group is not standing still.

[00:15:11]They're opening new locations, they're moving into new communities, they are pulling and putting a sign on the door and setting the tables and baking the bread and waiting for the next person who walks in alone looking for something.

[00:15:23]The founders dead, the scandal came and went, the raids came and went, the documentaries came and went, and the Yellow Deli is still open.

[00:15:32]The question is no longer whether this is happening. The question this series has been building towards across all these five episodes and 50 years of documented history is who's responsible for the fact that it's still happening.

[00:15:45]The communities that host these businesses and choose not to look at who's running them, the legal systems that define religious freedom in terms broad enough to shelter abuse, the governments that have the evidence and have not acted, and the rest of us who walk past the handcrafted sign and warm light in the window and assume that the place looks good, so it must be.

[00:16:07]Think about your own town.

[00:16:09]Think about whether there's a Yellow Deli near you.

[00:16:16]Or business staffed by people who seem unusually devoted and unusually unwilling to talk about their personal lives. Think about whether you've eaten there.

[00:16:25]Whether you've left a positive review, whether you've told a friend about the great little sandwich shop you found. The 12 Tribes does not survive because some elaborate conspiracy, it reportedly survives because it is very, very good at looking like something it is not, and it counts on the rest of us being too busy, too polite, or too committed to the idea that a place with good food and friendly people could not possibly be what former members say it is if you look at it closer.

[00:16:55]But the former members have looked.

[00:16:57]They've looked from the inside, and they're telling us, in their own words, at their own cost, what they saw. The discipline manuals, the racial doctrine, the forced labor, the children with welts, the adults with no savings and no skills and no name. They're telling us that they have been what they've been telling us for decades. The evidence is not hidden, it's not ambiguous, it's not a matter of interpretation. It is a matter of whether anyone with the authority to act is willing to do so, or whether we keep walking past the sign, ordering the sandwich, leaving the five-star review, and pretending that what is happening on the other side of the counter is none of our business.

[00:17:34]The doors are open, the bread is in the oven, and someone is walking in right now. The only question left is whether anyone is going to tell them what they're walking into before the door closes behind them.

[00:17:50]If you're just joining us on this, five parts to this series, check it out. 50 years and a door that is still open.

[00:17:58]If you or someone you know has been affected by the high a high control group the International Cultic Studies Association is at icsahome.com.

[00:18:10]It provides resources for survivors and families.

[00:18:13]I suggest checking it out.

[00:18:16]Your thoughts in the comments section on Substack and YouTube, we'll continue our conversation right there.

[00:18:26]What can you do?

[00:18:28]Well, you can stop going there, number one.

[00:18:34]And you know what?

[00:18:36]Restaurants have places where you can leave reviews without ever going through the door.

[00:18:43]Maybe start there. Maybe start by educating your community and what the place is really about.

[00:18:50]In your own opinion.

[00:18:53]Cuz this has been mine.

[00:18:59]We'll continue our conversation in the comments. I'm Tony Bruski. We'll talk again real soon.

[00:19:03]Want more on this case and others? Then press subscribe now and don't [music] miss a moment of true crime coverage from Tony Bruski and the Hidden Killers podcast.