'I have to betray them to save them': how undercover film-makers exposed a sinister polygamous cult

[cbabe]

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2026/apr/08/trust-me-the-false-prophet-cult-docuseries-mormon

‘I have to betray them to save them’: how undercover film-makers exposed a sinister polygamous cult

In Netflix’s Trust Me: The False Prophet, documentarians in disguise help bring down a cult leader now serving a 50-year sentence

Radheyan Simonpillai
Wed 8 Apr 2026 10.45 EDT

Film-making affects change. Director Rachel Dretzin, a former investigative journalist for Frontline, will testify to that.

“These films that I’m making,” says Dretzin, “that other documentarians are making, are often more effective than the legal system at affecting change; psychological change and also sometimes systemic and criminal change.”

But the impact film-making has in Trust Me: The False Prophet feels more immediate. The riveting four-part series follows a pair of documentary film-makers, turned FBI informants, who helped take down Samuel Bateman, a polygamous Mormon cult leader currently serving a 50-year sentence for luring minors into criminal sex acts.

Cult expert Christine Marie and her husband, Tolga Katas, embedded themselves among Utah’s Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS) community. They earned the trust of typically guarded followers, and were eventually invited into Bateman’s home, where he presided over 20 “wives”, many of them underage.

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(teaching unquestioning obedience… closed system echo chamber cult)

Trust Me: The False Prophet is now available on Netflix