Cult leader, ‘Jesus of Siberia,’ jailed 12 years for harming his followers

SERGEY Torop, a Russian religious cult leader who claimed to be the reincarnation of Jesus Christ, has been sentenced to 12 years in prison for causing physical and psychological harm to his followers, the country’s media reported.

A former traffic policeman, Torop gained a huge religious following in the early 1991, taking advantage of the void caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union.

He called himself ‘Siberian Jesus’ and claimed to be Jesus reincarnated by traveling to other countries to convert people.

He was finally arrested and charged with using psychological manipulation to control and exploit his followers for labour and money. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison.

“It’s all very complicated. But to keep things simple, yes, I am Jesus Christ,” Torop told The Guardian of London in a 2002 interview.

The Russian cult leader founded the Church of the Last Testament in 1991 shortly after being laid off as a traffic policeman, and managed to attract thousands of members to remote settlements in Siberia, including a group of about 300 fervent followers who lived atop a hillside in a complex known as the Abode of Dawn.

Controversy always surrounded Vissarion and his cult, but in 2020, Russian authorities finally decided to do something about it.

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Torop and two of his associates were arrested and charged with harming at least 16 followers’ health and financial affairs. They had been in custody ever since, and on July 2, 2025, a court sentenced the former traffic policemen to 12 years in a maximum security prison.

Styling himself to closely resemble the depiction of Jesus Christ, Sergey Torop asked his followers, who routinely honoured him in their prayers, to refrain from eating meat, smoking and drinking alcohol, and forbade them from spending money.