Brian Carn is imprisoned after declaring he’d never go to jail

By Leonardo Blair, Senior Reporter Monday, August 17, 2026

Self-styled prophet and leader of Kingdom City Church, Brian Carn Jr., is now in prison despite declaring last month that he’ll “never spend a day in jail,” after pleading guilty in January to obstructing the IRS’ efforts to collect more than $600,000 in outstanding taxes.

Online prison records show that the 37-year-old televangelist began a court-ordered nine-month stint at the Federal Correctional Institution in Bennettsville, South Carolina, last Friday.

Carn was initially ordered to report to prison on June 15 to begin serving his nine-month sentence for tax evasion. On June 9, however, U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Corrigan granted him a 60-day extension to self-surrender on Aug. 14, to allow him to care for his terminally ill father. Weeks after that extension was granted, Kingdom City Church’s Charlotte, North Carolina, campus was evicted after the ministry fell nearly $76,000 behind on rent for the two units it leased.

During a worship service billed “The Freedom Encounter” on July 3, a defiant Carn boldly declared, “I’ll never spend a day in jail.”

“I’ll never spend a day in jail. You better believe it. See, you know, I talk like that,” he said. “I talk like that. I ain’t scared.”

The U.S. Department of Justice announced Carn’s guilty plea in a press release in January. Prosecutors say Carn’s original 2015 tax return correctly reported that he earned more than $1.4 million in income and owed more than $600,000 in taxes.

Rather than pay it, prosecutors claim that Carn later amended that return and falsely removed nearly $1.3 million in previously reported income after the IRS attempted to collect the debt, including by placing liens on his properties and trying to levy his bank accounts. The DOJ also claims Carn made several other false representations and material omissions to the IRS to conceal his assets and income, causing a loss to the U.S. Treasury of between $550,000 and $1.5 million.

Prosecutors have said Carn’s public statements minimizing the case were misleading. “Carn’s false tax returns did not result from accounting errors, but from Carn’s fabrication of a document specifically to cause his accountant to prepare a false tax return,” U.S. attorneys wrote in a sentencing memorandum. That filing also noted that Carn told the court he had no children, despite having made $14,600 in child support payments in 2024 alone.

On Sunday, Carn’s legal troubles didn’t appear to matter to his supportive congregation. Members engaged in spirited praise during a worship service as J.R. Butler, Kingdom City Church’s senior associate pastor, praised his imprisoned boss as “the world’s prophet” and “the devil’s nightmare.” He encouraged congregants to ignore media reports and continue to give money to the ministry to support their “anointed” leader.

“We’re believing God to do something supernatural, unparalleled and unprecedented. We thank God for … our visionary, the keeper of the gate. Amen. The mouthpiece that … brings Heaven and Earth together, the world’s prophet, our pastor, the devil’s nightmare still,” he insisted. “Let’s make amen, bless God, the devil mad.”

Butler also told congregants that crooked politicians raise “multi-millions of dollars” from the public despite having anti-God agendas, as he urged them to sow $50 seeds into Carn’s personal ministry called the “Shepherd’s Seed Offering.”

“Do you not know crooked politicians that don’t care nothing about you, raise multi-millions of dollars from folks? Amen. Bless God, that don’t know them from Adam. Amen. And they raise it. Amen. To set their agendas that’s contrary and diverse from the word of God,” he continued.

“We have a pastor. I don’t care what the media say, what social streams say. Amen. All of that foolishness. We know because we have, Amen. received the impact of the anointing.  And it doesn’t change. God hasn’t changed his mind. So, we want to be a blessing and an encouragement to the man of God. Not only in word but in deed and in truth.”