York was arrested in May 2002, and in 2003 he pleaded guilty to child sexual abuse after being indicted on 197 counts of child molestation, including charges of sex trafficking of minors across state lines. These minors were as young as 8 years old. He was imprisoned. In 2004, he was convicted to a 135-year sentence for transporting minors across state lines in the course of sexually molesting them, racketeering, and financial reporting charges. His convictions were upheld on appeal. York's case was reported as the largest prosecution for child molestation ever directed at a single person in the history of the United States, both in terms of number of victims and number of incidents. The case was described in the book "Ungodly: A True Story of Unprecedented Evil" (2007) by Bill Osinski, a reporter who had covered the Nuwaubians in Georgia during the late 1990s.