Eligio Bishop, the self-styled spiritual leader known online as “Nature Boy,” was arrested on March 30, 2022, in DeKalb County, Georgia, after a former follower reported that he had raped her and posted sexually explicit videos of her on Twitter without her consent. A grand jury indicted him on five counts. In March 2024, a jury convicted him on all of them, and Judge Stacey Hydrick sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole plus ten years.
What Led to the Arrest
DeKalb County police responded to a domestic incident call at a home on Arbor Chase in Decatur on March 30, 2022. The woman who called them was a former member of Bishop’s group, Carbon Nation.
She told officers she had tried to leave the group on March 24, 2022, after Bishop ordered other female members to beat her. When she went to say goodbye, according to her account to police, Bishop refused to let her go and forced her to have sex with him. She said she submitted out of fear for her safety and escaped the house the next day while other members were sleeping.
Two days after she got out, sexually explicit videos of her appeared on Bishop’s Twitter account. She told investigators Bishop posted them without her consent to “taunt and humiliate her.” Detective Panosian of the DeKalb County Police Department led the investigation, and the case went to the District Attorney’s Sexual Exploitation and Crimes Against Children Unit.
The Five Charges
The grand jury returned an indictment with five counts:
- One count of rape
- One count of false imprisonment
- Three counts of prohibition on nude or sexually explicit electronic transmissions under O.C.G.A. ยง 16-11-90, Georgia’s revenge porn statute
The Georgia statute makes it a crime to knowingly transmit or post intimate images of another person without consent when the act is intended to cause substantial emotional harm or financial loss and serves no legitimate purpose to the person depicted. Posting such material to sites that advertise sexually explicit content is a felony on the first offense, carrying one to five years in prison and fines up to $100,000.
The Rejected Plea Deal
Before trial, prosecutors offered Bishop 30 years in prison in exchange for guilty pleas on the revenge porn and aggravated assault charges, with the false imprisonment count dropped. He turned it down. Judge Hydrick warned him on the record that the rape charge alone carried a maximum penalty of life without parole.
Trial and Conviction
The trial of State v. Eligio Bishop began around February 26, 2024, in DeKalb County Superior Court. Senior Assistant District Attorney Michael Coveney led the prosecution for DA Sherry Boston’s office, assisted by DA Investigator Rosalyn Byrd and Victim Advocate Peggy Remy.
The prosecution’s case rested on the victim’s testimony and a recorded police interview in which Bishop admitted posting the sexual videos, describing what he’d done as “clout-chasing.” He denied the rape and called the recordings a form of “sex education.” Former Carbon Nation member Velvet Marquez also testified, describing an incident on July 4, 2020, in which Bishop ordered followers to form a circle around her while he assaulted her.
The defense argued that sexual encounters inside the group were consensual and that the social media posts were staged for attention. Two defense witnesses said some of the group’s filmed altercations were staged for views. Bishop did not take the stand.
On March 1, 2024, the jury returned guilty verdicts on all five counts. Judge Hydrick sentenced him the same day: life without the possibility of parole on the rape conviction, plus ten years on the remaining counts. At sentencing, the judge called Bishop a “master manipulator” and noted his “lack of remorse or regret.”
Who Eligio Bishop Is
Born in Harlem in 1982, Bishop worked as a stripper, sex worker, and barber shop owner in Atlanta before reinventing himself online. In late 2015 he launched a YouTube channel called NatureboyTV, promoting veganism, nudism, and a blend of spiritual teachings he called “astro-theology.” He began recruiting followers to Carbon Nation, marketed as an off-grid, self-sustaining community and a path to a “Black utopia.” His claims about himself escalated over time: master teacher, then Messiah, and eventually God.
He had a criminal record before Carbon Nation drew wider attention. In 2009 he was arrested in Georgia for forcible entry. In 2011 he was charged with aggravated battery against a woman named Maisha Evans and ultimately pleaded to probation and a $1,000 fine.
From 2016 through 2022, Bishop moved a core group of roughly ten to twenty followers through Honduras, Costa Rica, Belize, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, and Hawaii. The group ran into local authorities repeatedly along the way, including deportations from Central American countries and a COVID-19 quarantine violation arrest on Hawaii’s Big Island in 2020. The group eventually settled in the Atlanta area, where the 2022 case arose.
Where Bishop Is Now
Bishop is incarcerated at Macon State Prison in Georgia. On August 7, 2024, he was hospitalized after an altercation at the facility. The Georgia Department of Corrections confirmed he was treated at a local hospital and returned to the prison, and the incident was referred to the department’s Office of Professional Standards for investigation.
Federal court records show a case styled Bishop v. Macon State Prison was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia in 2025 and transferred to the Northern District of Georgia in June 2025. Further details about that filing are not publicly available in the record reviewed.