In his own video, David Najar asks why he would want money. It starts one line after his sworn answer: “Wouldn’t you want to take away all the money you can from a child sex cult? I would.”

COCKROACH OCTOPUS is David Najar’s YouTube channel. Its only video, posted October 22, eight seconds before Myra Nishizaki’s Instagram post, is a fourteen-minute appeal for his Patreon and her legal fund that opens on a clip of his own deposition. Set against his sworn testimony, his earlier words and the court record, it contradicts him on money, on lawyers, on the recordings, on the restraining order and on his own anonymity.

“If I wanted money, why didn’t I go to Netflix or to Hulu or HBO?” Najar asks six minutes into the video. “Is that the profile of an extortionist looking for cash?” The video’s first seconds are footage of his own deposition of February 25, 2025, at the moment Ideal Living’s lawyer asks whether he said Nishizaki needed to be paid. The answer just before that moment, on the same page of the transcript, is how he explained the nine figures named in Spiegel’s office: “Wouldn’t you want to take away all the money you can from a child sex cult? I would.” The video leaves it out. So does his Patreon episode, which makes the same cut.

In the video: 0:00 the deposition clip · 0:51 anonymity · 2:26 “pixelated” · 3:01 the restraining order · 3:59 lawyers · 4:59 the deposition pages · 6:22 money and the recordings · 7:44 the LA Times · 10:49 the law firms · 13:21 the attorney he wants

Whose video this is

The name, the face, and the post that points to it.

Najar took the name on camera at the start of Reckless Ben’s second documentary: “Therefore, in this story, my name is cockroach octopus.” The narrator of this video speaks as the defendant in Ideal Living’s extortion case (“You’ll see my deposition,” and “I defended myself in the four-day TRO hearing”), and the deposition footage in it is his. At 9:29 he says, “I chose cockroach octopus a long time ago.” Nishizaki’s post of the same morning sends readers to the channel for “part one of the deposition with nick soltman,” and its twelfth slide reads “ideal living, peter and katie sued COCKROACH.” Under the video Karen Jonson addressed him by name, “David Najar,” and wrote, “How dare you include me in your video.” In all of the new footage his face is in plain view, while the clips from his deposition are pixelated and his name in them is bleeped.

The line before the first line

Page 338 of his second deposition, filed by the company with its motions before trial.

The video starts at line 13. Just above the question, Najar had said, “I’ve run this whole thing, me.” Earlier in the same session, on page 333, he was asked whether he had told Spiegel that an attorney advised the nine-figure number, and answered: “you try to scare them a little bit, but you do it with money because Peter is about money.” In the video he asks why, if he wanted money, he turned down “massive, I mean massive, settlement offers.” No offer to him appears in any court paper this site has read; Nishizaki wrote on Reddit on October 25 that he rejected one “the day before court-ordered mediation.” The case ended in a settlement whose money terms, if any, are not public, and Nishizaki has testified that she offered to settle her own claims for nothing.

“No lawyer, me”

The lawyers he says he never had, and a text about the victims’ lawyer.

“No attorney wanted to represent me and Myra,” he says. “No one would take us on.” Of the four-day restraining-order hearing he adds, “No lawyer, me,” and there he did represent himself. But a lawyer had taken his case. Benjamin Taylor answered the company’s suit for him on November 15, 2023, two months before that hearing; the deposition transcript shows Taylor objecting on the record (“Asked and answered like four times”); and the company’s motion of March 2025 records its talks with “Ben Taylor, Najar’s counsel.” Nishizaki’s complaint in 2023 and her dismissal in 2025 were both filed by lawyers. In the same video he mentions “the awful attorney who was representing her for that minute” and “One lawyer who said he would take on my case for $400K.”

The video closes by asking for money to “secure a major attorney who has represented victims in some of the biggest cases in American history,” one “who can also offer victims of JKP some protection.” On August 27, 2026, the day Reckless Ben’s first documentary went up, Najar texted Karen Jonson, the author and former member who has written about the sect for years, that “the victims now have representation. john c manly,” naming a lawyer known for abuse-survivor cases, and added, “i hope they feel safer.” His next message: “i will have a lawyer soon.” Jonson posted the text on Reddit on October 23, and BJC Live Show put it on screen the next day. In August he told Jonson the victims had a lawyer; now he asks for money for one who “can also” protect them. The claim is older than the text. In the anonymous emails of fall 2023 the senders “teased specific lawyers: John Manly, Gloria Allred,” in the words of Spiegel’s declaration, and the email it attaches boasts of the lawyer “we secured as an attorney for ALL victims.” Najar denies writing those emails; the restraining-order judge found that at least two of the campaign’s anonymous emails came from him, not that these did. Nothing this site has found shows John C. Manly acting for anyone connected to JKP.

The recordings and the NDA

His account on October 11, his account on October 22, and the post of the same morning.

“They wanted an NDA. I refused over and over and over,” he says, and then that the company wanted to make sure he “erased the recordings that proved that I did not extort.” On October 11, on Reckless Ben’s channel, he had said the settlement made them do it: “And so I deleted mine, Myra deleted hers.” On October 22 Nishizaki posted what she presents as the settlement’s recordings clause, requiring the transcripts handed over and every copy certified deleted, beside pages from those transcripts and the line “she has the recording.” That post, and what its pages show, are the second report. One page has Najar telling Spiegel, “The attorney is ready to file, and it’s going to be nine figures”; his sworn answer is that he had not contacted an attorney. The stipulation in his case records that the agreement binds him to “refrain from certain actions through December 31, 2034”; what those actions are is not public. The anonymous campaign of 2023 had put an NDA on the table itself. One email to Williams read “Think double the Bond,” then: “NDA. Everything will go away.” The company attributes the emails to Najar, who denies them. In September 2025 the company told a federal court that the settlement “included a confidentiality provision related to proprietary information stemming from Ms. Nishizaki’s employment with Ideal Living.”

Anonymity

What he says about hiding, and what the video shows.

“I’ve chosen to be anonymous because I believe in protecting whistleblowers,” he says in the first minute, and a minute and a half later, “That’s why I’m pixelated.” As he says it his face is in plain view, unpixelated, as it is through all of the new footage; only the 2025 deposition clips are blurred. At 6:33 he asks, “Why am I trying to keep my privacy?” At 4:59 the video shows two pages of Nishizaki’s deposition about an email from the former student who sued his old school’s religious order and him in 1999 and 2001, a woman he describes moments later as “asking to be kept anonymous.” Neither suit was served on him, the second ended in 2002 after the order paid her, and he denies the allegations and was never found liable. He blurs his own name on both pages. Hers is left legible.

The rest, against the record

Seven more of the video’s claims, beside what the record and his own earlier words say.

Who answered

Karen Jonson, whose book the video recommends by name, answered under it on October 23: “I am NOT working with you or with Myra,” she wrote, adding that she had cut off contact in September 2025, and ended, “STOP USING MY NAME.” In BJC Live Show’s chat the next day she wrote of the sect, “NOT HUMAN TRAFFICKING RING.”

What this changes

The channel can now be named, and the man behind it held to his own words. On money, on lawyers, on the recordings and on his anonymity, the video says things that his sworn testimony, his earlier statements or his own footage contradict. None of it changes what the record shows about the company’s owners and the sect, which never rested on his word, and none of it decides whether he extorted anyone. No court has.

Sources. COCKROACH OCTOPUS, “Ideal Living Finally Responded. But the Evidence Tells Another Story,” 5X1Czf-DCXg, YouTube, published October 22, 2026 at 10:43 a.m. EDT, 14:07, with the comments under it; the channel’s Patreon episode, “THE DEPOSITION: Big Mistake.” Najar’s deposition of February 25, 2025, volume two, pages 333, 335 and 338, attached to the company’s omnibus motions in limine of March 19, 2025, LASC 23VECV04262, below. The restraining-order findings at the rulings report; the demand for correction at the letter report; the recordings and the stipulation at the recordings report; Nishizaki’s post at the settlement-clause report. Reckless Ben’s documentary CHID7-wdowU at 0:03. The text to Jonson and her chat line as displayed on BJC Live Show’s stream of October 24, 2026; the answer on documents as shown in Reckless Ben’s video of October 11 and read on BJC Live Show’s stream of October 12.

The JKP Map · Prakashanand Saraswati is the only person on this site convicted of a crime.