A Colorado pastor and his wife admitted online they scammed Christians out of $3.2 million worth of cryptocurrency, spending over a million on themselves.
Eligio “Eli” Regalado and his wife Kaitlyn released a YouTube video, in which they confessed to selling worthless cryptocurrency to 300 Christians recruited to invest in INDXcoin through an offering they called Kingdom of Wealth.
“So the charges are that Kaitlyn and I pocketed $1.3 million. . . I just want to come out and say that those charges are true,” says Regalado in the video, which has now been made private.
Last Tuesday, Colorado Securities and Exchange Commissioner Tung Chan filed civil fraud charges against the Regalados in a Denver district court. The complaint accuses the couple of raising nearly $3.2 million from investors by claiming that God would make them rich. Yet, the cryptocurrency the couple sold was illiquid, the complaint claims.
Regalado spent the money he got in the scheme on a Range Rover, jewelry, luxury handbags, cosmetic dentistry, boat rentals, snowmobile adventures, home renovations and an au pair, according to Commissioner Chan.
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“There’s been $1.3 million that’s been taken out of, I think it was, a total of $3.4 million,” says Regalado in the video. “But out of that $1.3, half a million dollars went to the IRS, and a few hundred thousand went to a home remodel that the Lord told us to do.”
Regalado preaches at Victorious Grace Church in Denver. According to Chan, Regalado exploited his position to prey on a vulnerable congregation.
“We allege that Mr. Regalado took advantage of the trust and faith of his own Christian community and that he peddled outlandish promises of wealth to them when he sold them essentially worthless cryptocurrencies,” said Chan. “New coins and new exchanges are easy to create with open source code. We want to remind consumers to be very skeptical.”
Yet, in his video, Regalado implied that officials don’t understand the way God works.
“Money would come in. We’d tithe. We’d sow,” Regalado said. “. . . We were just always under the impression that God was going to provide, that the source was never-ending, that God was doing a new thing and that we had nothing to worry about. We sold a cryptocurrency with no clear exit. We did.
“We took God at His word . . . And so the prosecutors have to take that and say, ‘These people willingly sold a cryptocurrency with no clear exit.’ What we’re praying for, and what we’re believing for still, is that God is going to do a miracle.”
Julie Roys contributed to this report, a version of which originally appeared at CHVN Radio.
Sylvia St. Cyr is an on-air radio host at CHVN, a Christian outlet in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
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9 Responses
The ever-hopeful scammer wants his marks to stay in the game. Except there is no exit anyway. The fools who gave him money never bothered to check anything. Let’s hope the pastor and his wife get some well-deserved prison time. I’ve reached the point of ultimate cynicism and skepticism with pastors. If any of them claim “God told me…”, I know they’re lying.
It seems so many of these ‘mouth-of-God’ pastors don’t read God’s Word so the Spirit of God can’t renew their minds. They clearly break many of the Ten Commandments and are unregenerate in having the love of money which is the root of all evil.
“But out of that $1.3, half a million dollars went to the IRS, and a few hundred thousand went to a home remodel that the Lord told us to do.”
So now “the Lord” is telling his pastors when they should remodel their homes? And with money they didn’t earn, wasn’t given to them or they didn’t inherit. They just requisitioned it. I’m assuming “the Lord” also told them to buy the Range Rover, the luxury handbags and the jewelry as well.
IMHO it’s become a serious problem in Evangelical Christianity that no one can determine if someone is born again by their behavior. The behavior, the actions, the day to day experience of the average Christian is indistinguishable from that of the average non Christian. In my own experience, I would say that non believers are often way better at simply being decent human beings than Evangelical Christians seem to be. If the Holy Spirit is not being demonstrated in the lives of Christians, then what evidence does the world have that God exists?
Very disheartening.
Barney,
Your words: ….” the day to day experience of the average Christian is indistinguishable from that of the average non Christian…”
Do not be discouraged, Barney. Just because someone claims to be a “Christian” does not mean that person has any idea what being a born-again Christian actually is. The Holy Spirit indwells true believers and you cannot mistake who they are: They shine and bear incredible fruit.
Do not be discouraged. God is growing His church and the gates of Hell cannot prevail against it.
“In my own experience, I would say that non believers are often way better at simply being decent human beings than Evangelical Christians seem to be.”
WOW, Barney. GREAT statement. I’ve come to this conclusion myself…albeit with a HARD reminder to myself…to check my ego, myPharisee’ism, my judgement, my greed, my lust, and everything else that makes me the sinner that I am…I need to check all that at the door.
I fall down, I get up. I get up, I fall down. Lord forgive me, a sinner.
The prosperity gospel is nothing more than a get rich quick scheme. Both the conmen pastors and their greedy followers are at fault. While only one side is criminally liable, the other side should be ashamed of themselves for believing the shed blood of Jesus Christ entitled them to money.
The American brand of evangelical Christianity trains (grooms?) its followers to believe in delusions and trust in fictions. So it is no wonder that scammers with charisma and charm can find in the minds of rank and file American evangelicals many open doors for exploitation for personal gain. Even when the scammers are exposed by secular law enforcement, the scammers double down with the language of being persecuted by “them,” meaning the corrupt system of the world. For example, these two are so brazen that they admit to their crimes on YouTube and then challenge the state’s attorney general to take a run at overcoming their faith-based defense! No shame. No apologies. It is an approach taken straight out of the infamous lawyer Roy Kohn’s (Google him) playbook and employed for great personal gain and effect by some prominent politicians today. And I’ll bet there will by a decent number of evangelicals who will buy into this “I am being persecuted” defense and will support these crooks, regardless of the mountain of evidence of their wrongdoing. SMH.
Their true Lord and Savior Donald Trump has perfected the persecution card to an art form. And the vast majority of evangelicals go for it in a Pavlovian response. They might as well be walkers from The Walking Dead.
“a few hundred thousand went to a home remodel that the Lord told us to do.”
Well, if God told them to do it, who are we to question?
Paula White says if you question Trump you are questioning God.
They must think the same principle applies here.