A Colorado pastor Eli Regalado and his wife Kaitlyn stole $1.3 million in crypto and have been charged for violating anti-fraud provisions.
With no previous experience in crypto, pastor Eli Regalado and his wife Kaitlyn invested their assets in INDXcoin, which they purported as a low-risk, high-profit endeavor. Like many scams, the risks were buried in promises that never came to fruition.
According to the Colorado Attorney General’s Office, the Regalados raised $3.2 million in crypto from 300 individuals in local Christian communities. The couple “peddled outlandish promises of wealth to them when he sold them essentially worthless cryptocurrencies,” said Colorado Securities Commissioner Tung Chan.
In the INDXcoin private community, Eli Regalado posted an update video in which he confessed to the charges and laid out the reasons he stole the crypto.
Pastor explains why he stole crypto
Eli and Kaitlyn Regalado alleged the “Lord told us” to walk away from their marketing company in 2021. “[The Lord] said, ‘I’m going to do a new thing.’ Then, he took us into this cryptocurrency,” said Eli. “That turned out to be a scam, so the Lord says, ‘Give that to them,’ but also, ‘Give them a 10x.’ I’m like, ‘Where is this liquidity going to come from?'”
“Lord says, ‘Trust me,'” he added.
The couple then “launched an exchange,” which failed, and “things went downhill,” he said. “From that point forward, we’ve been waiting on the Lord literally for a miracle.”
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The original video runs nine minutes but has been supercut into just under two minutes.
An online pastor was charged in CO for a $1.3 million crypto scam. He's released a 9-minute-long video explaining that the Lord told him to sell a cryptocurrency with no clear exit", and spend some of the proceeds on "a home remodel the Lord told us to do".Here's a supercut. pic.twitter.com/scKpF8nyrT
— Molly White (@molly0xFFF) January 21, 2024
Out of the $1.3 million stolen crypto, the pastor claimed “half a million went to the IRS” and “a few hundred thousand dollars went to a home remold that the Lord told us to do.”
Money kept pouring in, and the couple continued “sewing it” in INDXcoin. “At first, it was hundreds of dollars, then thousands of dollars, then tens of thousands of dollars. More money would come in,” he said.
“We were always under the impression that God was going to provide,” he said. “That the source was neverending, that God was doing a new thing, and that we had nothing to worry about.”
“We took God at His word,” he added. “God is going to work a miracle in the financial sector.”
The couple has been charged by the Colorado Securities Commission for “selling millions of dollars of crypto that’s been deemed worthless by the state.” Additionally, “there is no exit for people who have bought,” clarified the pastor.