Eli Regalado first put the fear of God into his congregation by pointing out that the Signature and Silvergate banks had gone bust weeks earlier and it was a good time to come up with a better investment.
“After months of prayers and cues from God, he was going to start selling cryptocurrency, he announced in a YouTube video last April.
With divine wisdom, he said, he was “setting the rails for God’s wealth transfer.”
Soon after, Regalado and his wife, Kaitlyn Regalado, launched a cryptocurrency, INDXcoin, and began flogging it to members of his Victorious Grace Church and other gullible Christians in Denver.
They sold it through the Kingdom Wealth Exchange, an online crypto scam he created, controlled and operated.
The Regalados raked in more than $3.2 million from over 300 investors, Tung Chang, Securities Commissioner for Colorado, said in a civil complaint.
“The Regalados used technical terms to confuse investors and misled them into believing that the coins were valued at between $10-$12 even though they were purchased for $1.50 or, at times, given away, the complaint said.”
The couple’s sales pitches were filled with “prayer and quotes from the Bible, encouraging investors to have faith that their investment ... would lead to ‘abundance’ and ‘blessings,’” the complaint said.
But Colorado state regulators say that INDXcoin was “essentially worthless.”
The complaint said that instead of helping investors get rich, the Regalados used around $1.3 million of the investment funds to splash out on luxury items, including a Range Rover, jewellery, cosmetic dentistry and fancy holidays.
The complaint said the money paid for renovations to the Regalados’ Denver home.
In a shocking video statement posted online on January 19 — several days after the civil charges were filed — Eli Regalado did not deny that he and his wife profited from the crypto con.
“The charges are that Kaitlyn and I pocketed 1.3 million dollars, and I just want to come out and say that those charges are true,” he said, adding, “A few hundred thousand dollars went to a home remodel that the Lord told us to do.”
Regalado said he and his wife used about half a million dollars of their investors’ funds to pay taxes to the IRS.
CNN reports Regalado explained how God “convinced him that it was a safe and profitable investment venture.” So we guess Jesus was the real scammer here, and his invisible friend’s evil ways just took in Regalada and his missus.
We hope the Lord that gaveth will swiftly taketh away.