US uncovers cryptocurrency scam worth more than $ 3 million, behind which was a priest

Eli Regalado, an American pastor from Colorado, founded the INDXcoin cryptocurrency project and later publicly confessed to fraud and misappropriation of parishioners' funds. The priest stole $ 1.3 million to renovate his house with the money.

Regalado posted a 9-minute video on the website of the fraudulent crypto project, in which he confirmed the accusations of the Colorado Securities Commission. on January 18, the regulator accused the founders of the cryptocurrency pyramid scheme of distributing and promoting the INDXcoin token.

The INDXcoin digital asset was placed on the Kingdom Wealth Exchange (KWE) cryptocurrency platform, which was also controlled by Regalado. Between mid-2022 and early 2023, gullible investors gave the criminal pastor about $ 3.2 million in INDXcoin. Most of the depositors were parishioners of the Church of Victorious Grace, where Regalado serves as pastor.

Commissioner Tung Chan said that Regalado took advantage of the trust of the Christian community in Denver by promising them «mountains of gold» and embezzled the money with his partner Caitlin Regalado.

on November 1, Kingdom Wealth Exchange ceased to exist due to a lack of funds to maintain internal servers. However, Regalado urged INDXcoin holders to refrain from selling them and not to pursue wealth.

The pastor did not deny the Commission’s accusations. «The Lord told me to sell the cryptocurrency without any clear strategy and spend part of the proceeds on the reconstruction of the house. It was a message from the Higher Power. We are accused of selling millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency that the state considers useless. We launched the platform, the technology failed, and things went bad. So we were just waiting for a miracle,» the priest said.

Earlier, we told you that the principal of an American high school resigned after she was caught in an unknowing scam. Members of the school board discovered that she had written a check for $ 100,000 to a person who was pretending to be Elon Musk on the Internet.