A Colorado pastor of an internet church is difficult allegations that he and his spouse defrauded parishioners out of thousands and thousands {dollars} by the sale of cryptocurrency deemed “basically nugatory” by state securities regulators.
Colorado Securities Commissioner (CSC) Tung Chan filed civil fraud costs in opposition to Eligo and Kaitlyn Regalado final week in Denver District Courtroom, in keeping with an announcement from the Colorado Division of Regulatory Companies. The criticism accuses the Regalados of concentrating on members of the state’s Christian group, enriching themselves by selling a cryptocurrency token that the Denver couple launched referred to as the INDXcoin.
The couple allegedly bought the “illiquid and virtually nugatory” tokens from June 2022 to April 2023 by a cryptocurrency trade they created referred to as Kingdom Wealth Trade, Commissioner Chan stated within the assertion. The gross sales supported the couple’s “lavish life-style,” he alleged.
Kingdom Wealth Trade, the one crypto trade promoting the INDX token was inexplicably shut down on November 1, in accordance to the Denver Publish.
“Mr. Regalado took benefit of the belief and religion of his personal Christian group and that he peddled outlandish guarantees of wealth to them when he bought them basically nugatory cryptocurrencies,” Chan stated.
Pastor says “God was going to offer”
In a nine-minute lengthy video, Regalado acknowledged on Friday that the allegations that he made $1.3 million from traders “are true.”
“We took God at His phrase and bought a cryptocurrency with no clear exit,” Regalado stated within the video, including that he had additionally been divinely instructed to desert his former enterprise to take over INDXcoin.
“I am like, properly, the place’s this liquidity going to come back from,’ and the Lord says, ‘Belief Me,'” Regalado stated within the video.
“We have been simply all the time underneath the impression that God was going to offer that the supply was endless,” he added.
Regalado didn’t instantly return CBS MoneyWatch’s request for remark.
In line with the CSC, the Regalados had no prior expertise working a cryptocurrency trade or making a digital token earlier than minting INDX two years in the past. Virtually anybody can create a cryptocurrency token, the company famous in its assertion.
There are greater than 2 million cryptocurrencies in existence, along with 701 cryptocurrency exchanges the place traders can commerce them, in accordance to crypto markets web site CoinMarketCap.
Regalado stated within the video that he’ll go to court docket to handle the allegations in opposition to him and his spouse. “God will not be carried out with this venture; God will not be carried out with INDX coin,” he stated.
