A Denver grand jury has indicted a married couple on 40 counts of theft, fraud and deceit, for allegedly working a multi-million-dollar cryptocurrency rip-off that largely focused church buildings, the Denver District Attorney announced in a press release on Tuesday.
Between 2022 and July 2023, Eli Regalado, who can also be a pastor who preaches on the Victorious Grace Church, and his spouse Kaitlyn, the one different worker on the church which they host at their dwelling, allegedly solicited practically $3.4 million from buyers seeking to purchase their INDXcoin cryptocurrency from their Kingdom Wealth Trade.
The couple focused Christians from their church in addition to different church buildings to purchase their cryptocurrency, promising big returns, the district lawyer alleged, however in the long run the INDXcoin maintained zero worth and greater than 300 buyers misplaced their cash. The Regalados spent $1.3 million of the proceeds from their token gross sales on private expenditures, like a house renovation, the indictment mentioned.
The INDXcoin whitepaper said that the coin was “engineered to develop because the cryptocurrency market explodes by benchmarking the world’s high 100 cryptocurrencies, permitting customers to capitalize on progress whereas mitigating threat.” Nonetheless, the indictment mentioned this was misleading.
“Eli and Kaitlyn Regalado deceived potential and present buyers, and didn’t open up to them: that Defendants lacked liquidity to assist the quantity of INDXcoin then excellent and that INDXcoin was not ‘pegged’ to a sure worth or the typical of the top-100 cryptocurrencies on the earth, however as a substitute was backed by primarily no belongings by any means and had no actual worth,” the indictment mentioned.
Colorado Securities Commissioner Tung Chan initially filed expenses against the pair last year. In March the pastor appeared in a video message and said that the “expenses are true.” He additionally mentioned on the time the enterprise was one thing he believed God had advised him to do.
“The Lord advised us to stroll away from our parking firm. … [H]e took us into this cryptocurrency … properly, that cryptocurrency turned out to be a rip-off…. And I mentioned Lord … you advised me to do that,” he mentioned within the video.