What did Eli Regalado and his wife do? Colorado Pastor admits to fraudulence, stating "Lord told us to"

Colorado pastor Eli Regalado recently admitted to pocketing $1.3 million through a cryptocurrency scam that ran between 2022 to 2023, as per CNN. The pastor encouraged Christian communities to buy INDXcoin, a cryptocurrency created by him and his wife, Kaitlyn. The pastor told investors that God had told him that they would be rich if they invested in the currency.

Investors lost millions through the currency, which was deemed worthless by the state and according to a Colorado Attorney General’s Office complaint, the couple swindled the money and used it to live a lavish lifestyle. The Colorado pastor released a video on the currency's official website on Friday, January 19, admitting to the fraud.

He said that half a million dollars of the 1.3 swindled went to the IRS, but there was more, adding:

"A few hundred thousand dollars went to a home remodel that the lord told us to do."

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Colorado pastor and his wife raised $3.2 million

On Tuesday, January 16, Colorado Securities Commissioner Tung Chan filed a civil fraud complaint against Colorado Pastor Eligio (Eli) Regalado, his wife Kaitlyn, their cryptocurrency INDXcoin, and their very own cryptocurrency exchange service, Kingdom Wealth Exchange.

The complaint alleged that the couple had violated the licensing, registration, and anti-fraud provisions of the Colorado Securities Act. The complaint found that the Colorado pastor and wife's cryptocurrency, INDXcoin had raised a whopping $3.2 million from over 300 investors between June 2022 and April 2023.

The complaint further alleged that the couple would target members of the Christian community by telling them that God had told the pastor directly that they would become rich if they bought INDXcoin. The currency was marketed as a low-risk and high-reward incentive.

The transactions even took place on an exchange that they created and operated named Kingdom Wealth Exchange. The couple did not have any previous experience trading crypto, and according to the complaint, a third-party audit found many technical issues in the currency's code, making it extremely unsafe.

As per the complaint against the Regalos, the currency was "practically worthless" as it was "illiquid." It led to the loss of millions from the hands of the investors. Colorado Securities Commissioner Tung Chan said in a press release:

"We allege that Mr. Regalado took advantage of the trust and faith of his own Christian community and that he peddled outlandish promises of wealth to them when he sold them essentially worthless cryptocurrencies,"

Chan added:

"New coins and new exchanges are easy to create with open source code. We want to remind consumers to be very skeptical."

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"We took God at his word and sold a cryptocurrency with no clear exit": Pastor Eli Regalado

In response to the complaint, pastor Eli Regalado released a video explaining that the state deemed the currency worthless as there was no exit for people who had bought the currency. He said that the couple launched an exchange and the "exchange technology failed" which has led to them waiting for a miracle ever since. He confirmed:

"The charges are that Kaitlyn and I pocketed $1.3 million and I just want to come out and say that those charges are true."

He explained that the whole thing started when "the lord" told them to abandon their parking company and then allegedly took the pastor and his wife into cryptocurrency. However, he said that the currency "turned out to be a scam". He alleged that the lord told them to "build this the way that it should be done".

At one point the lord even allegedly told the Colorado pastor to give people a 10x return and when he asked the lord where the liquidity was going to come from, the lord simply asked the pastor to trust him. The pastor further continued:

"We took God at his word and sold a cryptocurrency with no clear exit."

He proclaimed:

"What we're believing for still is that God is going to do a miracle. God is going to work a miracle in the financial sector."

The Colorado pastor seemed pretty confident in his defense despite admitting to the crime. He claimed that the couple were going to argue their case in court along with the help of a few journal entries leading up to all of it.