“The Lord said to do this”: American pastor cheated parishioners out of $1.3 million in “God-pleasing” cryptocurrency (4 photos)

He bought luxurious things, went on vacation with his wife and had fun at other people's expense.





Televangelists are quite popular in the United States. They regularly appear on TV, conduct sermons, and at the end sometimes ask to transfer money to them to a specified account. What is typical is that many translate and televangelists are alive and well.

Now a new trend has appeared: online preachers and jokers on the Internet also call them “cyberpops.” But seriously, they are becoming more and more popular. And some of these Gavriks settled in Colorado. This is the Regalado couple - Eli and his wife Caitlin. They founded the online church Victorious Grace Church and began to slowly enroll parishioners.



Eli Regalado

Over time, they acquired followers and then Regalado said:

God said that people will get rich when they buy the INDXcoin cryptocurrency.

It was possible to buy “godly” crypto only on the Kingdom Wealth Exchange. Its founder was the cyberpastor himself. Well, off we go: people bought $3.2 million worth of this crypto. The priest was happy and motivated the parishioners to buy more and more, promising them unprecedented profits. Almost like the late Mavrodi. Sergei Panteleevich also promised a lot of things.



The pastor and his wife spent approximately $1.3 million on vacations, buying jewelry, paintings and building their home. And then Regalado announced that the Kingdom Wealth Exchange was closing - he no longer had money to maintain the servers.

The parishioners finally realized that they were loved and began to fuss. Some ran to the police, others reached local authorities. And soon the Colorado state regulator sued priest Eli Regalado and his wife Caitlin, accusing them of fraud with the INDXcoin cryptocurrency.



The charge is not criminal, but civil. In the worst case for the spouses, they will only take away the loot and issue a fine. Well, they will ban online sermons.

While the proceedings are ongoing, the pastor decided to address his former parishioners and stated:

The allegations are that Caitlin and I pocketed $1.3 million and I just want to state that these allegations are true.

And he explained very simply that they spent the money on spillikins and a house:

Because the Lord told us to do it.

The only losers, as always, were the parishioners. In one fell swoop, both online churches and cryptocurrencies were lost.