God told them to sell crypto. Their investors lost everything.
| Source: MIT Technology Review AI
Tags: cryptocurrency, INDXcoin, fraud, affinity fraud, crypto regulation, investor protection
A Colorado pastor and his wife collected over $3M from 500+ evangelical Christian investors in INDXcoin — a cryptocurrency they said God directed them to create — before the project collapsed and investors lost everything, with fraud charges following.
Details
Eli and Kaitlyn Regalado, a Colorado pastor couple with no prior crypto background, launched INDXcoin in late 2022 and marketed it through evangelical Christian community networks, claiming divine direction. Over 500 investors handed over a combined $3M+, including retirees Debbie and Jose Bonilla who withdrew $70,000 from retirement savings. Within roughly a year of launch, the project collapsed and investors lost everything. The case is a textbook affinity fraud — exploiting trust within a tight-knit religious community — applied to cryptocurrency's particular opacity. Unlike conventional investment fraud, crypto's lack of consumer protections gave victims limited regulatory recourse after the coin's collapse. For the tech and AI community, the story is tangential but instructive: platforms that lower barriers to token launches and digital community marketing bear increasing scrutiny as infrastructure for schemes like this. Fraud accusations against the Regalados are being litigated as of publication. Published as an investigative collaboration between MIT Technology Review and Type Investigations, with support from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.