Colorado pastor charged for cryptocurrency scam he perpetrated at God's command

https://web3isgoinggreat.com/single/indxcoin

by beardyw • 3 years ago

145 157 3 years ago

paulgb• 3 years ago

This detail didn’t make it into the summary, but the audacity of it gave me a laugh.

Hacken, a cybersecurity company, audited the cryptocurrency, according to INDXcoin’s website. State investigators, who obtained copies of Hacken’s audits, say that the Regalados fail to mention that Hacken gave it a rating of “zero out of 10.”

Uptrenda2• 3 years ago

I can see it now: 'your system is horribly and laughably insecure. Please don't launch with this plan.' Is then turned to: 'we have been independently audited by a third-party' (((no need to mention what they said)))

kstrauser• 3 years ago

Flashbacks to Mad Magazine:

“This [terrible] idea will change [nothing positively, but will cause] the world [to eat itself].”

bsenftner• 3 years ago

I'm quite surprised the crypto-scam "geniuses" and the Prosperity Gospel criminals did not join forces. Put those two together, and you've got a con worthy of taking over the Republicans...

tomaytotomato• 3 years ago

This was clearly the work of the devil...

foofie4• 3 years ago

That's the gist if it, isn't it? If the scam works it's Divine Providence, but if the scam blows up in their face then the devil made them do it. What matters the most is that it's never their responsibility and thus they are never responsible and accountable for anything they do.

zaphar2• 3 years ago

Under christian theology the devil made me do it isn't an excuse it's a condemnation. The blame still lies entirely with you. That is in fact the whole point.

MandieD• 3 years ago

“Pastor for an online ministry” - the cool new way to say “televangelist,” and apparently just as trustworthy.

thanatos519• 3 years ago

"televandalist"

numbsafari2• 3 years ago

It’s a smashing success.

spoiler• 3 years ago

I didn't know televangelist were a thing until a year or two ago, and remember having my mind blown (in a "but why" way).

How is that a thing. Why do so many people fall for it? How do these people get discovered. The only reason I know about them is because of a meme YouTube video where a reporter drilled a televangelist on camera.

Aside: may I propose we style the Internet variety as eVangelists?

Pirvax• 3 years ago

Counter proposal: how about iVangelist?

cqqxo4zV46cp• 3 years ago

I’ve genuinely gotta ask: is not having heard of this an age thing, or a location thing?

zer00eyz• 3 years ago

Im gonna nerd out here:

America has a long history of "preachers", and "evangelists". I was in a thread yesterday that referenced Johnny Appleseed who was ministering and planting nurserys.

There is "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinners_in_the_Hands_of_an_Ang... ) That continues to be looked at and dwelled upon.

This carries through into modern times... Sam Kinison who was a famous and very distinct comedian gets a lot of his style from being a tent revival style preacher (You can watch is comedy that is very NSFW and his preaching its an interesting counter point). Mind you Sam is a contemporary of Jim Baker (a massive scandal that makes this one look small), and his wife Tammy Fay. And in the very present The show The Righteous Gemstones makes fun of the excess and money that preachers can generate.

magicalhippo• 3 years ago

The son of some family friends decided one day to suddenly give up his life and devote 100% of it to some guru in India. He was moderately religious christian, as most are here in Norway, and I'd spent a lot of time with him as we were of similar age and our families met regularly through our childhood. As such I knew him as quite bright and well informed.

Suddenly he was devoting all his time to studying rites and rituals, almost cutting out contact with is family, and taking up extra jobs so he could send money to this guru.

My dad met this guru once when he visited here in Norway. My dad said he spent way more time talking about the stock market than anything spiritual.

Yet to this day, a couple of decades later, their son is still laboring hard for this guy.

I did get to speak to him a few times after he had converted. For me this whole thing was utterly bewildering.

Looking back at us growing up, I suppose what he was seeking was somewhere to belong. It wasn't about this or that religion specifically, that seemed almost incidental, looking in from the outside.

His life had gotten a new meaning: follow these rites and rituals, and do whatever this guy says. In return he got a sense of belonging.

Still really weird to me, and still very hard for his parents. But their son willingly and with open eyes embraced this.

I've reflected on this several times, and my conclusion is that some people just want to believe, so they can belong.

jl6• 3 years ago

A lot of people live in bubbles and local networks that don’t have regular access to the normal tools of skepticism that you and I might take for granted. If you’ve been brought up to believe what you’re told, these people can be very convincing.

This is no longer an exclusively offline type of localism either. There is no shortage of online bubbles that are well insulated from outside perspectives.

It’s not even a “poor, dumb people” thing. We are all subject to the network effect and must make continuous active effort to avoid sinking into a comfortable echo chamber. I know so many people who grew up combatting religious fundamentalism, dispatching creationist arguments with expert logical fallacy-fu, only to later fall into their own malign belief systems, losing the ability to question. Even academia, where the foundation stones of skepticism and innovative thinking were laid, has bubbles of very smart people whose working environment is being drained of heterodoxy.

everdrive• 3 years ago

There's probably a better way to explain this, but I think it's just an emotional hook. A lot of things seem crazy when you don't get to experience the emotional aspect of the experience. You can sort of test this out by describing things which are commonly enjoyed, but in cold, cynical terms.

For instance, why do people like going to concerts? It's $100 or more to be surrounded by a hostile crowd, probably catch COVID, certainly induce some hearing damage, have zero peace and quiet for hours, etc. None of these "costs" really stack of up course if you find going to concerts rewarding in an emotional sense. If the concert itself never moved you emotionally, it'd be very difficult to see why people would put up with all the additional externalities of the whole event.

This isn't a perfect comparison, but I hope you can see what I'm getting at.

keepamovin2• 3 years ago

If you have divine prescience is that insider trading? Would the SEC prosecute based on oracular accuracy? Would RFJ pay out on that even?

throwaway421967• 3 years ago

Only if god is a director/exec or someone subject to a non-disclosure agreement.

According to answers to this question, "Is it insider trading if I bought Boeing puts while I am inside the wrecked airplane?" [1]

"Insider trading, I like to say, is not about fairness, it’s about theft. It’s illegal to trade on information that isn’t public and that you have some duty to keep secret" - Matt Levine

[1] https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/98706/is-it-insider-...

keepamovin2• 3 years ago

This is hilarious, thank you! Hahaha! :) Next time the plane goes down, have to remember that: crack open the brokerage account, ladel on the puts hahaha :) might even be an incentive to start taking MAXes preferentially :ghost_face:

cm21873• 3 years ago

How do you tell a scam coin from a non scam one? It's like a cult vs a religion, as far as I can tell the only difference is popularity.

scandox• 3 years ago

The difference between a cult and a religion is this: a cult wants it all but a religion just wants their cut.

throwup2382• 3 years ago

I’ve heard it phrased differently: the difference between a religion and a cult is that in a religion the person at the top of the pyramid making the most money is dead.

Uptrenda2• 3 years ago

It's genuinely a difficult question because there are projects that have the exact same technical designs that are still legitimate projects. So how do you evaluate this? From my perspective it used to easier. I'd just look at the problems that the company was focusing on and ask: (1) are they solving a real issue (2) are they making a valid contribution with their solution?

Normally both 1 and 2 would be eliminated as projects tried to intentionally use buzzwords to confuse investors into thinking they were doing something cool. They would write papers that mentioned nothing specific and you would sometimes come away thinking: 'what the fug are you even building' or often 'this exists already so what is your take on it?' The latter of which is hard to deny because many tokens, ICOs, blockchains really don't need to exist. Technically you could have argued that Ethereum didn't need to make a new blockchain because a third-party system could have been made that added smart contract logic on top of Bitcoin like a soft fork. This would have been similar to master coin.

I'd say that the quality of the people around a project can tell you a lot. Often scammers use impressive sounding publicists to make them seem like they're successful entrepreneurs. But when you dig deeper its all just paid shilling.

cm21873• 3 years ago

By that standard dogecoin is a scam.

danlugo92• 3 years ago

Bitcoin

rcxdude• 3 years ago

Some scam coins are reasonably obvious if you look at the technical details: things like the code allowing the founders access to large pools of funds that they claim they don't have access to. Obviously it's possible to obfuscate or even run a scam-coin without this, but many of the largest rug-pulls have been pretty blatent in this regard.

Stagnant• 3 years ago

In cases like this it is really easy to tell since the whole thing appears to have been some exchange website where you traded dollars for the supposed crypto coin but there was no way of taking those coins out (because the blockchain and coin didnt exist in the first place). In a sense it really wasn't an actual crypto scam, but a traditional ponzi scheme marketing itself with crypto buzzwords.

amenhotep2• 3 years ago

Not even a traditional ponzi scheme, that would be using new funds to pay returns to older marks. I can't figure out if just taking people's money and telling them it's going up but refusing to give it back has a name or if it's just, you know, lying.

Ographer3• 3 years ago

Money corrupts; bitcoin corrupts absolutely.

https://www.cynicusrex.com/file/cryptocultscience.html

makerofthings• 3 years ago

The different between a cult and a religion is whether the main character is dead yet.

yokem552• 3 years ago

Part of the problem is that there is a huge space where something can be: A) Designed and deployed in good faith (not designed as an actively bad-faith fraud) B) Still is an extremely risky investment C) While there can still be participants (not necessarily the proginators), who operate in bad faith to exploit the shortcomings of a good-faith design

Figuring out which is which while avoiding getting rekt is not easy, but can be done.

gumby• 3 years ago

He should have called it the INRIcoin, that couldn’t have failed!

JohnMakin• 3 years ago

What’s funny is if he promises eternal rewards instead of $$$ this isn’t illegal at all.

throwup2382• 3 years ago

He’s a pastor, not a priest. They have a whole thing about indulgences. It’s kinda their founding prohibition.

Though based on this guy’s fundamental moral failings, that probably wouldn’t have stopped him…

dash2• 3 years ago

That's a brilliant idea: indulgences on the blockchain!

graemep2• 3 years ago

Eternal rewards are out of jurisdiction.

edgyquant• 3 years ago

That isn’t funny and there isn’t a widely accepted intrinsic value to eternal paradise. You’re just anti-religious and want the excuse to let us all know

amenhotep2• 3 years ago

There'll be edge cases, but I think it's pretty clear that there is in fact a widely accepted intrinsic value to eternal paradise. What isn't widely accepted is the intrinsic value of some tradition telling you that eternal paradise exists and you can get into it.

pavel_lishin• 3 years ago

I disagree, I think it's mildly funny. But there isn't a widely accepted intrinsic value to humor, I guess.

marginalia_nu• 3 years ago

At least the Church of the SubGenius has a triple money back guarantee if you don't get eternal salvation.

loeg5• 3 years ago

Usually not even illegal if the material rewards promised are kind of vague: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology

lawgimenez• 3 years ago

https://youtu.be/ACKzBy8nOxY?si=a9PeYp-syJyPmKWK

graemep2• 3 years ago

Who knew God was a degen!

That is a great line.

Regalado had told investors that the funds would be going to "widows and orphans", but spent most of it on himself and his wife.

Maybe his parents are dead and his wife was windowed in the previous marriage :)

He actually contradicts himself as he denies spending the money on himself and hiss wife, and admits spending money on a home renovation "the Lord told us to do".

I thought when someone said something like "your house looks divine" it was a metaphor!

danShumway• 3 years ago

It would be a strong defense, except I heard that unfortunately the prosecutors were all told in a dream by God to prosecute him for fraud. Nothing they can do about it except move forward with the charges, it's just God's will that there be legal consequences for this. /j

morelisp• 3 years ago

Was there actually any cryptographic aspect to this, or was he even lying about it being a “cryptocurrency”? He’s taking money on Venmo and running an “exchange” that trades only in this coin.

It would be interesting if “cryptocurrency” is now this entrenched as a synecdoche for any scrip-y scam.

nickpsecurity2• 3 years ago

Followers of Jesus Christ are commanded and equipped to test prophets rather than blindly believing them. Here's God's Word on that:

"If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you, and he gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder comes to pass, of which he spoke to you, saying, “Let’s go after other gods” (which you have not known) “and let’s serve them,” you shall not listen to the words of that prophet, or to that dreamer of dreams; for the LORD your God is testing you, to know whether you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul. You shall walk after the LORD your God, fear him, keep his commandments, and obey his voice. You shall serve him, and cling to him." (Deut. 13:1-4)

"But those who are determined to be rich (greedy) fall into a temptation, a snare, and many foolish and harmful lusts, such as drown men in ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some have been led astray from the faith in their greed, and have pierced themselves through with many sorrows." (1 Tim. 6:9-10)

More Scripture on that topic: https://www.biblestudytools.com/topical-verses/is-gambling-a...

Knowing these, we can look at the cryptocurrency market to see it's mostly gambling, get rich quick schemes, attempts to rebel at authority (esp IRS), unstable, and often with illegal activity. This would keep us away from most of that even if we'd consider it for legitimate instruments or smart contracts. Anything that's helpful, not sinful, is a gift from God who raises up many brilliant inventors to solve our problems. Even indirectly like how smart contracts inspired millions to be invested in tooling for verifying software.

With that general impression, we look at the guy starting a cryptocurrency with high skepticism. We'd say: "Brother, why would a man of God charged with preaching Christ dying for our sins and moving money to society's helpless need a cryptocurrency? Are you serving God or money? And should the church's money be focused on such things? If you lack a Biblical answer, then perhaps you have been tempted by the Devil to set your heart on the wrong things. Please pray God helps you overcome this, focus on what truly matters, and serve Him faithfully."

And we'd pray for them. And God would help them overcome temptation or set an example of who to protect His flock from.

muglug2• 3 years ago

The verses from Deuteronomy aren’t a clear-cut condemnation, because they refer to following other gods vs the God of the old testament. Deuteronomy was transcribed at a time when there were a ton of potential gods for the Israelites to follow.

The Bible also has lots of stories of people taking incredible risks to follow the leaders God chose for them, so I'm not sure it has great advice for biblically-minded investors under the sway of a greedy pastor.

nickpsecurity2• 3 years ago

In His Word, God says He never changes. His character remains the same. They lived by the Law with its morals.

With that in mind, the Deuteronomy passage says that anyone claiming to be a prophet, but contradicting God's existing Word (eg commands), is a liar. Most people falsely claiming to be prophets have poor character, be ego/money centered, people pleasers, often contradict the Word, cherry-pick what serves them, and/or fail in their predictions or miracles (see Deut. 18). The Deut. 13 test is even easier today since we have the whole Word, including Jesus' and Apostles' ministry, to test them with.

xrd• 3 years ago

God only gives total losses like that to his strongest cryptocurrency soldiers.

spamizbad• 3 years ago

Lots of people mocking the “God commanded me to do X” but if you’re familiar with evangelical Christian culture, this line gets used to justify all sorts of behavior and life decisions that might go against what one would traditionally expect a devout Christian to avoid. Obviously fraud and financial crimes are an extreme version of this, but it’s a line I’ve heard to justify all sorts of legal albeit self-destructive behavior.

“I know I should be saving money for a house but god spoke to me and I spent the downpayment on <fancy car that’ll get repo’d in a year>”

test77777g• 3 years ago

I’m an atheist and frequent places where men have anonymous gay sex and the majority of the men are “devout” Christians for me it’s a kink, I don’t feel a lot of guilt, and neither do they, lies are their choice and it shows.

retrac• 3 years ago

I don’t feel a lot of guilt, and neither do they

I can tell you haven't tried to date such guys. They may not feel enough guilt to keep them from engaging in casual sex, but many of them absolutely feel guilt. Indeed, sometimes it's a complex of immovable guilt and shame, in the style of classic Freud, with the entire panoply of coping mechanisms deployed to deal with the dissonance (projection, affect isolation, displacement, dissociation, reaction formation, etc.)

ametrau• 3 years ago

This is how we incubate various diseases. Monkey pox being a good example (but it’s origin story doesn’t get mentioned because it goes against the current zeitgeist).

LNSY• 3 years ago

It's been used to justify all sorts of child abuse, also. Going back to Abraham's abuse of his son Isaac and Lot and his Daughters.

batch12• 3 years ago

Christianity isn't the only religion abused by flawed people to do bad things. Its more of a reflection of the people involved and not the religion. It's sad.

kevingadd2• 3 years ago

Modern american evangelical christianity suffers from a particular moral rot that isn't unique to it but is also not common to other branches of the faith. Specifically, there's a firm conviction that once you're saved you remain saved, and you can find lots of people who behave as if as a result, nothing they do really matters. They can be selfish, they can be rude, they can be cruel, they can be unfaithful, and it's all fine in the end because they're still safe. They'll tell you of course that everyone should do their best, and they might even tell you that they're doing their best, but the basic tenets of their specific flavor of faith are essentially that Nothing Really Matters. The most extreme evangelical/nondenominational Christians take this especially far like the pastor in the article, and I feel bad for people of faith who have to share the same label with them.

(for context, I worked in evangelical christian ministry for multiple years when I was younger)

manicennui• 3 years ago

The problem is a world view based on appeals to authority and nothing claimed about said authority can be proven or disproven.

jjulius• 3 years ago

... but if you're familiar with evangelical Christian culture, this line gets used to justify all sorts of behavior and life decisions that might go against what one would traditionally expect a devour Christian to avoid.

Religion being used that way isn't limited to evangelicals nor Christianity. In fact, it's basically the reason people are mocking the phrase.

HarryHirsch2• 3 years ago

I'd rather say that such conduct is mostly confined to evangelicals. Mainstream Christianity teaches that prophecy ceased with Maleachi, and form then onwards we have only the traditions of the Church to go by. That would include a sober ("chaste") lifestyle.

Duanemclemore• 3 years ago

You're right. I grew up in an independent evangelical church so I've been attuned to all this since I got out in my teens. To emphasize - American Evangelical Christianity is especially insidious about this on multiple levels. In contrast to Mainline Protestantism, the entire movement is based on two particularly pernicious things that map to cultlike methods.

They are taught to blindly follow and never question authority. The pastor is the "shepherd" of the "flock" and they openly talk about it in terms echoing the way that the Disciples followed Jesus. And there's a reason you hear about what seem to be so many nasty stories of evangelical religious leaders abusing their power than mainline ones. And there's a reason authoritarian politics are so closely identifiable with evangelism in America.

Second, they work HARD TO create an in-group and out-group. There are the "saved" and everyone else. If you're "unsaved" and attend the church, the pressure is INTENSE to commit. RELENTLESS. And once you're in, you're on the inside of an "us against the world" mentality. I'll give an example. You know the current "War On Christmas?" People walking around like NPC's saying "I don't care, I'm going to say Merry Christmas - since when did that become a crime, none of this 'Happy Holidays' stuff!"

I remember being inside the movement in the eighties, and the thing they were completely up in arms about then was that businesses were co-opting Jesus's name by using "Christmas" to sell stuff. So the move to "Happy Holidays" by corporate America wasn't just an inclusive, religiously-neutral way to put it. I distinctly remember listening to christian radio at the time and the conversation being about pressure campaigns to get "Merry Christmas" out of businesses. I'm sure businesses were happy to oblige to stop the PR onslaught. It was the "War on Christmas" of its day. And twenty years later when it fits their agenda to creating division between believers and non-believers? The entire thing reversed directions.

29athrowaway• 3 years ago

In a superdeterministic universe, that would be probably true.

blantonl2• 3 years ago

Hustle culture is the new set of MLM/Ponzi schemes of our time. It is a scourge on humanity, and I see no redeeming ways for participants to enjoy real, honest, legal success. I've watched participants of hustle culture in my immediate vicinity in life, and it almost always leads to participants venturing into dubious or flat out illegal activities to fund their "fake it till you make it" lifestyle.

I'm convinced that the vast majority of these folks are either selling unlicensed securities, sham interests in social media / crypto / real estate / commodities / life coach etc, or they are stealing directly from the federal government via tax shams and assistance programs. The sheer number of hustle culture participants that "participated" in PPP (paycheck protection program) for example fraud is frightening.

skocznymroczny• 3 years ago

These days they are probably transitioning to AI scams or "keto supplements" as the new best thing.

Pat_Murph• 3 years ago

Combining 2 grifts, religion and crypto. Story as old as time.

Take religion, the perfect tool designed to manipulate the credulous masses and now add the latest grift of the moment and take in the money... And when you get called out, blame god.

And these evangelicals claim to be morally superior than the rest of us. Pfff

kepler1• 3 years ago

I guess if a core part of your belief system is that an unexplainable deity speaks through only certain people who you need to trust without good reason to, small problems like this sometimes happen! Oh well, acceptable losses, right?

solardev• 3 years ago

Why can't God be fairer about his commands? Some people get all the fun ones and I get stuck updating package.json every week.

jimberlage• 3 years ago

    "So the charges are that Kaitlyn and I pocketed $1.3 million, and I just want to come out and say that those uh charges are true," said Regalado in the video, presumably causing a cold chill to run down the spine of his defense attorney in the middle of whatever he was doing.

You know when you have a task that it feels impossible to complete in your current role because of external factors? Management troubles, massive tech debt, etc. I wonder if that's how his lawyer feels about winning this case.

loeg5• 3 years ago

Frequently the role of a defense lawyer is to negotiate the best available guilty plea.

hereme8884• 3 years ago

"A Christian did something bad, let's insult God and Christianity!"

That's the point of this article and its title.

But no one cares about the missionaries who risk their lives to benefit others, and all positive things are thrown out the window.

Then, let's blame God because a human did something bad "in His name."

See the irrationality of the "logic"?

kevin_thibedeau• 3 years ago

Most missionaries are engaged in the selfish pursuit of a free vacation. Otherwise they could stay home and deliver alms to their local impoverished masses.

hereme8884• 3 years ago

May I know what source you're using for saying "most missionaries" globally are like that?

loeg5• 3 years ago

I read it completely differently. It is especially audacious and egregious that this guy claimed defrauding his followers was god's will. That doesn't reflect badly on christianity; it reflects badly on him.

hereme8884• 3 years ago

Glad you do. But lots of commenters see it as I wrote, hence I made my comment.

blantonl2• 3 years ago

The vast majority of missionary work these days is virtue signaling disguised as a grift.

hereme8884• 3 years ago

May I know what source you're using for saying "most missionaries" globally are like that?

NelsonMinar2• 3 years ago

Affinity fraud is one of the most successful kinds of scams https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affinity_fraud

This one seems to be two in-groups at once. Believers in cryptocurrency and believers in a particular type of Christian god.

154573452342• 3 years ago

To a certain extent participation in organised religion is an indicator of the propensity of the subject to be manipulated.

NelsonMinar2• 3 years ago

So is participation in cryptocurrency.

bsdpufferfish2• 3 years ago

This post and the commments it attracts seems more appropriate for /r/atheism. It’s not technology (what about a stripe scam pastor?) and it’s not something interesting that wouldn’t be peddled in gossip journalism.

loeg5• 3 years ago

Cryptocurrency-related topics frequently make the front page. At the end of the day, what's appropriate for this site is what its readers find interesting.

bsdpufferfish2• 3 years ago

There is a specified rule and popular posts are constantly removed for allegedly breaking it.

red-iron-pine• 3 years ago

"god says scam the rubes"

Colorado pastor charged for cryptocurrency scam he perpetrated at God's command

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