Pastor Charged in $6 Million Crypto Fraud Scheme That Targeted Church Members

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission filed a lawsuit against Francier Obando Pinillo on Tuesday, accusing the former pastor of orchestrating a multilevel marketing scheme that allegedly took at least $5.9 million in cash and digital assets for a fake “Solanofi platform.”

Promising investors they could earn up to 34.9% monthly through a so-called leveraged staking platform, Pinillo allegedly targeted “unsophisticated investors,” including Spanish-speaking members of a Washington-based church, according to a complaint filed by the CFTC.

Staking refers to the process whereby users pledge digital assets to a network in order to help it validate transactions—but the Commission alleged that no such activity took place.

Instead, Pinillo allegedly pocketed money from 1,500 unwitting investors, made false statements about trading Bitcoin on their behalf, and later claimed that investors’ funds were lost in FTX’s bankruptcy. Of the money he raised, Pinillo allegedly sent $4 million worth of digital assets to 23 “private digital wallets” that prosecutors believe are in Colombia.

Resembling the name of Solana, the fifth largest cryptocurrency by market cap, Pinillo’s Solanofi platform allegedly never existed. Still, he provided victims with a fake dashboard that showed them falsified account balances with purported profits, which the CFTC alleged were crucial in maintaining Pinillo’s scheme, alongside a Ponzi-like “referral fee” for pulling in new investors.

The regulator alleged that the former pastor’s scheme wasn’t limited to the Evergreen State. At a mega-church in Florida, Pinillo “lectured the congregants on the importance of lifting themselves out of poverty and then proceeded to pitch them” on the Solanofi platform, the complaint stated.

Pinillo “was able to reach a vast number of potential customers, who believed he was honest and trustworthy,” prosecutors wrote.

The case, in which a religious authority is accused of abusing his trust while touting crypto tech, mirrored civil charges brought against a Colorado-based couple earlier this year. Promoting a token backed by nothing but god’s word, a lawsuit brought by the Colorado’s securities regulator centered on pastor Eligio “Eli” Regalado, INDXcoin, and his online church Victorious Grace.

Meanwhile, the absurdist Solana meme coin Smoking Chicken Fish (SCF), which plans to build a physical church around its own religion, weathered controversy in September. Ousting its de facto leader, core team members accused “Pastor Kelby” of “rug pulls” and other unsavory behavior.

While Pinillo never had an account at FTX, the exchange that infamously collapsed in 2022, he allegedly sent digital assets to a different trading venue listed as “Exchange A.” Among digital assets solicited by the former pastor, Pinillo allegedly instructed investors to send Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Dogecoin, and Shiba Inu to wallets he created and controlled.

At one point, the former pastor told investors that he would release a token embodying Christian values called “ShekkelCoin.” Prosecutors said the token was never released.

Whether it was FTX’s bankruptcy or technical issues regarding the Solanofi platform, Pinillo made several excuses for investors’ inability to withdraw funds that prosecutors claimed were false. At his Washington church, a woman allegedly begged Pinillo for her money back to no avail.

“Never has a dark night defeated the power of a dawn,” the former pastor wrote in a Tuesday Facebook post, translated from Spanish by Decrypt. “When the storms get worse, it is because the calm is about to begin.”

Edited by Andrew Hayward