Washington Pastor Arrested, Charged With Scamming $5.9M From Congregants
Hireling ‘pastor’ Francier Obando Pinillo has been arrested and charged with 25 counts of wire fraud and one count of unlicensed money-transmitting business over allegations that he stole $5.9M from hundreds of people, including his own congregants.
According to a press release by the CTC, the leader of Tiempo de Poder Church (Times Of Power Church) in Pasco, WA, engaged in a “fraudulent digital assets multilevel marketing scheme” where he “targeted at least 1,515 customers in the United States, including members of a Spanish church where he was the pastor.”
Along with thieving from his sheep, he was frequently the guest speaker at other churches, where he primarily “targeted Spanish-speaking customers who had little to no experience or understanding in digital asset transactions or commodity interest trading” by encouraging them to invest in his business to be lifted out of poverty.
He abused his position of trust as the church pastor to attract customers and claimed to be the CEO of the Solanofi entities that had an automated computer trading system which he called Solanofi. Pinillo claimed to operate a leveraged staking trading platform which rewarded users through an interest pool based on high performance trading of cryptographic assets. He further claimed it was risk-free and guaranteed profits of up to 34.9% compounded monthly.
Despite these claims, the CFTC points out that during the relevant period, “there was no trading platform, no trading took place, no profits were generated, and Pinillo misappropriated all assets that customers transferred to him.”
Pinillo went to some lengths to conceal his crimes. In some cases, after taking the money, he created fake online dashboards for clients. One victim who invested $36,000 reported that she could access her account and see over a million dollars in her account- money she thought she had made but, in reality, was made up.
If convicted, each wire fraud charge carries up to 20 years in prison.
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