It was all a fraud, as cryptocurrency schemes are, but it was enabled by the religious faith that members of Pinillo’s church placed in their pastor. They had to have faith, they were told, or they wouldn’t go to Heaven when they died.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission issued the following statement two days ago:

“The Commodity Futures Trading Commission today announced a civil enforcement action in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington against Francier Obando Pinillo, doing business as Solanofi, Solano Partners Ltd., and Solano Capital Investments –collectively Solanofi entities – for engaging in a fraudulent digital assets multilevel marketing scheme worth at least $5.9 million.

Pinillo targeted at least 1,515 customers in the United States, including members of a Spanish church where he was the pastor in Pasco, Washington, in the scheme.

In its continuing litigation, the CFTC seeks restitution to defrauded customers, disgorgement of ill-gotten gains, civil monetary penalties, trading bans, and a permanent injunction against further violations of the Commodity Exchange Act and CFTC Regulations.

As alleged in the complaint, Pinillo, individually and doing business as the Solanofi entities, mainly targeted Spanish-speaking customers who had little to no experience or understanding in digital asset transactions or commodity interest trading. 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.

Pinillo provided customers with access to an online dashboard with account statements showing their purported account balances and profits. He encouraged customers to involve friends and family in his fraudulent scheme by offering to pay a 15% referral fee to them for referring additional customers. These representations and account statements were false. 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.”

In Donald Trump’s Christian Nationalist political movement, religious faith and financial fraud go hand in hand, just as they did under the criminal Pastor Pinillo. That’s why Donald Trump is appointing Paul Atkins to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC is the organization that is supposed to protect Americans from financial fraud, but Paul Atkins is an advocate of fraudulent cryptocurrency schemes. Cryptocurrency is nothing more than a financial faith, with no physical assets to back up its extravagant spiritual promises of wealth and liberation. Donald Trump is putting Paul Atkins in the SEC to make sure that the Securities and Exchange Commission looks the other way while cryptocurrency scammers like Sam Bankman Fried rip Americans off.

In the same way, Donald Trump’s Christian Nationalist Cabinet appointees will be looking the other way while Christian leaders rip off their congregants. Pastor Pinillo and Paul Atkins are ultimately leading the same scam.