More than 500 people handed over a total of more than $3 million to Eli and Kaitlyn Regalado for a cryptocurrency called INDXcoin, but within a year of the project's 2022 launch, it collapsed and investors lost everything, according to a new investigative report published by MIT Technology Review on September 10, 2026. The couple, who say they launched INDXcoin after receiving divine instructions, are now facing 40 felony charges including theft, racketeering, and securities fraud, and could face decades in prison if convicted. Colorado securities regulators accused them in a civil lawsuit of spending around $1.3 million—nearly 40% of the funds they raised—on personal expenses including luxury vacations, designer clothing, a Range Rover, cosmetic dental work, and extensive home renovations.
The Regalados began selling cryptocurrency to fellow Christians in late 2021 after Eli's sister and her husband gifted them holdings in a little-known digital coin called Sumcoin, the report says. By February 2022, the couple was making over $260,000 in monthly sales despite having no background in crypto. After learning that Sumcoin's creator wasn't planning to list it on mainstream exchanges as they'd told buyers, the Regalados decided to build their own coin. They paid two developers $100,000 to launch INDXcoin with its own blockchain, typing questions like "What is a blockchain?" into YouTube and ChatGPT to learn as they went. The couple promoted INDXcoin through family, friends, and evangelical Christian networks, offering some promoters referral commissions of 30%. Nearly all of the 20 investors interviewed for the report had heard about the coin from a trusted friend, relative, or faith leader, and most had little or no experience with crypto. They funded purchases by raiding retirement accounts, cashing out pensions, or taking out home equity lines of credit—including retired couple Debbie and Jose Bonilla, who withdrew $70,000 from their retirement savings.
The couple launched Kingdom Wealth Exchange in April 2023 to allow INDXcoin trading, but the platform failed within hours when sales orders dwarfed purchases and drained all available funds, according to the report. The exchange initially showed INDXcoin trading at around 10 times what people had paid, making the Bonillas' $70,000 investment appear worth more than $716,000, but investors couldn't complete sales transactions. The Regalados suspended sales the next day and, despite attempts to salvage the project over subsequent months, shut down the exchange and took INDXcoin's blockchain offline in November 2023. A judge in the civil case ruled that INDXcoin was a security and that the Regalados had misled investors about its true value and risks, where their funds went, and how many coins had been given away, noting a "lack of understanding of the harm they have caused." The judge wrote that "in reality, INDXcoin was worthless because no one wanted to buy it" and ordered the couple to pay nearly $3.4 million in damages.
The project collapsed amid a broader surge in cryptocurrency fraud and an environment of limited regulatory oversight, the report notes. In 2025, crypto scammers collected at least $14 billion worldwide, a 17% increase from the previous year, according to blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis cited in the report, while U.S. victims of fraudulent crypto investment schemes reported $7.2 billion in losses to the FBI. More than 3 million cryptocurrencies were created in August 2026 alone, and launching digital coins is relatively easy—something anyone can do in minutes through an online token generator. Much of the U.S. crypto market lacks the oversight and investor protections present in traditional finance, including rules around transparency and safeguarding customer assets, with oversight split among multiple agencies that each have their own tests and definitions. After the crypto industry spent around $135 million backing crypto-friendly candidates in the 2024 election cycle, federal enforcement efforts scaled back significantly: the Justice Department disbanded its crypto crimes unit last year, and the SEC has dropped or retreated from the majority of its active lawsuits against crypto firms.
The Regalados maintain they haven't done anything wrong and were simply following God's wishes, with Eli telling investigators "if you think following the Lord is reckless, then yeah, we were very reckless." The couple represented themselves in their civil case because they couldn't afford lawyers and have decided to appeal the ruling, drafting briefs with help from Google Scholar and AI. They continue to believe that INDXcoin will eventually gain traction among world leaders losing faith in the U.S. dollar and say they're "privately making preparations." Investors remain divided on whether they were conned: Jose Bonilla, who reported the couple to authorities, believes their actions were "totally intentional," while his wife Debbie thinks they simply "got in way over their heads," and some buyers who lost money still support the Regalados. The ease with which religiously motivated founders can launch technically complex financial products without adequate safeguards points to structural gaps that enforcement alone may struggle to close. When belief systems that discourage skepticism intersect with lightly regulated markets, the burden falls almost entirely on individual investors to protect themselves—a responsibility many are simply not equipped to shoulder.