God told them to sell crypto. Their investors lost everything.
God told them to sell crypto. Their investors lost everything.
上帝让他们卖加密货币，结果投资者血本无归。
This article was produced in partnership with Type Investigations and with support from the Fund for Investigative Journalism. 本文由 Type Investigations 合作制作，并获得了调查新闻基金（Fund for Investigative Journalism）的支持。
When Eli Regalado first heard God speak to him, he wondered whether he was hallucinating. Now he likens the experience to having “a thought that is not my thought.” Divine words echo in his mind like a line from a movie or the memory of a loved one’s voice. “It’s not ‘You better do this,’” he says. “It’s just a knowing inside you: This is what you do.” 当 Eli Regalado 第一次听到上帝对他说话时，他怀疑自己是否产生了幻觉。现在，他将这种体验比作“一种不属于我自己的想法”。神圣的话语在他的脑海中回荡，就像电影里的台词或亲人声音的记忆。“那不是‘你最好这样做’，”他说，“而是一种内心的认知：这就是你该做的事。”
Holy messages arrive daily while Eli is praying, reading, or watching television. Sometimes they surface in prophetic dreams or missives from strangers. Occasionally, they appear midsentence, when he pauses to ask, “Lord, what do you want to say here?” 神圣的信息每天都会在 Eli 祈祷、阅读或看电视时出现。有时它们出现在预言性的梦境中，或是陌生人的信件里。偶尔，它们会在他说话中途突然出现，这时他会停下来问：“主啊，您在这里想说什么？”
Eli’s wife, Kaitlyn, tends to get heavenly dispatches in the shower, when she finally has a moment to herself. Other times, she seeks counsel from above. “I’ll be writing in my journal and praying and asking questions and just believing what I’m hearing is Him,” she says. Eli 的妻子 Kaitlyn 通常在洗澡时收到“天上的指令”，那是她难得独处的时刻。其他时候，她会寻求来自上天的指引。“我会写日记、祈祷、提出问题，并坚信我所听到的一切就是祂（上帝）的声音，”她说。
God’s directives have been manifold. According to the Regalados, He told them to get married, buy a house, and start having kids. When Eli owned a marketing firm in Colorado, He told him what to name it, whom to hire, and which clients to take on. Then God told him to start preaching in his living room and online. Always, the couple obeyed. 上帝的指示多种多样。据 Regalado 夫妇所言，上帝曾告诉他们结婚、买房并开始生孩子。当 Eli 在科罗拉多州拥有一家营销公司时，上帝告诉他该给公司起什么名字、雇佣谁以及承接哪些客户。后来，上帝又让他开始在客厅和网上布道。这对夫妇总是言听计从。
In 2021, when Eli was 41 and Kaitlyn was 28, divine guidance steered them in an unexpected new direction: crypto. That October, the Regalados later testified in court, Eli’s sister and her husband gifted the couple some of their holdings in a little-known digital coin. “Take this to my people for a wealth transfer,” Eli heard God say. He and Kaitlyn felt that they were being called to sell the cryptocurrency to fellow Christians. 2021 年，41 岁的 Eli 和 28 岁的 Kaitlyn 在“神圣指引”下转向了一个意想不到的新方向：加密货币。Regalado 夫妇后来在法庭上作证称，那年 10 月，Eli 的姐姐和姐夫赠送了他们一些鲜为人知的数字货币。Eli 听到上帝说：“把这个带给我的子民，进行财富转移。”他和 Kaitlyn 感到自己被召唤去向基督徒同胞兜售这种加密货币。
Later, though they had no background in crypto, they came to believe that God wanted them to launch their own coin. Learning as they went, the Regalados created a new cryptocurrency called INDXcoin, which they promoted through family, friends, and contacts in evangelical Christian circles. 后来，尽管他们没有任何加密货币背景，但他们开始相信上帝希望他们发行自己的代币。在边学边做的过程中，Regalado 夫妇创造了一种名为 INDXcoin 的新加密货币，并通过家人、朋友以及福音派基督徒圈子的人脉进行推广。
“I was really feeling that this is the wave of the future,” says Debbie Bonilla, a retired pharmacy technician in her 70s who bought INDXcoin with her husband, Jose. The couple learned about the currency through friends—a minister and his wife, who had also invested. “We just trusted that their judgment was good,” Jose says. “我当时真的觉得这就是未来的浪潮，”70 多岁的退休药剂师 Debbie Bonilla 说，她和丈夫 Jose 一起购买了 INDXcoin。这对夫妇是通过朋友——一位牧师及其妻子——了解到这种货币的，而那位牧师也进行了投资。“我们只是相信他们的判断力，”Jose 说。
Starting in November 2022, Debbie and Jose withdrew a total of $70,000 from their retirement accounts—a large share of their nest egg—to buy INDXcoin. In all, more than 500 people handed over a total of more than $3 million to the Regalados. But within a year after the Bonillas bought in, the project collapsed. Investors who had entrusted the Regalados with large sums of cash lost it all, leaving many to wonder where the funds went and some to question whether they had fallen victim to an elaborate fraud. 从 2022 年 11 月开始，Debbie 和 Jose 从他们的退休账户中总共提取了 7 万美元——这是他们养老金的一大部分——用于购买 INDXcoin。总共有 500 多人向 Regalado 夫妇交出了总计超过 300 万美元的资金。但在 Bonilla 夫妇入场不到一年后，该项目就崩盘了。将大笔现金托付给 Regalado 夫妇的投资者血本无归，许多人想知道资金去了哪里，一些人则开始怀疑自己是否陷入了一场精心策划的骗局。
“Poof—the money just evaporated,” Debbie told me. “Like, how does that happen?” “砰的一声——钱就这么蒸发了，”Debbie 告诉我，“这到底是怎么发生的？”
Though Eli believed God was leading him into crypto, he claims he was initially apprehensive. “Absolutely not,” he recalls thinking. “I don’t know anything about cryptocurrency, and I don’t want to be caught up in some church scam.” 尽管 Eli 相信是上帝引导他进入加密货币领域，但他声称自己最初是心存疑虑的。“绝对不行，”他回忆起当时的想法，“我对加密货币一窍不通，我不想卷入什么教会骗局。”
The crypto market was booming, and the Regalados knew people who’d made a fortune investing in early-stage coins. But a growing interest in digital assets also meant a rise in crypto fraud. In 2025, crypto scammers collected at least $14 billion worldwide, a 17% increase from the previous year, according to blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis. And in the United States, victims of fraudulent crypto investment schemes reported $7.2 billion in losses to the FBI. 当时加密货币市场正处于繁荣期，Regalado 夫妇认识一些通过投资早期代币发家致富的人。但对数字资产日益增长的兴趣也意味着加密货币欺诈的增加。据区块链分析公司 Chainalysis 数据显示，2025 年，全球加密货币诈骗者敛财至少 140 亿美元，比上一年增长了 17%。在美国，加密货币投资诈骗的受害者向联邦调查局（FBI）报告的损失高达 72 亿美元。
Fraud is on the rise partly because many people who invest in crypto don’t fully understand how it works, and launching digital coins is relatively easy. More than 3 million cryptocurrencies were minted in August 2026 alone, according to the website CoinMarketCap. “It’s just something anybody can create,” says Jason Ghetian, a former FBI special agent who has served as an expert witness in crypto cases. 欺诈行为呈上升趋势，部分原因是许多投资加密货币的人并不完全了解其运作方式，而且发行数字代币相对容易。据 CoinMarketCap 网站显示，仅 2026 年 8 月就铸造了超过 300 万种加密货币。“这只是任何人都能创造的东西，”曾担任加密货币案件专家证人的前 FBI 特工 Jason Ghetian 说。
In the US, much of the crypto market lacks the oversight and investor protections in place in traditional finance, including rules around transparency and safeguarding customer assets. “There isn’t adequate disclosure; there’s fraud, there’s manipulation of the price, there’s conflicts of interest,” says Timothy Massad, former chairman of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). 在美国，大部分加密货币市场缺乏传统金融领域所具备的监管和投资者保护措施，包括关于透明度和客户资产保障的规则。“缺乏充分的信息披露；存在欺诈、价格操纵和利益冲突，”美国商品期货交易委员会（CFTC）前主席 Timothy Massad 表示。
The sector is overseen by a tangled web of state and federal regulators, including the CFTC, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, and others. But “every agency has its own tests and definitions,” says Carol Goforth, a law professor at the University of Arkansas who has written a textbook on crypto regulation. “It is a complicated, fragmented, and often inconsistent approach.” 该行业由州和联邦监管机构组成的错综复杂的网络监管，包括 CFTC、证券交易委员会（SEC）、金融犯罪执法网络等。但阿肯色大学法学教授、曾编写过加密货币监管教科书的 Carol Goforth 表示：“每个机构都有自己的测试标准和定义。这是一种复杂、碎片化且往往不一致的方法。”
After the industry spent around $135 million backing crypto-friendly candidates in the 2024 election cycle, the federal government significantly scaled back enforcement efforts. Last year, the Justice Department disbanded its unit focused on crypto crimes, and the Trump White House created a working group aimed at “eliminating regulatory overreach on digital assets.” 在加密货币行业于 2024 年选举周期花费约 1.35 亿美元支持对加密货币友好的候选人后，联邦政府大幅缩减了执法力度。去年，司法部解散了专注于加密货币犯罪的部门，特朗普政府成立了一个旨在“消除对数字资产监管过度”的工作组。
The SEC has dropped or retreated from the majority of its active lawsuits against crypto firms, including many with financial ties to the president, the New York Times reported. Donald Trump and his family have netted at least $2.3 billion from their crypto ventures since his reelection, Reuters recently estimated. 据《纽约时报》报道，SEC 已经撤销或退出了针对加密货币公司的大部分现行诉讼，其中包括许多与总统有财务往来的公司。路透社最近估计，唐纳德·特朗普及其家族自他连任以来，已从其加密货币投资中获利至少 23 亿美元。
In August 2026, the SEC proposed new rules that would narrow the circumstances in which crypto transactions fall under securities laws, further limiting the agency’s oversight of the industry. “Any future enforcement will have an uphill battle,” Goforth says. Even when crypto projects operate aboveboard, prices are often driven by speculation, and large swings are common. Investing in crypto c 2026 年 8 月，SEC 提出了新规则，将缩小加密货币交易受证券法管辖的范围，进一步限制了该机构对行业的监管。“未来的任何执法都将面临一场硬仗，”Goforth 说。即使加密货币项目运作合规，价格也往往由投机驱动，且经常出现剧烈波动。投资加密货币……