The former Tri-Cities pastor of a Pasco church pleaded innocent Thursday to wire fraud after being accused of collecting $5.9 million from church members and others promised risk-free cryptocurrency …
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The former Tri-Cities pastor of a Pasco church pleaded innocent Thursday to wire fraud after being accused of collecting $5.9 million from church members and others promised risk-free cryptocurrency investments.
Francier Obando Pinillo, the owner and pastor of Tiempo de Poder Church in Pasco, guaranteed monthly returns as high as 40% in his cryptocurrency investment business "Solano Fi," according to court documents.
But instead of investing the money, Pinillo, 51, diverted it into accounts he and co-schemers owned, court documents allege.
Pinillo was arrested Dec. 5 in Miami, where he was most recently living, after being indicted in U.S. Eastern Washington District Court on 25 counts of wire fraud and one count of unlicensed money transmitting business.
His church which operated out of two different strip malls in Pasco, no longer has a physical presence in the Tri-Cities, but Pinillo continues to make Facebook posts related to the church.
He made his first appearance in the criminal case at the Richland U.S. Courthouse in the Federal Building on Thursday. If convicted, the criminal fraud charges carry a maximum sentence of up to 20 years in prison.
In addition, the Commodity Trading Commission has filed a civil suit against Pinillo in federal court. The commission is an independent federal regulatory agency charged by Congress with enforcement of commodity exchanges.
Between November 2021 and October 2023, Pinillo targeted unsophisticated customers, including members of his church, who had little or no experience in cryptocurrency transactions or the specific type of investment he said he would make, according to court documents. The investments were to include commodity interest trading.
His solicitations for investments were almost entirely made in Spanish.
"As the pastor at his church in Pasco, Wash., and as a guest speaker at other churches, defendant (Pinillo) was able to reach a vast number of potential customers, who believed he was honest and trust-worthy," according to the civil lawsuit.
At one mega-church in Florida he lectured the congregants on the importance of lifting themselves out of poverty and then pitched them on his investment scheme, saying they could earn as much as 34.9% a month on their investment, according to court documents.
He also held seminars for potential investors, including at the Pasco Red Lion Hotel and Conference Center, and solicited investors through Facebook and a Telegram group known as "Multimillionarios Solano Fi," which had more than 1.500 members.
False investment statements alleged
Solano Fi had no trading program, but investors Pinillo recruited were given access to fabricated, online account statements that showed balances increasing monthly, according to court documents.
Participants were told that could earn additional returns for recruiting more investors, according to court documents.
Some money from Pinillo's 1,516 investors may have been used for payments to earlier investors in the nature of a "Ponzi" scheme, according to court documents.
But when some participants tried to withdraw assets from Solano Fi, Pinillo would make excuses rather than payments, according to court documents.
He would say that they needed to wait until the cryptocurrency markets improved, or that the website was down or that they needed to bring in another investor to "buy out" their account, court documents allege.
The indictment also alleges that Pinillo told investors they needed to send more money to repair and upgrade the Solano Fi online system so that investors could get their money back.
"Fraudulent investment schemes are not new, but cryptocurrency scams are a new way fraudsters take money from hardworking, honest people," said Vanessa Waldref, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern Washington District.
"Cryptocurrency fraudsters often quickly route funds to international accounts, which presents new challenges for law enforcement attempting to recover lost funds," she said.
The criminal case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Dan Fruchter and Jeremy Kelley.
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