The Commodity Futures Trading Commission filed a lawsuit against Francier Obando Pinillo on Tuesday, accusing the former pastor of orchestrating a multilevel marketing scheme that allegedly took at least $5.9 million in cash and digital assets for a fake “Solanofi platform.”

Promising investors they could earn up to 34.9% monthly through a so-called leveraged staking platform, Pinillo allegedly targeted “unsophisticated investors,” including Spanish-speaking members of a Washington-based church, according to a complaint filed by the CFTC.

Staking refers to the process whereby users pledge digital assets to a network in order to help it validate transactions—but the Commission alleged that no such activity took place.

Instead, Pinillo allegedly pocketed money from 1,500 unwitting investors, made false statements about trading Bitcoin on their behalf, and later claimed that investors’ funds were lost in FTX’s bankruptcy. Of the money he raised, Pinillo allegedly sent $4 million worth of digital assets to 23 “private digital wallets” that prosecutors believe are in Colombia.

Resembling the name of Solana, the fifth largest cryptocurrency by market cap, Pinillo’s Solanofi platform allegedly never existed. Still, he provided victims with a fake dashboard that showed them falsified account balances with purported profits, which the CFTC alleged were crucial in maintaining Pini

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Author: André Beganski