In Pasco, Washington, the leader of a Christian church has been charged with engaging in a massive cryptocurrency fraud that targeted the members of his church. Francier Obando Pinillo, the pastor of the Pasco Spanish Adventist Church, tricked 1,515 people, most of them members of his church, out of $5.9 million by telling them he had a special cryptocurrency scheme that could deliver them a 34.9% return on their investments every month.

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 Commodities Futures Trading Commission declared, “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.