Church members go to pastors for spiritual guidance, prayers, and hope. They generally do not expect a Sunday sermon to turn into a sales pitch for a multimillion-dollar business.
Unfortunately, authorities allege that one Washington pastor took fundraising to a whole new level.
Cristian Popescu, a 46-year-old pastor from Bothell, Washington, has been indicted over allegations that he defrauded members of his church of $13 million. He led a Christian congregation in Kirkland called Passion for Christ.
According to the allegations, Popescu encouraged church members to invest in his company by telling them that God had chosen them to help fund his business.
Apparently, the usual collection plate was not ambitious enough.
Federal prosecutors say Popescu’s alleged scam began in 2015 with Followone, Inc., a Bellevue-based startup he passed off as an all-in-one e-commerce giant and social network.
He allegedly fabricated claims of millions in revenue, soaring stock value, and an impending Nasdaq IPO to get 30 investors onboard. In reality, the marketplace was nothing but a non-functional web of dummy screens.
One victim invested nearly $1 million in one wire transfer; others were nearly $600,000 and $500,00, authorities said.
“At one point, Popescu claimed Followone Inc had a value of $1.4 billion, when he knew it had little or no value,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Western District of Washington, said in a statement Wednesday.
If convicted, Popescu could face up to 20 years in prison, according to the reported allegations. That is a serious potential consequence for a case involving people who may have trusted him both as a spiritual leader and as a business figure.
Popescu allegedly told his victims they could be on the board of the company if they invested $1 million, authorities said. He would routinely ask victims to funnel out money from their retirement accounts and children’s college savings accounts to invest in the company, prosecutors said.
The investigators said he used shell companies to show that the business at Followone was booming, but “he was just using investor money to pay fake invoices and then used those payments to shell companies he controlled for his own benefit.”
“These charges allege that a religious leader abused the trust of his fellow believers to steal millions of dollars for his own personal benefit,” said W. Mike Herrington, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Seattle field office.
Popescu treated the fake business as a personal piggy bank and when investors pressed him to return their money, he allegedly told them that “they were demonically possessed,” authorities said.
Think about that for a moment. Most investment pitches involve financial reports, business plans, and lengthy discussions about risk. This alleged pitch reportedly brought God into the conversation.
According to the prosecutors, he funneled more than $4.5 million directly into accounts for himself, his wife, and family members, while cutting himself over $1 million in “wages” between 2017 and 2024.
He allegedly even put his wife on the payroll for roughly $300,000, although her wife never worked a single day for the company.
Popescu is charged with ten counts of wire fraud and five counts of money laundering. He was arraigned Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Seattle and was released on electronic monitoring.
A church should be a place where people seek guidance, not a place where they feel pressured into questionable financial deals.
For now, Popescu’s case must play out in court, but one lesson already stands out: when millions of dollars are involved, faith should never replace financial due diligence.
