For more than five years, Winston Batino was a trusted figure in the Chicago Church of Christ’s North Ministry Center community in Buffalo Grove, Illinois. He was also, federal prosecutors allege, systematically stealing from the people who trusted him most, the Daily Herald reports (1).

Batino — a minister formerly associated with the congregation — now faces federal charges of wire fraud and filing a false income tax return. Prosecutors say he defrauded around 40 people, most of them church members, of at least $2 million between February 2020 and May 2025. He faces up to 20 years in prison on the wire fraud count alone (1).

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Batino reportedly told victims their money would be invested in luxury rehabilitation facilities, but those facilities didn’t exist. He allegedly signed repayment agreements but, instead of following through, used the funds to pay earlier victims and for personal expenses, like gambling (1).

According to prosecutors, a January 2025 wire transfer of approximately $46,500 from a Skokie church member into an account Batino controlled forms the basis of the wire fraud charge (1).

The church, which fired and disfellowshipped Batino immediately upon learning of the alleged scheme in May 2025, commissioned an independent investigation led by a former federal prosecutor. The final report, submitted in April 2026, cleared the institution of any involvement or complicity (1).

“This is a serious and unfortunate situation, and we are working to address it responsibly in court,” Vadim A. Glozman, Batino’s attorney (2), told Moneywise in a statement.

What Batino allegedly perpetrated has a name: affinity fraud. According to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), affinity fraud targets members of identifiable groups — religious communities, ethnic communities, professional associations — by exploiting the trust and social bonds that hold those groups together (3).

Many instances of affinity fraud are Ponzi or pyramid schemes, where early investors are paid with funds from later ones, creating a convincing illusion of returns until the whole structure collapses (3).

What makes it so hard to detect is the fraud operates on a social layer that bypasses normal skepticism. It’s not a typical investment pitch from a professional contact. Instead, victims are being asked, perhaps by someone they pray with, someone who knows their family, someone whose integrity they’ve observed over years.

The SEC notes fraudsters often use respected community or religious leaders to recruit victims, knowing that a trusted endorsement overrides the due diligence people would otherwise apply to a financial decision (4).

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The scale of the problem is substantial. Between 2022 and 2023, the SEC filed more than 30 affinity fraud-related enforcement actions, targeting communities as varied as Nigerian-Americans, Orthodox Jews, Latino immigrants and church congregations across the country (5).

Then, in 2024, the agency brought multiple enforcement actions targeting religious and ethnic communities — including a $650 million crypto fraud targeting multiple communities, a Ponzi scheme targeting Filipino-Americans, a $300 million crypto scheme targeting the Latino community and a Tennessee investment adviser charged with affinity fraud targeting his clients (6).

Other cases include a $46 million scheme (7) targeting elderly church members in Northern California and a $47 million fraud (8) targeting the Orthodox Jewish community in Los Angeles.

Last September, Morgan Lewis noted the SEC “continued to pursue and bring charges arising from Ponzi schemes and affinity frauds (9)” — with the agency filing 456 total enforcement actions that year (10).

The SEC’s investor guidance identifies a consistent set of red flags that appear across virtually every affinity fraud case, the most reliable warning signs including promises of high returns with little or no risk, pressure to decide quickly before an “opportunity” disappears, requests to keep the investment confidential and reluctance to put the terms of the investment in writing (11).

That last point is notable in the Batino case: prosecutors say he did sign repayment agreements — a detail that could have helped disarm victims’ skepticism and given the scheme an air of legitimacy (1).

The SEC’s core advice is to verify before you invest, regardless of who’s asking. That means checking whether the person offering the investment is licensed through FINRA BrokerCheck (12) or the SEC’s Investment Adviser Public Disclosure database (13), and independently confirming that the investment itself is registered and real.

Shared faith or friendship is not due diligence.

Bottom line: Don’t be pressured or rushed into any investment before researching it thoroughly, be skeptical of anything that can’t be put in writing and never assume that because someone you know made money on an investment, you will too (11).

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Daily Herald (1); Pacer Monitor (2); U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (3), (4), (6), (8), (10); Morrison & Foerster (5); Investor Claims (7); Morgan Lewis (9); Investor.gov (11); FINRA BrokerCheck (12); SEC Adviser Info (13)

This article originally appeared on Moneywise.com under the title: A Chicago minister allegedly stole $2 million from his own flock — why is affinity fraud so hard to spot?

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