If he ran a family office I'll have zero issues with a priest/ religious figure trading or investing but he is running a hedge fund IE raising funds from outside sources, his flock and those people who invest with him are doing so not because of his trading or analytical prowess but because he is their priest and they trust him...
As long as he had the training and the background, sure.....but I wouldn't invest with him just because he was a priest and a nice guy. And I'd check his background on FINRA to make sure he was registered.
Barry Minkow was not a priest but he fleeced his flock.....he is the clown that had a publicly traded company called ZZZ Best that specialized in the restoration of damaged buildings....he was the CEO at 21.
On June 14, 2011;
KGTV in San Diego interviewed several members of Minkow's former church, who said Minkow swindled them. One woman said Minkow asked her for $300,000, purportedly to help finance a movie about his redemption.
[63]
On January 22, 2014, Minkow pleaded guilty to one count each of conspiracy to commit bank fraud, wire fraud, mail fraud and to defraud the federal government. He admitted to embezzling over $3 million in donations to Community Bible Church from 2001 to 2011. He opened unauthorized bank accounts purportedly on the church's behalf, forged signatures on church checks, diverted money from legitimate church accounts for his personal use, and charged unauthorized personal expenses on church credit cards. He also concealed $890,000 of income and $250,000 in taxes from the IRS.
[64][65] Among his victims were a widower who gave $75,000 to fund a supposed hospital in
Sudan to honor his wife after she died of cancer, and a woman who gave Minkow $300,000 that would have otherwise gone to help raise her teenage granddaughter.
[66]
At sentencing and in interviews with media, Minkow claimed that he committed securities fraud because he had become addicted to his migraine headache medication
Oxycontin.
[53][6
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Minkow