CBI FIR Against TTI Turns on a Thousand Debit Cards

The CBI has booked The Timothy Initiative and six India-based associates for moving Rs 92.55 crore ($9,995,240) on foreign debit cards. The FIR, filed on August 27, 2026 by the agency’s Economic Offences-II Branch in New Delhi, says the cash came out of ATMs on Truist Bank cards, not through a Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act account.

Investigators describe a circuit that did not need a bank transfer into India: more than 1,000 US debit cards, cash at ATMs, and a single name printed on the plastic. The group is not registered under the FCRA, the Enforcement Directorate said in April, so it had no legal window to accept that money in the first place.

A Thousand Truist Cards, One Indian Name

The FIR’s load-bearing claim is not a sermon. It is a stack of plastic. Officers say TTI and the six named people used debit cards issued by Truist Bank in the United States, handed those cards to people who were not the account holders, and drew rupees from ATMs in Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, Assam and other states.

Micah Mark, listed as a key finance hand in India, was stopped at Kempegowda International Airport in Bengaluru on April 18, 2026. He had 24 Truist cards on him. Every card, the FIR says, carried the name “Santosh Kumar.” Ajit Verghese Mathai, described as the India finance head, allegedly ordered that imprint so the real users would not show up in Know Your Customer checks. Older cards in the same network, the ED told the Karnataka High Court, had used region codes such as NE-1, NE-2 and Southern Region-1.

The August FIR treats two cash windows as separate counts. They overlap in time, so they cannot be added into one grand total.

THE TWO CASH WINDOWS IN THE FIR

The Home Ministry’s note to the CBI, based on the ED’s file, used the same two figures. The first is a six-month use total. The second is a longer withdrawal tally. November 2025 through March 2026 sits inside both, which is why a reader who adds them double-counts part of the trail.

The Timothy Initiative Built a Village-by-Village Training Ladder

TTI is a church-planting group based in Raleigh, North Carolina. Its own site says it wants a church in every village, everywhere. Dr. Jared Nelms is president and chief executive. David Nelms, the founder, sits on the board. GuideStar lists The Timothy Initiative Inc under EIN 80-0472803, with a Raleigh, North Carolina nonprofit record at PO Box 98177.

The model is a two-year ladder. TTI gathers as many as 200 area pastors, picks “Pauls,” and has each Paul recruit about 20 “Timothys.” Those trainees work through ten books, from basic disciple-making to church history. A training centre, the group says, typically plants 15 to 25 churches. Every Timothy who plants at least one church is invited to a graduation.

WHAT TTI PUBLISHES AS ITS SCORE

• Churches planted: 287,653-plus since 2007, on TTI’s own “Kingdom Impact” tally.
• New disciples: 2,541,871-plus, an estimate the group says is based on historical averages per church.
• Widows and orphans: 190,527-plus people it says were impacted.
• Unreached groups: 1,896-plus unreached people groups on the same dashboard.

Those numbers are TTI’s claims about worldwide work, not CBI findings about India. They do show why a debit-card channel would matter to the group: the India programme is built on training events, field cash, and local planters who need rupees in hand, not a wire into a Delhi FCRA account they do not have.

Section 17 Leaves No Room for Pocket Cash

Section 11 of the FCRA, 2010, is blunt. A person with a religious, social, educational, cultural or economic programme cannot accept foreign contribution without a registration certificate, or without prior permission for a stated purpose and source. Section 17 then pins the money to one place. Anyone who holds that certificate must receive the funds only in a designated “FCRA Account” at a specified State Bank of India branch in New Delhi.

Home Ministry guidance to banks repeats the same gate. A 2016 charter still on the FCRA portal says banks must not credit foreign contribution without registration or prior permission, and must not let an association spend a stray inward credit until that paper exists. The alleged TTI method never asked a bank in India to post a foreign gift. It used overseas debit cards at local ATMs, which left rupees in someone’s pocket and no FCRA credit on an SBI ledger.

That is the second punch in the file. Even a registered NGO that took foreign money in cash at an ATM would still be off the designated-account rail. An unregistered group doing it, the agencies say, skipped both the licence and the account.

Micah Mark Walked Into Bengaluru Airport With 24 Cards

The ED had already put a lookout circular on Mark. Bureau of Immigration officers stopped him on April 18 as he brought the 24 cards into the country. The Directorate then searched six sites on April 18 and 19 under the Foreign Exchange Management Act. Its April 24 release said TTI is not FCRA-registered, that Truist-linked cards had been used for repeated ATM cash-outs, and that officers seized 25 foreign debit cards and Rs 40 lakh in cash, plus devices and papers.

The same release flagged about Rs 6.5 crore drawn in LWE-hit Dhamtari and the Bastar region of Chhattisgarh over a span of years. It said a billing platform run from outside India kept the ATM and spend records. It also warned that a parallel cash pool in Naxal-affected areas can move illicit funds. That security claim is how the case jumped from FEMA and FCRA into a UAPA FIR two months later. It is still a claim.

ED, Headquarters Office, New Delhi has conducted search operations on 18th and 19th April, 2026 at six locations in multiple states in connection with suspected withdrawal and utilisation of funds by using foreign bank debit cards, bypassing regulatory channels. The investigation… pic.twitter.com/gloGiWyDvQ

— ED (@dir_ed) April 24, 2026

After the searches, the CBI FIR says, TTI USA blocked Indian access to ttiglobal.org and remotely wiped cloud data tied to seized laptops. The ED’s letter, as the High Court recorded it, put the same act in one line: on Mark’s interception, the accused “remotely destroyed the digital back-end record of the scheme.” The CBI has added Information Technology Act counts for that wipe, alongside FCRA and Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita conspiracy and fraud sections. The Income Tax Department had already searched the outfit earlier in 2026.

FROM THE AIRPORT STOP TO THE CBI FIR

1. April 18, 2026: Officers stop Micah Mark at Kempegowda International Airport with 24 Truist debit cards in the name “Santosh Kumar.”
2. April 18-19, 2026: ED teams search six locations and later report 25 foreign debit cards and Rs 40 lakh in cash seized.
3. April 24, 2026: The Directorate publishes the FEMA search note, says TTI is not FCRA-registered, and flags about Rs 6.5 crore drawn in Dhamtari and Bastar.
4. June 11, 2026: Kothanur police in Bengaluru register Crime No. 202 of 2026, adding UAPA Sections 13, 17 and 18 on an ED information letter.
5. July 1, 2026: Justice M. Nagaprasanna of the Karnataka High Court dismisses pleas to quash that FIR.
6. August 27, 2026: CBI Economic Offences-II in New Delhi registers the FCRA FIR after a Home Ministry nod on the ED’s report.

Mark’s lawyers later told the High Court he was taken to Delhi on April 18 and held, and they challenged the summons in a separate writ. Those custody fights sit beside the money trail; they do not erase the cards listed in the seizure memo.

What the August 27 FIR Puts on Paper

On August 27, 2026, the CBI’s Economic Offences-II Branch in New Delhi registered an FIR under the FCRA, the Information Technology Act, and the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. It alleges a conspiracy to pull foreign cash from Indian ATMs on Truist cards, print those cards in a false name, circulate more than 1,000 of them to people who were not the account holders, and wipe digital records after the Bengaluru airport stop. Those remain allegations.

Jonathan S. Rajan, the FIR says, ran India operations: training logistics, trainer lists, venues, and the funding asks sent to the US finance team. Mathai handled the cards and the money. Field hands then drew cash and passed it on. The political argument around the case has clung to conversion and Naxal maps. The paper trail the agencies listed is more mechanical than that. A card, an ATM, and a false name would work for any unregistered spender, pulpit or not.

WHO THE FIR NAMES

• The Timothy Initiative, USA: The unregistered foreign principal, named as an accused alongside unknown others.
• Jonathan S. Rajan, 50, Bengaluru: Overall India operations head, Kothanur resident, accused of routing ATM cash into training and preaching.
• Micah Mark, 43, Bengaluru: Finance operative stopped at the airport; the High Court file lists a Yadava Layout address.
• Ajit Verghese Mathai, 55, Bengaluru: India finance head, accused of ordering the “Santosh Kumar” imprint to dodge KYC.
• Varghese Chacko, 58, Dhamtari: Field functionary in Chhattisgarh, resident of Blessing Home, Bharri Para.
• Bablu Kurmi, 35, Goalpara: Field functionary in Assam, listed at Patpara PT-II.
• Supreme Joy, 34, Mysuru: Field functionary in Karnataka, listed at Udayanagari, Sathya Nagar.

Neither TTI nor Truist Bank has issued a public reply to the CBI FIR. Truist is named as the issuer of the cards, not as an accused. There is no finding in the papers that the bank knew how the cards were being used in India.

The High Court Leaves the UAPA Case Standing

Before the CBI file existed, the six people had already gone to the Karnataka High Court to kill the Kothanur UAPA case. Criminal Petition Nos. 8401 and 8417 of 2026, heard by Justice M. Nagaprasanna, asked that Crime No. 202 of 2026 be quashed. The court reserved orders on June 17 and dismissed both criminal petitions on July 1.

Senior counsel for Mark argued that the ED had no power to seed a police FIR, that UAPA had been added as if he were in a terrorist plot, and that the accused were church workers who help the poor. Counsel for the others said there was no link from Mark’s cards to a terrorist act. The ED’s letter, quoted in the order, had gone the other way. It called the movement of foreign cash into areas under Naxal influence a prima facie unlawful activity under Section 2(o) of the UAPA, and it asked for counts of raising funds for a terrorist act and conspiracy.

One of the gravest threats to National security in the present times is, the clandestine funding of extremism. Funding, therefore, becomes the oxygen that enables extremist movements to survive and proliferate.

Justice M. Nagaprasanna, Karnataka High Court, order dated July 1, 2026

The judge was clear he was not deciding guilt. He said the court at this stage is not asked to return findings of guilt, then let the UAPA FIR run. That order is why the CBI’s later FCRA case does not arrive on a blank page. A trial court in Bengaluru already has a live unlawful-activities file on the same six names and the same cards.

Cash Landed in Dhamtari, Bastar and Goalpara

The geography in the ED note is specific. About Rs 6.5 crore came out of ATMs in Dhamtari and Bastar. Varghese Chacko lives in Dhamtari. Bablu Kurmi lives in Goalpara in Assam. Supreme Joy lives in Mysuru. Rajan, Mark and Mathai live in Bengaluru, which is also where the airport stop happened. The FIR reads that pattern as a planned spread of cash into training, preaching, and work among poor groups, and it repeats the charge that this work fed left-wing extremism. The defence reads the same pattern as church planting among people the group calls unreached.

No chargesheet in the CBI case has been filed. No court has held that TTI money reached a banned Maoist unit. The Rs 6.5 crore figure is a withdrawal tally in two districts, not a recovered payment to a named extremist group. That gap is the live fight inside the UAPA file, and it is the part of the CBI FIR that will be hardest to take from allegation to proof.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The FCRA FIR: CBI Economic Offences-II registered it on August 27, 2026, against TTI, the six named people, and unknown others.
• The cards: Mark was stopped with 24 Truist cards; searches seized 25 foreign debit cards and Rs 40 lakh in cash.
• The licence: The ED has said TTI is not FCRA-registered, so it cannot legally accept foreign contribution in India.
• The UAPA case: The High Court has already refused to quash Crime No. 202 of 2026.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• End use in LWE areas: Withdrawals in Dhamtari and Bastar are on the ED’s record; a proven handoff to a banned group is not.
• Truist’s knowledge: The bank issued the cards; nothing in the public papers shows it approved the India cash-out plan.
• TTI’s defence: The US group has not published a reply to the CBI FIR.
• Guilt: Both the FCRA FIR and the UAPA FIR are still at the accusation stage.

The CBI file now runs beside the UAPA case that the High Court refused to quash. Both rest on the same cards, the same ATM trail, and the same six names. TTI still lists a church in every village as its aim. The agencies say the rupees that paid for that work in India never should have come out of a wall machine.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting on a live criminal investigation and on a published High Court order. It is informational only and does not constitute legal advice, nor does it decide the guilt or innocence of any accused person. Readers who need advice on FCRA, FEMA, UAPA or related criminal procedure should consult a qualified lawyer in India before acting on any of these allegations. Figures and case statuses reflect the CBI FIR, the Enforcement Directorate’s April 24, 2026 release, and the Karnataka High Court order of July 1, 2026, and they may change as the probes proceed.