"Carbon Negative" RE Development Scam In Denver Busted As Ponzi Scheme - Ultimate Greenwashing
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McKelvy was the pitchman for a green utopia offered by Mantria’s two founders, Troy Wragg and Amanda Knorr. And if Mantria’s promise sounded too good to be true, that’s because it was: a few months after the conference in Centennial, the Securities and Exchange Commission shut down the company, alleging Mantria had bilked investors out of tens of million of dollars in a widespread ponzi scheme. Now, after years of legal delays, federal prosecutors have indicted McKelvy, Wragg, and Knorr with wire and securities fraud and conspiracy. For Westerners, white-collar crime might seem a distant threat, relegated to the East, to Bernie Madoff and wolves of Wall Street. But the details of the case reveal how the green sheen of Mantria created a vision well suited to Denver, where capitalism and environmentalism often align.
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McKelvy operated what he called “Speed of Wealth” clubs, which advertised on television, radio and the Internet; they also held seminars for prospective investors and promised to make them rich. Along with his former wife, Donna, McKelvy targeted elderly investors or those approaching retirement age to finance Mantria’s “green” initiatives.
According to the indictment, McKelvy convinced investors to liquidate their assets, such as mutual funds and 401k plans, to take out as many loans as possible, such as home mortgages and credit card debt, and invest all those funds in Mantria. The company, he claimed, was already producing large amounts of biochar and would turn consumer waste from the Tennessee real estate developments into biochar. Investors could get paid “by just owning land and spreading this stuff [biochar] all over your field, because this stuff pulls the toxins out of the atmosphere.” According to McKelvy, it was “the biggest wealth-building opportunity that I believe has ever come across in your lifetime.”
In fact, Mantria never produced biochar of sufficient quality to sell on the market, according to the indictment. In addition, there was no way consumer waste from the residential development would generate enough carbon to be turned into biochar. But even building the houses looked impossible: McKelvy never told investors that the land they hoped to develop had significant problems, including a lack of potable water, and the possibility of unexploded artillery shells.
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https://www.hcn.org/articles/colorados-great-green-scam