Liberals have been caught with their hands dirty on a lot of deals meant to promote so-called green technology. Now, one out a trio of Clinton-associated hucksters has been sent to prison for a massive scam. It’s a scam that’s so grand in scale that NBC New York has called it one of the biggest green energy scams in American history.
Amanda Knorr has been sentenced to a 2 and a half year stint in a federal prison for a fraudulent enterprise run through her company, Mantria. According to the prosecutor, US Attorney Robert Livermore, Mantria- started in 2005- effectively ran a ponzi scheme which deprived many people of their life savings.
NBC New York writes, “Knorr co-founded a company called Mantria Corp., which with the help of a slick-talking Colorado ‘wealth advisor’ raised millions for a supposed clean energy product called ‘biochar.’”
Knorr and fellow Mantria co-founder Troy Wragg both graduated in 2005 from Temple University and within four years had raised $54 million from hundreds of investors. Most of the investors were wooed through seminars run by Wayde McKelvey, of Colorado.
Their pitch about producing biochar, however, turned out to be completely baked, according to prosecutors, and eventually proved to be a giant Ponzi scheme.”
According to prosecutors, Mantria never even came close to making good on its promises- nor did it even try to produce the mysterious substance they called “biochar.”
The company’s “wealth advisor” Wayde McKelvy told investors over and over that they were very close to producing the revolutionary fuel substance. According to Livermore’s report, the investors were, “husbands and wives nearing retirement, retirees looking to invest their savings, and other small-time prospectors, who were wooed by the idea of big profits from clean energy: getting rich and saving the world.”
McKelvy was convicted last year for wire and securities fraud. The third member of the Mantria trio of criminals, Wragg, is set to be sentenced in June.
The three are believed to have victimized more than 300 well-meaning people. Instead of making progress toward their goal of creating a magical new bio-fuel, investor money went to secure uninhabitable land and a phony plan that promised to transform trash into clean energy. According to US Attorney Bill McSwain, the claims were based on a fictional technology.
Here’s where the story gets interesting. In 2009, just four years after the founding of Mantria, former President Bill Clinton honored all three of the scam artists in a ceremony for the Clinton Global Initiative. That same year, in 2009, the phony company was charged with “selling millions in unlicensed securities” by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
At the time, those crimes were called the biggest green energy scam in history. Now, the biochar ponzy scheme holds that distinction.
In the early days of the biochar scam, Mantria returned $17 million to its investors in order to keep up the appearance of a returns generating business. In total, prosecutors believe the ploy brought in $54 million. As the scam progressed, disenchanted investors would pull out, or have a small amount returned and be told that the money represented gains. The scam artists would then go on to bring in fresh investors to keep the ponzy scheme going.
In an interview with Metro News in 2009, Wragg said, “I live in a 1,200-square-foot home. I don’t drive a Lamborghini.”
He did, however, drive a Mercedes SLK 350 with the word MANTRIA printed on his vanity license plate.
NBC New York Writes, “A class action lawsuit filed in federal court eventually recovered about $6 million for victims of the scheme. Another $800,000 was placed in a receivership, overseen by a Colorado accountant John Paul Anderson.”
As for the Clinton Global Initiative, that scam too eventually crashed in 2016. Of course, you won’t hear about from the mainstream media. But by 2016, the CGI had actually broken ground on less than half of the projects for which it had taken millions in donations.
According to the Washington Examiner, one report from the CGI, “showed fewer than half of those commitments have been completed since 2005, with roughly a third underway and more than 200 others “stalled” or “unfulfilled.”
The Examiner describes just three percent of nearly 3500 projects undertaken between 2004 and 2015 by the CGI actually made any real progress or got started at all.
But that didn’t stop the high profile Clinton Global Initiative from throwing lavish and well-attended fundraising dinners wherein they took in millions in donation and commitments.
To this day, meaningful legal action against the Clinton crime family still has yet to materialize.
