A California man was sentenced on Monday to greater than six years in jail for operating an $8.75 million Ponzi scheme that hinged on a nonexistent manufacturing facility that was presupposed to create inexperienced vitality out of cow manure, federal prosecutors mentioned.
For 5 years, Raymond Holcomb Brewer falsely claimed to be an engineer who ran an organization that constructed anaerobic digestion crops, which convert manure into biogas, the United States legal professional’s workplace for the Eastern District of California mentioned in a press release on Monday.
Mr. Brewer, 66, of Porterville, Calif., advised his buyers that he was constructing the crops and would generate thousands and thousands of {dollars} in income by promoting the biogas, the assertion mentioned. He advised the buyers that they’d obtain two-thirds of the income, in addition to tax incentives.
“None of this was true,” Phillip A. Talbert, the U.S. legal professional for the Eastern District of California, wrote in a sentencing memorandum. “Mr. Brewer did not begin construction on a single digester. He simply took his investors’ money and ran.”
Mr. Brewer, who pleaded responsible to fraud prices in February, spent the cash on a 3,700-square-foot customized residence in California, a 12-acre plot of land in Montana and new Dodge Ram pickup vehicles, federal prosecutors mentioned.
Anaerobic digesters use micro organism to interrupt down natural materials, producing a fuel that consists primarily of methane and carbon dioxide. New York City and different locations world wide have turned to the method to take care of sewage, meals scraps and farm waste, producing a renewable pure fuel.
Mr. Brewer’s elaborate scheme of pretending to run such a course of started in 2014, in line with a federal indictment. He carried out the affairs primarily via a Wyoming company with its principal place of business in California. The firm was named CH4 Power, after the chemical formulation for methane.
Mr. Brewer went to nice lengths to persuade his buyers that his manure undertaking was actual, Mr. Talbert mentioned. Mr. Brewer took them on excursions of dairies the place he mentioned he was going to construct digesters, and he offered them with pretend lease agreements that he mentioned he had reached with dairy homeowners throughout California. He obtained inventory pictures of digesters and despatched them to buyers, generally altering the photographs in order that they would seem to point out development progress. He fabricated an in depth schedule for the undertaking to point out purported progress, court docket filings confirmed.
After receiving cash from his buyers, Mr. Brewer tried to cover it by transferring it to different financial institution accounts that he had opened within the names of different business entities, relations and an alias, Mr. Talbert mentioned.
Mr. Brewer’s scheme started breaking down in 2019, when a few of his buyers discovered that he was issuing refunds with cash he had obtained from different buyers, regardless that they’d not licensed him to make use of it on this method.
Mr. Brewer’s buyers obtained a number of civil judgments towards him that 12 months, Mr. Talbert mentioned. Mr. Brewer responded by closing CH4 Power, placing his remaining property in his spouse’s title, acquiring a fraudulent business mortgage with stolen investor cash and fleeing to Montana, the place he lived half time, in line with the indictment.
Even then, he continued to have interaction in fraud, purporting to construct extra manure-processing via a brand new firm he created with an alias, Mr. Talbert mentioned.
Sheriff’s deputies arrested Mr. Brewer in Montana in 2020 and detained him on 24 counts, together with wire fraud, cash laundering and aggravated identification theft.
But Mr. Brewer continued to lie, telling the authorities that they’d the unsuitable man and that he was a Navy veteran hero who had as soon as saved a number of troopers from a hearth by blocking the flames together with his physique, Mr. Talbert wrote within the sentencing memorandum. Mr. Brewer has since admitted that these lies had been meant to curry favor with legislation enforcement, Mr. Talbert mentioned.
“He is a fraudster through and through,” Mr. Talbert wrote, “and needs to be punished harshly to ensure both specific and general deterrence.”
Mr. Brewer was sentenced to 6 years and 9 months in jail for the fraud scheme, and he was ordered to pay $8.75 million in restitution to the buyers who fell sufferer, Mr. Talbert mentioned.
Source: www.nytimes.com