The green energy firm created by a pair of Temple University graduates has gone to spoils.
A federal jury in Philadelphia convicted a Colorado man for his role as the deal-closer in a $54 million Ponzi scheme where investors poured their money into a bogus Main Line green energy company started by Troy Wragg and Amanda Knorr, who met when they were students at Temple.
Wragg and Knorr formed Mantria shortly after graduating from Temple University where they met and began dating. The company operated out of Bala Cynwyd and claimed to sell real estate and “green energy” products, like biochar – a form of charcoal produced by plant matter. Prosecutors said the biochar was never actually in production, writes Jeff Blumenthal in the Philadelphia Business Journal.
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The two then teamed up with McKelvy –who once called the allegations “ridiculous”– from 2005 through 2010 so they could raise the funds through the Colorado man’s “Speed of Wealth” seminars, which advised potential investors to liquidate other assets, like their retirement accounts, and put the money into Mantria.
Wragg pleaded guilty in March 2017 and Knorr pleaded guilty in 2016 after the trio were indicted in 2015. The criminal charges came six years after the SEC filed a civil suit against the company in Colorado, shut down the firm and secured a court order barring Wragg and Knorr from raising more funds.
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