Wayde McKelvy, the pitch man hired to raise funds for what was discovered to be a $54 million green energy Ponzi Scheme started by two Temple University graduates, was sentenced to 18 years in prison in August.
McKelvy was convicted of helping to defraud dozens of retirees of their life savings by selling them shares in Mantria Corp., a Philadelphia-based company which claimed to be on the verge of a new clean energy revolution with “biochar,” which founders claimed would turn common household waste into clean energy.
Mantria also claimed it was building a “carbon negative” housing development in Tennessee, but neither project ever proceeded to construction.
Mantria’s fraudulent operations eventually caught the attention of the Securities Exchange Commission and federal prosecutors from the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
“McKelvy is nothing more than a twenty-first century snake oil salesman, with all of the trappings to make him appear to be a legitimate businessman,” said Jennifer Arbittier Williams, Acting U.S. Attorney for Eastern Pennsylvania, after McKelvy’s conviction. “The defendant is clearly a danger to the investing public and deserves to be in prison for a very long time, as the government demonstrated at trial.”
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