Federal prosecutors Monday sentenced a California man to more than six years in prison for running an $8.75 million pyramid scheme that cost a nonexistent factory that was supposed to produce green energy from cow manure. , announced.
For five years, Raymond Holcombe Brewer falsely claimed to be an engineer who ran a company that built an anaerobic digestion plant that would convert manure into biogas, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California said. announced in a statement on Monday.
Brewer, 66, of Porterville, Calif., told investors the plant was under construction and would generate millions of dollars in revenue from selling the biogas, the statement said. He told investors he would receive two-thirds of the profits and tax incentives.
“None of this is true,” US Attorney for the Eastern District of California Philip A. Talbert said in the judgment memorandum. “Mr. Brewer didn’t start building a single digester. He just took the investors’ money and ran away.”
Mr. Brewer plead guilty The defendant, who was indicted on fraud charges in February, spent the money on a 3,700-square-foot custom home in California, a 12-acre property in Montana, and a new Dodge Ram pickup truck, according to federal prosecutors. .
Anaerobic digesters use bacteria to break down organic matter and produce gases that are primarily composed of methane and carbon dioxide. New York City and other places around the world are turning to the process of treating sewage, food waste and farm waste to produce renewable natural gas.
Mr. Brewer’s elaborate plan to pretend to carry out such a process began in 2014, according to the federal indictment. He conducted his business primarily through a Wyoming corporation with its principal place of business in California. The company named his CH4 Power after the chemical formula for methane.
Talbert said Brewer made every effort to convince investors that the fertilizer project was real. Mr. Brewer said he was going to build a digester and toured the dairy, presenting them with fake lease agreements he claimed to have agreed with dairy farmers across California. He obtained stock photos of the digester and sent them to investors, sometimes changing the images to show the progress of construction. According to court filings, he concocted a detailed schedule for the project to show progress.
Mr. Talbert said Mr. Brewer tried to hide the money after receiving it from investors by transferring it to other entities, family members and other bank accounts opened under false names.
Brewer’s scheme began to collapse in 2019. Some investors learned that Mr. Brewer had returned funds he received from other investors, even though he did not authorize such use.
Mr. Talbert said Mr. Brewer’s investors had won multiple civil judgments against him that year. According to the indictment, Mr. Brewer closed CH4 Power, put the remaining assets in his wife’s name, obtained fraudulent business loans with stolen investor funds, and moved to Montana, where he lived part-time. said to have fled.
Mr. Talbert said he continued his fraudulent activities, claiming he would expand his fertilizer-processing business through a new company set up under a false name.
Sheriff’s Deputy Arrested Mr. Brewer Arrested in Montana in 2020 and held in custody on 24 charges, including wire fraud, money laundering and aggravated identity theft.
But Mr. Brewer continued to lie, telling officials they were wrong and that he was a Navy veteran hero who once saved several soldiers from a fire by shielding the flames with his body. , Mr. Talbert wrote in the judgment memorandum. . Mr. Talbert said Mr. Brewer later admitted that these lies were to court law enforcement.
“He’s a fraud to the core,” wrote Mr. Talbert, “severe punishment is necessary to ensure concrete and general deterrence.”
Mr. Talbert said Mr. Brewer was sentenced to six years and nine months in prison for the fraud scheme and ordered to pay $8.75 million in damages to the investors he had harmed.
