It was all just a pile of manure.
A California con artist has been sentenced to nearly seven years in prison for duping investors out of close to $9 million in a Ponzi scheme that claimed to be converting cow poop into green energy.
Ray Brewer, 66, pleaded guilty earlier this year to running the scam in which he claimed to be building anaerobic digesters on dairy farms in and around California’s central valley that would break down manure and turn it into methane gas.
Between March 2014 and December 2019, federal prosecutors say Brewer convinced investors to plunk $8.75 million into the scheme, which he claimed would make money by selling the methane as green energy on the open market.
When the scam began to come unwound and some investors started filing civil lawsuits against him, prosecutors say Brewer fled from Porterville, Calif., to Montana, where he lived for a time under an assumed identity.
When authorities caught up to him, he claimed they had the wrong person and that he was a Navy veteran who had saved several seamen during a fire by blocking the flames with his body so they could escape.
Brewer later admitted he had lied in order to “curry favor with law enforcement.”
On Monday, he was sentenced to six years-and-nine months in prison on charges of wire fraud, money laundering and identity theft.
Brewer’s attorney declined to comment, but pointed to a letter his client had written to the judge asking for leniency, in which he claimed he had intended the business venture to be legitimate but had gotten in over his head and made poor choices.
“I made some very bad decisions in an attempt to keep us going,” Brewer wrote. “I should have known that you cannot make something right by doing something that’s wrong.”
According to court documents, the manure scam revolved around the concept of renewable energy credits that could be sold to companies trying to meet green energy regulatory requirements. Brewer told investors that they would receive 66% of all the profit generated from the purported business, plus tax credits.
Instead, prosecutors say the money went into Brewer’s pockets or to pay out earlier investors. Brewer admitted using the cash to buy land, a house and multiple Dodge Ram pickup trucks for himself. As part of the scheme, prosecutors say Brewer moved the money through an elaborate network of bank accounts — some opened in fake names — to hide what he was doing.
In order to convince his investors that the the business was real, prosecutors say he would take them on tours of dairies he claimed to have leases with and provide them with doctored agreements with banks that made it appear he had obtained millions of dollars in loans.
He also admitted sending investors forged contracts with multinational companies that implied he had secured revenue streams along with fake pictures of the digesters under construction.
As the scheme continued, Brewer sent investors bogus construction schedules and invoices to show that the projects were progressing.
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