Philadelphia man sentenced to prison for Ponzi scheme

PHILADELPHIA — The founder of a green energy company who employed his Hellertown girlfriend in a Ponzi scheme that promised to turn “trash to cash” but actually bilked investors of $54 million has been sentenced to more than two decades in prison.

Troy Wragg, 37, of Philadelphia, was sentenced Tuesday to 22 years behind bars and ordered to pay restitution after he pleaded guilty to fraud in the green energy scheme and another fraud carried out while he was awaiting trial in the first case.

Wragg also admitted soliciting an investment in an online video dating website called LUVR with a false representation that a well-known internet entrepreneur was about to buy the company, federal prosecutors said.

“Wragg and his co-conspirators talked a big game about their bogus trash-togreen-energy business, but it was all a lie. And when he was caught in this lie, he just couldn’t help himself and decided to scam yet another innocent investor,” U.S. Attorney William McSwain said in a statement. “The defendant is clearly a danger to the public and deserves to be in prison for a very long time. My office thanks the Court for delivering an appropriate sentence.”

Amanda Knorr, 36, of Hellertown, pleaded guilty to fraud in the green energy case in 2016 and is serving a 30month sentence in a Kentucky federal prison for her role in the scheme.

Wragg founded Mantria Corp. based in Bala Cynwyd, Montgomery County. The company promised investors returns of more than 50% from its success with technology that would turn household waste into power and a valuable charcoal-like material used in agriculture, according to prosecutors.

The company assured investors their money was secured by real estate worth more than twice as much as they were putting in. Knorr, who met Wragg when they were students at Temple University, explained the science behind the purported green energy technology to persuade investors to entrust their money, prosecutors said.

Between 2005 and 2009, Mantria raked in more than $54 million with the help of a pitchman from Colorado, Wayde McKelvy, who ran getrich-quick seminars promising to make the investors “filthy, stinking rich.”

In reality, prosecutors said, the technology didn’t work and the real estate backing the investments was a polluted Tennessee wasteland littered with unexploded World War II artillery shells. The money raised from new investors was used to placate those who were waiting for their payoff, prosecutors said.

Federal prosecutors allege Knorr, Wragg and McKelvy misled more than 300 investors across the country, in what a Denver magazine described as “The Biggest Green Scam in America.”

McKelvy, who prosecutors said persuaded investors to take out home equity loans and max out credit cards to get cash to invest in Mantria, was convicted in October. He is awaiting sentencing.