Two in Phila. charged in Ponzi scheme

The Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday charged two Philadelphia residents and their Bala Cynwyd company in a $30 million Ponzi scheme that purported to raise money for environmentally friendly businesses.

The SEC's civil lawsuit, filed in Denver, says Troy Wragg, 28, and Amanda Knorr, 26, cofounders of Mantria Corp., made bogus claims and falsely promised enormous returns from the development of residential housing in rural Tennessee and from the production of a charcoal substitute known as biochar.

Also charged were Wayde M. McKelvy, Donna M. McKelvy, and their Centennial, Colo., company, Speed of Wealth L.L.C., for their roles during the last two years in raising money for Mantria.

The alleged scam netted 300 victims, who were urged to liquidate their traditional investments to purchase Mantria's securities, with returns ranging from 17 percent to "hundreds of percent rates of return" annually, according to the 27-page SEC complaint.

Wragg's executive assistant in Bala Cynwyd, Christine Gresh, directed an inquiry to Steven W. McDonald, an attorney in Greenwood Village, Colo. McDonald did not respond to a message.

Wragg, who worked as a manager at a small janitorial-services company and then as a financial adviser to a relative before starting Mantria, according to the SEC, did not respond to a message left at his residence in Manayunk.

In May, Wragg told potential investors that Mantria had generated $10.6 million in pretax profits for investors, but he told the SEC under oath that the company had made at most $4.1 million in profit since 2007.

The SEC alleges that almost all the money used to pay off investors came from new investors, and that Mantria's 11 divisions, including mortgage banking and hip-hop record production, did not generate significant profits.