The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged two companies – including a Colorado-based financial planning firm – with conning senior citizens out of their retirement money with outlandish claims about investing in a shady bio-tech startup.

According to the SEC complaint, advisory firm Speed of Wealth convinced more than 300 investors, many of them seniors, to liquidate their pension plans and invest all the money in a bio-tech startup called Mantria.


The complaint alleges that Speed of Wealth bosses Wayde and Donna McKelvey touted Mantria's supposedly eco-friendly products, including one they called “biochar” – a charcoal substitute made from organic waste.

In addition, the McKelveys, who were divorced, persuaded investors to plow their money into a purported ‘carbon negative' housing community in rural Tennessee, the SEC said.