St. Louis, Mo.-Last week a U.S. district judge sentenced the founder and chairman of Earthly Mineral Solutions Inc., which bilked more than 250 investors with phony claims of recovering and processing minerals from the Mojave Desert for use as a natural fertilizer, to 60 months in prison for conspiracy to commit mail fraud. Roy Higgs, 67, of Henderson, Nev., pleaded guilty in late June. In April, co-defendant Frank Schwartz, 45, of Los Angeles, Calif., was sentenced to three years for his role in the scheme that from 2004 through 2006 sold hundreds of investors across the country approximately $18 million worth of mining claims to the desert site south of Las Vegas. Schwartz pleaded guilty in January to working for EMS and failing to report its fraudulent activities to authorities. In addition to the criminal case, Higgs, Schwartz, EMS, and Rick Lawton, the company’s former general counsel, face a civil enforcement action brought by the SEC. The Las Vegas case has been stayed pending the outcome in St. Louis. As part of his guilty pleas, Higgs agreed to resolve the SEC case. In imposing the maximum sentence allowed, Judge Stephen Limbaugh Jr. declared that he was “overwhelmed” by the scores of victim impact statements provided by the U.S. Attorney’s office, and agreed with the prosecutor that it was a “sad day” for everyone involved in the case. A 2005 news release still available on the Internet stated that Higgs acquired over 20,000 acres in a natural deposit of agriculture minerals 15 miles from Las Vegas, developed a testing and production facility, hired a team of agronomists, and using the natural minerals as a base, developed three unique products to be marketed as Minerals of the Mojave.
Transparency Across the Fertilizer Value-Chain