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Law360 (May 15, 2020, 4:08 PM EDT) -- The mastermind behind a $54 million Ponzi scheme is urging a Pennsylvania federal judge to free him from his 22-year prison sentence due to the heightened risk he faces from a potential COVID-19 infection as a result of his weight and an underlying seizure disorder.
Troy Wragg, who was sentenced in August for defrauding hundreds of vulnerable investors through a phony green energy company, told the court that recent difficulty controlling his seizures made it all but inevitable he would end up having to mingle with inmates in prison health facilities who were suffering from COVID-19.
"Mr. Wragg has uncontrollable severe epilepsy and he is at risk of dying from seizures and secondarily given COVID-19," he said in his motion for compassionate release. "This is truly a matter of life or death for Mr. Wragg."
Wragg pled guilty in March 2017 for working with several co-defendants to convince victims to liquidate their savings, including 401(k) plans and mutual funds, to invest in a real estate company known as Mantria Corp., which they said was planning a "carbon negative" housing community in Tennessee.
Instead of putting investment money toward any of its touted projects, however, the government said that Mantria used additional funds it solicited to pay "earnings" to prior investors.
While out on bail after being charged in connection with the Mantria scheme, Wragg was slapped with an additional count of wire fraud after prosecutors learned he had solicited just over $100,000 in investment money for a phony online dating service he branded as LUVR.
Wragg ultimately pled guilty on that charge, too, and was taken into custody pending formal sentencing.
Since being sent to prison, Wragg, who is currently housed at the federal correctional institution at Fort Dix, New Jersey, said he'd suffered multiple seizures including one early last year that was so violent it left him with a broken wrist.
He said the medication he uses to control his seizures was upped in January, leading him to experience a dramatic increase in his weight, which he said also heightened the risk he faced if he were to contract COVID-19.
Despite prison health staff increasing his medication, he said that he didn't always end up receiving the proper agreed-upon dosage and that he ended up suffering more than a dozen seizures in a three-week period.
The seizures, the filing said, "were painfully wearing Mr. Wragg down to a shell of a human being who has oftentimes not been able to get out of bed without assistance."
Wragg said he was scared to visit the prison's health services facilities after being told by a staff member that it could result in him being quarantined with potential COVID-19 cases.
"Mr. Wragg is terrified to go to health services again," the filing said.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, there are currently 27 confirmed active cases of COVID-19 among inmates at FCI Fort Dix.
Representatives for the parties did not immediately return messages seeking comment Friday.
Wragg is represented by Evan T.L. Hughes of Hughes Firm LLC.
The government is represented by Robert Livermore and Sarah Wolfe of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
The case is United States of America v. Troy Wragg, case number 2:15-cr-00398, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
--Editing by Gemma Horowitz.
For a reprint of this article, please contact reprints@law360.com.
