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According to a media release from the United States Attorney Eastern District of Virginia, Breon Clemons, 36, of Suffolk, was sentenced to nine years and two months in prison for defrauding investors and employees of his business, GoGreen Farms, out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. While on pretrial release, he also attempted to defraud the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services out of $1.1 million.

In November 2017, while working at a car dealership, Clemons told a coworker about his plans to form an organic produce company. Clemons later formed GoGreen Farms and offered the coworker employment.

In 2020, Clemons invited his neighbor to invest in GoGreen Farms. After the neighbor invested $10,000, Clemons asked if she would like to be an unpaid officer or director of the business, and she agreed. Clemons said that he needed a copy of her driver’s license for the articles of incorporation, and she provided it. In November 2021, Clemons told the neighbor that the company needed a revolving line of credit and asked if she would be a co-applicant. During discussions about the line of credit, Clemons asked the neighbor for her Social Security number, and she provided it to him. Clemons later told her that she would not need to co-sign for a line of credit because he claimed he would receive a loan from a professional basketball player.

In March 2022, the neighbor received a call from Capital One regarding late payments. Upon further inquiry, she discovered that the card in question was a joint account with GoGreen Farms. She conferred with an acquaintance at GoGreen Farms, who indicated that GoGreen Farms also utilized an American Express card and a line of credit with lender TVT Capital that were in her name.

The loan application submitted to TVT Capital falsely showed Clemons and the neighbor as each owning 50% of GoGreen Farms. A Virginia State Corporation Commission document, titled “Certificate of Entity Conversion,” was provided to TVT Capital as part of the loan application. The “Certificate of Entity Conversion” document contained a signature page dated July 6, 2021, with the neighbor and Clemons’ purported signatures when the neighbor had not signed the document.

The TVT Capital loan was $100,000, with interest of $46,000, for a total repayment of $146,000. When the neighbor confronted Clemons, he denied taking out lines of credit in her name. He also removed Capital One and American Express cards from his pocket and gave them to her. The balance on each card was over $100,000.

Another individual later discovered that in November 2021, Clemons took out a $25,000 line of credit with Bluevine Inc. using that individual’s personal information and without consent. Clemons further forged the individual’s signature on a financing, security, and guaranty agreement. Bluevine Inc. advanced approximately $30,390 to Clemons on the line of credit.

While on pretrial release, Clemons continued committing fraud. He defrauded two individual investors, taking $5,000 from each victim by promising to pay inordinate returns in one week. Clemons also applied for a $1.1 million Resilient Food Systems Infrastructure (RFSI) grant from the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. Clemons submitted a grant application with false representations from prison with the assistance of a family member.

The total loss from Clemons’ fraud was approximately $1.5 million, and the total amount of laundered funds was $218,442.