Doyen Elements’ Geoff Thompson sentenced to 33 months in prison

The long saga that is Covalent Collective and Doyen Elements has come to some sort of an end – finally. Geoff Thompson, the person behind the scheme, was sentenced to 33 months in prison and three years of supervision once released.

Despite settling with the SEC in 2020 for past bad behavior, in December 2021, Thompson was charged in federal court in Chicago for ripping off cannabis investors to the tune of $950,000.

A year later in December 2022, Thompson pled guilty to the charges. However, the sentencing didn’t come down until last month.

Doyen Elements

The wheels of justice move slowly, as the Doyen Elements scheme began in roughly 2017 when Green Market Report reported that the company was planning to publicly list its shares on the OTC Market and was accepting investments prior to its IPO at $7 a share.

Doyen Elements said it was building one of the largest grow facilities in North America and had big plans. Several investors decided to jump in. They received confirmation of their purchase – and that was it. The money was taken, and all communication stopped.

Thompson was Doyen’s CEO at the time, and in September of 2017, the SEC alleged that he, acting through separate companies called Accelera Innovations Inc. and Synergistic Holdings LLC, sold approximately $1.7 million worth of Accelera stock to investors. He also said that the sale was not registered or subject to an exemption from registration.

Despite being in hot water for Accelera, Thompson began a cannabis scheme with Doyen. He tried to tell investors asking for their money that there were two different Doyen companies, but there weren’t.

Doyen was then rebranded as Covalent Collective, with Bill Gregorak named as the chief executive officer. Gregorak had served as chief financial officer of the firm since February 2018.

Thompson resigned from Covalent in 2019, following an enforcement action from the SEC.

Covalent Collective then raised millions of dollars from cannabis investors and planned to buy a property called the Colorado 16 (CO16). However, a lawsuit about the acquisition arose when the deal didn’t go through.

Covalent accused Thompson of being a co-conspirator with the CO16 sellers. Then the company had to ask its investors for more money to sue the CO16 group.

Black Bear Farms

The situation gets even messier and more tangled with the current owners of Covalent. Green Market Report reviewed emails to the shareholders that explain how Covalent told them they would receive a part of a cannabis cultivation operation called Black Bear Farms so that their investments wouldn’t be zeroed out.

Black Bear also operates under the company name Cultive, and Covalent’s President Sal Milazzo also serves as President of Cultive. At one point beleaguered Covalent shareholders were told they majority owned Black Bear, but then that got dialed down.

“Covalent shareholders collectively own the majority of both Black Bear Farms and AmaVie,” Covalent’s Gregorak told Covalent shareholders in an email. Yet, in a later email, Gregorak stated that Covalent shareholders only owned a 5% interest in the operation.

As recently as September 2023, Milazzo said in a letter to Cultive that he had been speaking with Gregorak regarding the formal acquisition of Covalent.

“We agree on the terms and discussed making this a priority for Cultive,” the letter said.

Whether the original investors ever see anything come from their money and the convoluted trail it has taken, many will be somewhat satisfied to see Thompson behind bars, even if it was for the Accelera fraud and not the Doyen scheme.