Ellsworth, 57, who resigned as Toquerville mayor in September 2022 to become district manager of the Hurricane Valley Fire District, and St. George resident Brian Garry Sewell, 52, have been charged with conspiring to conduct an unlicensed money-transmitting business, a class D felony.
Sewell, in turn, then used his company, Rockwell Capital Management, to convert the cash he received from Ellsworth into cryptocurrency, U.S. attorneys allege in court documents. Further exacerbating Sewell’s legal woes, he has been indicted by a federal grand jury in a separate case of additional federal crimes, including two class C felony counts for wire fraud and money laundering and one class B felony count for making false statements to secure loans, according to a recent news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office.From December 2017 to April 2024, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Sewell schemed to obtain $2.
In July 2020, according to court documents, Sewell applied for a federally insured home mortgage from a mortgage-lending business in which submitted a fabricated W-2 that stated he earned $180,000 in 2019 and $15,000 per month from Rockwell Capital Management in 2020.