newsletter. Enter your email below to receive more stories like these right to your inbox.Ryan Benson, LRS’s CEO, had to answer to creditors in a Utah district courtroom on Sept. 12. During that questioning, Benson listed Jeff Hartley among partial owners in his company., which sits on the east shore of the lake. Vineyard City Mayor Julie Fullmer pledged $5 million to the project and wrote a letter of support as LRS sought nearly $1 billion in financing from the Environmental Protection Agency.
Also along the funding vein, a slide from a September 2020 meeting with the Governor’s Office asking for a $10 million loan guarantee shows LRS claiming two other sources of funding. One was a “well-established family fund” that accounted for $10 million in backing. Another was $5 million from the Lehi-based Prospera Growth Fund. In court, Benson said that was an either/or situation and LRS chose to go with Prospera.
“I’m not aware of any other funds that came into LRS,” Benson said, “other than Prospera and Utah Lake Development Fund.” And there was the matter of the company’s payment to Big Game Forever, a nonprofit Benson founded to lobby against federal protections for wolves. Benson previously said Big Game Forever accepted $80,000 and agreed to forgive $250,000 in debt. In the hearing, Benson said that debt came from a loan the nonprofit had issued to LRS and from the sale of LRS’s “intellectual property.” Benson added that “we haven’t been able to find a document” of the loan.