Some of the investors found out when the rent checks stopped in early 2019. They had bought fractional stakes in event centers, the kind of venue that books weddings and receptions, and the venues had been paying them a monthly return. The money was not coming from weddings. When the payments stopped, and investors asked why, some learned that the centers they had bought into had never been built. The funds they wired to construct the buildings had gone somewhere else, and what sat on the sites was raw dirt, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
On May 15, a federal jury in Salt Lake City convicted the three men who sold those stakes. Christopher J. Ashby, 52, Jordan S. Nelson, 45, and Scott W. Beynon, 49, were found guilty of 17 counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, every charge against them, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Utah announced. Ashby and Nelson live in Salt Lake County. Beynon lives in Davis County. The three founded and owned Rockwell Debt Free Properties, a Sandy firm that sold commercial real estate to investors in fractional shares.
The Pitch
Rockwell's offering was built for a particular buyer. It sold tenant-in-common interests, fractional shares of a commercial building that entitle the holder to a portion of the rent. Folded into a 1031 exchange, the arrangement lets an investor defer capital gains taxes by moving the proceeds of one property sale directly into another. The SEC says Rockwell marketed the interests as a passive investment, a monthly rental check with no role in managing the property. The buyers were retirees. A federal judge in an early civil case described them as retirees who invested millions in a facility that was never built.
The buildings belonged to Noah Corporation, a Lehi company that William J. Bowser founded in 2003 and grew into a national chain of wedding and reception venues. By 2019, it ran 42 of them. Around 2015, Bowser and the Rockwell owners agreed to build new centers together. Bowser would find the land and run construction. Rockwell would raise the money, own the finished property, and lease it to Noah. An investor's funds were supposed to buy one specific center and pay rent once it opened.
The centers were not opening, and the rent was not coming from them. Noah had been losing money for years. Financial statements the Rockwell owners reviewed showed net losses of $3.1 million in 2014, $3.3 million in 2015, and $3.2 million in 2016, with accumulated losses near $8 million and liabilities of $11.5 million against $3.5 million in assets, the SEC alleged. Bowser kept the existing venues running on money from new investors. He paid the earlier investors their rent from it. In a call with Rockwell's investors, he later described the method himself. He had robbed Peter to pay Paul.
What investors saw was a brochure. Rockwell's marketing showed luxurious event spaces and claimed Noah had demonstrated an ability to modify its business for maximum profitability, federal prosecutors said. At trial, they answered it with satellite photographs of the five sites investors had funded. The lots in Dublin, Independence, and Toledo, Ohio, in Jacksonville, Florida, and in Carmel, Indiana, were empty. Investors had put roughly $30 million into the five, about $6 million apiece.
The SEC's account fills in how the money moved. Rockwell told investors their funds would be held in escrow at a title company and released only to buy a named property or to reimburse construction. The funds were not escrowed. Rockwell handed the money to Bowser's construction company on his request, against expense spreadsheets the SEC alleged were falsified. In one period, the construction company drew more than a fifth of the money budgeted for 12 centers before Rockwell had bought any of the land for them.
The Collapse
The arrangement ran on a steady supply of new investors. In February 2019, Rockwell told Bowser it would stop developing centers with him. The supply ended. Noah began missing rent, and the missed payments are how many investors first understood what they owned.
Noah filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in May 2019. That spring, a group of Indiana investors sued over a $6.2 million center in Carmel that was never started, KSL reported. In June, U.S. District Judge Tena Campbell ordered Bowser to hand back $845,000 from the sale of his Park City home. The bankruptcy was converted to Chapter 7 in February 2020, and a judge ordered Noah to shut down. The company closed its venues in South Jordan and Lindon, as well as in 19 other states. About 2,800 booked events were canceled, and hundreds of workers lost their jobs.
The Founder Folded First
Bowser was charged with the Rockwell owners and three other men. He did not stand with them for the verdict. On April 16, during the trial, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud. He admitted he knew Rockwell investors would be paying to build centers other than the ones they had funded, and that he used their money on unrelated projects.
Two others had already pleaded out. John D. Hamrick, who ran a New England firm that arranges 1031 exchanges and steered investors to Rockwell, pleaded guilty in January to three counts of wire fraud. Scott L. Rutherford, Rockwell's vice president of marketing, pleaded guilty in June 2025. He admitted sending investors brochures that called Noah a strong and reliable tenant while containing false statements about its finances.
Bowser had asked to be tried alone, and the request opened a window onto the defense the case would turn on. He intended to testify that he had told the Rockwell owners the truth about Noah's finances and about his diversion of their investors' money. The Rockwell owners intended to argue the reverse, that Bowser had hidden both from them. Judge Jill N. Parrish refused to separate the trials in May 2025. She found the two defenses genuinely irreconcilable but ruled that the conflict did not entitle anyone to a separate trial. Her order noted that each Rockwell owner had already given sworn testimony in civil litigation, in bankruptcy, or before the SEC.
What Came Back
The verdict is the second time these men have answered for Noah. The SEC sued Bowser, Ashby, Beynon, and Nelson in December 2020 and settled with all four the same day, none admitting wrongdoing. The agency alleged the four had drawn about 90 investors into more than $35.9 million in Noah interests between January 2017 and February 2019.
The four were ordered to pay a combined $2,067,163.91 in disgorgement, interest, and penalties. Bowser, who ran the fraud at the center, was ordered to pay the least in disgorgement and the most in penalty, a structure that tracked the charges, since he alone faced the counts requiring proof he acted knowingly. Ashby was ordered to pay about $691,500 in total, Beynon about $728,500, and Nelson about $400,100, itemized in the SEC's distribution filings.
Set the $2.07 million ordered against the $35.9 million raised. A court-supervised fund built from the settlement held $1,648,264.55 as of May 2023. A judge approved a plan in March 2025 to distribute that money to the people who lost it.
What Is Next
Sentencing for Bowser, Ashby, Nelson, and Beynon has not been set. The Justice Department expects it in the coming months at the Orrin G. Hatch United States District Court for the District of Utah in Salt Lake City. Hamrick is scheduled for August, Rutherford for October. Wire fraud carries a maximum of 20 years per count, though the actual terms will follow the federal sentencing guidelines, which weigh the loss amount most heavily. The U.S. Postal Inspection Service investigated the case. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Cy C. Castle, Stephen P. Dent, Luisa Gough, and Bryant L. Watson prosecuted it.
The restitution figure set at sentencing will be measured by what investors lost, not by what the defendants kept, so it could run far past the civil judgment. Collecting it is a different problem. Rockwell filed for bankruptcy in 2020. For now, the verdict has settled the question of who was responsible, and the fund built to repay the investors holds about $1.6 million of the $35.9 million that went in.
