PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The man who dreamed of making Philadelphia the first “Vertical Farm City,” by transforming abandoned buildings into indoor farms, has pleaded guilty to fraud and tax evasion.
Jack Griffin promoted vertical farming with the zeal of an evangelist. In a 2016 TED X Talk, he bragged about the quality of his Metropolis Farms produce.
“We have the most incredible strawberries. They’re like the strawberries you had when you were a kid where you’d rip them open and the juice would flow out,” he told the crowd.
It seemed like a perfect match: Philadelphia’s abandoned warehouses, representing all those lost blue collar jobs, and a new kind of farming — floor to ceiling instead of in the soil — creating a fresh green-collar economy.
It wasn’t just a TED X crowd Griffin sold his idea to. The pitch was the same in 2016 when he was hosted in city council by then-councilman Al Taubenberger, who’d arranged to have the state AG secretary listen too.
Alas, federal prosecutors say Griffin oversold the concept’s financial potential to two investors — taking nearly $800,000 from them and using it for his own expenses instead of building them vertical farms.
Griffin entered a guilty plea to charges of wire fraud and failing to pay taxes on the income he collected.
Taubenberger said he’s disappointed by Griffin’s admission that he bamboozled investors. He still thinks the concept is sound. There are a few successful indoor farms worldwide but many have gone out of business due to energy and space challenges, or encountered legal issues like Griffin.
He is set to be sentenced in October.