Sell, baby, sell. In 2015, two Oklahoma con artists baked a towering layer cake of tilapia, quail, penny stocks, Arabian sheikhs, cruise ships, diamonds, oil wells, copper mines, and Costco, and then stole the savings of farmers across Arkansas, Kansas, and Missouri.
The flimflam duo reeled in $1 million and hoped to stack the Ponzi far higher—until the scheme collapsed under a flood of fish. Welcome to one of the most outrageous scams in agriculture and business history.
Digging Holes
Seated in a booth at the Golden Corral on Kansas Expressway, a stone’s throw off I-44 in Springfield, Mo., Terry Bollinger was enraged. Over $200,000 in the hole, along with a steady bleed of $2,500 per month in barn electricity, he was swamped with near-biblical loads of fish. No pickup. No payment. No propriety.
“I was furious past words,” Bollinger recalls. “I was close to going vigilante on the pair responsible—two predator criminals of the lowest kind, Jerrold (Jerry) Wayne Myers and Gary Warlick.”
Myers, 78, and Warlick, 55, entered the restaurant doors, slid into the booth, rattled off a litany of saccharine explanations, and offered Bollinger a purported lifebuoy. In reality, they tossed him a brick.
“Jerry and Gary pulled out a bunch of paperwork and offered to compensate me with fake stock options as real as the rest of their bulls***, and it all went down at the Golden Corral. It was one shell game on top of another.”
Hovering just within earshot, Bollinger noted three men—wide and thick-necked—watching the exchange. “Muscle. They brought along muscle in case things got out of hand,” he explains. “They were thinking I might dig a hole and bury them in it. They were right.”
“People know some crazy stories, but they’ve never heard nothing like Jerry and Gary,” Bollinger adds. “They were going nationwide with their scheme until the whole deal blew up because of one overlooked detail: We crashed their plan with too many fish.”
Barrel of Hooks
Starting roughly in April 2015, two no-frills advertisements began running in electric co-op magazines and agriculture periodicals, and on rural-related websites. Although the ads contained no pictures or graphics, they were neck-snappers—proclaiming the possibility of $100,000-plus in side-stream income.
The first ad championed fish farming: BREEDERS/GROWERS NEEDED NOW. Manna Source Sustainable, a Premere Resources Corp company, needs breeders/growers for our sustainable living operation. Raise organic tilapia fish and aquaponic vegetables-fruits in the fish water for sustainable living perhaps progressing to six figure income according to capabilities and desires. Use the unused buildings on your property for production. We provide all equipment, tanks, organic feed and stock. You provide facility with utilities, hands on effort, and small investment/deposit for desired level of income. We buy all production under our Breeder/Grower agreement. Free Sustainable Living Workshop at our Bartlesville Oklahoma facility. (Manna’s claim of “organic tilapia fish” was part of the hoodwink. USDA organic certification for fish is a fantasy; it does not exist.)
The second ad, almost a repeat of the first, changed the fish focus to fowl: QUAIL EGGERS NEEDED NOW! … Raise quail eggs for us perhaps progressing to six figure income according to capabilities and desires ... We supply all cages, stock, and feed. Breeder supplies buy-in amount for desired level of income, indoor facility with heat for the winter, and we buy all egg production under our egger agreement.
On its face, the Manna Source Sustainable premise was simple. A potential grower paid an upfront fee and provided a barn/building/housing unit. In return, the grower received equipment, setup, training, pickup every 35 days, perpetual buyback of fish and quail eggs, and a shot at “six figure income.”
The tiny ads, each less than 100 words, caught eyeballs in Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, and Illinois. In a matter of weeks, dozens of Midwest farmers and rural property owners made the drive to Bartlesville, Okla., where entrepreneurial guru Jerrold Wayne Myers and silver-tongued Gary Warlick showed plenty of leg.
First, according to Myers and Warlick, the Saudis and the Emiratis of Dubai couldn’t get enough fish, i.e., the Arabian appetite for Oklahoma tilapia was insatiable. Second, Carnival Cruise Line passengers were scarfing quail eggs at a prodigious rate and creating a market void that demanded a daily supply.
Myers and Warlick assured all comers that tilapia contracts were sealed with Saudi Arabia and Dubai: A landing strip was purchased and both countries would send airplanes to pick up weekly loads of fish in Bartlesville. Additional million-pound tilapia contracts, Myers and Warlick noted, were secured with Costco, Kroger, and Whole Foods. Further, quail contracts were signed with Carnival Cruise Line, with eggs destined for the haute cuisine of buffet salad bars.
Despite its shining promises, Manna Source Sustainable was crooked as a barrel of fishhooks. It was a lie from crop to table.
Reap the Whirlwind
At 41, Terry Bollinger led a rural lifestyle in in southeast Missouri’s Iron County. He was an old-school grinder—blue-collar, straight-shooter, hardworking to the bone, and willing to pour buckets of sweat equity into his work. He made his bones in concrete, but Bollinger had a keen eye for the countryside, often selling tracts and timber.
In 2015, he caught wind of Manna Source Sustainable after a friend in Iron County bought into the con. In mid-summer, Bollinger drove across southern Missouri, six hours on I-44, and into the parking lot of Manna Source Sustainable headquarters—a nondescript warehouse in Bartlesville.
“It was a metal building with lots of tanks and fish. I walked into an office room on the side and met Jerry and Gary. Neither had a distinct accent, and they came across as average joes, dressed in jeans and boots—nothing beyond ordinary in Oklahoma. Jerry was shifty, a red flag in hindsight, but he was contrasted by Gary, who seemed like a good old boy and did most of the talking.”
Myers and Warlick touted themselves to Bollinger as conservative businessmen with company ties to oil drilling, gas wells, and copper mines. Simple fellas that walked a straight line and feared the Lord. No flash. No cash knots wedged in a boot top. No Cadillacs.
“They talked up their experience with oil,” Bollinger remembers. “Bartlesville is a historical oil town and they presented themselves as part of that regular crowd.”
Out of the gate, Warlick laid out the buy-in tilapia package: four levels of investment from $10,000-$100,000, with a “Jumbo Upper Level” projected to return an astounding $548,000 per year.
Next, Warlick mapped the buy-in quail package: four levels of investment from $1,500-$50,000, with a “Higher End Setup” annually tallying $115,200.
“They claimed that for each dollar you spent on tilapia, they’d set you up with breeders, tanks, and buy back the fry at 10-12 cents apiece. We were basically going to be a co-op and the customer contracts were already in place. Gary said Whole Foods and Kroger were ready, and that the government in Dubai was buying our product. He also wanted us to invest in quail and he said they were selling the eggs in contracts to cruise ships.”
For approximately two hours, Bollinger listened to the Manna sales pitch, which careened beyond tilapia and quail to stock options and vegetables. “They tried to sell me on aquaponics—growing vegetables in or under or above the fish. Then they tried to get me to buy stock that Jerry promised was certain to go up in value.”
Myers claimed ownership of “HXPN” and offered stock in the company at 2 cents a share, sweetened by the projection that HXPN shares would jump to $1 by late 2015, and $3 by March 2016.
Listening to four whirlwind propositions in less than two hours, Bollinger bought into the fish. In good faith, he invested with Manna’s tilapia setup at the $100,000 “Jumbo” level. Additionally, he spent another $100,000 on a specialized, 40’ x 80’ metal barn to hold a projected 100 breeder tanks and 10 fry tanks.
However, after he slapped cash on the barrelhead, it took Myers and Warlick almost two months to deliver a single piece of equipment to Bollinger’s countryside property in Missouri. And when a sketchy Manna crew finally arrived on-site in Iron County with aquaculture equipment, the façade fell away from the scam.
“The Manna crew guys looked like they came straight out of prison,” Bollinger explains. “They had no idea how to do the plumbing; they had no idea how to do anything. They started arguing and ended up in a fistfight on my property.”
Bollinger’s nightmare kicked into gear. For $200,000, he received a jumble of tank parts, a load of tiny fish, and two former convicts throwing haymakers and rolling around in the dust of his yard.
Despite a total lack of training and assistance from Manna, Bollinger bootstrapped the tanks and connected the plumbing. Simply, he turned Manna’s chaos into a highly efficient fish factory. “Everything and every word they told me was wrong, whether it was about temperature, filtration, feed, or bacterial control. On my own, I started producing fry at an incredible rate, and six months later, I was overrun with fish.”
Bollinger called Warlick for pickup, anxious for ROI and alleviation of a $2,500 per month heating and lighting bill. “Gary told me over and over a truck was coming around to get my fish. No truck came. He knew there was no truck coming. He knew my fish had nowhere to go. He knew they’d stolen my money. He knew they never paid me a dime. And he knew he was telling me one lie after another.”
As Bollinger’s barn bulged with tens of thousands of tilapia, Myers and Warlick never came for the fish. Not a single pickup. Ever.
And while Bollinger bled from a $200,000 gash, Myers and Warlick built the Manna Ponzi pyramid ever higher, dangling more buy-ins to unsuspecting clients. Sell. Sell. Sell.
Diamond Jerry
Neither Bollinger, nor any of Manna’s grower clients, knew that Jerrold Wayne Myers was low enough to steal a widow’s ax. The Manna scheme was not Myers’ first rodeo. In 2004, he was sentenced to 10 months in federal prison and $532,510 in restitution for fraudulently selling diamond investments in Texas.
Translated: Myers was a convicted grifter. From 1998 to 2000, he was a partner in Third Day, a Texas-based company specializing in precious stones. (Significantly, “Third Day” was an aptly chosen biblical reference, as was Myers’ title choice of “Manna” when pushing tilapia.) At Third Day, Myers tapped lawyers, doctors, and other high-end clientele to invest in the buying and selling of diamonds, specifically a “fancy colored” collection” valued at $40,000,000.
Yet, Myers had no background or training in diamonds. Zero. After being pinched by the feds, Myers switched from diamonds to tilapia—a shift down the ladder that although far less lucrative, carried much less risk of incarceration.
By 2016, Myers was a tilapia baron. However, 100 farmers and small business owners were growing restless as hellfire.
Bizzaro World
In 2016, on his farm in central Missouri’s Audrain County, livestock producer Matt Van Schyndel scanned the pages of a co-op magazine and spotted Manna’s alluring tilapia advertisement. Several weeks later, Van Schyndel, who was among Manna’s first investors, walked into an office suite at a Bartlesville motel for a dog-and-pony show conducted by Warlick.
“Jerry and Gary were both there,” Van Schyndel recalls. “Jerry was the mastermind and Gary was the puppet. Jerry was crooked to the bone and Gary was hapless, and the two of them together were twisted.”
“Gary said they’d buy our fry and put them into their own grow-outs, and then ship the fish in big numbers to overseas markets in Arabia,” Van Schyndel continues. “Gary said, ‘More and more people want tilapia overseas—more than you can shake a stick at.’”
Van Schyndel went down the tilapia hole with a $25,000 investment, but he got a glyphosate shock when the Manna crew showed up in Audrain County. “The setup guy they sent brought a bunch of IBC totes that he claimed were food-grade. I tore the front off one of them and saw ‘Roundup’ stamped on it. They set up 40 other legit tanks, but the Roundup tote was the sign of things to come.”
Six months later, Van Schyndel was awash in tilapia. He called Bartlesville for pickup and Warlick sent a truck to Audrain County, but the loading process was chaotic, according to Van Schyndel. “All the fish died on the way back to Oklahoma,” he says. “Warlick appeared to have never done this before and the truck’s air pumps didn’t work.”
“They made three total pickups at my place, but we only got paid a tiny percent of our investment,” Van Schyndel adds. “Things got increasingly bizarre.”
Bizarre, indeed. Myers and Warlick had no grow-out facilities and no market for the fish. “They actually had asked me to put a grow-out facility on my farm,” Van Schyndel explains, “and wanted me to fork over the money for it. No way. What were they really doing with the fish? I have no clue, but I do know that we all started growing fish faster than Myers calculated, and that’s what crashed their plans. The very last investors never even received their tanks.”
Frozen Fish
In 2016, in northwest Arkansas’s Carroll County, Robert Fairweather had access to several idle, family poultry barns. After observing Manna tilapia production on a friend’s property, Fairweather drove north to Bartlesville.
“Jerry was introduced to me as the primary shareholder. He hovered in the background and Gary did the talking, giving off a used car salesman or televangelist vibe.”
“Gary was really interested in our poultry barns and sold us hard on quail. He said they’d install nesting boxes and every egg would go straight to a cruise ship. He said he had all the licenses to deliver quail across state lines and all the breeder permits. Finally, he gave up on quail and tried to rope us into buying stock. Hour and a half of talking—and he pitched three different pyramids.”
Fairweather was solely drawn to tilapia, but rather than buy in at the minimal $10,000 level, he balked and insisted on a $1,200 good-faith payment, with the remainder due in increments, provided Manna fulfilled its duties. Warlick snatched the $1,200.
Weeks later, Manna tanks and equipment were delivered, as promised, to Fairweather’s barns in Arkansas, but problems began immediately.
“Nothing worked,” Fairweather says. “The tanks leaked right away. The filters were jacked up. The wiring was screwed. They didn’t deliver feed. I was upset, but Gary didn’t answer calls. He was running.”
All the while, Fairweather paid utilities, put in manhours, and bought feed from Amazon. After months of frustration, along with recognition of Warlick’s duplicity, Fairweather threw in the towel during a winter storm.
“I was in Fayetteville and the power went out at our place with temperatures about 10 degrees. My wife called and said, ‘What should I do about the fish?’”
“What the hell were we supposed to do? The fish froze and died.”
Made in America
Patty Labarthe investigates deceptive investment schemes for a living. As director of enforcement for the Oklahoma Department of Securities (ODS), with dual jurisdiction over securities and business opportunities, Labarthe has seen a wide spectrum of violations across a 38-year-career.
However, the Manna case is unforgettable, she says. “They preyed on average, hardworking people, but no one could ever make this story up because it’s so far over the line. People lost tens of thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars even beyond their investment because many of them built facilities and paid for extra upkeep.”
In 2015, ODS received a whistleblower complaint from a concerned citizen about Myers and Warlick. As the investigation proceeded, the scheme became clear.
“The investors were a cross-section of America: farmers, blue collar workers, and retirees,” Labarthe explains. “On the one hand, the Manna presentation seemed farfetched, but on the other, Myers and Warlick had a receptive audience because they were promoting a made-in-America, or at least, grown-in-America, opportunity.”
“At the time, Myers and Warlick promoted the opportunity by claiming that tilapia were being imported from overseas where they were grown in dirty waters,” she continues. “Manna promoted US-grown tilapia produced in clean waters. Myers and Warlick stepped in and said, ‘No more dirty fish from foreign markets.’”
“Investors were strung along,” Labarthe adds. “When the tilapia con ran low on steam, they pushed investors to quail investments. Investors could trade out their tilapia opportunity for quail. Or they could trade out for stock. Finally, they were dodging clients offering a vegetable or aquaponics buy-in.”
In February 2017, ODS filed a civil petition against Manna, tracking a massive siphoning of dollars in a year and a half: Defendants accepted One Million Fifty-Two Thousand Ninety Dollars ($1,052,090) from Purchasers beginning in February 2015 through approximately August 2016.
“Cease and desist is good, but we wanted to get money back for the investors,” Labarthe notes. “We filed in district court and went after restitution—but there was almost no money to get back.”
Ride With An Outlaw
Myers and Warlick skated. Despite the diligence of the ODS, no criminal prosecution was initiated.
Warlick professed innocence, claiming Myers was the sole fiend behind the Manna fraud. However, the victims say otherwise.
“There’s no doubt in my mind, Warlick was in on it,” Terry Bollinger says. “He told me so many things that were lies that he knew were lies. Whether he got in straight, I don’t know. But as it went on, he became part of the scam as the money got big. He never, never said he was sorry. Not a word.”
Ride with an outlaw, die with an outlaw, says Ed Weaver, 46, a farmer in Cedar County, Missouri, with cattle, sheep, and layers barns, who invested $50,000 with Manna. “One time, on the phone, Gary Warlick told me he’d been suckered by Myers, but I believe he was just a good actor. If he wasn’t a crook at the beginning, then he chose to become one. He crossed the line and didn’t come back. And there sure were never any apologies.”
Oklahoman Jim Miller of Pottawatomie County had 24 270-gallon tanks filled with tilapia and lost $25,000 to the charade. “Jerry and Gary didn’t deliver feed; they didn’t answer calls; they didn’t do anything but steal. Gary was hard to read and I don’t know his level of involvement, but I know he used Christianity and his involvement in the Church to get in good with people.”
Robert Fairweather insists Myers and Warlick were in the know from soup to nuts. “They came up with this scheme together. Jerry provided the upfront money and Gary was the pusher. We’re talking about an unreal amount of paperwork, legwork, and phone calls that Gary was right in the middle of, and he’d have to be a severe idiot not to know. Bottom line, I believe both men were sociopaths.”
Fish Fertilizer
What became of the millions of tilapia?
The fish couldn’t be legally sold or dumped into lakes. “I destroyed all of mine—thousands,” Jim Miller says. “I couldn’t sell, process, or turn them loose.”
Ed Weaver grasped at straws: “I researched for something to do with my fish, and I sold a few privately. I tried to market, but I was out of options. I cleaned and froze what I could—and used the rest for fertilizer.”
Terry Bollinger speaks plainly: “I always thought they tasted like hell. Dumped’em all.”
Frontier Justice
On a Facebook account active until at least 2023, Warlick described himself as “Former General Manager at Manna Source Sustainable” from Jan. 1, 2015-Sept. 1, 2017. The Facebook page noted his actions at Manna: “Did the founding promotional startup of this division of Premere Resources Corporation bringing it from $0 to $1.2 million in one years span.”
The irony is stunning, Weaver says. “It blows my mind. Gary and Jerry stole $1 million at a minimum, but there were no criminal consequences. In this country, if you play it right, you can knowingly lie and steal and never be prosecuted.”
“Neither of them got jail time,” Fairweather echoes. “How could they hurt and steal from this many people, but get off with no penalty?”
In the end, ODC clawed back 2 cents on the dollar. Bollinger, despite a $200,000 hit, received a $2,000 restitution check. “People think this is about financial damage, but its far deeper and raw. The emotional damage is tough to put into words,” Bollinger concludes.
Revenge is a dish best served cold, but Bollinger leaves the reckoning to Providence. “My anger drove me for a good while and I considered delivering frontier justice for all of us that had been taken advantage of. But I knew I’d end up as the one in trouble with the law and hurt my own family. It was the ultimate frustration to hold back because I also knew the law would do nothing to the real criminals. I was right.”
For more articles from Chris Bennett (cbennett@farmjournal.com or 662-592-1106), see:
American Pie Reborn: How An Iowa Farmer Saved Buddy Holly
Corn and Cocaine: Roger Reaves and the Most Incredible Farm Story Never Told
American Gothic: Farm Couple Nailed In Massive $9M Crop Insurance Fraud
Priceless Pistol Found After Decades Lost in Farmhouse Attic
Cottonmouth Farmer: The Insane Tale of a Buck-Wild Scheme to Corner the Snake Venom Market
Power vs. Privacy: Landowner Sues Game Wardens, Challenges Property Intrusion
Tractorcade: How an Epic Convoy and Legendary Farmer Army Shook Washington, D.C.
