Developer Indicted for Defrauding Allen University

The Department of Justice indicted Lamonica “Monti” Valrie for wire fraud and money laundering in a scheme that involved a 2023 deal to build a football stadium for Allen University.

Valrie’s development company, 50 Plus 1, struck a deal with the historically Black university in South Carolina to build the stadium at no up-front cost. The university agreed to a revenue-sharing arrangement that would grant Valrie’s company a 70-year ground lease. But in 2024, the parties amended the deal and Allen agreed to pay Valrie up to $3 million to expedite the project.

Now, the DOJ alleges that Valrie “did not have sufficient funding sources to develop, construct, or build a stadium” and instead “spent the funds on personal luxury purchases including exotic supercars, jewelry, luxury goods, a Yacht charter, and a high-end rental home in south Florida.”

Altogether the developer is accused of defrauding Allen and its parent organization—the African Methodist Episcopal Church—and other victims of more than $6 million. Valrie, who faces up to 20 years in federal prison if convicted, has denied the allegations. He is expected to appear in federal court in South Carolina on Tuesday.

As the stadium deal collapsed, Valrie was in talks with another HBCU—in November 2024, Valrie struck a deal with Saint Augustine's University in North Carolina to lease its 105-acre campus for 99 years in exchange for a much-needed cash infusion of $70 million. However, the deal fell apart in early 2025 when the North Carolina attorney general’s office—which reviewed it as required by state law when assets are being transferred from a nonprofit—declined to sign off on the arrangement. The attorney general’s office found the deal lacked “sufficient documentation to support the proposal” and the payout was “too low to justify transfer of the lease rights.”

SAU’s campus, state officials noted, was valued at almost $200 million.