Why friends and neighbors believed in a Lancaster County investor who’s since lost millions

Amos Wilmer “Wil” Stolzfus Jr. says he doesn’t know details of the cash crunch that crashed investments in his close friend and mentor Daryl Heller’s ATM company, Paramount Management Group, and brought federal investigators into their native Lancaster County.

But Stoltzfus’ own upbringing and 25-year business career in Amish country helps him understand why friends and neighbors from Lancaster’s prosperous, close-knit communities believed so readily in Heller and backed him with hundreds of millions of dollars that may be gone beyond recovery.

Lancaster County is the eighth-richest of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties by household income. Yet just three of every 10 Lancaster County residents finished college, little more than half the rate for its suburban neighbors Chester and Montgomery Counties and below the averages for Philadelphia, all of Pennsylvania, and the United States.

Success without college supports a common local view that diligent work and personal virtue are worth more than schooling — though some worry the lack of legal sophistication leaves community members especially vulnerable to speculative digital-era sales pitches from friendly neighbors.

Like Heller, Heller’s now-estranged partners David Zook and Jerry Hostetter, and some of their fellow investors, Stoltzfus graduated from 12th grade at Lancaster Mennonite School and went no further in the classroom. The Mennonites’ Amish neighbors typically leave school after eighth grade.

“Almost all the most successful people I know in Lancaster — and I’ve seen it replicated around the country — are guys that sucked in school or didn’t bother going,” said Stoltzfus, 46. “The thing that makes a person an entrepreneur, you’re born with it.”

And Heller, whose father and grandfather were pastors at Hammer Creek Mennonite Church in the farm country north of Lititz, was a born entrepreneur, Stoltzfus said.

“I idolized the guy,” said Stoltzfus, who is seven years younger than Heller. “He drove a beautiful car, a blue (sports car). He was dating a beautiful girl, who he married. He had this aura. We played church softball together. He played second base. He would take phone calls between innings. I said, ‘This guy knows how to make things happen!’ ”

Heller had started a phone brokerage company, Premier Management Group, in the basement of a partner’s house. After Stoltzfus returned from a South Pacific surfing-and-mission trip partly paid for by the church, Stoltzfus determined he, too, would get into business.

With Heller’s inspiration, Stoltzfus set up as a hardware supplier, selling Chinese imports for less than U.S. manufacturers charged. He sold directly to farmers and tradespeople, two-thirds of them Amish. Zook’s father, Gideon, was one of his biggest customers.

Stoltzfus’ name and heritage gave him an edge among the Amish. Paradoxically, so did his and his parents’ decision not to join his grandparents’ Amish church. As Anabaptists, Amish and Mennonites choose whether to join the church as adults. Stoltzfus’ parents “were never excommunicated” for neglecting church rules, which he said would have made it tougher for him to do business in the community. Stoltzfus could drive a personal car and use the full spectrum of communications technologies outside Amish restrictions on worldly networks — while still remaining credible to Amish business owners.

“As an outsider to the community, to get the trust is very difficult,” he said. “But someone like me with the last name Stoltzfus, everyone knows who my parents are and my grandfather. The whole community is built on trust.”

As Stoltzfus built his business in the late 1990s, he, Heller and other friends met on Monday mornings to talk about business, their personal lives, and how to pray. If they breakfasted at a diner, Heller would pay — and tip the waitstaff amply, setting an example.

When Stoltzfus was without health insurance, Heller paid his medical bills, “no questions asked,” he said. When their businesses separated them, sometimes for years, on returning to Lancaster County they met again as if they’d parted the week before.

“It goes beyond genuine brothers,” said Stoltzfus, who attended the Eagles-Rams NFL playoff game with Heller in January. “We’d talk about what was going on in our lives that was hard. We shared our challenges.”

Heller sold his first business and diversified; Stoltzfus did, too. For a time Stoltzfus had an office in Philadelphia, buying Old City apartments and flipping properties. Heller invested in some of his deals. They built a portfolio of single-family homes in Lancaster County.

In 2017, they cofounded Glorious Cannabis and began raising tens of millions from out-of-state banks and investors, joining what became Michigan’s largest marijuana-growing operation. Heller bought Stoltzfus out in 2020.

Stoltzfus said he didn’t invest in Paramount, though some of his friends “in every group” — Amish, Mennonite, and country club members — bought in. “I was getting ready to” when the company defaulted last year.

Stoltzfus said he recognized that high-return investments, like Paramount, carry higher risks. “If it pays 10% or more, everything you put in there had better be dollars you can live without.”

He added, “My own view is that businesses fail. A lot of very successful people out there have failed companies. The president of the United States is one of them.”

Stoltzfus said Heller “is sharp and shrewd and will negotiate hard. He expects success and has very high expectations. He’s a fast mover.”

Stoltzfus witnessed that firsthand when he and Heller were partners in the cannabis business, where regulators demanded detailed paperwork. “He might say, ‘Do a copy-and-paste; we have to get the report out.’” If a model number was inadvertently copied wrong, ”does it matter? No.”

Michigan fined Glorious Cannabis $9,500 for recordkeeping violations last year. The company has since gone into court-ordered receivership after defaulting on a $51 million loan personally guaranteed by Heller.

Stoltzfus said he doesn’t know what happened with Heller’s ATM company. Among investors, he said, “there’s a certain group of people that still fully expect him to figure it out and make things whole,” he said. “From what I’m hearing, there’s less and less of that.”

While the partners fight in court, and banks and other lenders have filed civil complaints, the 2,700 rank-and-file investors haven’t hired lawyers. There’s been no class-action suit, though a lot of anticipating whether federal investigators might bring civil or criminal charges.

Stoltzfus and others say Heller’s family members have come under pressure from disappointed investors, some of them angry.

But he’s not surprised there haven’t been more formal, community-wide protests.

“It’s a really core part of Amish theology. There is a Bible verse [1 Corinthians 6:6-7] that says you do not sue your brethren,” he said. “Litigation is not part of Amish culture. It’s the way things used to be and should be. It’s a handshake: ‘I know who you are, where you live, who your parents are.’ They will hold you to it.”