- Colorado awarded $103 million of BEAD funds to Maverix broadband
- But it was alerted to financial improprieties by whistleblowers
- Now, it's rescinded the BEAD awards
Today, the Colorado Broadband Office (CBO) said that after receiving whistleblower reports about Maverix Broadband and investigating the matter, it has taken actions to protect more than $100 million in taxpayer funds.
Maverix, a provider of fiber broadband, had been provisionally awarded $103 million in Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) funds, which as of today CBO has rescinded.
In addition, Maverix has already received about $9.17 million from three federal Capital Projects Fund grants and three state High Cost Support Mechanism grants, according to the Colorado Sun.
Unfortunately, earlier this year Maverix was placed into receivership, and on August 31 it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Colorado is now pursuing the recovery of $3.2 million in grant funds — $2.5 million federal dollars and $700,000 in state dollars — through ongoing receivership and bankruptcy proceedings.
While those efforts proceed, CBO has notified federal partners and referred its findings to the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of the Inspector General and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.
According to CBO, it received two whistleblower complaints in May, raising concerns about Maverix’s use of grant funding. CBO moved to immediately freeze further payments, open an inquiry and initiate enhanced monitoring oversight of Maverix. These actions identified financial mismanagement, misuse of grant funds, payments for services and materials that were not received and failure to pay legitimate vendors.
Maverix and BEAD
Of its about 96,000 eligible BEAD locations, Colorado awarded 44% to Amazon Leo’s low-Earth-orbit (LEO) satellite service. But Maverix was granted the second-highest number of locations, at around 10,232. However, no BEAD funding was ever disbursed to Maverix.
This is Colorado’s BEAD technology mix:
CBO said today it’s working with federal partners to reopen the affected planned broadband locations through a competitive rebid process so other providers can bring high-speed internet service to impacted communities. This is possible because the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) is allowing state broadband offices to proceed with another round of grants, using all the left-over BEAD funds.
This is a developing story. Fierce Network has reached out to CBO for more information.
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