Uprise owner Stephen A. Kromer pleaded guilty to federal money laundering after admitting he diverted more than $7.8 million in state-supplied matching funds from a rural Nevada broadband build, and he agreed to $7,886,941 in restitution under a plea agreement filed October 27.
For tower and fiber crews, the headline is less about crypto and bank transfers than about a simple question: what happens to the people doing the work when the money behind a project goes missing? The plea settles part of that story. It leaves most of the contractor side open.
What Kromer admitted
Kromer is the owner and manager of Uprise, a Reno, NV broadband company. The project was a fiber-to-the-premises network in and around Lovelock, financed by roughly $27 million from USDA's ReConnect Program and about $9 million from Uprise, for a network of roughly $36 million.
Uprise's share was not its own cash. In the factual admissions, Kromer acknowledges that the Nevada Department of Transportation transferred more than $9 million to Uprise, which deposited it into a Pledged Deposit Account as its matching contribution. USDA held a security interest in those funds and limited withdrawals to approved project expenditures.
From May through November 2024, Kromer admitted, he initiated 32 wire transfers moving more than $7.8 million from that account into his personal bank account. He falsely described the transfers as Lovelock project expenditures.
He pleaded guilty to one count of money laundering under 18 U.S.C. § 1956, tied to a May 7, 2024, purchase of $383,677 in cryptocurrency through Coinbase. Sentencing is set for March 9, 2027, and the money-laundering count carries a maximum of 20 years in prison.
Read the numbers carefully
Two figures in this story get mixed up. The $27,154,596 figure is USDA's grant award announced July 28, 2022. It is not the amount stolen. The admitted diversion came from the matching-fund account, and the plea is not an admission that Kromer took the entire federal award or that USDA paid out all of it.
The same caution applies to the wider indictment. It describes a larger cryptocurrency trail and alleges a false ledger was submitted to USDA in March 2025. Those are allegations. The guilty plea covers Count Six, even though the factual admissions reach the full pattern of 32 transfers.
What the plea does not settle
Restitution is an obligation, not a recovery. Kromer agreed that the full amount is due immediately after judgment, and he agreed to disclose financial information and release funds or property to pay it. But the agreement contains no accounting of how much cash or cryptocurrency has actually been seized or remains available.
The agreement also identifies NDOT as the victim for restitution purposes. It does not set aside any payment for contractors or suppliers in the construction disputes.
A promise to repay is not the same as money in the bank, and it is certainly not the same as a paid invoice.
A promise to repay is not the same as money in the bank, and it is certainly not the same as a paid invoice.
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Several other pieces remain open:
- Prosecutors will seek dismissal of the other 15 of 16 federal counts at sentencing. That is a promise to ask, not a completed dismissal.
- The judge may consider dismissed or uncharged conduct when setting the sentence, and neither side's recommendation binds the court.
- The advisory federal range could be 46 to 57 months if the judge accepts the plea calculation and grants every contemplated reduction.
- The deal does not bind state prosecutors. A separate Nevada complaint charges Kromer with 31 felony theft counts, which remain allegations.
- The plea does not resolve contractors' civil claims.
The payment fights started first
The contractor disputes predate the admitted transfers. CommNV filed its civil complaint on November 17, 2023. It alleged that Uprise failed to supply promised construction funding for related NDOT infrastructure work along approximately 52 miles of Interstate 80, and that it had finished about half the work when Uprise ordered it to stop. It also alleged Uprise handled its invoicing, payments, and payroll. These remain allegations in a civil case.
Supplier Stuart C. Irby Company filed a separate federal action in October 2024. In July 2025 a magistrate judge allowed Irby to amend its complaint to pursue alter-ego allegations against Kromer and a related entity. The order let those claims proceed. It did not find anyone liable.
The timeline is the useful part: payment trouble was in court months before the admitted May to November 2024 transfers. Anyone working on a grant-funded build has reason to treat early payment friction as a signal, not an annoyance.
What crews, leads, and safety managers can take from this
This is a financial-crime case, not a safety citation, but the fallout lands on field operations. General practice, not specific to this project, suggests the following.
What to watch next
The next marker is the March 9, 2027, sentencing before U.S. District Judge Richard F. Boulware II. Watch for any accounting of recovered assets, the outcome of the Nevada charges, and rulings in the CommNV and Irby civil cases. Those will show whether restitution ever reaches the people who built, or were meant to build, the network.
