Stephen Kromer recently reportedly resigned from his position at his family’s powerful and wide reaching company Kromer Investments after his own Reno-based company Uprise Fiber was paid $9.1 million in upfront state funds in 2023 to initiate a rural broadband project in Lovelock which has seen almost no movement, despite also involving huge sums of promised grant money from the U.S Department of Agriculture.
Kromer Investments is a property management company which gets many negative reviews from apartment complexes across Northern Nevada. Its offices are listed at the same address as Uprise Fiber at 1150 Matley Lane.
Stephen Kromer’s LinkedIn still lists him though as Vice President of Kromer Investments.
As part of the missing funds related to the Lovelock high-speed internet project, a lawsuit accuses Uprise Fiber of non payment to CommNV, another suit by a construction materials company is against both CommNV and Uprise, while the state of Nevada has reportedly issued a Cease and Desist order to another company involved in the project Rocky Mountain Telecom.
CommNV, which had an initial contractor’s license for the job, was created by the request of Uprise and shared staff, before experiencing a major fallout and communication breakdown with Uprise over this huge project.
Another contractor hired by Uprise NNE Construction says they were paid very little money even as they purchased several millions of dollars in materials and equipment to start work on the Pershing County project.
As the project was going nowhere, bank records show millions of dollars from Kromer’s personal Uprise account were steadily being withdrawn.
Meanwhile, the Reno attorney previously representing Uprise Louis Bubala has filed a motion to withdraw from pending cases.
Kromer has refused to speak to media. There are reports that Kromer also stepped down from Uprise late last year, amid urgent calls from many parties for a criminal investigation.