Mark Blanchard is the real Keyser Soze...

This is the thing that started it all: my delve into the seedy underbelly of the Matrix Project and MSB global. [Also, if you haven't seen the movie Usual Suspects, pause here and come back when you've done yourself that favor. 8.5/10]

Marc with a C Maxell, City Manager, gave an interview with Front Porch News in August of 2025. Ostensibly, the purpose of the interview was to address public concerns over the data center project (which, sure, let's use Facebook for this instead of City Council meetings).

In answering the first question that centered MSB's qualifications, he made a few claims that should be easy enough to fact check:

• MSB is a new LLC. Mostly False or Irrelevant depending on how you look at it. MSB Global Services, LLC was organized in Delaware in 2009 and registered as a foreign entity in Florida in 2010 (foreign in this case means organized in another state, not international).

  

  
  

  MSB did create a subsidiary entity, SSDC1 LLC, in February of 2025 for the purposes of this project (I'll explain why this timing is problematic for Maxwell and Nate Smith in another post). I'd imagine practice of subsidiary formation for specific projects is common for developers. That doesn't seem to be an issue in itself. I'm just unsure why Maxwell would mention it considering the subsidiary didn't exist at the time he supposedly vetted MSB and the LOI was executed on December 19, 2024.

  

• Mark S. Blanchard was in upper management at AECOM. Likely False. There is a Mark Blanchard who is a VP at AECOM, but he's not a C-level executive or principal stakeholder. This may sound picky, but in a publicly-traded company worth $16 Billion with 51,000 employees, it's actually a huge distinction.

At least from an outsider's perspective, there is credible doubt as to whether this is the same Mark S. Blanchard with MSB Global Services. Blanchard's picture and bio are conspicuously absent from MSB Global's website, making it harder to confirm. I've run several AI queries which all concluded it's not the same person, noting different estimated ages and no overlapping corporate filings or public records. Further, I have yet to find evidence that anyone from the City has actually met Mark S. Blanchard, even though he signed the LOI on behalf of MSB. We'll see, though. I've sent a TPIA requesting a copy of due diligence information from the City.

• Blanchard "and his buddies" sold AECOM and bought Hill International. False. Like completely false. AECOM is an active, publicly-traded company and wasn't sold. The Mark Blanchard at AECOM did briefly leave for Hill International, but he was hired as an employee, not an owner.

  
  

  Hill International was not acquired by Mark and his buddies. It completed a strategic merger with GISI in December of 2022 (Blanchard didn't join until 2024). Also, at the time of the merger, Hill International was already a large company with 3,100 employees and 100 office locations worldwide. There was no "building it up" as Maxwell states in the interview.

  
  

  The final speck on this turd is that, unbeknownst to Maxwell apparently, Blanchard rejoined AECOM a couple of months prior to this interview. Great work, Marc...really.

  
  

• Hill International is ok with Blanchard working on Matrix Project on the side. wtf? An $18 Billion large-scale data project is a side project ? Even if it this was true or ok (an extraordinary assumption, I know), whatever agreement Blanchard had with Hill International is no longer valid since he doesn't work there anymore. His availability and capacity for the project would need to be reverified.

  
  

• Blanchard worked with Ganna Halvorsen on large scale wind and solar projects. Likely False. AI queries have returned zero evidence of this. No information from press releases, articles, announcements, corporate filings, or industry databases can yet corroborate the claim that either of them were involved in these type of projects - at any scale. You can, however, find info on her career as an oil painter.

It's clear Maxwell struck out on the first question. This raises some real concerns then about what actual due diligence the City did (or didn't do) on MSB. Hopefully, there's more we haven't seen that explains some of this, but I think it's more than reasonable to be skeptical at this point.

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Putting all of this aside for a second, though, our City Manager doesn't explain why this project wasn't put up for competitive bidding from other developers.  The lack of RFP and vetting of candidates on a project of this magnitude is gross negligence. It's highly irregular, unethical, and leaves the City exposed to unnecessary risks. The City RFP'd sewer materials for Thermo, but somehow it didn't seem fit to RFP the entire 18 billion dollar deal. Unreal.

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Fun fact: No one named Mark Blanchard is licensed as a Professional Engineer in the State of Texas - or Florida for that matter. It's kind of a big deal, I think, but I'll go in more detail about it in a later post.

Update: Removed reference to LOI vote on MSB project. See here.