Companies Named Griftco and Money Money Money Scored Taxpayer Funding In Canada

The spigot is flowing in Ontario for small mining exploration companies, even those with eyebrow-raising names such as Griftco Corp. and Money Money Money.

Griftco, with a name that conjures suggestions of petty swindles, received more than $66,000 in taxpayer funding from the Ontario Junior Exploration Program, according to a report in The Globe and Mail.

Money Money Money — a private company that has offered little public information — received more than $27,000.

The Ontario funding is available to companies worth less than $100 million with mining exploration permits and the ability to pay all project costs. Griftco and Money Money Money were among about 100 companies that received funding last year.

The names are ironic in a nation that has suffered its share of mining industry frauds. Most famously, the Bre-X Minerals Ltd. scam in the late 1990s, cheated investors out of about $6 billion with a hoax about a massive gold discovery in Indonesia. The fraud was said to have inspired the 2016 movie Gold, staring Matthew McConaughey, although its producers denied the connection.

Ontario's Minister of Mines declined to comment to the Globe and Mail, and the newspaper could not reach the prospector behind Money Money Money.

Chris Irwin, a principal of Griftco, told the Globe and Mail his company's name has and innocent explanation. It was named after a friend, Alastair Griffin. The company started out as a shell, but purchased a uranium exploration company in 2008 and has options agreements with Latin American Minerals Inc. and Canoe Mining Ventures Corp.

Irwin, an attorney, said the Ontario government, or anybody at companies Griftco has dealt with, has ever raised concerns about the name.