A hearing set for Monday in federal court for a Bowling Green businessman to plead guilty in a fraud case became a hearing to set a new trial date.

Clay Shelton, who is charged in U.S. District Court with 19 counts of securities fraud, six counts of money laundering and three counts of wire fraud in connection with a natural gas pipeline investment gone bad, had been scheduled to change his plea.

“Mr. Shelton indicated to me recently he wanted to plead guilty,” Shelton’s court-appointed attorney, Patrick Bouldin, said Monday. “He informed me this morning he has changed his mind and wants to proceed to trial.”

The case against Shelton had been scheduled to go to trial next week, but the Feb. 21 trial date had been vacated in anticipation of a guilty plea.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Bryan Calhoun said he believed four days would be needed to conduct the trial, which U.S. District Judge Greg Stivers set for April 18.

A federal grand jury indicted Shelton in 2015 on six counts of money laundering and three counts of wire fraud. A superseding indictment was returned last year that added the 19 counts of securities fraud.

Shelton owned and operated U.S. Energy Partners in Bowling Green.

He is accused in court documents of soliciting $1.37 million from multiple investors between March 2011 and September 2012 toward the eventual purchase of a Tennessee property referred to in the indictment as the Monterey natural gas pipeline.

Shelton represented to investors that the funds would be held in escrow as a down payment until he was able to close a loan of $10 million to $15 million from an unnamed financial institution to buy, develop and operate the pipeline, court records show.

“Shelton advised investors that the pipeline would produce revenues by charging gas well owners a transmission fee to transmit gas from their wells,” the indictment said. “Each investor was promised that they would receive their investment back as soon as the funding from the financial institution was completed.”

Federal authorities claim Shelton assured investors they would receive their investment back in 60 days, but $1 million he had received from investors was wired in 2011 to a person identified in the indictment as J.M.R., who purportedly used the majority of the money to invest in collateralized mortgage obligations, with other money being transferred to U.S. Energy Partners and a company Shelton created called Brakaw Energy Management.

Shelton is also alleged to have provided false information and omitted facts in his presentation of the Monterey project to would-be investors in order to secure the $1.37 million.