The ongoing cannabis-related Ponzi scam, which appears, despite multiple high-profile departures to be running smoothly and has even raised the price of initial “investments” to sixty, from fifty euros “a plant,” has also just made several, potentially fatal mistakes
At this point, those who are watching the Juicy Fields scam continue to play out, are doing so for reasons that range from being entertained by an ongoing soap opera meets true crime drama with a cannabis twist, to rooting for some serious change to come to both the world of cannabis, and beyond that, the very murky, often terrifying world of cybercrime.
It has certainly been an interesting time for the class action litigation team led by Swedish lawyer Lars Olofsson.
Rerouting Juicy Fields DAO Investor Funds to Lars Olofsson
Here is the really shocking thing. The scam is still active and actively attracting new investors. On Friday, April 7th, Olofsson learned that programmers working on the supposed “emergency management team” of the reconstituted fraud, the Juicy Fields DAO, had posted his bank account and routing details from his corporate website onto theirs. As a result, he found, to his horror, that more than a few “investors” had bought plants subsequently, the funds for which ended up in his bank account.
Obviously, he has been in touch with his bank, and this is unlikely to happen again. Hopefully, any investor, or potential investor in the ongoing fraud will (if not should) be given cause to pause. This is not the action of a legitimate group, of any kind, just in case there was any doubt at this point.
However, the fact that the “decentralized scammers” would be brazen, or stupid enough, to do this should make those who have been sitting on the fence so far realize that this is far from “casual” much less even “like” other cannabis swindles to date. Anywhere.
Evidence of Repeat Scams by Same Con Artists
Even more intriguing is that this caper occurred shortly after Olofsson, working with a whistle-blower known as “Anders,” revealed the real names of the Juicy Fields brain trust as well as linked them with a still (unbelievably) ongoing fraud called Recyclix that, despite jail time for several linked to the crime, is still operational and even linked to a working phone number in Poland.
Recyclix bears a great deal of similarity to Juicy Fields, even being in another kind of “green” industry.
It is tragic that scammers appear to be the only ones making real money on promoting such ideas, but the reality is that scammers succeed by co-opting the art of the possible into people’s passions, hopes, and dreams.
Scammed Up with No Place to Go?
Retaliatory or boastful gestures to prove that the perps are still scamming aside, hopefully, the release of these names will lead to the interdiction of at least some of them, even though Olofsson has never stated that he is interested in taking action against them. That is the role of the authorities in several countries at this point.
The alleged Misela father and daughter crime duo apparently seem to have German roots. Beyond this, it is also clear that everyone outside of this circle within the company post exit scam, from Viktor Bitner, to Alan Glanse, was clearly brought in (if not bought off) to play a role, whether they liked it or not. That they could have been, and almost certainly were aware of some of the larger eyesores and problems is beyond doubt. This is one of the many reasons that the apparently sensationalistic focus by several German media entities on the fake member of the aristocracy who “stole” the company is a complete sideshow.
There was nothing to “steal.” Certainly, no legitimate business.
However, much like the proverbial Hotel California, it’s apparently not so easy to just “check out.” The credibility of those denials is not proving as bulletproof as perhaps it was hoped, starting with the fact that Olofsson is not going to just melt away. That was clear just in his social media posts this weekend.
Beyond this, however, it is increasingly obvious that those who got sucked in downstream of the original scammers, certainly on the professional cannabis or financial compliance side, and certainly those who were paid (rather than just signing cooperation documents) knowingly participated in a scam they were paid to participate in. Further, as may become increasingly obvious, those who were defrauded into signing those documents because of the fraudulent actions of paid Juicy Fields facilitators have a legal case against those who set them up in the first place.
There is zero way, for example, that even the most cleverly lawyered document could have hidden the fact that there were NO sales in Europe, a fact which could have been easily checked and verified (and in fact was required for their onboarding in the first place as a professional standard). Even if these people claim that they “did not know,” downstream association with a crime of this nature does not discriminate. It is called negligence. In Germany, as in other European countries, this can be prosecuted under a legal eagle term called “torts” – meaning “damages” whether intentional or not.
Of course, as a corollary, there is unambiguous evidence that just because they have scrubbed social media accounts and gone anonymous, it does not mean that the original instigators are not still involved. Indeed, the retaliatory, if not adolescent attempt to reroute investor funds to Olofsson indicates that they very well might be, particularly after he revealed their names to a wide and growing audience, internationally.
Alert Interpol.
