Revealing Emails: The Juicy Fields Scandal Thickens


A South American consultant has shared an email that appears to confirm the accounts of former Juicy Fields CCO and now whistle-blower Zvezda Lauric about the way the company appeared to operate internally but also opens other questions about the quality of cannabis which may or may not have made its way into Germany and further whether any of the cannabis the company supposedly purchased or grew was ever sold


In an email obtained by me, sent by a consultant to the legitimate Uruguayan industry who wishes only to be identified as “Martin A.” details of how Juicy Fields approached the industry and its claims, are made fairly clear. Not to mention appear to back up the accounts of one of the whistle-blowers in the case.

According to a BusinessCann interview with Zvezda Lauric, “We visited the farms with which they worked – that was ordered by Erika Misela (who has recently deleted her LinkedIn profile), strategic partner and part of the board of directors, and Julianne Lewandowski, who was in human resources, and everything seemed fine.”

This email sent to the consultant from Ms. Misela reveals other interesting details too. See below.

De: Erika Misela <erika@juicyfields.io>
Enviado: lunes, 20 de abril de 2020 10:53

Dear Martin,

Following our conversation in LinkedIn, I send you our current request

JuicyGrow GmbH is interested in potential purchase of bulk volume of cannabis dry flower in the following quantities :

2, 000 kg – 5 , 000 kg of dry cannabis flower per month.
THC min required level must be at least : 12%
Expected price per gram : 0,8$

Besides buying flowers we also have a specific request which we would like to know if you can address. We intend to plant up to 10,000 clones within next 6 months, can we arrange that under your current capacities and does this fit in your production plan?

We would like to request a sample from your previous batch for research and purity test purposes if you don’t mind.

Concerning bulk quantity please advise when you expect your next batch to understand timeframe, duration and conditions of possible delivery.

Last, but not least, we are also looking into possibilities of further expansion and financing of reliable and profitable cannabis licensed producers. How scalable is your current greenhouse infrastructure if we talk about increasing harvest x3 for example?

We look towards long term and beneficial relations, let’s see what can be arranged.

Erika Misela

The Uruguayan German Connection: Non-GMP Flowers In German Market?

In what appears to be an even more intriguing connection, it also appears that Juicy Fields may have been involved (or at least intended to be seen as trying to be involved) in shipping non-GMP cannabis into Europe for recertification in the EU at a time when large amounts of non-GMP grown flower were being shipped from Uruguay to Portugal for GMP drying certification.

The question remains, however, whether they ever succeeded in doing so. “Martin A.” told me he walked away from the proposal because he never believed he would be paid for helping the company set up such relationships.

As Marijuana Business Daily reported in late 2021, “large exports quietly shipped from Uruguay to Portugal at the end of 2019 and earlier this year.”  According to MJBizDaily, the firms involved in these transactions were both Tilray and a licensed cultivator in Uruguay called Fotmer Life Sciences.

However, it clearly shows that Juicy Fields was aware of this potential path to market, even if controversial just from the GMP certification discussion. These amounts, however, were also much smaller than the amounts requested by Ms. Misela in the above email.

This again points to one of the ongoing questions about what Juicy Fields was actually up to. And while it may have bought such flowers, in whatever amounts, from somewhere, at some time, where might they have been sold? If ever.

10,000 Clones?

One of the more intriguing aspects of the Juicy Fields scam is what was actually grown or acquired, much less sold. It certainly appears that the company had stated plans to grow large amounts of cannabis – but as most of the large public Canadian cannabis companies found out long ago, growing (and or purchasing bulk cannabis) and then selling it through legitimate channels are two different things. Whether Juicy Fields ever succeeded in the cultivation or even acquisition of cannabis is another discussion.

Beyond this, the relationship with Juicy’s cannabis and the kinds of strains available on the German medical market has never made sense. One of the reasons the company seemed to be a scam even in 2021 when I first encountered them was that the cannabis they were purporting to “grow” did not line up with the strains legally available in the German market.

For example, according to the above email, Juicy Fields was looking for cannabis with at least a 12% THC content. But according to this list of flowers legally available in the German market, no legal distributor or producer was (or even is to this day) selling cannabis flower with a 12% THC content.

The plot certainly thickens as class action lawsuits begin to emerge across Europe.

margueritearnold

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