The victims would be very numerous, including in France. More than a thousand Spaniards have filed a complaint against the company JuicyFields which proposed to invest in therapeutic cannabis. This collective complaint relates to alleged acts of “fraud”, “embezzlement” and “money laundering”, indicated Norberto Martinez, lawyer for the Martínez-Blanco firm, at the origin of this procedure.
Bringing together nearly 1,200 investors, it was filed over the weekend with the investigating judges of the National Audience, a Spanish court specializing in complex cases, confirmed spokesperson for this institution.
Promise of high profitability
This would be the first collective complaint at this stage against JuicyFields, a company based in the Netherlands which offered to buy cannabis plants for medical use online, promising investors a very high return. The promised return on investment was “between 29% and 66%”, explains the Martínez-Blanco firm, which evokes in a press release a possible “pyramid of Ponzi”, a scam consisting in remunerating existing investors with the funds provided by the new entrants.
In fact, according to several testimonies collected by AFP, investors initially made substantial gains. But from July 11, the possibilities of withdrawing money were blocked and the accounts gradually closed. “The alarm was raised on July 13, when the JuicyFields website stopped working,” explains the Martínez-Blanco firm, for which the drop in the number of new investors, but also the fall in the cryptocurrency market, would have led to the “bankruptcy” of the company.
A group complaint soon filed in France?
According to the firm’s estimates, JuicyFields would have caused nearly 4,500 victims in Spain, with “average losses of 6,500 euros”. These could go in some cases up to 200,000 euros. Many other investors would have been victims of this company elsewhere in Europe.
In France, a group complaint must also be filed between the end of September and the beginning of October, indicated lawyer Arnaud Delomel, who affirms that several hundred people have contacted him to join this collective action. On a Telegram group of more than 1,600 people and on which French investors are organizing to retaliate, several of them also claim to have filed a complaint individually.