Barcelona“We don’t know whether to report, whether not, whether to accept the group demand – paying and probably without receiving a single euro – etc. I don’t see it at all clearly. I have the feeling that many are trying to take advantage of our situation” . “I have lost 27,000 euros of mine. 54,000 in total, if you count the reinvestments. I have lost faith in recovering not a cent, but it must be tried.” “My partner and I applied for a loan to put money into JuicyFields. Now we’ve lost over 90,000 euros. I’m screwed.”
These are just some of the thousands of complaints that since mid-July have been running through the Telegram groups created by users affected by the collapse of the JuicyFields platform, considered the latest pyramid scheme for investments in digital legal cannabis plantations. Although it sounds like a business from another planet, what the platform did was easy: it promised returns of up to 66% in three months in exchange for making a small investment on its platform. The investor then became a “cannabis grower without having to touch a single plant”. They named it after crowdgrowingthe result of putting English words together crowdfunding (crowdfunding) i growing (grow or plant).
What seemed like the investment of the century, and which promised to invest in legal cannabis crops without having to touch a single plant, has turned out to be a fraud. The company’s owners, Holland-based JuicyFields, have disappeared with hundreds of millions of dollars that investors had in the platform. In fact, the total figure for the losses remains to be confirmed: some lawyers say they are 500 million, others increase the figure to 9,000 million.
In total, there are more than half a million affected people whose accounts have been frozen, and between 40,000 and 50,000 are Spanish, the country most affected, according to data from the National Platform for Affected Persons by JuicyFields.
Faced with the situation, hundreds of those affected have filed collective complaints, and Telegram groups – accustomed to unregulated online investments, such as cryptocurrencies – are coming up with new ways to claim the money.
The perfect business
“It was a round business,” explains one of those affected. “You could make a small investment, of only 50 euros, and get more than 80 in just three months; or make a larger initial investment, of 2,000 euros, with even higher returns,” details this user. Each investment represented a medical marijuana plant, of varying quality: when it had sprouted, the platform notified the user that he could sell the product and thus obtain this return. Or reinvest it in another plant, which most users did.
But not everything could be so idyllic. When the platform started to grow, several investors and the media began to warn of a possible scam. From the start, there were already some details that did not make a good thorn. First: Anyone over the age of 21 could create a user and link it to their bank or cryptocurrency wallet, thus becoming a digital farmer. The platform did not require ID or any type of legal or identity document. And second: astronomical returns.
Official bodies, such as the Spanish National Securities Market Commission or the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority, also included JuicyFields in the list of possible fraudulent organizations. In fact, in a report on the platform published in Eldiario.es, lawyer Luis Garvía already warned that users “don’t have any kind of legal protection in case the company disappears”. Even the Dutch authorities, where JuicyFields was originally registered, warned that it was a possible scam, as although it was properly registered, it had no license to provide financial services.
The beginning of the end was on July 11, when users received an email warning that “due to differences between staff and management” workers were going on strike. Users’ accounts were then frozen under the promise that it would only be for a couple of days. After three days, the resignation of the company’s CEO, Willem van der Merwe, after only two months in office, was announced. His predecessor, Alan Glanse, stated via his networks that the company had fired him a few months ago and that he has not “taken anyone’s money”.
The rest of the managers have been disappearing. The visible face, Zvezda Lauric, who introduced herself as the company’s director of communications, publicly explained that the company’s networks had been hackades and that they were waiting to release the funds; she later announced that the new CEO had resigned and she herself disassociated herself from the company. The company’s workers sent a letter to investors explaining that since June they had stopped getting paid and that they could not “understand that it was all a lie”.
The last statement from the company dates from July 19, but this time “it looked like a joke”, explains an investor. The statement in question, under the subject “Volunteers Needed” and still available on the official website, reads: “Use the following email addresses to submit your story, voice what you have say, send a guarantee for an emergency refund or go through a long road of endless conversations with our lawyers. […] Likewise, the boys in black hoods can send their proposals indicating the quantities of hashish or flowers they can sell monthly to mafia@juicyholdings.com. After all, it’s good to be part of a big Italian-Russian-Colombian family.”
All indications are that investors will not get all of their money back.