Dear Investigative Journalists,
We are writing to you because you are attending the global investigative journalism conference.
By way of introduction, I am the lead plaintiff in a series of private prosecutions and class actions due to a massive ponzi scheme in the global cannabis industry called Juicy Fields. The fraud itself was huge – kind of like the Wirecard of cannabis. Investors were lured mostly via online means, including direct, paid advertorial pitches on social media like Facebook, but also via cannabis conferences, and both the mainstream and cannabis focussed media. We were told that we could make up to a 100% return by investing with them as they “crowdgrew” legitimate medical cannabis and then sold it in the European, starting with the German medical market.
Of course everything went boom in July 2022. Luckily I was able to connect with a Swedish lawyer named Lars Olofsson. In the course of a year’s investigation and legal action, this is what we have achieved:
1. Ahead of the police in several countries, we have identified the masterminds behind the scam, thanks to several whistleblowers. This was Russian Mafia backed and funded, certainly linked to drug cartels in Central America and Mexico, probably linked to the FSB given the scale of the organization and the amount of money laundered, and we have the first connections to North Korea via a mixer called Tornado Cash that was used to anonymize the crypto taken from investors.
2. On the fiat side, we have identified over 200 banks, mostly in Germany, but also across Europe and the US, along with crypto exchanges, that completely failed in basic AML compliance. Thanks to whistleblowers within the organization, we can now map the money laundering trail and explain what was done. It is clear that this was a direct hit on western infrastructure – the banks. That makes this a terrorist act.
3. We have also identified facilitators, beyond the banks, mostly in the German, but also European and American cannabis industry who went along with the scam and benefitted, either by being paid directly, or promoted and legitimized via indirect means.
4. Launched the first class action lawsuit in Sweden, currently at the Supreme Court against Meta for allowing the scammers to buy advertising promoting the scam.
5. Created an amazing network of both former investors as well as consumer advocates who are supporting our own internal investigations. We also have several investigative journalists helping us, one of whom has been significantly retaliated against with criminal charges for coming forward about what she knows.
6. Even more terrifying, given the scale of the bank failures of standard background checks, we also believe that there is a chance that a core piece of software, created by a scam bank attached to Juicy Fields, delisted in Australia and then operational out of Cyprus, may be at the root cause of the banks’ failure. Not every bank failed. Just about 98% of them.
7. Thanks to the evidence provided by a second whistleblower, it appears that distinct cells were set up in multiple countries, with most people unaware, except the top scammers, of what was actually going on. This includes strong links to Russia, Belarus, Germany, Portugal, Switzerland, the UK, Lithuania, Latvia, and Columbia.
We are hoping to interest you in this story. We already have a book being written about the investigation, and everyone who gets close to this says it sounds like a movie (including so far two failed assassination attempts and orders) but what we really need is attention, and help. The only way to move the police into moving faster, and escalate this to Interpol is to apply a kind of pressure that only media investigations will create. As this is also politically intertwined, starting with the fact that many of the people in Berlin who went along with all of this are directly involved in the German cannabis legalization lobby with direct ties to government, we also need investigative help outside of Germany, on a global scale. It is clear that this was a terrorist attack on the banking infrastructure of the West, with a focus on Germany, in the twelve months leading up to the Ukraine War. We have every reason to believe that some of these laundered monies ended up helping to finance this effort.
Our intention is to clean up an industry we care about.
We hope that you might be interested in looking at our evidence, and maybe even writing a story about what has happened, both in your country, and beyond.
Please contact Lars Olofsson or myself directly, and we can assist you in showing you rather unbelievable evidence. We are also traveling to the conference itself if anyone wants to book a face to face meeting.
Wish you all the very best,
Daniel Johansson