Many South African cannabis investors had their fingers burnt by Juicyfields meteoric rise as a cannabis crowd-funding platform and its spectacular crash in 2022. After all it had sponsored the Cannabis Expo, its last CEO was South African Willem van der Merwe and it promised to invest big time in the local industry.

JuicyFields had promised huge returns to those willing to invest in medical cannabis through its website. Almost 200,000 people did so and became victims of the biggest cannabis scam yet in which an estimated US$ 678 million disappeared through a series of secretive transactions.

Juicyfields’ collapse prompted a series of other scams with operators offering fleeced investors the chance to get some of their money back on further payments. 

In April 2024, hundreds of police officers raided homes and offices in 11 countries and arrested several individuals linked to JuicyFields, which was initially based in Berlin. Their investigations have found close ties between the Juicyfields masterminds and the Russian state as Radio DW explains below.

The one honest man who appeared to stand up for the aggrieved investors was Swedish lawyer Lars Olofsson (pictured above), who launched a class action in 2022 against those suspected of perpetrating the scam. He got hundreds of investors to pay him to represent them, but now it appears he has his own dark secrets and has done jail time for economic crimes.

The ‘Cannabis Cowboys’, a network of investigative journalists in several European countries, has been closely following the Juicyfields debacle and many of their findings were published in December 2024 through the following outlets, Danish public broadcaster DR, Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladed, Austrian newspaper Der Standard, and in Germany by the magazine Der Spiegel, online publication Correctiv.org, and public TV station ZDF. The story has been largely over-looked by the English speaking media.

This report on the Cannabis Cowboy findings from DW News. in December 2024.

New findings raise more questions in JuicyFields case

Journalist Kevin Shakir from DR, for example, managed to get in touch with the man suspected to be the mastermind behind JuicyFields. Sergej B., a Russian national, was arrested in April 2024 in the Dominican Republic and is set to be tried later in Spain.

According to Shakir's research, a network surrounding Sergej B. had set up two other major fraud cases before JuicyFields. One involved waste recycling, the other a cryptocurrency. Each time, a lot of people lost a lot of money. Shakir tells the story of Sergej B. in "The Phantom from Russia", a five-part podcast series in Danish.

"When you're able to launch such big projects with that much marketing, when you're able to disappear again and again from alleged scams, when you're able to move cryptocurrency in big amounts and sophisticated ways," Shakir told DW. "The question remains: is this guy [Sergej B.] acting alone or is he part of something bigger than himself?

Was the Russian state involved?

Gabriela Keller from the investigative online publication correctiv.org was intrigued by the same question. Many experts on Russia say scams on the scale of JuicyFields require political protection.

Keller said the investigation did not provide 100% proof that the Russian state was involved. But some of her findings suggest there is at least a connection.

For example, a Russian member of JuicyFields' inner circle, Vitaly M., was registered in Berlin under the same address as the official cultural embassy of the Russian state, an institution called the Russian House of Science and Culture.

"The fact that he was registered at the Russian House could indicate that he had helpers there," Keller told DW. "Because you either need a rental contract or a confirmation by the landlord when you register your address at the registration office."

The Russian House denied they had anything to do with Vitaly M. and said he must have forged papers or given false information at the residency registration office.

Back in April, Vitaly M. escaped arrest. He now lives in Russia, where he seems to run a company that manufactures drones, Keller told DW. "The website currently displays the coat of arms of the Russian Ministry of Defense, along with the slogan: 'Victory will be ours'." Keller's full report can be found here (in German).

A Swedish lawyer and his claims

Two investigative reporters at Svenska Dagbladet focused their investigation on a man who was never a member of JuicyFields, but whose name is closely linked to the case: Lars Olofsson, a Swedish lawyer.

After JuicyFields folded in the summer of 2022 and thousands of investors were left stranded, Olofsson announced that he could help victims get their money back.

Instead of waiting for the scammers behind JuicyFields to be convicted, Olofsson announced he would file class action lawsuits against all those who made the scam possible, including Facebook, where the company advertised, and banks that passed on investors' money to JuicyFields.

To become part of the class action suits, defrauded investors had to pay a fee to Olofsson. Initially, it was €100, later 150. Several thousand people signed up.

Swedish lawyer Lars Olofsson was interviewed for DW's Cannabis Cowboys podcastImage: DW

Frida Svensson and Erik Wisterberg have put Lars Olofsson under the microscope — with surprising results. They tell his story in a four-part podcast called "The Savior". The podcast is in Swedish and an online article about their findings is available in English.

"[Olofsson] markets himself as a super lawyer with 15 years of experience investigating international fraud and scams. He claims he's a former Navy Seal and that he worked in the Swedish military intelligence service," Wisterberg told DW. "But nothing of this is true."

"His real background involves serving time in prison for economic crimes. It also involves this year being put on trial again — which his clients didn't know about at all," Wisterberg added.

When will prosecutors file charges?

The Swedish journalists said they could prove their allegations with documents and that they had confronted Olofsson with their findings.

DW also reached out to Olofsson and asked him for comment. He replied but did not address any of the topics he was asked about. Instead, he wrote that journalists could not be trusted and said he got many new clients after "The Savior" podcast launched in Sweden.

In the podcast, Olofsson is portrayed as a soldier of fortune hoping to profit from a scam. He raked in considerable sums in sign-up fees from defrauded investors, while the legal proceedings he initiated concerning JuicyFields were rejected by Swedish courts.

Public prosecutors in Berlin, Madrid and elsewhere are currently evaluating the material confiscated during the raids in April 2024. They are yet to file charges.

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