DEAR POT LAWYER,
Tell me about the weed fraud case!
WEED, FELONS, forgeries, lawsuits, California swindlers, and duped Canadian backers—the weed fraud case had it all.
The culprits in this story are a Northeast Portland dispensary called Cannacea, its owner Tisha Siler, a California group called Green Rush Consulting, and, per the Oregonian, a Green Rush employee who did hard time for wire fraud. Siler, Cannacea, and Green Rush were busted last month for especially bad behavior.
In November 2014, Green Rush helped Cannacea and Siler with a private placement memorandum (PPM) for potential Cannacea investors. A PPM is an intense legal document provided to would-be investors by a business selling stock or other securities. The Green Rush document was a bright red flag: Even most lawyers are unqualified, and therefore unwilling, to draft a PPM. Green Rush Consulting, however, seemed pretty comfortable with it.
This particular PPM contained a few outlandish lies, including that Oregon regulators preselected Siler to open pot dispensaries in Oregon, and pre-approved six new business locations. Investors were also shown a forged letter repeating these and other whoppers. Among the investors is a naïve Canadian man who claims he ponied up $168,000. (That particular fellow is more likely to show up on a South Park episode than recover his cash.)