Some 500,000 users or investors participated in German-based company Juicy Fields, which used an e-growing platform to sell medicinal cannabis plants online. The plants were then planted and harvested, with sales from the cannabis products invested back into the company.
The lucrative system enticed many to invest, with around 4,000 Luxembourgers thought to have joined the platform, although the actual number could be much higher.
But now, Juicy Fields has disappeared. The site purports to have been hacked, although there are also rumours of staff strikes. Whatever the real reason, investors are no longer able to log on to the site and cannot access their money. Queries go unanswered, and to date there has been no official explanation behind the company’s disappearance, nor details on the financial side.
Online, people are calling it an “exit scam” - a scam in which a customer pays a business in advance, before the company disappears with the money without fulfilling the orders. The method is particularly common on the so-called dark web, where money is collected before operators simply take down the website.
Among the victims of the “Juicy Fields” scam are also a number of Luxembourgers. There is no precise figure as yet, but 260 victims have already filed a complaint or have indicated they will do so. Currently, the victims concerned have gathered to instigate a collective action, without overloading the police.
One of the victims is Mike, who was one of the first Luxembourgers to have invested and he has widely disseminated the platform in the Grand Duchy through marketing. He estimates that some 4,000 Luxembourgers have invested in Juicy Fields through him. He now feels guilty and has vowed to collect data required in order to find those concerned, while maintaining contact with the police.
Mike is no stranger to online investments, subjecting the companies involved to careful checks prior to parting with his money. In this instance, he says both he and his friends had investigated Juicy Fields to check they were correctly registered. He was first made aware of Juicy Fields by a friend who had visited the plantations in Portugal, documenting his meetings with the company manager. This encouraged Mike to invest, certain that the company existed and was secure.
His first purchase was a 50-euro plant. After 108 days, he had earned between 68 and 83 euros, recouping a profit of between 18 and 33 euros. Mike then went on to buy other plants and make new profits, only investing the money earned from his existing plants. After some time, he began to do marketing work for Juicy Fields, sharing the platform on social media and encouraging others to join, for which he earned additional money. In total, he estimates his earnings from his investments to be around 70,000 euros - although it is now unlikely he will ever see that money again.
As part of Mike’s initial research into the company, he had established contact with Juicy Fields’ computer technician in the early days, which meant he had access to information a couple of days before it became public. This offered him insight behind the scenes at the company, during which he noticed that Juicy Fields’ director changed every year. Mike describes this as his first indicator that something was amiss.
As time passed, Mike became more sceptical. The e-growing platform ran into trouble with the authorities, namely Germany’s Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin). Plant prices were always set at 50 euros, regardless of their origin or where they were planted, meaning Juicy Fields had either forgotten or ignored the relevant VAT.
BaFin lodged a complaint and the decision was taken that people with German nationality could no longer register with Juicy Fields. But as BaFin’s investigations continued, it was made public that nothing was really clear at Juicy Fields, in turn leading to more scepticism among users. At that stage, however, it was not clear how much money could be lost.
All of a sudden, no more money came, transfers were no longer possible and users could not access their accounts. The computer technician who managed the site was suddenly fired, with questions piling up without answers.
“We just had to accept that we had lost our money,” says Mike. He adds he no longer knows who to trust at Juicy Fields. Newsletters say one thing, the website says another, and more and more rumours are developing online.
The fact is that a number of Luxembourgers have been affected by the company’s disappearance, leading to the collective action against Juicy Fields. The Grand Ducal police has already launched an investigation, while a Facebook group has been created to offer support for Luxembourgers embroiled in the situation.
Mike has taken it upon himself to contact those affected with a view to collecting data for a document he will later hand over to police. As it stands, 260 investors have come forward to register a complaint. The financial damage is estimated to be high - 101 affected investors alone have lost around 1.6 million euros already.
