imagine being able to grow your own weed from home completely legit with just a few clicks you buy the plants online and a company cultivates them for you in real green houses when the Harvest is sold you get a cut of the profits the Cannabis Market is booming and the returns are huge massive even so you keep investing possibly spending your entire savings and then one day it's all gone that's exactly what happened to thousands of clients who invested in a firm called juicy fields and the story behind all this is just wild a flashy
revolutionary startup sponsoring International cannabis Expos a promo video starring a German rapper packed with hidden Clues a CEO with an Ivy League degree who barely speaks English a business address leading to a castle and a group of fake Aristocrats alleged criminals trying and failing to smoke joints through the slits in their guy Fox masks hundreds of millions in losses investigations all across Europe and a mysterious Mastermind secretly pulling the strings with a dream now we getting rich now I mean money money green straight out of M grown as the [ __ ] team moneyone the
story of Juicy Fields was originally covered in depth by brilliant apart investigative German podcast called cannabis Cowboys we spoke with one of the creators for this video and and also partly based our research on a great YouTube documentary by DP you'll find both links in the [Music] description cannabis is booming and not just on the black market as of March 2025 54 countries have legalized weed for medical or recreational use and that number keeps growing constantly estimates suggest that legal Canabis sales in Europe will soon have increased more than tfold in The Last 5 Years
2020 to 2025 despite being a young industry the market is already dominated by a few major players publicly traded companies worth billions of dollars but one startup is set on shaking things up in 2019 juicy grow officially launches in Berlin pitching an innovative business model crowd growing small investors chip in small Investments juicy Fields channels the funds grows the plants and distributes the profits getting started is easy you sign up pick a plant and watch it grow in your virtual Greenhouse the cheapest one is €50 a few months later the Harvest is sold for 68
to 83 yielding up to 66% in returns other plants can cost up to €2,000 but will of course generate higher profits down the line juicy fuels markets itself pretty aggressively they pay YouTubers to push the platform with affiliate links they sponsor major weed Expos like spannabis and Barcelona and they flaunt their success with flashy stunts Lamborghinis pompous parties lightly clad dancers and an obscene amount of bling this promo video takes things to another level passengers are handed airplane shaped joints and welcome on board by Captain blunt and his co-pilot Mary Jane next stop a massive
hot boox party up in the clouds another video shows a relatively successful German rapper endorsing juicy [Music] fields and then there's this guy here sniffing cannabis buds like a suier just moments earlier in the video he was playing Captain blunt he's the CEO of Juicy Fields Alan glance the face of the company his mission is to take down the Cannabis oligopoly legal weed for everyone the Robin Hood of ganja game on the company's website and his LinkedIn profile he presents himself as a Visionary entrepreneur but despite his supposed ivy league degree in interviews his English
is well pretty [ __ ] the the GU is incredible is working the perfect I'm not know it's about the how many you know like five star but the message still hits home a tight-knit community forms and to be fair apart from the CEO's sketchy resume juicy field seems pretty legit at first glance the website lists several renowned cannabis producers as partners they offer tours of Real green houses and webcam live feeds of the crops they actually keep their promises frequently Distributing major payouts in 2021 juicy Fields Harvest a staggering 72 tons of cannabis they
claimed their production costs are just a tenth of their competitors after only 2 years the platform already has half a million investors mostly from Germany but also from Austria Spain and Portugal juicy Fields is a massive success until it all comes crashing down now imagine you're running a real business legit and serious a good product a team that shows up every day loyal customers who count on you there are dozens of separate workflows managed through dozens of separate tools project management sales admin and HR emails invoices chats and deadlines it can be pretty overwhelming but
it doesn't have to be Udo is an all-in-one business management software that helps you manage all operations of your business on one inative platform they offer more than 45 fully integrated apps from CRM and website creation to accounting and inventory no more juggling 12 different tools everything works together seamlessly in one place hudo is flexible easy to use and skills as you grow your first app is free for life with unlimited hosting and support you can get access to the entire platform for just $19.9 per month scan this QR code or visit fern. dealo 35
to get started whether you're a team of two or 200 Udo helps you stay on top now back to Juicy fields on June 3rd 2022 Germany's Financial regulatory Authority bofin steps in it bans juicy fields from selling plants in the country juicy Fields ignores the order and is fined €1 million on July 11th some juicy Fields employees announce a strike shortly after the company's official telegram groups and social social media profiles vanish then on July 13th investors are suddenly unable to log into their Accounts at that moment juicy Fields is sitting on investments worth at
least €400 million no one knows what will happen with all that money the CEO has been fired just before the Fallout he drops a series of shirtless video messages swearing he's innocent I'm innocent I'm never take your money okay in my sight glance insists he wasn't really involved in the business he says the real masterminds were shadowy figures he only met a couple of times in person many employees claim to be just as clueless some speak of mysterious backers they never saw face to face meanwhile thousands of investors keep trying to log into their juicy
Fields accounts to know Avail at this point you might think you know what this is a classic scam the promised returns were just too good to be true tough luck too many red flags in the first place but assume no further this this is just the beginning on July 16th the juicy Fields website suddenly publishes the full names and contact details of several individuals people who had never been publicly linked to the company before the statement accuses them of plotting a hostile takeover it claims the customer logins had to be frozen to prevent that this
is Nicholas Martin a journalist at the German public International broadcaster de he has followed the case from the start and spent over a year investigating it he explains that juicy Fields split into two fractions the old juicy Fields made up of the platform's original Founders and the new juicy Fields a group of individuals based in Germany these new people are all connected to Juicy Fields AG a PLC registered in Switzerland so they seem to have some actual ties to the platform their official address is a castle and many of them boast long and complicated Noble
titles counts dukes and princes but according to Martin's research these people are only fake aristocrats their titles are not real the old juicy Fields operators zero in on a wannabe nobleman in particular they claim he stole all the funds and disappeared hinting that he's hiding out in the Bahamas to evade taxes they tell him to stop acting nasty and that they're getting irritated by his actions especially their guys in black hoods leaked documents suggest that juicy Field's main bank account was opened by one of those fake Aristocrats If This Were true the new guys from
Switzerland would have had Direct access to all the money and could run off with it at this point it really does look like juicy Fields was undermined by a criminal gang of fake German noblemen but the presumed Aristocrats fight back they claimed they never had access to the main bank account saying it was set up with a fake passport and a fake signature to prove their point they leak internal documents allegedly exposing the real masterminds behind juicy Fields the people running the website and the company itself according to these documents four Russian born men are
listed as the official owners of the German juicy grow gmbh the leak even includes passport copies for three of them the company's actual CEO appears to be a man named Victor Bitner a russian-born German who has stayed completely out of the spotlight until now but the main shareholder and the true Mastermind behind all of it is supposed to be a Russian named Paul barold it also turns out that juicy Fields wasn't just operating through one or two companies the companies in Germany gmbh LTD and Switzerland aglc appear to be linked to at least six other
European firms the company's legal imprint starts to get edited on an almost daily basis and Nobody Knows by whom then a newly appointed CEO from South Africa speaks up again there's no way to prove this guy is who he claims he is in November 2022 juicy Fields appears to have summoned a so-called anti-crisis committee all attendees are hiding behind V for Vendetta masks they keep blaming the new juicy Fields And even dangle the hopes of recovering lost Investments but the whole thing feels surreal one of the six mask figures tries to smoke a joint through
the slit in his mou mask and fail spectacularly it's total and utter chaos there's countless leaks and docks flying around there are CEOs Founders shareholders presidents and Consultants but who is really calling the shots it will soon turn out that all the chaos and confusion is not accidental it's most likely part of a meticulously orchestrated farce behind all these weird characters and blatant amateurs is someone who knows exactly what they're doing [Applause] October 2021 9 months before the login freeze Victor bner sits alone in Berlin on paper he is the CEO of the German Branch
juicy grow but he's not the one calling the shots the real power lies with a small group operating out of St Petersburg Bitner is little more than a frontman a puppet CEO facilitating access to the German Market he is also the one who set up the German bank accounts they're now full to the brim with millions of Investments but the world is in lockdown and traveling is nearly impossible bitner's bosses are stuck in distant Russia and Bitner starts wondering why not take the money and make a run for it he seizes the moment and Hogs
1.5 million for himself but it doesn't go unnoticed the puppeteers in Russia order their inhouse fixer to fix the situation Bitner is marked for liquidation but the fixer refuses Ops out and walks away about a year later he Blows the Whistle using the Alias ERS he reaches out to a Swedish lawyer who represents people of fed by the juicy field scam L olafson The Whistleblower Anders said that I don't want to be a part of this yes I could scam people I'm a criminal yes but I don't want to be involved in in killing people
Nicholas Martin and the creators of dper documentary have spoken to Anders as well we can't independently verify his claims but desper was able to prove that he was in fact part of the criminal Network in St Petersburg un says juicy Fields wasn't just a massive scam but a perfectly orchestrated puppet show with a brilliant Mastermind pulling the strings on a whole cast of disposable puppets the most visible of them was Alan glance Anders confirms that he never was some business genius with a degree from an elite University thank you guys for understand for understanding he
appears to have been a taxi operator in St Petersburg before a stint at Juicy Fields his real name isn't Allan it's Anatoli they bought him designer suits and a Rolex to make him look the part the entire juicy field success story was carefully staged the 72 ton harvest the 500,000 investors completely made up most of the bigname partners had no idea they were being featured on the website the Lamborghinis were rentals the tourist took people to random cannabis plantations with zero connections to Juicy fields and the profits from those crops the sales never actually happened
there was no Revenue stream whatsoever to pay out those Returns the truth is the juicy Fields was never even allowed to sell cannabis derived Financial products the Berlin trade register officially listed the company as a gardening supply business everything points to a classic Ponzi scheme new investors kept pumping in new cash and the old investors got their payouts from that same pool of money of course the whole system only works as long as it keeps growing but the masterminds knew it wouldn't last forever according to Anders they had a clever exit strategy a tangled web
of shell companies a bank account in Cypress and a few hand selected fall guys to take the hit I'm calling them uh useful idiots these are people who are just being paid to be seen and signing papers and so they they are not the Mastermind and says the entire power struggle was orchestrated too a big fat red herring to sew confusion and distract people from what was really happening the accusations against the fake aristocrats the leaked Russian passports probably all staged the passports are fake the names made up up the photos edited the only real
thing is this there really was a tight inner circle behind juicy fields and they were really led by one Mastermind his name just wasn't Paul Bears Anders describes him as a lowkey techsavvy guy an IT expert darket Enthusiast and dieh hard cannabis fan oh and apparently he's really into rap juicy Fields produced multiple promotional music videos and Martin's research suggests that the rap lyrics in them were actually written by Paul himself in one of the music videos you can see these Russian matosa dolls in the background under says Paul explicitly requested that but why as
a hidden Easter egg a subtle Flex why would he deliberately draw attention to his home country was he so sure that no one could touch him [Music] there and this is not the end of it whistleblower Anders claims the entire thing juicy Fields the pzi scheme the puppet show it was all just a front for an even bigger operation money [Music] laundry at the heart of Juicy Fields finances was a bank account in Cyprus a country long accused of turning a blind eye to Shady Financial dealings that account alone processed over half a billion EUR
since it was opened up the Cannabis Investments might have been the perfect cover for an old-fashioned money laundering scheme the Dirty Money flows into illegal business Blends it into its Revenue stream and comes out clean on the other end in other words the Ponzi scheme and the money laundering machine could have been a perfect match Anders claims the masterminds had Direct ties to a Colombian drug cartel Was Juicy Fields up front to wash cartel money Martin and his team spoke to the German prosecutor's office according to them juicy Fields was linked to organized crime in
Russia and St Petersburg does indeed seem to be the Hub the city is Infamous for being a stronghold of the Russian mob experts believe an operation of this scale could only go down if it's somehow sanctioned by the Kremlin Victor Bitner is believed to be connected to Russia's FSB intelligence service but this is where the trail went cold for a while the picture got too blurry and too speculative fast forward a couple of years finally a breakthrough investigative reporters managed to identify the Mastermind at the top a Russian named Sergey ban an international research Network
and other outlets found that he was the one operating under fake names like Paul Boltz his Network allegedly scanned 645 million EUR from investors and funneled the money through a complex web of shell companies after nearly 2 years on the run ban was finally arrested in the Dominican Republic and extradited to Spain in August 2024 there he now faces charges of fraud moneya laundering and running a criminal organization Ban's father was a Russian nuclear scientist with political and Military connections that adds weight to the long-standing suspicions that juicy Fields may have been a joint operation
between the Russian mob and the FSB designed to funnel Western money into shadowy activities potentially even the war in Ukraine then there's the alleged whistleblower Anders turns out his real name is eor kekin and he wasn't just some low-level Insider he was directly involved in the juicy Fields operation but in a bizarre twist kin later revoked all of his statements apparently someone tried to kill him twice in one in in his car was blown up shortly after he returned to Russia the suspects were driving a car registered to Ban's father someone must have wanted him
permanently silenced meanwhile Lars olon the Swedish lawyer who represented juicy Fields victims has come under scrutiny himself reports now suggest he may have been playing both sides working with both the scams victims and some of its key perpetrators Ban's network was ultimately dismantled in April 2024 law enforcement across 11 countries coordinated a massive Crackdown nine arrests 38 raids and over 400 officers deployed all targeting other key players behind the scheme and yet despite all this thousands of victims are still waiting for their money the juicy field Scandal is a textbook case of how reality and
deception can blur in massive Financial frauds what's real what's fake even now it's hard to say but one thing is clear if something sounds too good to be true it usually is
