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Should you “Secure $1 Shares in This Private Vegas Cannabis Deal?”

What's the pre-IPO story about a "$2 Billion Cannabis Deal About to Go Down on the Las Vegas Strip" being teased by Cannabis Venture Syndicate?

By Travis Johnson, Stock Gumshoe, September 23, 2020


This ad has generated some discussion and a few questions on the site, so I thought I’d help to go through it for you and check on the company being teased — even though it’s not actually a publicly traded stock at the moment. I first covered this ad on June 3, 2020, and it was an odd story back then… but it has actually changed substantially in the past few months (though the Cannabis Venture Syndicate ad hasn’t), and we’re getting lots of questions about a big new push for subscriptions for this one, promising a last chance here to get in on the “most valuable property on earth” before its developed, so I’ve gone through and updated this story to incorporate those new developments and the changing story the company is peddling.

The ad is from the National Institute of Cannabis Investors, which is a Money Map Press service focused on marijuana stocks… and what they’re selling is their “higher end” service that they call Cannabis Venture Syndicate, which seems to deal largely with microcaps or private placements. It’s a huge commitment to an extremely risky kind of investing (the subscription is $1,950/yr, nonrefundable), so I thought I’d walk through it for you and hopefully provide a little context before you throw money at the subscription or the investments they’re promoting. Then if you want to subscribe or invest, by all means, it’s your money — but don’t punch in your credit card number just to learn about a “secret” idea.

And yes, as with all ads, this one sounds tantalizing… it’s about a company that wants to build a huge cannabis superstore/wellness center facility for marijuana sales and experiences near the Las Vegas Convention Center. Here’s a taste from the order form to give you the summary:

“Secure $1 Shares in This Private Vegas Cannabis Deal

“And Potentially Turn a Ground-Floor Stake into a $5.5 Million Windfall…

Michael Robinson here. I want to thank you for joining me and John today to hear about the unique opportunity opening up in Las Vegas….

“… this company has three critical contracts locked and loaded. Once they put pen to paper, itโ€™s off to the races.

“Deal #1 provides the opportunity to multiply revenue six times over โ€“ to $25 million โ€“ almost overnight.
“When Deal #2 closes, production capacity will triple almost instantly, putting another $35 million in reach.
“Deal #3 โ€“ the planned cannabis resort on the Strip with seven million customers on its doorstep โ€“ sets this firm up to be the number-one player in Vegas. Once it gets the green light, total revenue could hit $165 million.”

So that’s what’s getting everyone hot and bothered about the “get rich” opportunity… but what are they actually talking about?

Well, it is a private placement — which means it’s a company selling shares in itself, but directly to investors rather than through an exchange (like the Toronto Stock Exchange or the NYSE). And this newsletter/service is essentially setting itself up as a “matchmaker” to connect investors to the company — I don’t know if NICI has a formal marketing relationship with the company or are directly involved, or if they’re just reviewing the offering materials and passing them along to subscribers with a recommendation, but they’re definitely using that “private company” and “pre-IPO” allure to entice subscribers.

And it’s a company that apparently has dispensaries in place, and some deals to expand, but the real focus of the promotion here is that they’re going to build a huge marijuana facility on the Las Vegas Strip…

“This 70,000-Square-Foot Resort Should Have a Virtual Monopoly on the Strip.

“In fact, according to the companyโ€ฆ

“This will be the only place to get, experience, or enjoy cannabis on the Strip for years โ€“ even decades โ€“ to come.

“And right here, right nowโ€ฆ

“You Can Own a Piece of This Cannabis Resort Before Itโ€™s Developed!”

With some big projections for the sales numbers that might be generated:

“In fact, the Vegas cannabis market could hit $770 million this year alone.

“By 2021, itโ€™s expected to reach $840 million.

“Soon after, $1.6 billion a year.

“And up to $100 million of those sales could happen at this location.

“Making this, perhaps, the largest retail cannabis outlet in the world.”

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I’d say that it’s not technically “on the Strip,” but the location they pitch is across the street from the new expansion wing of the Las Vegas Convention Center, so it’s more or less between the Strip (Las Vegas Boulevard) and the Convention Center, you’d have to walk about half a mile before you were “on the Strip,” near the downtown end between Circus Circus and Wynn.

Casinos are not allowed to have anything to do with the cannabis business in Las Vegas, the marijuana dispensaries are not even allowed to make deliveries to casino hotels, so that might be about as close as a big dispensary could get to the center of the action. The biggest existing dispensary in Las Vegas is Planet 13, which has its “superstore” location on the other side of the strip, fairly nearby (about the same distance away — half a a mile off the Strip in the other direction, near the Trump International Hotel and the Fashion Show mall).

And they make some hugely bold predictions about the company…

“This Little Company Is Set to Take Over the Entire Cannabis Market in Nevada Before It Goes Public.

“Today, we value this company at about $26 million.

“But soon after this company goes public, I expect the market cap to go up to $2.4 billion.”

And while there’s some strain to the logic here, the assertion that they’re going to “take over the cannabis market” but, at the same time, that the optimistic projection from Michael Robinson is that they’ll account for only 6% of the marijuana sales in Las Vegas in a few years ($100 million out of 2025’s projected $1.6 billion), at least the company really exists and already has revenues — they’re apparently supplying “high end” product to other dispensaries in Las Vegas…

“… nearly three out of four dispensaries in Vegas already carry this companyโ€™s products.

“One store sells over 6,000 boxes of edibles every month. They can barely keep them in stock.”

And apparently it’s very high quality stuff…

“… the average grower in Nevada loses nearly one-third of their crop due to failed tests.

“But this companyโ€™s lab can test down to the microgram level….

“And theyโ€™ve never failed a test. Not one time.

“So they donโ€™t have to dump millions of dollars of cannabis in the trash.”

And their edibles are extra tasty…

“The Mastermind Behind Their Popular Edibles Is Actually a Wolfgang Puck Protรฉgรฉ.

“Sheโ€™s taken her best recipes to make amazing cannabis-infused brownies, gummies, caramels, and rice treats.”

So who is Michael Robinson pitching here? This is the marijuana cultivator and product developer Qualcan, which is selling shares as Mystic Holdings in an Offering Circular that got finalized with the SEC on April 16 (the NICI ad is being recirculated now, but doesn’t seem to have changed since I posted the first version of this article… and is still dated “June 2020”).

So yes, this is a Reg A+ offering, that’s the provision in the JOBS Act a few years back that allows small companies to raise money (up to $50 million, which is what Qualcan is seeking) directly from private investors who are not accredited (“accredited” just means “you can really afford to lose the money” — to oversimplify, you have to have a net worth of at least $1 million outside your primary residence or earn at least $200K a year).

And yes, the company does describe themselves as having a multi-part strategy to expanding the business — they started by building up the Qualcan edibles line of products that are sold through other dispensaries, and over the past year they have made agreements to acquire two dispensaries and their associated licenses from Medifarm/Terra Tech, one in Reno and one in Las Vegas — the two taken together had revenues in 2018 of about $11 million and lost a little bit of money (Reno had a small profit, Las Vegas a larger loss). Neither deal has closed yet still, I don’t think, but they’re not particularly big deals anyway — there are conditions to the sale being completed, so just be mindful that they may not own those dispensaries as of the latest filing or, it appears, the most recent update with the SEC that extended the fundraising deadline.

And this is what they said about their planned dispensary near the Convention Center in one of their initial filings for this private placement offering with the SEC (on January 3, 2020):

Planned Convention Center Drive Dispensary

“We are in the planning stages of building beginning in 2021 and opening in 2022 our flagship retail ‘mega-dispensary’ across the street from the Las Vegas Convention Center. It is estimated that 42 million visitors pass through the Convention Center each year. This planned 70,000 square feet retail project would encompass a two-story dispensary and a multi-level, state-of-the-art parking structure. The facility would include an advanced logistics system that fully utilizes the multi-level floor plan for process isolation and is intended to accommodate the safety of both consumers and dispensary staff. The layout of this facility is designed to promote the control of costs through the minimization of human capital necessary to effectively run each department and use the created bonus headroom to provide consumers with a unique shopping experience and entertainment. This facility would utilize the multi-level design to completely isolate the inventory/cash vault from the day-to-day dispensary operations. This is to ensure that the consumer-facing experience is optimized so that product display, customer interaction, pop-up events and education are the focus. The amount of available surplus square footage also would create an opportunity for hosting a consumption lounge should this become a possibility in the future. This retail space is being designed to provide us the ability to facilitate events, classes and entertainment, giving customers an additional reason to return to the store. While the details for this facility and location were submitted for state approval as part of our 2018 retail license application, the location is still conditioned on state and local licensing approvals.”

And then the SEC responded, on January 22, with a comment about that…

“Please revise to explain where you are in the planning stages for the Convention Center Drive Dispensary. In particular, revise to indicate whether you own or lease the land for the dispensary and discuss the funding needed to build a mega-dispensary. To the extent that you do not have funding or agreements in place to build such facility, please also explain to us why you believe it is appropriate to highlight plans for this dispensary in the Offering Summary.”

Which led to the next update of the offering circular, on February 10, including no mention of the Convention Center Drive Dispensary at all.

There’s more than one way to interpret that — maybe they just didn’t want to deal with changing the language further and thought investors wouldn’t care, maybe they don’t want to put in writing just where they are in terms of leases or permitting or financing for that potential project, or maybe they’re dropping the idea of that superstore dispensary entirely…. I don’t know.

My guess would have been door number two, that they didn’t want to disclose just how early-stage that project is or the extent of the financing they’d require to build it, but, interestingly, in their investor pitch deck back in August of 2019 (yes, they’ve been trying to sell their story for a long time), they highlighted that Convention Center “Concept” and a second large dispensary they were “negotiating to acquire” in Las Vegas… though they didn’t call them “concepts.” The actual text back in 2019 was:

“Qualcan is building a 70,000 sq.ft. cannabis experience complex close to the Las Vegas Convention Center

“$70,000-$100,000 in estimated gross revenue per day

“$2.5M to $3.5M+ estimated revenue per month

“25% estimated revenue growth prior to entering year 2”

They certainly aren’t currently “building” this project in any physical way, and now they don’t mention it at all.

And as of the “current” deck associated with the recruitment of investors (as of April 15), neither that convention center project or another established dispensary they were negotiating to buy is included, having been replaced with a smaller “concept” in a different location (more on that in a minute, there’s been yet more adjustment as of August). So the story has changed quite a lot.

And as for the ‘never failed a test’ bit? That doesn’t seem to be true, they do pop up as failing a test in February, though I confess that I have no idea what that means or if it is common.

The goal for Qualcan/Mystic Holdings, they say, is to use this Regulation A+ offering (which has been in the works since early this year) to raise money to build the business, presumably consummate those acquisitions of two existing dispensary operations, and then apply for and hopefully get a listing on the Canadian Securities Exchange, where many US marijuana stocks are “listed” (that’s a small alternative exchange in Canada, the rules are far less strict than the Toronto exchanges so “technically illegal” businesses like US marijuana companies can get listed there).

There’s no guarantee that they will ever get a listing, of course, or that the stock will trade at over a dollar once they do and make these private placement investments worthwhile (they’ve done three private placements of increasing size over the past year or so of either equity or convertible debentures at roughly 3.6 cents, 30 cents, and 60 cents, and those earlier placements included conditional warrants but this one does not appear to — those two tranches of warrants trigger if the company doesn’t get “public trading status” by May 31 and August 31, so there’s probably at least a little motivation to get listed and avoid a bit of warrant dilution, though the terms may well have been extended with recent delays in the fundraising process).

They’ve so far raised about $22 million, which could theoretically have been adequate to close on the smaller dispensaries they’ve agreed to acquire so far, but they’re also losing money pretty fast — they put that “acquisition of Nevada Dispensaries” in as a $16.5 million cost in the “how we’ll use the proceeds” section of the offering), and are hoping to raise another $50 million in this current offering. If they get people to buy all of those shares, that would be roughly 120 million shares outstanding at a valuation (implied by this private placement, at least) of $120 million.

So far, the fundraising hasn’t gone very well. Which is probably why NICI is out with a new repeat of this ad with a new urgent September deadline — in the latest update that Mystic/Qualcan sent to the SEC, the timing is not so urgent — they announced that they are extending their Reg A+ filing deadline to June of 2021, blaming COVID for the delay in finding investors, and that the money coming in has hit their $5 million minimum to begin closing tranches of the deal, but just barely, and is far short of the $50 million goal:

“Through September 15, 2020, we have received approximately $5,188,000 in cleared subscriptions for this offering. Discussions and marketing efforts with investors are ongoing. To date, no funds have been released to us from the segregated bank account holding such funds.”

So they might well close the first tranche of this particular deal sometime soon, since they’re running out of money and can’t raise capital otherwise, but have no fear — I imagine that they’ll keep raising money after this first tranche closes, presumably on the same terms if they can convince investors, so you’ve got time to think it over.

The other news in their update has been not terribly consequential or surprising, at least as far as I can tell — they sued when they were denied five licenses in a few locations in Nevada, and settled recently with the result that they’ll now have two new licenses to work with for opening new facilities at some point (one in Vegas, one in Carson City), and they also have delayed their acquisitions of existing dispensaries (one in Vegas, one in Reno) because of regulatory and COVID speed bumps, but apparently those deals are still moving and they intend to close them, eventually.

What happens in the future? Well, the delay of the offering until June 2021 means you’ll probably have much longer to wait than originally expected… and for those who are locked in to this first offering, which is presumably irrevocable, the only real way to get “liquidity” if you choose to invest in this private offering… is to hope that they get listed on an exchange where you could easily sell, like the Canadian Securities Exchange. That seems very unlikely to happen anytime soon, not with the weakness of this Reg A+ offering response.

If they do not get listed for any reason, shareholders are probably a bit tied up — I didn’t check the offering details on that front, but private placements typically have rules about not being able to sell your shares for a period of time (6-12 months or so, usually), and restrictions on how much you can sell (and since they’re not listed, you’d have to find a private buyer or hope the company will buy them back).

So if you decide you want to follow up with the company about investing in their private placement, or review the details, I’d start by reading the Final Offering Circular and the September 15 update. You’d be crazy to think about investing in something like this without reading the full filing, including the risk factors. Don’t just limit yourself to the sales pitch deck they put up on their website in April or the updated version in August. Just call me “Mr. Buzz Kill,” but you gotta read the fine print… and that’s especially true with private placements.

Personally, I try to avoid the temptation of investing in private placements and similar private companies… but if I were to be tempted, it probably wouldn’t be in a company trying to build a brand and maybe a “destination” dispensary in Las Vegas right now, just because there are so many marijuana outlets there and I have no particular expertise as an investor in which are the strongest (and I enjoy an occasional trip to Las Vegas, but I’m not a marijuana consumer or student of that market — I did notice, when I was there last year, that there are a lot of big players in town or near the strip, including MedMen, but Planet 13 has its brand everywhere).

The two dispensaries Qualcan has agreed to buy at this point are small and not terribly meaningful (or profitable), and there are dozens of similar dispensaries just in Las Vegas, to say nothing of the gigantic Planet 13 Superstore that’s set up as a “destination” for marijuana and is trying to add nightclubs and restaurants to its business.

The theoretical Convention Center Drive facility “Concept” Qualcan has talked about (and left off their final offering, though it’s still the core of the big NICI sales pitch) did indeed sound impressive as a concept, and those initial “plans” could have ended up making it larger than Planet 13 and in a higher-traffic area, but we also don’t even have any idea whether it’s anything more than a concept, whether they have even a tangential connection to that land, or whether a huge marijuana dispensary across the street from the flagship convention center would be approved. Everything since their initial filing back in February has served to push that Convention Center “concept” and any other large (and probably equally “conceptual”) projects further out of the limelight, and if you were starting with just their actual SEC filing and their most recent investor deck you would never have heard of any of that — according to the latest filings, it’s just those two small dispensaries, the conditional approval for two more licenses in Nevada, and their existing cultivation facility that are worthy of focus, with “Sapphire” the only item in the “future potential projects” column. it’s only this NICI promo that’s still selling the Convention Center Mega-Resort idea.

For me, if I were sucked in to convinced to buy the non-refundable offer from Cannabis Venture Syndicate primarily because of this “Convention Center” story about that “world’s most valuable real estate” project, it would be worrisome that the company, in response to SEC questions, has left any details on that project out of not just the offering circular but also their updated glitzy presentations. The deal that seems to have replaced that in their Spring investor material was a “proposed Sapphire Plan” to open a much smaller dispensary behind the new Resorts World Resort that’s going up next to Circus Circus, where the Stardust casino used to be.

That smaller expansion “plan,” which as I interpreted it meant that they were replacing the idea of a mega-destination 70,000 square foot facility by the Convention Center with a proposed retail dispensary of 10,000 sq.ft. near the Sapphire Club, isn’t in the offering circular, either — it was a “proposal,” which doesn’t sound all that different from a “concept.” That’s still a pretty big dispensary, should it actually come to fruition, (10,000 sq.ft. is about the size of a typical Trader Joe’s), but it’s not likely to massively change the marketplace (Planet 13’s facility is 115,000 square feet, but only 16,000 sq.ft. is actual dispensary space right now, and before that opened the biggest dispensary in Las Vegas was NuWu’s “nearly” 16,000 square foot superstore).

And, as of the August update to their pitch deck, even that smaller Sapphire Plan has been downplayed further in the presentation materials — they no longer talk about the specifics or the estimated $2 million in monthly revenue at Sapphire, or show the location, they just say “EXPANSION โ€” Qualcan is planning: 10,000 sq.ft. cannabis retail space near Sapphire Club and Resort World Las Vegas.”

Which I guess is good, in that the company is not overpromising as much any more… but NICI apparently didn’t get the “don’t overpromise” memo, maybe since they can use the loophole that they’re not the ones actually doing the offering and they didn’t actually name the company in their teaser ad. They are still hitting hard on that “planned cannabis resort on the Strip” project that now exists only as a generic image of a “dispensary concept” in Qualcan’s pitch deck. I’d be curious to hear what Cannabis Venture Syndicate is telling its subscribers about this drastic downgrade in Qualcan’s plans, but when it comes to recruiting new members, at least, they seem to be “full steam ahead.”

So whatever happens with Qualcan, my primary concern with this Cannabis Venture Syndicate ad is that they’re all but promising something that isn’t really even planned anymore, and yet they’re selling it hard, with a $1,950 subscription that offers no possibility of a refund if you decide you’ve been sold a pig in poke.

And yes, the ads are still running hot and heavy — the presentation is still the same one they gave in June of 2020 that led to the first version of this article by yours truly, but the emails about how this deal that “ends tonight” regarding “the most valuable square feet of property on the planet” hit my inbox again today. And this is how that Sapphire “plan” is still referenced on the NICI order form as of September 23:

“This Vegas Cannabis Play Just Got Even Better…

“The CEO just signed a deal to build another resort smack-dab in the middle of the ‘Cannabis Corridor.’

“The new resort will be attached to the largest nightclub in the world โ€“ an $80 million property just minutes from the Wynn, Encore, and other major casinos.

“I knew something like this was in the works. The CEO is forward-thinking and ahead of his time. And make no mistake…

“This New Acquisition Could Be a Game Changer.

“The club already draws over 600,000 people every year.

“When the new cannabis resort opens in July 2020, just a month or so from now, that number could skyrocket.

“And this tiny cannabis player could become unstoppable.

“Thereโ€™s no doubt in my mind:

“This Company Is Positioned to Dominate the Projected $1.6 Billion Vegas Cannabis Market.

“When you add another luxury resort attached to one of the hottest nightclubs in Vegas with 600,000+ people ready to party… and up to $40 million in additional revenue… the competition wonโ€™t stand a chance.”

And no, of course, that “new cannabis resort” was never going to open in July 2020, they didn’t even have licenses or own or have leases or options on any of that property according to their filings earlier this year (they do have a couple marijuana licenses now, thanks to their recent legal settlement, but don’t note any other new assets — and presumably a signed deal to open a resort would be an asset)… but, worse, it’s not even something that the company itself is promising to prospective investors any more.

Resorts World itself is getting closer to being finished as the newest Strip casino, with the main hotel tower “topped off” earlier this year, but that Sapphire deal, assuming it actually exists, looks like it would actually be across the street behind Resorts, most likely, built in what is presumably the parking lot of the Sapphire Club, which bills itself as the world’s largest strip club. All we really know is that in one version of the presentation (not the current one),it was “penciled in” in that slot as a “proposed plan” for a dispensary, nothing like a “destination resort” for marijuana lovers. And again, that Convention Center idea over on the other side of the strip is but a daydream now, no longer acknowledged by the company at all.

The idea of a “mega resort” for cannabis in Las Vegas is not brand new, of course — the first really high-profile one was developed by Planet 13, and they still dominate cannabis marketing on the Strip, though I don’t know how their expansion plans are doing with the covid shutdowns. Planet 13 (PLTH on the CSE, PLNHF OTC in the US), in case you’re curious, is publicly traded, and has just about doubled since I posted the first version of this article in June. It now has a market cap of about $450 million, and carries the value of its superstore (and other minor assets) on the books at about $21 million (I don’t know what the capital costs were for the initial build, but that’s buildings, improvements, furniture and equipment, presumably the startup cost was at least in that neighborhood) — they have been booking about $60 million a year in sales, both from products that are distributed to other dispensaries and from their own facility, and have reported some surprisingly strong results in the last couple quarters, as they held up well doing deliveries to local residents while tourism evaporated and “walk up” dispensaries were closed, though they’re not profitable.

I don’t particularly want to invest in any marijuana dispensaries in a competitive environment, personally, but if forced to make a Las Vegas marijuana investment I’d still stick with the words I shared in June: I’d carefully consider the established Planet 13 before I risked money on an uncertain private placement for an unbuilt (and maybe even unplanned now) project. Your mileage may differ, of course, and you may have more of a taste for private investing and risk than I do — if you’ve got thoughts on this cannabis venture, or on other favorite ideas in the space, feel free to share with a comment below. I’ve left all the comments that readers posted to the original version of this article attached, so you can see if your fellow Gumshoe readers had anything helpful to add.

P.S. As always, we’re curious to hear how investment newsletters and services are working for you — and we don’t have any reader feedback on this one yet, so if you happen to have subscribed to that Cannabis Venture Syndicate, please click here to share your experience with your fellow investors — worth it? Not worth it? Did they send good deals your way or make you money? Provide great research or disappoint? Inquiring minds wanna know.

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goolie2
Member
goolie2
June 3, 2020 3:05 pm

Seems insane. Isn’t the strip closed due to covid19? Why would anyone invest in unproven Cannabis operators while existing well financed players aren’t getting any love. Cresco Labs recently canceled a deal they had announced in Nevada. If you are investing on the strip it makes more sense to me to just buy the Casino stocks or the Casino REIT’s.

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Mitchell Gordon
Member
Mitchell Gordon
June 3, 2020 3:11 pm

I belong to NICI and after reading your assessment of the offering, I am totally disgusted with them. There description does not tell the truth. Very glad that I will never put $2,000 into any newsletter. This particular deal description is incredibly deceptive. I also notice all the big financial gurus selling their newsletter always tell you it is”the best deal they have seen in there life”. Between NICI and A & E (Angels and Entrepreneurs) , there initial cost for information is very low and then they hit you up for huge amounts of money to get the good deals. Thank you for being the only honest person to help us. I have noticed since I started following you that there have been no deals you really think are as good as they are touted.

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taubie
June 3, 2020 4:24 pm

You are so right! Thanks for commenting on this pitch. I must have gotten 20 emails pushing this Vegas thing from many sources in the last 3 days. Between NICI, Robinson, etc., these constant barrages are driving me crazy. All in all, I’m now getting over 300 emails a day from various pitchers pushing their particular “fortune makers” despite constantly unsubscribing. Madness.

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frostly
frostly
June 3, 2020 6:22 pm
Reply to  taubie

Why give them your main email????? I use ‘burner ’emails. Lol

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western ne
Irregular
western ne
June 3, 2020 3:40 pm

I have found that most of these newsletters to pretty much be “bait and switch” scenarios. You think they will do research and give you profitable advice, however the good stuff always has an additional fee. My largest mistake was paying for a service when I was new to investing and it turned out to be an options only program. The fine print had a no refund policy. That was an expensive mistake, Plus the very well done presentation did not tell you up front that it was for speculative option trading. Travis, thank you so much for being a stand up guy

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Fredrick Stickler
Guest
Fredrick Stickler
June 3, 2020 4:18 pm

Mitch, I too belong to NICI and A&E. I tried to get my money back on A&E as I am sure many have found, they are not fully honest in their presentations. Mike Robinson, is a fraud as far as I am concerned.

Mitchell Gordon
Member
Mitchell Gordon
June 3, 2020 5:07 pm

Frederick, I didn’t mind the initial cost of joining the two organizations. It was under $100 for each and I do get some useful information, but for the good “top” deals, they want you to spend a lot more. By the way, when I first started getting newsletters I did pay almost $2,000 for one that was “non-refundable”. The presentation for it was so far off what they delivered, I sent them a detailed email about their shortcomings and threatened to go to the FTC and they refunded all my money. It was for trading penny stocks by Tim Sykes (stay away).

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gbyrd912
Member
gbyrd912
June 4, 2020 4:16 am

Mitchell Gordon would it be possible to get a copy of your email letter used to get your refund from Tim Sykes Penny Stocks Newsletter? I tried to get a refund but they would only give a credit to another of his services. I am still in the process of paying for this service but not getting any value from it.[gbyrd912@sbcglobal.net]

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Mitchell Gordon
Member
Mitchell Gordon
June 4, 2020 7:50 am
Reply to  gbyrd912

I will try to find it and send it to you. Basically, it was for penny stocks that were under $5.00/share. Most of his recommendations were over that amount, so I wrote down all the recommendations and showed that more than 80% were out of the promised range and accused him of fraudulent advertising. By the way, his system of what he was promoting was, I thought, a good idea, just not as workable as he promised.

larkn1412
June 3, 2020 7:37 pm

A&E is nothing more than creepy Neil Patel scouring crowdfunding sites and finding listings that he then brings to the table with that Don Yocham fellow el creepo as their own detailed investment finding and then backfill all the details from the investment profile….

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Mitchell Gordon
Member
Mitchell Gordon
June 4, 2020 7:46 am
Reply to  larkn1412

At first I thought Patel was the real deal., but now I agree with you. But he did get rich, so he must know something. One of the last promos talked about three different companies and thanks to the Gumshoe, I learned how to figure out what all of them were. I also used to have a marketing company and helped people raise money for new inventions so I am not new at research. I have found many of the funding companies so now I check them out myself.

Rhonda
Guest
Rhonda
June 5, 2020 11:13 am

I joined A&E and hate seeing it come in my inbox anymore. Lots of long videos and “deals”.

david
Guest
david
June 3, 2020 3:31 pm

I like the future for medicinal mushrooms and legal psiliscibin microdosing which has just gotten FDA approval

The company to is shrm in Canada and shrmf in USA.
i like the outlook much better than marijuana.
Yes i own some stock but i do recommend the company and products.

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Jim
Member
Jim
June 3, 2020 4:33 pm

I am done with the whole industry after getting burnt on Canopy Growth one of the big players. It started out good but tanked big time over the past year. Everybody thought they were going to get rich when pot was legalized a few years back glad I did not invest big money in it.

Ekrem Bozkurt
Guest
Ekrem Bozkurt
June 3, 2020 4:45 pm

Hi travis
Michael robinson also mentions this company. Have former Reagan And Bush senior adviser on board so thats lead too deep root Companyโ€™s. Has already have 2 dispansery.. and in interview
High profile person on boards.
At the height of the โ€œJust Say Noโ€ campaign in the war on drugs, Sig Rogich was a senior adviser to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

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Ekrem Bozkurt
Guest
Ekrem Bozkurt
June 3, 2020 4:48 pm

At the height of the โ€œJust Say Noโ€ campaign in the war on drugs, Sig Rogich was a senior adviser to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
Michael robinson mentio this name and this lead to Deep root Whic is acegra was gone buy out 120 millions deal fail it.

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dcronin5000
Member
dcronin5000
June 3, 2020 6:10 pm

Planet 13 is intriguing to me. They just also bought land in Santa Ana, which they are planning to develop, I believe, into another retail megaspot. Seems like an odd location to me, but maybe their research says otherwise.

A couple of Motley Fool posts are pushing Planet 13, too.

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Carl M Welch
Member
Carl M Welch
June 3, 2020 6:46 pm

Good to know Americans are hot to “invest” in their own stupefaction. Alcohol is enough for most of us. I live in Nevada. We are ruled over by idiots.

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Kurt
Member
Kurt
June 4, 2020 11:01 pm
Reply to  Carl M Welch

Carl, I think your to Kind on your Ruled By Idiots, I’m Still trying to figure out when they Outlawed Common Sense & Being accountable for Our Actions.
Back to the CannaResort the Picture they show is the Parking Lot of Piero’s Italian Ristorante, They Have a Fabulous Ossobuco, Well worth Stopping By If and When they Open again. As they Say the Market Giveth & The Market Taketh Away. My Current Favorites are TCNNF, PLNHF, SHRMF, RVVTF, ISCNF,. Not that these are any better of worse, But I’m in the Green on these.

P.S. Travis Your Awesome, A Shining Light in the Blackness of the Hype Abyss.

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larkn1412
June 3, 2020 7:33 pm

Thanks Travis, needless to say the Thinkolater’s detailed output here has cooled any enthusiasm I had ( which was minimal to start) in this. Out of all of the emails promo’s I get I find Money Map press stuff to be the most overhyped and least accurate and as Ive vented on before ,when they scour the crowd funding sites and then present up a new investment opportunity as there own finding through their market research and contacts , well thats border line on fraudulent in my book.

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George
Member
June 3, 2020 8:19 pm

I’m really pleased to see so many people coming forth to expose those newsletter hucksters out there. Keep the flow coming, my friends, so those shysters are identified and cannot continue to pick the pockets of the naive and gullible with the apparent ease they’ve enjoyed in the past. It’s a long, persistent process to reach the goal line; but, it can and will happen. In the end, the consistent game plan of those promoters is to continue to suck more and more people into buying their service(s) over time, then, up selling them, with virtually no intent of ever making money for their subscribers. It seems apparent to me that their money is probably made primarily from new subscribers, not renewals. CAVEAT EMPTOR!!

Jared Crawford
Member
Jared Crawford
June 3, 2020 9:06 pm

I want to also thank you for what you do. I was very intrigued by this proposal… seemed like a solid bunch of information, though I do have to say that it seemed too good to be true. Thanks for helping us make informed decisions. I am a member of the NICI and I do believe in investing in cannabis… Iโ€™ve seen CBD products help my family first hand. I do believe that there will be a lot of money to be made in cannabis, especially once itโ€™s federally legalized; but seeing that SEC revision made my head spin. Theyโ€™re pushing an investment on something the company already said it canโ€™t do. How does that help anyone except to line their pockets. I had the funds at the time so Iโ€™m a lifetime member… otherwise Iโ€™d drop them like a bad habit. They provide solid information on individual companies… which to me makes the investment worth it, but Iโ€™ll never spend $2,000/year to be a member of someoneโ€™s special club. I guess Iโ€™ll just invest the old fashioned way. Thanks so much again!

Aussie
Member
Aussie
June 3, 2020 10:36 pm

Hey i was really going to go for this Cannabis deal.!! “BUT” something in the back of my mind told me to research a little deeper I did write to the writer and was waiting for a reply which came through my email today,thank goodness. I have now lost my touch for these kinda deals,that’s it Kaput !! I just had that feeling it was to good to be true…I’m just a little Aussie battler,trying to make a honest quid… Why are people so dishonest.?

elkate
elkate
June 4, 2020 4:52 am

There is Planet 13, PLNHF, they opened their first superstore in the Las Vegas strip. Looks promising.

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vickyg43
June 4, 2020 10:55 am

I made a little money on Cannabis A couple years ago, Acreage Holdings was all the way up to 24.00, Cara was at 28.00 etc. I owed about 20 different companies, they went from Penny stocks to real investments. This was before it was even legal in most places. ACREAGE HOLDINGS, had a Dream Team for a Board of directors. The X speaker of the House Bainner, 2 x Presidents, etc. I thought to myself how could they fail? I loaded up. The stock was up to $24.00. and then they did that big deal and sold everything, and over night the stock Plunged to $4.oo. I’m not even sure the deal ended up happening? Pot stocks now are real penny stocks. My $50,000 Cannabis pro-folio is now worth $8000.00. Funny how they all went in Business, they had big numbers going in, Canada was booming, and now all those stocks are worthless! Most are selling for under a dollar. unless you like Penny stocks, and losing money, stay away from the Cannabis Business! Unfortunately we put them in Business by buying their stock, it was kind of like crowd funding, and we didn’t get a lot in return, if we were loyal !

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dunadar
June 4, 2020 11:57 am

Where does PNTV/Greenleaf of Vegas fit in with this especially since they are already starting to grow crops on the 420 acre tract in Argentina and a small farm in Vegas?

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dunadar
June 4, 2020 11:59 am

OH Yeah! the strip is opening today.

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jgreen22
jgreen22
June 4, 2020 12:03 pm

I have been very leary of this segment. Prices for cannabis are insane. Cannabis is very easy to grow. Anyone who can grow a tomato can, assuming they are not Cheech or Chong, grown enough to supply themselves and sell a bit to their friends. The industry is assuming $200/oz will hold. Why would I pay that rather than grow my own? Eventually the risk of growing your own will drop as law enforcement loses interest in enforcement. The price of weed will eventually resemble cilantro or tobacco.

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jgreen22
jgreen22
June 4, 2020 2:25 pm

200/ oz vs 2-3 per pound. Don’t see tomato IPO’s.

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Steve
Member
Steve
June 4, 2020 3:19 pm

I would not be in a rush to invest in this company….I’m in the Convention/Trade Show business and Vegas is totally shut down for those events. It will take quite a while for the business to get back to any level of normal, so it will be a long time before the traffic they are counting on develops. If they are smart, they will delay any plans to build. If you have a net worth of over 1 million and make over #200 thousand a year, you may want to throw a few bucks at it and then forget about it for at least 2-3 years. I personally prefer Planet 13 as an investment. They are established and have a great long range plan in place. Good luck….

wazuzu17
wazuzu17
June 4, 2020 3:38 pm

These hucksters are among the worst! I’ve lost $250,000 having been sucked into a number of their cannabis recommendations and am still inundated daily with their hyperbolic pitches. And when I wrote them citing a lengthy list of my losses per stocks touted to the skies by them, I got one tepid response and that was it! They’ve lost all credibility with me.

exvestor
Guest
exvestor
June 4, 2020 4:22 pm
Reply to  wazuzu17

You might have better luck contacting FTC attorney Omolara Bewaji Joseney
ojoseney@ftc.gov , who is one of the FTC plaintiffs that in March 2020 succeeded in getting a Federal court to issue an injunction against Agora Financial’s misleading “Congressional Checks” marketing, commenting “As demonstrated by detailed evidence, including consumer testimony, sales videos, transcripts of sales pitches, marketing emails, testimony from the Clerk of the United States House of Representatives, testimony from an Assistant General Counsel to the Office of the Clerk of the United States House of Representatives, and expert testimony, the representations detailed above are false or unsubstantiated. Therefore, there is good cause to believe that Defendants have engaged in and are likely to engage in acts or practices that violate Section 5(a) of the FTC Act, 15 U.S.C. ยง 45(a), and that the FTC is likely prevail on the merits of this action.”

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Rhonda MacFadzen
Guest
Rhonda MacFadzen
June 5, 2020 11:11 am

Thank you for this frank look at what they are hyping on the NICI . Besides watching a video that goes on and on and on. It is not forthcoming in the developments you mentioned. Investors beware of shiny suits and rags to riches stories.

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