I Tracked Down a JuicyFields Scammer. He’s Still Rich.

How a Cannabis Scam Paid for Palaces, Pool Parties, and Absolute Fuckery

I’m sitting in a plastic chair in an Airbnb that smells like incense, panic, and off-brand vape juice. There’s a broken oscillating fan, an unopened pack of JuicyFields rolling papers, and a man named Viktor explaining how 186,000 people “just didn’t read the terms.”

He grins like he’s at a TED Talk. I’m in Valencia, Spain, allegedly here to interview a low-level JuicyFields architect. In practice, I’ve been listening to him freebase startup delusion for two hours while a guy named Aleksei in the kitchen microwaves yerba maté.

And just last year — April 2024 — Europol kicked in doors across 11 countries, seized phones, laptops, and piles of crypto receipts, and arrested nine of his former coworkers. The charges: money laundering, wire fraud, and organized crime. One of them, Sergej B., got yanked out of the Dominican Republic and dumped into a holding cell in Spain. Trials are happening now. And Viktor?

He’s still here. Still rich. Still rolling.

This Is What a €645 Million Scam Smells Like

JuicyFields promised 6–14% returns to anyone who would “sponsor” medical cannabis grows in Colombia, South Africa, and Portugal. There were webcam tours. White papers. A full-blown roadshow through Europe. Investors were issued PDF grow certificates like they’d just been knighted by a Mailchimp.

And then in July 2022, it vanished. Gone. Offline. The site, the money, the so-called grow ops — all vapor.

“The business model wasn’t the problem,” Viktor tells me, sipping THC soda. “The transparency was.”

The Grow Was a Lie. The Webcam Farms Were Real.

They livestreamed greenhouse footage to make investors think they were seeing their weed grow. Viktor says they reused loops constantly. One guy in the Telegram group asked why the grower wore the same outfit every day. JuicyFields told him it was a “traditional Colombian farming ceremony.”

He believed it.

Meanwhile, Europol Is Still Cleaning Up the Blood

The April 2024 raids weren’t minor. This was full-blown international crime theater:

• 400 officers

• 11 countries

• 9 arrests

• Not even 2% of the stolen funds recovered
  

I ask Viktor how he felt when Sergej B. got dragged out of the Caribbean.

“He was never good at hiding,” he says, rolling a blunt. “Too many suits. You want to disappear, you blend in.”

He offers me a hit. I decline.

The Count, the Lawyer, and the Crypto Laundromat

Other names still floating around the wreckage:

• Count Friedrich Graf von Luxburg — German nobility, owns €5.5M worth of Juicy-linked property in Poland. Not arrested. Renovating a palace. Posting weird memes.
  

• Lars Olofsson — Swedish “lawyer” who tried to start a victim class-action… after doing time for financial fraud himself. You can’t make it up. The grift nested inside the grift.
  

Viktor claims he barely knew them.

“Everyone had aliases. Telegram was church.”

He says that with a straight face, wearing a Fendi tank top.

Where Did the Money Go?

“Some to crypto. Some to lawyers. Some to this.”He points to the apartment. There’s mold on the ceiling and a busted TV on the floor.

“Most went to lifestyle. That was the point.”

He’s not joking. JuicyFields didn’t fail. It worked exactly as intended — to extract money from rubes who thought cannabis was the next tech goldmine.

So... Are You Still in Weed?

This is where it gets good.

I ask him if he’s done with cannabis.

“Done? Bro, it’s never been better. Less competition, more desperate investors.”

He pulls out a pitch deck on his phone and shows me a new site in development — dark UI, vague roadmap, big “COMING SOON” banner. The tagline: Grow Your Future. Stake Your Green.

I ask what it does.

“It’s fractional cannabis farm investment meets decentralized liquidity protocols.”I stare at him.“It’s JuicyFields without the branding issues.”He smiles like he just solved world peace.

The Final Grift: Hope

JuicyFields scammed thousands by offering hope. Hope of clean money in a dirty industry. Hope of passive income in cannabis. Hope that you weren’t too late.

What it really gave us? A blueprint. A blueprint for the next wave of scammers.

Because Viktor’s already building something new. He’s looking for a partner. He says I’d be “perfect for investor relations.”

I ask if he’s serious.

He winks. “Everything’s serious until it isn’t.”