green rush

green rush

California is the world's largest legal pot market, generating nearly $3.1 billion in spending in the Golden State alone. But cannabis-related businesses in the U.S. live in a legal-limbo, operating in this strange gray area between federal laws that make marijuana illegal and states that have decriminalized its use and sale entirely. This has led to sometimes difficult choices, workarounds and issues with which the cannabis and cannabis-linked companies are forced to contend.

dot.LA dove into this tenuous landscape during a virtual panel discussion on Tuesday with experts in cannabis compliance and legal issues, asking them: Is the green rush over? The consensus seemed to be that no, it isn't, but this first wave of "reckless money," likely is.

Tuesday's conversation on the current state and future of California's marijuana marketplace capped off the conclusion of dot.LA's five-part investigative series examining the rapid rise and rapid fall of L.A.-based Genius Fund, a one-time $164 million cannabis company. Today that money is gone and their Russian oligarch investor is dead.

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Illustration by Candice Navi

Hours before Dmitry Bosov, or "Dima," died alone in a Moscow suburb on May 6, allegedly of suicide or an accident, he chatted with family members over video. Even as his former cannabis company was sold to a new owner and he was overtaken by concerns about the novel coronavirus pandemic in Russia, he still seemed happy to family members, who wrote about his demeanor the night of his death in an online tribute.

The Russian coal magnate had gambled on Genius Fund, an ambitious Culver City-based cannabis startup that had plans to dominate the industry. But after investing roughly $164 million, he appeared to have walked away, at least temporarily, from the dream of a viable U.S. cannabis company.

When his former Genius Fund associates learned of Bosov's death shortly afterward, they were all "shocked," according to former employees interviewed by dot.LA.

Bosov's son called Genius Fund executive Ari Stiegler the next day crying. "It was super sad," Stiegler said.

A string of bad investments, power struggles and lavish spending had nearly brought Genius Fund to its knees. A lawsuit filed against Bosov and his company alleges funds were "commingled," that there was a lack of "any coherent business plan" and that the investor "concealed and misrepresented" his ownership, raising questions about what his investment intentions were.

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The city of Adelanto sits 85 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles and may be best known for its prison — now a privately-owned immigration detention center. It's also where cannabis startup Genius Fund was pouring tens of millions of its investor's dollars last year.

Genius Fund's state-of-the-art cannabis production facility sits at the intersection of Muskrat Avenue and Rancho Road on a dusty stretch of the Mojave Desert, guarded with 8-foot-high fencing and razor wire.

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