for a bottling facility,”
A Con Artist’s Cannabis Con Comes to an End
A handful of CBD and cannabis companies turned out to be nothing more than a figment of the imagination, as a con artist successfully duped investor after investor. But his conning spree has finally come to an end.
A California man, Mark Roy Anderson, pleaded guilty on April 5 to a slew of federal criminal charges for swindling investors out of a whopping $18.4 million. This mastermind managed to con several investors, all while he was already serving a sentence for prior criminal charges. His tactic? Creating fake companies that supposedly invested in hemp farms and cannabis-infused retail products. He even went as far as claiming to run a sham bottling business for CBD-infused products. However, his bogus businesses quickly fell apart.
People magazine reports that Anderson, 69, pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud, according to an announcement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Central District of California.
Anderson admitted to engaging in two separate schemes that swindled investors. His fraudulent activities began right after he was released from federal prison, while he was on home confinement and supervised release. Police say Anderson has been conning people since the 1990s, but he saw an opportunity in the booming cannabis industry where there was a lot of money to be made.
From June 2020 to April 2021, Anderson convinced investors to fund his company, Harvest Farm Group, which supposedly harvested and processed hemp grown on his farm into medical-grade CBD isolate. According to the report, Anderson deceived investors by falsely claiming that he owned and operated a hemp farm in Kern County and had already completed successful and profitable harvests. He also lied about using his own machinery and equipment to convert the hemp into CBD isolate and Delta 8, a psychoactive substance that can be used in various consumer products.
Despite skepticism from investors, Anderson managed to weasel his way out by denying that his past fraud convictions were actually him. When investors demanded their money back, Anderson falsely blamed the delay on the COVID-19 pandemic.
In another scheme, which ran from April 2021 to May 2023, Anderson duped investors by soliciting money for two more sham companies, Bio Pharma and Verta Bottling. He claimed that these businesses successfully manufactured, bottled, and packaged commercial products. Specifically, he said that Bio Pharma produced and sold CBD-infused products such as avocado oil, olive oil, pain cream, gummies, tequila, and chili oil. Anderson also claimed that Verta Bottling manufactured and sold beverages and a variety of food products.
But it was all a lie. Anderson falsely stated that his bottling companies owned millions of dollars’ worth of assets, including hemp biomass, CBD isolate, CBD oil, and manufacturing equipment. However, these companies were nothing more than a facade.
