Juicy Fields - Where Did the Investors' Money Go?

What is Juicy Fields?

Juicy Fields is an online offer at the internet address juicyfields.io where customers can invest in growing cannabis plants. Investors are promised a share of the proceeds from selling the harvest. Investments in cannabis plants are made through an online shop, which accepts payment by bank transfer and in cryptocurrencies. We receive numerous reports from investors who are unable to withdraw the profits they have earned. On 3 June 2022, BaFin, the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority, prohibited the operator at the time, Juicy Holdings B.V., from distributing investments in cannabis plants as investment products [1].

To this day, the actual operators of the online offer juicyfields.io have not been fully identified. A first lead to Juicy Fields is the founding of Juicy Grow GmbH, whose articles of association are dated 6 November 2019. Juicy Grow GmbH was initially named as the operator in the legal notice of the online offer. Its managing director was Viktor Bitner, a German of Russian origin who is said to have links to cybercriminals. Investigations by the Berlin State Criminal Police Office (LKA Berlin) began in mid-2021. At the beginning of 2022, the operator named in the legal notice changed to the Dutch company Juicy Holdings B.V. From March 2022, BaFin published information and warnings concerning the offer of Juicy Holdings B.V. [1-4]. In March 2022, the German Juicy Grow GmbH appeared on a warning list of the Spanish financial supervisory authority [5]. From 13 July 2022, the online offer was restricted and partly shut down: withdrawals were refused, and the company's social media accounts were deleted or deactivated. On 1 August 2022, the Luxembourg financial supervisory authority issued a warning [6]. On 16 August 2022, the Berlin public prosecutor's office carried out searches in connection with Juicy Fields. The German Juicy Grow GmbH and the Dutch Juicy Holdings B.V. are now insolvent. In August 2022, the legal notice was changed again, naming the Danish company Jansen Grow ApS as the operator. Today, the legal notice of juicyfields.io names a DAO (Decentralised Autonomous Organisation). So far, law enforcement authorities have been able to secure investor funds of only around 10 million euros, which would be just a fraction of the suspected total investment [7].

What happened to the money of Juicy Fields investors?

The online offer of Juicy Fields allowed deposits and withdrawals in the cryptocurrencies Bitcoin, Ethereum and USD Tether (as a token on the Ethereum network). The IT forensic experts of investmentwarnung.de have carried out several analyses of payments connected with Juicy Fields and prepared them for a television report by the German broadcaster ZDF [8].

Analysing the payments on the Ethereum network revealed the following:

• The worldwide total of all deposits to Juicy Fields via the Ethereum network amounts to approximately 300 million euros.
• Most of the deposits were made in USD Tether (USDT).
• Approximately 89,781 deposits (from 88,123 individual accounts) and 157,780 withdrawals (to 85,737 individual accounts) can be observed.
• At the end of August 2021, Juicy Fields switched the account it used to process payments.
• 98% of all deposits have a transaction value below 5,000 euros and can be attributed to retail investors. Deposits from retail investors account for 40% (approx. 120 million euros) of the total paid in to Juicy Fields via the Ethereum network (Ethereum and USDT).
• The remaining 2% of deposits amount to at least 5,000 euros each. They account for 60% (approx. 180 million euros) of the total paid in via the Ethereum network (Ethereum and USDT).
• At the beginning of 2022, the way the Juicy Fields account was used changed. There were very large single deposits, transferred directly from individual cryptocurrency exchanges. A large deposit was often followed by a large withdrawal shortly afterwards, so large deposits stayed on the known Juicy Fields accounts only for a very short time.

Where is the money now? What is known?

Analysing cryptocurrency transactions makes it possible to trace how investor funds were used afterwards. In our investigations so far, we have identified withdrawals to various cryptocurrency exchanges. Official requests to these exchanges about account holders and their balances can reveal information about the people involved. Outgoing transfers from the identified exchange accounts can provide further leads. Existing balances can be frozen by the exchanges and seized by the authorities.

In principle, success depends on how completely investors' deposits and withdrawals are recorded and on how accurately the related transactions are analysed. If you have lost money, your data can be very important for clearing up the case, identifying the people involved and securing existing balances.

The analysis described here covers payments on the Ethereum network only. Including further payments, for example in Bitcoin, can provide additional insight into where the investors' money went. Did you invest in Juicy Fields and receive the promised profits only partly or not at all? The team of investmentwarnung.de will gladly help you with analyses to trace your payments and find out where they went.

Was investors' money used to buy or grow cannabis plants?

There are indications that the stated core business, namely growing cannabis plants and selling the end product, took place only to a minimal extent or not at all [9].

Why can investmentwarnung see the payment data of Juicy Fields?

The cryptocurrencies used are digital means of payment whose payment history (sender, recipient, amounts) is publicly visible. Instead of account numbers, they use long strings of letters and digits. So the sender and recipient addresses can be seen, but not the true identity behind them. Various techniques, however, make it possible to identify some of the cryptocurrency addresses and to trace the payments. The IT forensic experts of investmentwarnung.de have been working intensively on analysing and tracing cryptocurrency transactions since 2014. We are in close contact with the authorities and have developed and delivered training courses on how cryptocurrencies and wallet applications work and how they can be traced. We regularly analyse where investor funds went on behalf of courts and defrauded investors.

What can you do as an investor?

Investments through the online offer of Juicy Fields at juicyfields.io are still possible. However, given its history so far, several warnings from authorities and ongoing investigations, the operators of the online offer do not appear trustworthy. Potential investors should act with the utmost caution.

If you have already invested money and cannot access your balance or profits, we recommend reporting the matter to the police and, if necessary, consulting a specialist lawyer. On request, the IT forensic experts of investmentwarnung.de can examine your deposits and withdrawals in more detail. Leads to further Juicy Fields accounts can provide the basis for satisfying your legitimate claims in future court proceedings. We will be glad to present the options for analysing your case.