Rapper BigRigBaby's WeedGenics Company Was A Ponzi Scheme

Sit back and listen to a story where rapper BigRigBaby (Patrick Earl Williams) and his partner Max Bergmann (Rolf Hirschmann) steal millions of dollars of investor money from their “WeedGenics” company. This is eCrimeBytes.com S 2 Ep 6-3: Rapper BigRigBaby’s WeedGenics Company Was A Ponzi Scheme – Act 3: The High Life.

For the background, see please check out our prior acts:

Rapper BigRigBaby’s WeedGenics Company Was A Ponzi Scheme – Act 1: Meet The Playas

Rapper BigRigBaby’s WeedGenics Company Was A Ponzi Scheme – Act 2: Green Investments

Sources:

Transcript:

00:00:10:00 – 00:00:29:05
Keith
Hey, welcome back to Crime Bite Season two, Episode six. This is rapper BigRigBaby’s WeedGenics. I know it’s a lot to take in. I’m not even done with the title. WeedGenics company is a Ponzi scheme, so we haven’t quite got to the Ponzi scheme yet.

00:00:29:05 – 00:00:59:05
Keith
We’ve introduced BigRigBaby, his partner, Max Bergmann. We’ve introduced INR, which is the company that creates this other company called WeedGenics that supposedly has some grow operations in a city in California and in Las Vegas, Nevada. They want to expand, they need investors. So they then produce a bunch of electronic documents and go talk to investors. And at this point, they start getting investments.

00:00:59:05 – 00:01:02:20
Keith
And we’re going to talk a little bit about the investments that they received.

00:01:02:20 – 00:01:37:17
Seth
Okay. So let’s move to October 20, 2020, rather, where Hirschmann, also known as Bergmann, had a spreadsheet and that was out there into evidence. Electronic evidence is how Jones and I met is e-discovery. The court documents indicate that INR and Hirschmann distributed to prospective investors a dated October 2020 spreadsheet that made three main representations A) that INR as Las Vegas facility was generating over $1,000,000 in revenue monthly.

00:01:37:19 – 00:02:02:25
Seth
That’s $12 million a year. B) the Adelanto facility, this is the one in California, would begin generating revenue sometime in November 2020, which is only a month away from the spreadsheet date, and then see the Adelanto facility revenue would peak at two and a half million dollars per month by, say, April of 2022. So it’s three promises there.

00:02:02:25 – 00:02:27:29
Seth
There was a three specific data points. I actually there’s a fourth excuse me D) The Las Vegas facility incurred millions of dollars in operating costs annually for, among other things, the growth and cultivation of marijuana or cannabis rent. The utilities licenses and related fees, which kind of makes sense, right? You think that in order to grow this stuff and build the other business, you got to pay some fees as well?

00:02:28:01 – 00:02:31:03
Keith
Electricity is probably through the roof, I imagine.

00:02:31:06 – 00:02:48:08
Seth
Through the roof. So Hirschmann again, still going by Max Bergmann had taken prospective investors on a tour of the purported Las Vegas facility also in October of 2020 and referred to it as, quote, our grow facility.

00:02:48:08 – 00:03:04:20
Seth
Let’s get into some more, Hirschmann claims. So from Q1 2020 to 2022, Hirschmann Bergman made the following representations on behalf of INR to the prospective investors, and this is either in person over the phone or even via email.

00:03:04:22 – 00:03:35:14
Seth
A) INR never missed an interest payment to investors in its purported many years of operation. B) INR interest payments were guaranteed based on past performance. C) the interest payments would come from the revenue generated from interest facilities, which would include the Adelanto facility, which was purported to be open in the following month. D) As of October six, 2020, the Adelanto facility was beginning phase two of its five phase buildout or expansion.

00:03:35:17 – 00:04:00:10
Seth
Regular interest disbursements would be issued on the 15th of every month, and both the Adelanto and Las Vegas facilities are, quote, operated under INR investment funds would be used solely for the planned development of the Adelanto facility. That also would kind of throw a bit of a flag. Right. You’re not going to keep the main facility up and running or updated or whatever.

00:04:00:12 – 00:04:29:24
Seth
There were more claims as of March of 2021. So in between that two year period with respect to the Adelanto facility expansion, Hirschmann slash Bergmann claimed, quote, Phase one is harvesting the first crop this month with additional rotations producing monthly close quote, also quote, Phase two has an array of strains from clones maturing to the adult budding phase, and Phase three was underway as of June 23rd, 2021.

00:04:29:24 – 00:04:55:27
Seth
The Adelanto facility expansion was in now phase four and investors could receive, quote, a share of the gross revenue, close quote, from the Adelanto facility. In addition to regular interest payments. This looks like he’s kind of pumping up that Adelanto is like the spot that’s going to make them going from big to huge. As of October 28th, 2021, the Adelanto facility expansion was in phase five.

00:04:56:02 – 00:05:14:02
Seth
Remember, it was a five phase situation and investors could, quote, receive up to four times their equity on the dollar. You have $1,000. Would you like $4,000 back? That doesn’t sound as awesome as you have $100,000 and you’d like $400,000 back. Come invest with INR.

00:05:14:02 – 00:05:32:01
Keith
Yeah. And so it just continues. He then claims in 2022, which is the next year, that they were wrapping up phase five of the California facility and phases one through five were a smashing success. He said things like,

00:05:32:01 – 00:05:43:18
Keith
revenue has already surpassed revenue projections. In January 2022, INR has secured three more units in addition to the five for a total of almost a quarter million square feet.

00:05:43:18 – 00:05:55:28
Keith
So here we see a little bit of a change. We see in March of 2022, INR investors could earn a quote unquote revenue share on top of regular instant interest payments

00:05:55:28 – 00:05:56:20
Keith
and they call it,

00:05:56:20 – 00:06:01:01
Keith
equity distribution. And then they go on to say,

00:06:01:01 – 00:06:09:29
Keith
they’re going to expand upon another Adelanto facility. So knowing that this is a Ponzi scheme, you should go.

00:06:09:29 – 00:06:19:13
Keith
Why are they changing this? My theory is this is the point where they start to run out of money, like desperately start to run out of money. So,

00:06:19:13 – 00:06:30:09
Keith
they need to pump more investor money in and they need to get more people excited to get more investor money in. And so they’re kind of changing their tactics at this point.

00:06:30:09 – 00:06:31:04
Keith
That’s just my theory.

00:06:31:04 – 00:06:44:13
Keith
Let’s see, June and August, they continue to offer these revenue sharing opportunities. You’re going to see there’s going to be a very hard shift coming up here in a month or two. This is why I’m spelling this chronological time out for you.

00:06:44:13 – 00:06:56:10
Keith
So to convince investors that they’re actually making money, he gave a bunch of numbers to the investors of what they were making.

00:06:56:10 – 00:07:04:10
Keith
And I’m not going to go through all these numbers for you because a lot of them are very similar to what Seth talked about earlier. But he gave numbers like,

00:07:04:10 – 00:07:21:20
Keith
total gross revenue of a Las Vegas facility was $50.3 million in 2020. He said There’s two divisions that basically kind of split that revenue. Number one is the cultivation division.

00:07:21:20 – 00:07:24:14
Keith
And then there is what is the other one,

00:07:24:14 – 00:07:35:24
Keith
the retail distribution is the other one. So there’s the cultivation and then there’s the retail distribution, which kind of sounds like it’s two parts of the assembly line process of getting weed to your table.

00:07:35:24 – 00:07:43:04
Keith
Now he goes on to throw more numbers out there. He said Las Vegas had a 2020 annual revenue of 20 million,

00:07:43:04 – 00:07:49:19
Keith
by itself, the California facility had 2021 annual revenue of 16 million,

00:07:49:19 – 00:08:03:19
Keith
he said, And our owned assets valued at more than 119 million, which made up of 88 million for the cultivation segment and 31 million for the retail segment.

00:08:03:19 – 00:08:10:22
Keith
So it sounds like cultivating is the lion’s share of the money that they make and then they sort of make some retail on top of that.

00:08:10:22 – 00:08:19:11
Seth
What do you think they meant by retail selling shirts or like the actual sale of the marijuana cannabis itself? I’m a little confused on that.

00:08:19:13 – 00:08:28:18
Keith
Yeah. So what probably what they do is they take the actual plant and then process it into probably like gummies or inhalants or.

00:08:28:21 – 00:08:29:17
Seth
So you’re saying they sell.

00:08:29:23 – 00:08:30:09
Keith
That would be that.

00:08:30:09 – 00:08:41:08
Seth
Purportedly they sell the marijuana like wholesale and then somebody else like a different shop might then turn it into a company or what have you, or they could do it the same way as I’m not sure I follow.

00:08:41:09 – 00:08:59:01
Keith
I Yeah, I assume so. When they say retail, that to me sounds like there’s, they have a finished product that they’re giving to a shop that a shop could readily give to a customer and they could consume it. Whereas cultivation is basically grow plant, chop it down, hand it to the next process.

00:08:59:01 – 00:09:02:24
Keith
Okay, So the last thing I want to note is investors…

00:09:03:00 – 00:09:15:28
Keith
If you were an investor, you weren’t left out in the dark here. You got to count statements. So they sent you statements showing what you put into it, the revenue generated by the facilities, and then,

00:09:15:28 – 00:09:16:13
Keith
things like,

00:09:16:13 – 00:09:27:08
Keith
the interest that you made and so forth. So you got statements that looked like you had money sitting in there with them that was generating the interest and making you money while you did nothing.

00:09:27:08 – 00:09:49:29
Keith
So sounds great, right? We told you there is a crime, but we haven’t really talked about the crime yet. So where is the crime? Well, the biggest fucking crime here is none of these facilities are real. California facility doesn’t exist. Nevada facility doesn’t exist. These tours and things that they went on weren’t to the actual facilities that they’re purporting that they’re building and so forth.

00:09:49:29 – 00:10:02:19
Keith
So whatever they did, the trick them and their physical walkthroughs must have been fucking amazing because people still invested money in them, even though it wasn’t in the right place.

00:10:02:21 – 00:10:15:04
Seth
Can I pause and ask, Isn’t one of the real crimes that a guy with a name as awesome as BigRigBaby doesn’t have a bigger career in rap because that is a fantastic name. That’s a crime.

00:10:15:07 – 00:10:20:21
Keith
He may he may need he may maybe his only out to pay back restitution here. Maybe he’ll make a big now.

00:10:20:22 – 00:10:30:18
Seth
And let’s talk about which means they must have had to either rent or know somebody who did have a marijuana facility in Vegas to go do a purported tour. Right. I mean, that’s like kind of finding,

00:10:30:18 – 00:10:37:15
Seth
a car on the corner you like and saying, hey, guys, this is my car. I’m selling it. I can’t open it for you because you can’t sit next to Key.

00:10:37:19 – 00:10:42:10
Seth
You can look at it and you can bid on it for sale. Give me the money and I’ll sell you this car that I don’t own.

00:10:42:10 – 00:10:50:12
Keith
I wish I could have found that detail because that’s what I wanted to know, was what happened in that trip. And because this is like a civil thing and,

00:10:50:12 – 00:10:58:22
Keith
the proof is different and the documents look a little different. That type of storyline, I couldn’t find it in there as desperately as I want.

00:10:58:22 – 00:11:15:16
Seth
This has the makings of a fantastic Netflix like documentary or even like a mini TV show, right? I mean, there’s so many great characters is such a great story here. The fact that it’s all bullshit is really wonderful. I mean, it’s not wonderful for the people who lost their money, but as a story, it’s great.

00:11:15:18 – 00:11:37:06
Keith
And so if you like anything and what you heard today, please give us a like give us a subscribe whatever application you’re on. Specifically on Apple Podcasts, if you could give us a five star review that helps new listeners find us, and that’s half of our audio only listeners find us through Apple. So that would help us out tremendously.

00:11:37:08 – 00:11:58:20
Keith
If you haven’t visit our website, it’s eCrimeBytes e c r i m e b y as in yellow milk t e s dot com. And we have all our social media accounts there. All our audio only side of things are there. You can actually just listen to it in the web page if you’d like. And we got our glossary there.

00:11:58:20 – 00:12:30:24
Keith
We’ve got newsletters there, pretty much anything you’d ever want. You can reach us through that web page. And with that, this is where I say you have to come back tomorrow and listen to Act four, which is the Ponzi scheme, where we put two and two together here, where we got all that background that we gave you and we start talking about the crime and basically how this whole thing went down and some actually some juicy details that are going to kind of fill in some pictures that we had to leave vaguely blank for you in order to leave a little bit of suspense.

00:12:30:24 – 00:12:36:01
Keith
So we’ll see you tomorrow on act four the Ponzi scheme. Thanks.

00:12:36:03 – 00:12:37:20
Seth
Bye

#ecrimebytes #cybersecurity #computer #electronic #truecrime #podcast #security #hacker #humor #funny #comedy #bigrigbaby #rapper #weedgenics #ponzi #ponzischeme #fraud

DrKeithJones.com

Rapper BigRigBaby’s WeedGenics Company Was A Ponzi Scheme – Act 3: The High Life

Sources:

Transcript:

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