A barber in National City says San Francisco-based cannabis chain, element 7, used her identity to gain a local retail license by claiming she was the company’s local owner. She was, she just didn’t know it. | Cannabis Law Report | How to buy Skittles Moonrock online

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Thanks to Weedweek for making me aware of this bizarre scam as reported by Voice of San Diego

One day three years ago, Rose Jasso and her husband, Bryan Rodriguez, were about to break for lunch at Five Star Barbershop on Plaza Boulevard in National City when a man introducing himself as Greg Moreno walked in and asked for a haircut.

“I remember it as if it were yesterday,” Jasso said of the day she met Moreno. “He walks toward us with a big old smile on his face and I got the feeling of a used car salesman. The first comment he made was, ‘What do you all think about medicinal marijuana?’”

Moreno settled into Jasso’s barber chair and handed her and her husband business cards. He was a Marine veteran, he said, working for a company called Element 7 that wanted to open a “holistic clinic for patients, specifically veterans” who might benefit from medical cannabis, Jasso recalled.

He asked again: What did Jasso think about medicinal marijuana?

“It’s fine,” Jasso answered, unsure why Moreno kept asking. “If marijuana helps people with their anxiety, I’m a supporter of that,” she said.

The questions continued while Jasso cut Moreno’s hair. Where did she and Bryan live, Moreno asked? (Chula Vista.) Any kids? (Three.) Did anyone in the family ever live in National City?

Jasso said she had grown up in the city and graduated from Sweetwater High School. Chatting the way barbers do, she disclosed that her father, an immigrant from Mexico, had died when she was young. Working at a barbershop was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream to work in the beauty industry, she said.

“You have a very powerful story,” Moreno said as he got up to pay. “I’m going to leave these papers with you.” He pulled out a sheaf of forms — a survey, he said. “Hopefully, you can fill it out.”

Moreno said Element 7 was looking for a few local residents to receive a small portion of profits from the company’s proposed cannabis clinic as way of “helping the community,” Jasso recalled. He said the company was hoping to “find that special person with that great story we can give back to.” Who knows, he said, maybe Jasso would be that person.

Moreno left the sheaf of papers on the counter, took one of Jasso’s business cards and walked out the door.

Late last year, in a shaky voice, Jasso told a shortened version of that story to the five assembled members of the National City Council. It was the evening of Dec. 3, and Jasso, accompanied by a phalanx of friends and family members, stood behind a lectern during public comment at a regularly scheduled City Council meeting.

Speaking rapidly because of a two-minute time limit, Jasso accused Moreno, along with other key employees of Element 7, of using false claims of a charitable giveback program to trick her into signing forms that made her the unwitting owner on paper of the company’s planned National City cannabis business.

National City is one of numerous California cities that include what are known as equity provisions in their cannabis business licensing programs. Applicants seeking to open a cannabis business in National City are given preference in the city’s competitive licensing program if they are majority owned by a local resident.

The provision is meant to ensure that the economic benefits of a lucrative cannabis license go to local entrepreneurs rather than to out of town corporations. Equity provisions in other cities award similar advantages to applicants from certain marginalized communities, or who have prior drug-related criminal convictions.

Standing before the City Council, Jasso claimed that executives at Element 7, a San Francisco-based retail cannabis company with what its corporate website calls “an operational footprint that spans California,” had persuaded her to sign a series of forms by telling her they were part of the company’s charitable community giving program. In fact, Jasso said, the forms were part of a cannabis retail license application that listed Jasso without her knowledge as the local owner of Element 7’s proposed National City cannabis business.

Element 7 submitted that application in 2022, according to city records, listing Jasso as the 51 percent owner of its National City business. The city ultimately awarded Element 7 one of six competitively bid cannabis retail licenses that year. Sixteen other businesses had competed for one of the licenses.

At the Dec. 3 Council meeting, Jasso said she never intended to own a cannabis business, knows nothing about the industry and was terrified that she was now legally liable for a company she never even knew she was part of.

and sadly there’s more lots more

How a Barber Became the Unwitting Owner of a Cannabis Company