The weed industry is getting to know a time-honored tradition of the American business world: corporate fraud. Federal prosecutors in Colorado last week charged the men behind FusionPharm, a publicly traded hydroponic marijuana farming company, with securities fraud over an alleged plot to pocket more than $12 million from the sale of phony shares. Regulators first caught wind of some suspicious behavior at FusionPharm back in 2014—enough to suspend trading of its shares, along with that of four other businesses. But there were no criminal charges filed against the company until this month.
The case is moving ahead at an auspicious moment, with a growing number of states edging toward legalizing marijuana for recreational use and thereby opening the floodgates for corporate capitalism to assert a grip on weed in America. As the industry lumbers from straight-up criminality toward a hazy, quasi-legal status (with an infusion of cash from Wall Street and Silicon Valley), some companies have begun to list on major and minor stock exchanges around the country, providing the public with the opportunity to essentially invest in the future of weed—for better and for worse.
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