Swedish attorney Lars Olofsson said he will file a class action lawsuit against several social and news media platforms that he said helped facilitate the massive Ponzi scheme run by cannabis investment platform JuicyFields.
“I´m now taking legal actions against Facebook, Instagram, Forbes, Google, CNN, and YouTube, to begin with,” Olofsson told Green Market Report. “All of them have allowed JuicyFields to expose themselves on their platforms or magazines, and not just normal accounts but paid ads.”
He added: “Later on, I’m targeting the German, Dutch, Swiss and Cyprus governments for a gross lack of their financial authorities, having not seen what was going on.”
As to precedent for holding large tech platforms responsible for due diligence regarding illegal activities by their affiliates, advertisers, or clients, Olofsson cited a case in which the plaintiff accused credit card company VISA with providing payment processing for distribution of child pornography on adult media platform Pornhub. While the case is ongoing, VISA and Mastercard moved to suspend card payments for advertising on Pornhub and its parent company Mindgeek in August after a motion to dismiss the case was denied by a judge.
Olofsson is representing nearly 800 plaintiffs who are former clients of JuicyFields, a fintech company that promised impressive returns on “per plant” shares of cannabis crops, which has since been exposed as a massive Ponzi scheme.
He estimates there may have…
