Two Florida physicians have sued the owner of Full Spectrum Nutrition in Colorado Springs, claiming their $1.1 million investment in the marketer of cannabinoid-rich hemp extracts and products went instead to a Costa Rican wildlife refuge.
Dr. Josse Anthony Mazo and his wife, Dr. Maritza Riascos, both of Melbourne, Fla., have sued John Michael Merritt Jr., the owner of Full Spectrum Nutrition.
The doctors claim they were defrauded and they want their money back plus three times that sum in damages. Orlando, Fla., attorney Craig Brand this week filed a lawsuit on their behalf in Denver U.S. District Court.
“It’s all done as a sham,” Brand said Thursday, referring to Merritt’s business strategy.
Merritt is a “classic con artist” who preys on people who dream of making millions on the rapidly growing marijuana industry, Brand said.
Costa Rica is an animal lover’s paradise, Brand noted, but Mazo and Riascos never intended for any of their investment to go to the iRescue wildlife refuge Merritt was setting up there.
Mazo and Riascos claim Merritt, who has homes in Florida, Costa Rica and Louisiana, and an apartment at 417 E. Kiowa St. in Colorado Springs, presented them with an elaborate business plan that spelled out huge profits, according to the lawsuit.
In May, Merritt claimed his company, which had a Florida address, had a special deal in which it received CBD-infused products at below-wholesale prices from Folium Biosciences, a Colorado Springs-based hemp-products wholesaler, the lawsuit says.
“Folium Biosciences is the largest vertically integrated producer, manufacturer, and distributor of hemp derived phytocannabinoids in the USA,” according to the company’s website.
The preferential deal, Merrit claimed, meant Full Spectrum could “sell such products at retail to obtain extraordinary net profit margins.”
Merritt actually walked Mazo and Riascos through Folium’s extraction and purification plant in Colorado Springs to reinforce the claim that he “had an ongoing equity interest in Folium.”
“In fact, Merritt had secretly been establishing a ‘wildlife refuge’ business in Costa Rica in conjunction with bottling and marketing Costa Rica water under the name ‘iRescue,'” the lawsuit says.