Juicy Fields ‘Splinter Group’ Claims To Be Raising New Funds To Refund Victims, But Investors Warned Not To Share Details

As everybody suggests.. tread extremely carefully

BusinessCann reports

LAST month a new iteration of Juicy Fields, dubbed Juicy Fields DAO (Decentralised Autonomous Organisation), contacted BusinessCann directly to inform us of a supposed new refund initiative, which it says has seen €367,014 reimbursed to 56 investors.

This new entity claims to be a ‘splinter group’ of volunteers and supporters who have banded together with the ‘sole mission to restore the platform’s operations, honour and investment’.

The so-called ‘Emergency Refund Group’ provided a number of email screenshots as evidence that these refunds had indeed taken place, which are also published on the company’s website.

Investors urged to remain cautious

BusinessCann has so far been unable to corroborate any of this evidence and has been unable to find anyone who can confirm the receipt of any funds from the company.

When asked if he was aware of any victims that had received a refund in his class action lawsuit, now understood to include around nearly 1,000 victims, Swedish lawyer Lars Olofsson told BusinessCann: “One of my clients has said that he has received money back. I’ve asked him if he could show me, and he has then refused. So, I’m not totally convinced.”

The Asociación Afectados Inversiones CBD, an organisation representing 1,050 victims in a class action lawsuit in Spain, told BusinessCann that its advice to investors considering signing up to the refund scheme is ‘never believe the scammers’.

“Taking into account our experience in this kind of case, the scammers are never going to send the money back to the affected people. Because we are talking about money that can be tracked by the authorities, they won’t give any clue to the courts.

“Never send personal information to the scammers, because they are just trying to gain time and, if they can, get more money and information from the JF investors to sell.”

For the first time since BusinessCann began investigating the Juicy Fields case in July 2022, the group has responded to our questions regarding its recent claims.

The 56 refunds that the group claims to have issued were reportedly selected based on how vulnerable the victim is and whether they are able to provide ‘relevant documents confirming the fact’.

Asked where the money for these refunds has been sourced from, the group said: “Part of the operating capital balance is in cryptocurrency. As the platform’s user base and fund turnover increased, the platform has always maintained a pool of funds in three cryptocurrencies to ensure minimal delay in withdrawals (a reserve fund).”

Bankruptcies

However, this reserve fund is reportedly being used to ‘pay for emergencies’ only, while Juicy Fields’ central funds ‘are frozen in bank accounts’ since the company officially entered insolvency.

On November 4, 2022, Juicy Holdings BV, part of the wider business registered in the Netherlands in 2021, was declared bankrupt by the Amsterdam District Court.

The administrators, CMS Law, say that ‘conducting an investigation into the causes of the bankruptcy’ is one of its primary tasks, one that it says ‘will take a long time given the complexity of the bankruptcy’.

Crucially, this means that not only are there no longer any funds available for the supposed refund team to dish out, but any creditor claims against Juicy Fields will now have to go via the Dutch courts.

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