The founder and chairman of Hightimes Holding Corp., the corporate that publishes Excessive Occasions journal, has agreed to plead responsible to becoming a member of a legal conspiracy to pay greater than $150,000 in undisclosed compensation to an analyst for an funding publication that touted its inventory and assisted Hightimes in elevating at the least $6 million, officers mentioned Friday.
Adam Levin was charged final month with one federal depend of conspiracy to tout securities for undisclosed compensation. In a plea settlement filed Dec. 20, Levin agreed to plead responsible to the felony offense, in accordance to the U.S. Lawyer’s Workplace.
Levin, who bought the enduring hashish journal in 2017 following the dying of its unique proprietor of 40 years, the late Michael J. Kennedy, ESQ, is scheduled to look in a Los Angeles federal courtroom on Jan. 14.
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Cash Laundering And Pay To Play
Levin is the fourth defendant to be charged within the scheme during which firms paid an analyst at Palm Seaside Enterprise, an funding publication with subscribers nationwide. That analyst, Jonathan William Mikula alongside along with his affiliate, Christian Fernandez, who acted as a cash launderer for the scheme and Raj Beri who brokered offers for undisclosed funds by different issuers, every obtained a portion of the funds. Mikula, Fernandez and Beri every pleaded responsible final yr and are scheduled to be sentenced in July 2025.
The funds made by executives corresponding to Levin had been in change for Palm Seaside Enterprise publishing promotional items for securities choices, based on courtroom paperwork. Federal regulation requires full and public disclosure from anybody who has obtained fee, straight or not directly from an issuer for publishing, publicizing or circulating any commercial or communication that describes the issuer’s safety supplied on the market.
$20 Million From ‘Investor-Victims’
In accordance with Levin’s plea settlement, in 2020 and 2021 “Hightimes raised roughly $20 million from greater than 10 investor-victims, with at the least $6 million in funding proceeds related to Palm Seaside Enterprise’s promotion.”
To hide the scheme, famous the Lawyer’s Workplace, Levin entered right into a sham “advertising settlement” and routed the funds by way of a Canadian financial institution to a shell firm in Canada, based on the plea settlement.
Mikula then prompted Palm Seaside Enterprise to advertise Hightimes’ securities providing on April 6 and Sept. 23 in 2020 in articles that falsely acknowledged, “Neither the Palm Seaside Analysis Group nor its associates obtain compensation for bringing this deal to you,” the plea settlement states.
Levin additionally admitted that he lied to the U.S. Securities and Alternate Fee when he denied realizing that he entered right into a “pay-for-play association,” courtroom papers present.
The FBI is investigating the matter.
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Photograph: Sarah Stierch (CC BY 4.0)
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