District Court to telling the bank involved that his company, Friendly Management Group, was a wellness and fitness company instead of the marijuana sales operation it really was.
It’s cases like these – and Ngo’s is not the first – that tend to set off cannabis entrepreneurs like Mark Lozzi.
His reference was to how banks typically won’t deal with marijuana companies because of fragmented state laws and because the drug remains on the federal Schedule I list of dangerous narcotics.
Ngo, who in the past operated a chain of medical marijuana dispensaries under the name Cannabless, pleaded guilty to laundering more than $770,000 in proceeds and agreed to forfeit $621,570 of that amount.
“No one working in a store or behind a register should have to worry about experiencing a traumatic robbery at any moment,” Senator Jeff Merkley, D-Oregon, one of 28 co-sponsors of SAFE, said in a press statement.
House in March for the second year in a row and has bipartisan support, would prohibit federal banking regulators from penalizing institutions that provide banking services to legitimate cannabis-related businesses.
“What is really important in all of this is how banking compliance is going to be prominent and a focal point of all future legislation moving forward,” Lozzi, the financial services CEO, said in the interview.
The need for governance is clear, as illustrated by the Denver Post’s recent characterization of Oklahoma, a decidedly red state, as “the hottest place in the country to grow marijuana.” In fact, the state has no limits on how many plants anyone can grow, and no limit on numbers of grows and dispensaries.
Given all this demand, plus the huge growth of the cannabis industry nationally and multiple steps toward federal legalization, the question is what a marijuana entrepreneur can do about the banking piece.
“You want to deposit $10,000? You have to provide all the evidence of that $10,000,” the CEO said by way of example.
Of course services like these don’t come cheap from Confia and other cannabis financial platforms: Lozzi’s fees range from $500 to $2,500 a month.
Nor does the CEO believe his company’s mission will end with legalization: “ can’t allow the financial system to get cavalier toward the industry,” he argued.