Jessica VerSteeg, an Iowa beauty queen, and her husband Egor Lavrov, a Russian entrepreneur and political strategist, have not been heard from since 2019.
The founders of Paragon, a blockchain platform intended to “build blockchain into every step of the cannabis industry,” are wanted by the United States federal judiciary. The problem, as CoinDesk reports, is they are nowhere to be found.
Paragon was started by Jessica VerSteeg, an Iowa beauty queen who took the Miss Iowa US title in 2014, and her husband Egor Lavrov, a Russian entrepreneur and political strategist. The company, which received a promotional boost from rapper “The Game”, reportedly raised about US$12 million in digital assets when they launched Paragon Coin in 2017. Now investors want their money back, but according to CoinDesk, neither Lavrov nor VerSteeg have been heard from since last year.
A lawsuit filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California also names Paragon technologist Eugene Bogorad as a defendant in the case. Bogorad, who has since returned to Moscow, told CoinDesk that he has not seen Lavrov since late 2017.
“I think they’re together and disappeared together,” Bogorad said. “Last we heard from them, they were visiting the development team near Kyiv.”
VerSteeg last posted to Instagram in July 2019, sharing a photo of herself and Lavrov having dinner in the Ukraine capital.
The attorneys representing the defendants have withdrawn as counsel, Donald Enright, who is representing the plaintiffs, told CoinDesk. The lawsuit may proceed as a class action case.
“Once we have the class certified we will then seek default judgment on behalf of the entire class for all of their damages for the full value of the Paragon ICO,” Enright said.
For VerSteeg, Paragon was not her first cannabis venture. In 2014, she founded AuBox, a cannabis subscription service that delivered products such as CBD bath bombs, edibles and supplements to customer’s doors, Forbes reports. She also developed a blockchain technology service alongside that company, called AuChain, which laid the groundwork for Paragon Coin.
Other cryptocurrencies have emerged in the cannabis industry over the past several years, perhaps most notably PotCoin, which bills itself as the cryptocurrency of the cannabis industry. PotCoin was first released in 2014 and is founded by three entrepreneurs in Montreal.
The cannabis industry continues to face issues when it comes to banking, especially in the U.S., where federally insured banks cannot interact with cannabis businesses, even if they are operating legally within their own state.
“Without banks, state-compliant cannabis businesses can’t accept credit cards, acquire loans, set up deposit accounts, write cheques, run payroll or pay taxes,” Robert Hoban wrote at Forbes this week. “All this currently enables money-laundering, presents a safety hazard and prohibits the U.S. from keeping pace with nearly all of its neighbours in the Western Hemisphere in the new commercial global cannabis economy.”
That could soon change, however, as the Democrats push to reintroduce the Secure and Fair Enforcement Banking Act in the next round of coronavirus legislation. The bill states that it would “increase public safety by ensuring access to financial services to cannabis-related legitimate businesses and service providers and reducing the amount of cash at such businesses.”
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