Phoenix New Times: Medbox is a company that “features patented systems that dispense medication based on biometric identification . . . . [and] turn-key consulting services to the pharmaceutical industry” Medbox (MDBX) is a publicly traded company whose stock value was $19.91 as of May 9, 2014, which gave it a market value of $587,857,682. Medbox is a major player in the Arizona medial marijuana dispensary industry.
On May 8, 2014, the Phoenix New Times published a devastating story about Medbox written by investigative reporter Ray Stern. Here are some interesting quotes from the story.
“Judging by its stock, this company truly is big time. Its products and services, however, aren’t as impressive. Medbox machines are by no means in widespread use in Arizona’s 80 medical-marijuana dispensaries. One drawback of the devices, as the unit at BC Wellness Center demonstrates, is that customers can’t use them legally. . . .
We spent all this money for the machine, and the customer can’t use it. . . . But the machine isn’t crucial to the dispensary’s operation . . . . ‘We could do without it.’ . . .
It’s not a glowing review of the Medbox product from one of the two Arizona dispensaries in which New Times was able to verify the existence of working Medbox machines. . . .
Vincent Mehdizadeh — founder, inventor of the dispensing machine, senior strategist, and (until his recent resignation) chief operating officer — is a convicted felon. He pleaded guilty last year to stealing from immigrants by offering them bogus legal services, avoiding a prison sentence when he paid $450,000 in restitution to victims. Medbox owns no factories, no buildings. It rents a West Hollywood office. Last year, it had revenues of $5.2 million but didn’t turn a profit. It ended the year with about $300,000 in the bank. What Medbox does have, though, is impressive stock. . . .
The founder of Medbox generally goes by the name Vincent Mehdizadeh. In U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings, however, he calls himself P. Vincent Mehdizadeh. The P is for Pejman, listed as his true first name in a 2013 plea agreement with the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office — a deal that allowed him to escape serving four years in prison. A civil complaint filed in a California court by theft victim Abdul Ahmed states another a.k.a. for Mehdizadeh: Vince Zadeh. [See the Statement of Issues and Supporting Facts, Declaration of Abdul Ahmedts with Evidentiary Exhibits . . . Memorandum of Points of Authorities in Support of Prejudgement Attachment filed in this lawsuit.] . . .
Over recent months, Medbox has been the target of another writer, Roddy Boyd of the Southern Investigative Reporting Foundation, who wrote lengthy articles about it published on September 30, 2013, and on April 17 [See “What’s in a Name: The Ongoing Saga of Medbox“]. A week before Boyd’s most recent article appeared, Mehdizadeh resigned as director and COO of Medbox, saying in a news release he’d done so to make the company ‘less prone to attack.’ [Roddy Boyd is the author of another scathing story about Medbox and Mehdizadeh called “Tinkerer, Lawyer, Hustler, Lies: One Man’s Path to a Dope Fortune.”] . . .
The June 21, 2013, plea agreement and subsequent news releases by the California agencies involved in the case are available online and show that Mehdizadeh pleaded guilty to two counts of grand theft and admitted to a “special allegation of engaging in a pattern of related felony conduct involving takings in excess of $100,000.” In addition to the hefty restitution order, he was sentenced to five years’ probation.
Read the article because it contains much more information about Medbox and its machines.
