A lawsuit has been filed against several Cookies employees, including CEO Gilbert Milam aka Berner, alleging that they have been using threats, violence and financial kickbacks to enrich themselves at the expense of company shareholders, according to a story in GreenMarketReport on Tuesday.
The suit, first reported by WeedWeek on April 19th, was originally filed in February by BR CO I LLC and Nedco I LLC, and later expanded in March.
Berner took to Instagram on 4/20 to refute the claims, calling the suits “bullshit”, and adding that they were brought forth at the same time he was fighting Stage 3 colon cancer.
“When I got sick I think a group of predatory investors saw a good opportunity to make a move on me and the leadership over at Cookies,” Berner said. “These guys have made extremely false, harmful damaging claims about myself that are just completely not true.”
According to the report, Cookies CEO Berner, President Parker Berling, CFO Ian Habenicht, board member Lesjai Peronnet Chang aka JAI, and employees Michael Roberts and Omar Ortiz purportedly “use the popularity of the Cookies brand to engage in pervasive self-dealing … and to strongarm and bully others into paying them millions of dollars in personal benefits and kickbacks.”
GreenMarketReport adds that the “litigation follows another breach of contract lawsuit filed in January by a Florida licensee of Cookies intellectual property, Cookies Retail Products, which claimed in its own suit that Cookies executives attempted to force them to do business with particular vendors from whom Berling and others were receiving kickbacks.”
Berner says that he is looking forward to his day in court.
“I hate that I’m in this situation and I hate that more and more people in the industry end up in this situation,” said Berner on his Couched Locked Network Instagram show. “Because I didn’t want to give into wild demands and change the way I chose to build Cookies, these guys are throwing a fit and trying to put me and my company into a corner and starve us out. Well, that’s not going to happen.”