LA Cultivators, Jungle Boys, Fake Late Fee Raids

On Tuesday night, one of Los Angeles’ most famous pharmacies had a head-on run-in with law enforcement and the California Department of Taxes and Fees.

TLC is known to be the headquarters of the Jungle Boys. They are one of the prime examples of urban growers carving their way to success in the modern cannabis industry where so many have tragically come up short and had to sell a piece or sell out entirely. As one of culture’s best success stories in a world of company dogs, the community was pissed when they saw what they went through last night.

Why? Because we’ve seen them jump through all the hoops that have ever existed for the LA legal cannabis market and maintain a quality that’s better than most. While some would say, “Well, that’s legal cannabis,” in reference to the raid, and wouldn’t be wrong, those with a little more hope in their hearts would be pissed to see someone who’s done so well up to this point that way be treated.

So what happened? We spoke to Ivan from the Jungle Boys to find out.

“At five o’clock in the evening we are all sitting in the shop. It’s the first of the month, so we’re all paying our bills,” Ivan told The High Times. “We look up at the camera and we see a car, two cars, three cars, four cars and we’re like, ‘Holy shit, they must be following someone in our building,’ you know? We watched them come up and my first thought was that they were either following someone in our building or someone who worked for us might have a warrant or something.”

As they watched the employees being jailed by law enforcement, they found the situation quickly turned into something else. Explaining the shock of the moment, Ivan said, “We started to see a raid of all of our employees into the front lobby area and we were like, ‘Are we going to be the fuck searched?'”

He immediately jumped on the line with his attorney as he faced the cameras. He then explained what happened next: “Right next to the office, two police officers come at us with guns, they put them in our faces, tell us to get on the friggin’ floor, this is basically a raid, and we’re like what shit?” Ivan spent the first hour assuming that someone had really screwed up somewhere to cause that sort of event in the store.

“I thought in my head we owed them millions of dollars,” Ivan said. “I’ve never seen undercover officers from the Highway Patrol, LAPD, the sheriff and all other agencies working together.”

Eventually, the TLC team determined that this all stemmed from a subtle discrepancy with the CDTFA when their offices were closed during the pandemic and pharmacies couldn’t pay taxes in cash. Despite the $18 million they received from the Jungle Boys last year, they have decided to continue this campaign with a sum of $66,000 for which the Jungle Boys have already received a hearing date.

The CDTFA regularly inspects California pharmacies. They come in and ask for your recent bills to make sure everything is ok. We asked Ivan, with those site inspections that have increased over the past year, has anything seemed wrong or ever felt like things aren’t cool? He said it always seemed normal. They would come say what they wanted to see and TLC would join.

But when Ivan realized what was really going on, they didn’t go along with it.

“They’re trying to charge us late fees,” Ivan realized at that moment. “And we have appealed.”

TLC provided all the paperwork to the incoming authorities, but apparently that still wasn’t enough.

“You will not speak to our attorney. They won’t look at the appeal papers,” Ivan said, reliving the shock. “They basically just said they’re taking all the money into the building. I think wait, that’s over $66,000?”

At this point, Ivan’s demeanor began to change.

“I think fuck you motherfuckers, what the fuck? You fucking raid our building about a fucking argument that we set a date that you got the email, you got it, you fucking accepted! We’ll send you faxes. We have all the papers, here they are. Is that what this is about? I thought that was over, millions of damn dollars we screwed up.”

While Ivan raged, the CDTFA scooped $174,000 from TLC. They even emptied the tip jars for the budtenders at the counter.

“This is our standard procedure for cannabis companies or any business. We do not single out any industry or type of business. If you owe taxes in California, we will do our best to collect the taxes owed,” the CDTFA told the High Times.