Misleading Much? The Fresh Toast Falls for a Cannabis Canard

One of our Flipboards called The American Cannabis Report. You should visit it after you read this article.

Another one is called ACR Followups, where we put news stories we intend to write about. Many of the 'follow-ups' are thinly veiled propaganda pieces so outrageous they demand to be illuminated by the bright light of truth.

Here's one:

"Is Oregon’s Cannabis Black Market Problem Getting Out Of Hand?"

We're not creating a link to this little turd, for a few reasons. First of all, we kinda like The Fresh Toast - it's mostly a cool site [though their bullshit monitor is asleep at the wheel.] And second of all, we don't want to create any SEO juice for a steaming pile like this one.

The headline would suggest that there's a problem with black market cannabis in Oregon, right? And we've read there's an oversupply issue in Oregon - that is, the legal growers are faster than the legal consumers - creating a glut. The "fear" (not really) is that this surplus cannabis is going to be sold ("leaked") to the black market. (The black market which is created and maintained by Federal Prohibition... but we digress.)

But that's NOT what this Fresh Toast story is really about. It's hardly about cannabis at all. It's about scam artists doing a thing called a "bust-out credit card scheme" which is described on Fresh Toast as:

Never heard of a “bust-out” credit card scheme? It involves running up large credit card balances and paying them off using a co-conspirator’s bank account. Then the co-conspirator would contact their bank to challenge the charge and receiving a full refund before any financial institution could detect something was wrong. Prosecutors have accused the defendants of defrauding financial institutions of more than $1 million.

A $1 Million credit card fraud.

It's not about problems with the "cannabis market" in Oregon, it's about real criminals doing really bad criminal stuff... Financial fraud to the tune of $1 Million in credit card fraud.

This article should have been called "Credit Card Fraud in Oregon"

Boring, but TRUE. Get your toast together, Fresh Toast.

image source: The Fresh Toast