A researcher who claimed he had discovered a variety of hops that produced CBD is a convicted con artist and his discovery is fraudulent, according to a report from the PotNetwork. Dr. Bomi Boban Joseph of Peak Health Center is actually Moses Sunith Prasad Joseph, who was arrested in 2005 for defrauding companies including Wells Fargo and Eastman Kodak of nearly $20 million. Joseph was convicted by a jury of 20 charges including grand theft, securities fraud, and embezzlement and sentenced to more than 15 years in prison for filing false financial records in a tech fund’s bid to provide broadband service over power lines. Joseph used proceeds from the scheme to buy real estate including a home in Carmel, California, according to prosecutors, who said he was “charming” and were impressed by his ability to continue the fraud over a span of several years. His attorney said it was all a misunderstanding.
“It’s a sad situation. The broadband product that he was trying to create and sell was a legitimate technology,” the attorney said.
Last year, Dr. Bomi Joseph announced that he had discovered a variety of hops that produced CBD. He said that he had theorized he might find a variety of hops that produced CBD in the mountains of Northern India.
“We were hoping to find what we call dominant species with cannabinoids and CBD, but as luck would have it, we didn’t,” Mr. Joseph told PotNetwork in August 2018. “We found that it was a recessive trait. And from the thousands of samples we collected, we’d find, maybe 1 in 800 or 1 in 1,000 that had some cannabinoids in it. But the trick was just finding the first few samples.”
Joseph claimed he then used his discovery to breed a variety of hops, which he dubbed Humulus kriya, that reliably expressed the recessive gene and produced CBD. Joseph then entered into an agreement with Isodiol to market the hops CBD. In late 2017, Isodiol announced that it was introducing ImmunAG, the first CBD product to be derived from a source other than cannabis. But the release made no mention of Joseph, and citing a breach of contract he sent a letter to Isodiol terminating their business relationship.
Joseph then signed a new agreement with Medical Marijuana Inc. to market hops-derived CBD, which he claimed to have a patent for. Medical Marijuana Inc. then offered the product through its HempMed brand as Real Scientific Humulus Oil.
CBD from Hops ‘Bullshit’
Dr. Volker Christoffel, a chemical researcher who has studied CBD for a decade and is a peer reviewer for a scientific journal, told PotNetwork that Joseph’s claims of CBD from hops are fabricated.
“This is total bullshit,” Christoffel said.
Christoffel says that the paper Joseph published to support his claims is a near word-for-word plagiarized version of a paper that Christoffel wrote with Dr. Michael Bodensteiner of the University of Regensburg two years ago. Christoffel also claims that the taxonomic designation Humulus kriya is a misnomer because the plant is actually Humulus yuannenis and not a separate species or registered variety. He said that the plant probably does not have enough CBD to be commercially viable.
“To judge the true content of CBD in the plant the figures of a milligram of CBD per gram dried plant part is pivotal,” noted Dr. Christoffel. “This is simple to calculate and standard information. Joseph avoids [giving] such a figure. This triggers the suspicion that the alleged Humulus yuannensis sport has not enough CBD to extract reasonable amounts. The steps of extraction and the ratio of CBD towards other Humulus constituents could be an indicating figure, but again, [there are] no description, no figures.”
“There is nothing, nothing worth,” he continued. “It is just marketing to drive their shares.”
In a statement to High Times, Medical Marijuana Inc. said that the company was aware of the PotNetwork story.
“Late last week our company was mentioned in an article online which contained a number of allegations against Dr. Bomi Joseph of Peak Health Center and his supply of Humulus hops derived CBD oil. As he is one of our suppliers, we are working with him directly to investigate. As a company, we always put our consumers and the products we provide for them first,” the statement reads. “We have already begun to address the questions raised in the article, and we will decide on the most appropriate course of action once all the relevant information has been collected and verified. However, we do believe that Dr. Joseph has been targeted by competitors in the industry. Our experience with Dr. Joseph and his company to date has been only positive and our customers have experienced great benefit from the Humulus derived products that we sell.”
When presented with the evidence PotNetwork discovered, Joseph denied their allegations.
“I can’t comment on that, right,” Joseph said. “All I can do is give you my ID and show you who I am. I’ve got a Driver’s License, I’ve got a California ID.”
