Connecticut’s attorney general is seeking a $2.5 million judgment against a limited-liability company that allegedly bilked convenience-store retailers and smoke shops seeking cannabis licenses out of tens of thousands of dollars.
Attorney General William Tong filed a lawsuit against MAKECTBETTER LLC, as well as its principal Michael Tedesco and affiliate Zafir Iqbal, alleging a wide-ranging “cannabis license-for-sale scheme” that may have scammed as many as 70 retailers, according to a statement released Monday.
In addition to a $2.5 million prejudgment remedy, Tong’s office is seeking to freeze the assets of all involved in the alleged scam.
“This was a brazen scam to extract tens of thousands of dollars from Connecticut retailers based on false promises and forged documents,” Tong said in the statement. “But let’s be clear—no one can pretend to be an agent of the Office of the Attorney General and get away with it. We’re suing and moving to freeze $2.5 million in assets based on the unassailable evidence in our case, and the extreme lawlessness of their misconduct.”
The complaint, filed in Hartford Superior Court, said as few as 35 businesses and as many as 70 may have fallen victim to the scam as they sought licenses to sell cannabis products in their establishments.
It details once such convenience-store retailer, the owner of Grab ‘N Go Mart in New Haven and New Milly Smoke Shop in New Milford, who allegedly paid MAKECTBETTER $50,000 for forged documents on Department of Consumer Protection letterhead stating the shops had received approval to sell cannabis.
The stores’ owner, Ali Azhar, was told to pay $25,000 per store for Adult-Use Cannabis Hybrid Retailer licenses, which would allow him to purchase up to 500 “units” of cannabis per month for his stores, the complaint stated.
As part of the scheme, Tedesco and Iqbal falsely claimed they were part of a Connecticut “pilot program” that allowed them to secure exclusive cannabis licenses and also that they had connections with cannabis cultivators who would supply products for sale after the retailers obtained their licenses, according to the lawsuit. He made the payments in early 2024.
Fees for the fraudulent licenses ranged from $25,000 to $30,500, according to the complaint.
“Even more egregiously, Defendants created an email account falsely purporting to belong to Associate Attorney General Arenas, to which Defendants maintained access and from which they sent emails on behalf of the State in furtherance of their scheme,” the lawsuit said.
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