Big Chief Extracts is already a “gray market” THC vape cartridge brand which we reviewed last time to just barely qualify it as licensed. Since then, new information has come to light – in fact, not a day goes by without some new static on the air about Big Chief. We’re going to try to catch up everything here.
UPDATE 8/21/2020: Aaaaand their license is reinstated. Big Chief is officially back on the straight ‘n’ narrow, though the legion of counterfeits out there remain.
Our conclusions about Big Chief so far : for the record:
Big Chief is DEFINITELY a copied and counterfeited brand. Since our last report, black market packaging, online sellers, and street dealers have multiplied many times over. It’s now far bigger than Dank, the original poster child for black market carts.
Big Chief empties are on DHGate, VapesWholesale, CartsPackaging, Made-In_China, CBDVapeMall, and more. Spend a few dollars, and you, too, can be a Big Chief filler! This brand is so cracked open, we use it to find empty packaging retailers we never knew about before.
As far as an actual licensed and legit Big Chief company, our possibilities are narrowed to either:
A legit company that is spectacularly mismanaged
A complete sham covered up by one of the most elaborate hoaxes since the Watergate conspiracy
Our bottom line advice to the vaping community: Avoid Big Chief, period, no matter where you find it. There are a thousand other vape cart brands out there that do not have a soap opera and a half worth of drama attached to them.
Two weeks ago: Big Chief was allegedly raided
This rumor popped around social media and was refuted by somebody allegedly speaking for Big Chief on similar channels.
If this is a false rumor being spread, it is unusual to have people named in the story. Somebody at an account @bigchiefextracts simply called this “fake news,” which isn’t the most convincing of denials.
See Reddit for further discussion. We wash our hands of this story temporarily.
The address associated with Big Chief’s license is questionable
Last time, we did drag out a California BCC license under “Cali Blue Sky Investments, LLC,” and traced it to an address and phone number in San Bernardino. We called that number, a man answered and affirmed: They represent Cali Blue Sky, they are responsible for Big Chief, and they are aware of the counterfeit issue.
Since then, one of our Deep Throat commenters mentioned that we should Google that address under the Cali Blue Sky corporate listing (“1055 WILSHIRE BLVD, STE 1945 LOS ANGELES CA 90017”). We did, and it matches the Kenneth KeeByung Yoo Law group. Here is the website of same. The copy at the bottom says “The Kenneth Yoo Law Group has been practicing law in Southern California for the last 20 years.” However, the “about” page on that site is still filled with “lorem ipsum” filler text. Isn’t twenty years enough time to finish writing a paragraph about yourself?
We’ve tried reaching out to Kenneth Yoo and gotten no response. The address 1055 Wilshire Blvd. in L.A. goes to exactly the kind of tall, anonymous office building you would expect. Nevertheless, it’s plausible that a Los Angeles lawyer could own a corporation which runs a cannabis oil company out of San Bernardino. But why is this so hard to verify?
Somebody speaking for Big Chief gave a false license
Days after that, we find this:
Now, the messenger claims to be “a licensed and compliant brand in California.” Yet when asked for a BCC#, the response is “CCL19-0002188.” This is not remotely in the format for California licenses, which we explain fully in our guide. BCC license format is “C{8-14}-(zero-filled to seven digits)XXX-{LIC | temp}.” There is no class 19 license at all. On the off-chance that this is an innocent typo, we’re trying things like “C12-0002188-LIC” and getting nothing.
Why lie about such an easily checked fact? Anybody asking for a BCC number clearly knows what one is and how to check it.
Well, this came from a Reddit thread, and another commenter on there said they asked on Big Chief’s Instagram and got the MCSB this time, “CDPH-10002803.”
A Manufactured Cannabis Safety Branch license for Big Chief?
So it’s off to the MCSB license check, also in California, and this time we get Boyle Brothers 411, LLC. That’s an active corporation in California; however, its a subsidiary of the same-name corporation in Nevada, which shows as is revoked. We tried the address under the corporate listing, (“3411 E.15TH STREET LOS ANGELES CA 90023”), and this time when we visit the neighborhood we got a distinctly un-corporate vibe:
Of course, we try the phone and get a garbled answering machine, and the email address produces no response. This time, the corporate owner’s name is “Dunstin Woo.”
Here’s the point to all this: We’re trying to verify one damn person and one damn address for this huge company with sales all over the world. What if NONE of these were the real owners? So far we had a 15 second conversation with an anonymous voice in San Bernardino who couldn’t wait to get us off the phone. The Big Chief Website does link to the Instagram which only now, since we last blogged this, puts up the license number we grabbed last time, so that’s one tenuous connection that is so far our only confirmation.
Where is the cannabis grown?
Where is the oil extracted?
How many license numbers are we going to get for one company that all lead to anything but a cannabis oil production facility?
It takes as little as $49 to register an LLC, by the way. Registering a domain name, $15 plus a monthly shared server fee (coffee money). You can go online with all that and claim to be the CEO of McDonald’s, but it doesn’t mean anything. If you fool people long enough to sell twenty hamburgers, you made a profit and you can keep on lying until the lawyers get to your door.
What if none of the people we have dealt with are the true original owners of this brand?
New packaging and a “verification system”
Which brings us to TODAY:
Redditors report that they tried the verification system and it failed already. That’s not surprising, because we found a different registered domain for Big Chief!
OfficialBigChiefExtract.com also has a verification system put up. Now how do we even know people are verifying at the right website?
Not to mention that another Instagram account, @bigchiefextracts2, gives us a different take on verification:
https://www.instagram.com/p/B8wnFU-gd6g/
You’ll notice that the box does not match the one posted on Reddit. Nor does the “BC Big Chief’n” logo on the back with the crossed arrows, in gold, match the one we found in our original post. The QR code from that post, recall, went to a 404 page.
Somebody else on Reddit scanned a Big Chief QR code and it just went to the BigChiefExtracts website.
UPDATE 06/05/20: Another post on Reddit reports that even fake Big Chief carts scan like the “real” thing on the website. Just like this:
When it comes to product verification, Big Chief speak with fork tongue. (sorry!) As one user points out, sometimes the box back says “stay Big Chief’n” and other times just “Big Chief’n.” Note also on the above package, the fonts for “stay” and “Big Chief’n” are different. Typography experts, can we name these fonts?
None of this is any help! Our advice is to forget Big Chief
If the actual people who own this brand are going to hide like they’re on the lam and a thousand fakes are going to run away with the show, what is the point?
Big Chief is a source of a constant tidal wave of turmoil in our comments, our forums, every social media channel, every cannabis forum on the web. This brand is so obfuscated and its path to proving the legitimacy of anything is so twisted that you might as well give up and vape something with a good review where it takes one easy minute to verify the company.
Comments (yes, more) in the continuing Big Chief saga are still welcome in our forum. Just don’t expect us to jump on them right away after this. There’s a whole cannabis industry out there, too.