Guanotea1

Personally I've only ever had this username on this site, for many, many years - prior to the founding of Grassmatch. I can only guess that the person you are referring to once went by the username 'Grassmatch' - a person who actually never had a stake in Grassmatch, but someone whom I consider a net positive influence in the early years of Medical Marijuana in Michigan and elsewhere. He was not a shill for GM, not a bot, just a person who dug our work as much as we dug his. I'm not aware of the problems Restorium2 and the user Grassmatch had. I came here originally to get/receive growing advice, strain recommendations, and connect with patients. I read way more than I posted, and I found (and continue to find) this site as mostly a source of inspiration.

Blunt but correct. Grassmatch is going paid-only for caregivers. We're changing our proposition to caregivers From: "Caregivers: come on to Grassmatch and maybe they'll be enough patients to go around" to "Caregivers: come on to Grassmatch, you'll have to pay us, but if you do you'll likely be able to keep your garden in full swing" If that's not interesting to anyone - it's totally OK - there are lots of other places you can pick up patients. This forum, craigslist, family/friends circles, expos, certification centers (sometimes), outside the parking lots of dispensaries, through current patient referrals, the list goes on and on. If you do the legwork - which will cost you time and money - then Grassmatch won't have to. As of yet, we're doing the legwork, but we're doing a shite job because we don't have the $$ to do it properly for all the C.G's we've got.

I'll reiterate: We setup a trap to confirm the identity of a robber who was terrorizing human beings across Grassmatch and probably elsewhere. We outed that robber. Yay! We apologized, not because we outed the robber, but because we included more information in that outing than was absolutely necessary. (To be clear we'd out him again) This circus ensued Go back to the first pages of this thread. Anyone who jumped to defend this service was summarily shot down as shills. This is confirmation bias 101. The overwhelming vast majority of meets on Grassmatch go well, because the overwhelming majority of people in the program are good people. But when something does go wrong, we try to address it with software and procedures because that's the right thing to do. Still, you can't please all the people all the time - and after you become popular enough there will always be a few people that hate you. We're not arguing with Resto, or Dalbert here. We don't care what they think. We want to make sure that patients and caregivers who run by this thread have accurate information.

Not from this state? Dude, I went to Novi. What am I doing with a Degree from UM again? Then I made a website that's helped thousands, then I moved, then I came back, then I moved again. What business is it of yours? Get over it. There usually won't be police records when caregivers are involved. It's often not in the C.G's best interest to open himself up to LEO. That's part of the reason that C.G's deserve to be protected, and the whole reason as to why we check patient's ID.

You know the problem you're having? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias Confirmation bias. The tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirm's one's preexisting beliefs or hypotheses.

That's correct, we had to start requiring id when we got big enough to become a target for scammers. If we don't have anything nearby you (or you're using a VPN or something that screws up our ability to detect your location) then you'll get that image. If you enter in any Michigan zip code into the search box, you'll get results within 35 miles. This is what Grand Rapids looks like. Note that products/caregivers are not sorted by distance (but instead by a reputation score).

Dude it all makes sense!!! Cops setup a complicated website in 2015 to trap patients and caregivers into legally connecting with one and other and have been adding features to it ever since. Those diabolical geniuses now even have texting, are ranking search results by scoring, and have added product menus. All under the guise of 'helping'... You guys do realize that every time you dredge up this post, Grassmatch gets a boost in traffic including a boost in people converting on the site? You can't let sleeping dogs lie, and I love it. P.S. we had that ROBBERS info because we setup a special trap and he fell into it.

Punkie, My Name is Peter and I run Grassmatch. You can reach me at peter at grassmatch dot com or the support email. I'm not sure if you read this whole thread or not, but the net-net of what went on here was that we outed a patient that was repeatedly robbing caregivers with a little more of his information than was absolutely necessary for people to avoid this guy. Once we're done with your card / id we get rid of it. We've been keeping your selfie so we can roll out a safety feature so that caregivers can check verify that the person that got verified on Grassmatch is the person that they are meeting up with. But that will only be shared with your explicit permission to single caregiver at a time. I'm not really sure why this all generated so much controversy. We are legitimate, we've been around for years, we've matched thousands and thousands of patients with their caregivers. We've intentionally stayed out of the public eye for a long time, while we've slowly build a system that works really well. I hope you find what you're looking for, where ever you look for it!

Re: hearsay. Hearsay has a very specific definition in the law: the report of another person's words by a witness, usually disallowed as evidence in a court of law. I did not assume someone was guilty, our investigation took months - multiple interviews, digital lineups, research on iChat, multiple reports inside our system, multiple device logs, ip logs, and a specially designed trap just for him... I'd love it if we could rely on the courts to get this guy off the streets and away from robbing caregivers but let's face it - the courts and medical marijuana caregivers just don't mix well. In addition the caregivers involved did not want to take it to that level. We still shouldn't have put out his ID to our caregivers - not because he's innocent (he's guilty as hell) - but for the simple reason that it was more information than was necessary to make sure people know to stay away. That is not a mistake we'll be repeating. Resto man... I've done all I could here. I get that you don't trust Grassmatch, you don't have to. No one should trust anything blindly. I'm glad that someone started this discussion and that I had an opportunity to respond. We put out a lot of info for folks to read and decide for themselves about the site, a lot of which I think belongs in a FAQ section. Thank you all, especially Resto. The more I can understand the mindset of caregiver's willing to ask the question - "Is Grassmatch Legit?" the better we can make things for the whole community.

Mel, The guy has a long and criminal record that includes assault, weapons, and theft. Resto is using OTIS - which is free - I am using iChat - which I pay $10 /check for. Here is a quote from the OTIS site telling you to use iChat if you want to be sure: "Although every effort is made to maintain accurate records on this database, no action should be taken as a result of information found herein without confirmation with the MDOC, the Michigan State Police through the use of their Internet Criminal History Access Tool (ICHAT) or a review of the court file. The Michigan State Police ICHAT can be found at: http://michigan.gov/ichat." I keep saying - use iChat, use iChat, use iChat...

Hearsay is when someone tells someone who then tells the investigator. Primary evidence is when someone tells the investigator directly. My evidence is primary. I didn't hear it from people who know the victims, I heard it from the victims. Going to court isn't going to stop a guy who pleads guilty twice every year, and it's would be seriously a terrible outcome for the innocent caregivers involved. Courts and marijuana tend not to mix well when caregivers are involved...

It's not hearsay when it comes directly from several different victims. Spend the money on an iChat record yourself...

You're stretching it an awful lot. I was overzealous when I sent out that id. For sure, bad move, and I accept the blowback from that. I just wanted caregivers to know that this guy was really dangerous and absolutely 100% unrelentingly after them. Here's a guy with multiple burner phones, burner email addresses, a violent rap sheet, robbing caregivers and continuing to try to rob them even after we implemented new ID verification procedures. We made a trap for him and he finally fell into it.

I'm not responsible for maintaining the state criminal databases. Like I said the report is from iChat, I'm staring at it right here, DOB is exact. You're spending a lot of time worrying about a guy who robbed a bunch of caregivers. His last offense was 8 months ago. Was my response entirely appropriate? No, I'd take some of it back. Would I track this guy down again and warn people about him again? Yes!!!!!

I assume that this message will be taken down. I do want to say I'm glad that this discussion forum exists, and I'm happy anytime I find a place that provides patients greater access and choices -dispensaries, forums, whatever. You can reach me at peter at Grassmatch dot. com if you want to talk. I'll just go down the list: The Grassmatch Schill I don't know Phil, other than he's apparently used our system and it was OK for him, we are not affiliated. Where's the evidence? Angel - the marijuana "Patient" I warned our users about I pulled his criminal history report from Michigan's State Police iChat system. It's a 'Mile Long" with very serious offenses - including robbery and assault. The other evidence against him includes: messages sent/received, reports from our users, descriptions from our users, pictures from our users matching exactly pictures he submitted to us, email addresses, phone numbers and mention IP/Device history. I needed to warn people about him, I've got ideas for how to make those warnings more efficient in the future. Have we had problems? Heck yes! We're not perfect human beings who can see the future. When we do have problems we do two things: (1) Communicate with our users & (2) FIGHT BACK Why do we now check ID's, paperwork, and marijuana cards of all patients? TO FIGHT BACK AGAINST CROOKS TO MAKE SURE PATIENTS ARE LEGITIMATE. Do we require caregivers to send us their ids/paperwork/etc? IT'S OPTIONAL That will change if it has to, I don't want info I don't need So far our caregivers have been mostly playing nice Does my identity become public information? Nope, only I see it. Do we sell information? NO! That would be immoral and probably illegal. I'd like to see any evidence you have that suggests we do this. Otherwise your just guessing - right? What's it cost? All patients are free, over 90% of caregivers use grassmatch for free as well. There are caregivers / co-ops who really clean up on GM, they pay between $14.95-$24.95 /mo. It's 1/10th the cost of any other avenue. Those people pay to keep the site open for the rest of us. Do we do a criminal background check? Nope :(. I'm researching that now. Good thing too - because obviously not all background checks are created equal... As always, I extend an open invitation to anyone who wants to collaborate with me on Grassmatch. If you have a better way of connecting thousands of patients and caregivers together across Michigan, just demonstrate it to me and I'll shut down the site today and send my users to you. peter at grassmatch d0t com. Here I am in the common bar in Detroit. I came around to every hydro shop in the metro and met every doctor that's ever had a patient on Grassmatch just to show my face. I never intended to make it into SE Michigan - but people started finding us anyway...