The Blacklist was at its best the main page of the internet regarding the U.S. cannabis sector.
Lured by an intoxicating “user generated” mix of insider leaks, industry rumor and gossip, and aggregated content that appeared to be copy-pasted directly from reputable news sources and spun into viral social-media posts, The Blacklist built an audience now totaling more than 400,000 Instagram followers. The result was “the most disruptive force in weed,” as cannabis website MerryJane described the outfit after interviewing one of The Blacklist’s shadowy, “anonymous” operators in 2019.
In its own words aspiring to be the putative “TMZ of cannabis,” The Blacklist at times showed an unfiltered, unreliable, and darker side.
It was alleged without conclusive evidence in industry circles that negative posts could be made to disappear for a few thousand dollars, a practice popular Instagram celebrity and cannabis entrepreneur Berner suggested was “extortionist” in an interview with SF Weekly last year. (The Blacklist rejected the claims as lacking evidence and “libelous” at the time.) They also responded to claims of unvetted information being published by pointing out the legal protections available to hosts of user-generated material.
The Blacklist, whatever its current status, isn’t anonymous. A dispute over the company’s ownership is the focus of a spiraling legal battle—and the latest episode in an increasingly ugly, increasingly public beef that’s equal parts personal drama and industry sideshow.
What’s not in dispute is that The Blacklist’s registered founder and owner, as per Delaware corporate filings attached to a lawsuit filed earlier this year, is a Los Angeles-area woman named Shalon Doney.
Doney is currently married to Adam Campbell. Adam Campbell was a long-time marijuana grower and spent many years fighting for Montana’s federal pot case. The 2021 divorce proceedings are not final. That means The Blacklist is community property—that is, an asset that should belong equally to both spouses—and Campbell is entitled to half, as Doney’s lawsuit admits.
Shalon Doney, Adam Campbell, 2010s.
Matthew Wagner
Still, she claims in her suit that “since its inception, Ms. Doney has been the sole operator and manager of TBO [The Blacklist Online] and she remains as such today.”
In addition to suing Campbell for “unlawfully misappropriating [Doney’s] federal intellectual property rights,” Doney is also suing Matthew Wagner, the man who sat for the “anonymous” MerryJane interview.
Doney’s lawsuit alleges that Campbell and Wagner represented themselves as The Blacklist in negotiations with a potential partner earlier this year that would have seen the brand expand from media into cannabis manufacturing and verification. Doney found out about this, her suit alleges, after she received DMs on The Blacklist’s account from people she didn’t recognize saying, “‘nice meeting you’ (or words to that effect),” according to her suit. (Going public right away, The Blacklist then posted on its LinkedIn page that the pair were “unauthorized people claim [sic] to be working with The Blacklist.”)
Wagner is the center of much of The Blacklist’s drama. A former adult nightclub owner, promoter, and performer originally from Missouri—where, he said in an interview, he originally met Doney—Wagner started selling advertising for The Blacklist in late 2019.
Matthew Wagner
Matthew Wagner
In his response to Doney’s lawsuit, filed last month, Wagner alleges that Doney formed The Blacklist at the direction of her estranged husband, Campbell. (The Blacklist’s logo, an empty-faced human figure in an upturned hooded sweatshirt, is based on Campbell, the two men told The Daily Beast.)
Further, Doney promised Wagner a one-third stake in the company “if he could figure out ways to monetize the platform”—and Wagner started closing five-figure advertising deals in late 2019, according to his own filing.
Their arrangement went south after Doney became “physically and verbally abusive” towards him, Wagner claimed in a March letter sent to Doney by his attorney and entered into the court record as part of her lawsuit. (Her filing said the claims were “legally and/or factually without merit.”)
According to the letter, Doney has sold half of the company’s stock for $250,000 to another Californian entrepreneur. This would give the company an estimated value of $500,000.
The claim could not be verified immediately. In a telephone interview, the entrepreneur who Wagner said bought a stake denied making any deal—and claimed to have no relationship with The Blacklist.
Doney cancelled a scheduled interview earlier in the month after being contacted by David Gingras, her attorney. Emails with follow-up questions were returned by someone writing from the email address [email protected], identifying themselves only as “The Blacklist Admin.”
The correspondent dismissed all of Wagner’s claims before throwing out some more accusations of their own.
“All of Matt Wagner’s allegations will prove to be false and untrue in a court of law,” the person wrote. “There is no proof to any of his false allegations, which is why a lawsuit was filed against him.”
“We will not comment further on frivolous claims being brought forward by an ex sales person who worked for blacklist for a short period time [sic]. We will continue to aggregate content and be the voice of the community.”
The correspondent offered a shifting explanation for the purported sale—first claiming that the investor was bought out six weeks after the deal, then claiming there was no deal at all, before they lobbed a serious bomb.
“It should also be noted that Wagner was released after it was discovered he managed a brothel that trafficked underage girls,” the email added. “That information is available with an internet search.” [emphasis theirs]
In subsequent emails, the correspondent shared photos showing Wagner in different undresses, including promotional photos to a male stripper show. The correspondent said he was fired “once these photos surfaced and there was a story submitted that Mr. Wagner was involved in a brothel in Thailand that was raided for trafficking underage girls.”
Wagner freely admits Missouri police raided a club he was managing in 2014—and that the risqué photos, from a four-month period when he performed in Texas, are in fact genuine. According to local reports, the raid involved the illegal sale and performance of nude by dancers, as well as the operation of an after-hours adult cabaret. The raid also included the defense of flash-bangs by the county sheriff. According to the news articles, Wagner was charged with felony drug possess for allegedly possessing anabolic steroids.
According to The Daily Beast’s review of the plea agreement, Doney pleaded guilty in two misdemeanors to allowing dancers to go too unclothed under Missouri law. Doney claimed that he knew all this information before Wagner began working for The Blacklist.
As for the underage trafficking allegation, that’s a familiar line, Wagner claimed.
“It’s just not true, and that’s why I’m not afraid to face it.”
Wagner was a promoter and consultant for Thai nightclubs, long after the Missouri incident. He was mentioned in a November 2018 local newspaper article about a $6,100 tab that a British tourist ran up at the Windmill in Pattaya City.
It’s also true that Thai police raided that club and arrested three employees after a 16-year-old girl offered sex to an undercover informant in July 2019, according to Thai media reports. Wagner claimed that he was back in the States by this point. This claim is supported by posts on Facebook which appear to have placed him in Pennsylvania at the time of raid. (The Pattaya office of the public procuror did not respond to an inquiry for comment.
Wagner claims to have been the subject of a larger internet troll campaign. Earlier this year, someone—not Wagner, he says—launched an Instagram account under the handle @mattwagner_ca where, along with innocuous posts, some of the stripper photos appear. “THIS PERSON DOES NOT REPRESENT @theblacklistxyz OR ITS AFFILIATES,” @theblacklistxyz posted in the comments.
Dan Miller, Wagner’s attorney in the lawsuit filed by Doney, said that his client plans to bring a separate suit against Doney and The Blacklist for defamation in response to the trafficking allegations.
In a separate interview, Campbell said his wife formed The Blacklist’s corporate structures by herself because he was on federal probation for the marijuana charge picked up in Montana. Campbell has not been served with the federal suit. He described it as a deliberate effort by Campbell to get out of the divorce proceedings and keep him from The Blacklist.
“Her goal is ostracization,” he said. “Her goal is to really make it so Matt and I are not part of the industry, that I’m not the original hoodie guy who started The Blacklist, which is ludicrous.”
It was Doney who saw The Blacklist as a “money grab,” Wagner claimed. Her venality took off after she left Campbell in May 2020, Campbell argued, claiming she used The Blacklist to fund a “five-star lifestyle.” (Neither Gingras nor [email protected] addressed these allegations.)
“What it’s turned into is a total perversion of the original ethos,” Campbell said of The Blacklist.
For some in cannabis, the property is now damaged beyond repair, regardless of what happened behind the scenes or what comes next—or who wins.
“I’ve never been quite sure what the vision of The Blacklist is other than to stoke divisiveness in this industry that is already under attack in so many ways,” said Kip Morrison, a veteran PR professional and principal of KMA Cannabis, one of the larger agencies in weed. “Posting gossip and negative reviews from anonymous sources does not equal credibility in our book.”
The post The Unsolicited Breakup Behind the Most Popular Instagram In Weed first appeared on Raw News.
