Today’s big news is about a parasite by the name of Zachary Gruskin. He sells kratom under the name Chai Botanicals (not like chai tea, but the Hebrew pronunciation meaning “life”). There are plenty of other weird websites and names he’s sold under.

We met good ol Zach through the grapevine. He claimed to have all sorts of great deals wholesaling extracts, powders, tablets and all sorts of stuff. He would talk of his long time blogging about kratom and how many connections he has. He is also supposedly a devout Jew, and decided to become a vendor to start “helping” people. You know- all the talking points to make somebody misdirect your attention from their shoddy behavior. After looking into some of these blogs it’s cheesy bad sales pitches and unhinged rambling. 0/10 would not recommend. Sadly, I should’ve found these before deciding to make a purchase, and everything could’ve been avoided. We all make mistakes. 

The first red flags came on the first deal. A broker was helping Zach sell product, and this broker was communicating with me. We worked up a deal. However, there were some big signs that Zach and this contractor were not communicating and were definitely not on the same page. So naturally I wanted to contact the “owner” to ensure everything was all good to go. Mr. Gruskin tried charging me 40% more than the agreed upon price in which I proceeded to rip him a new asshole. I got the price that was originally agreed upon and told him to get his shit together with his contractors/employees. After the deal closed the order was supposed to ship out right away and 3 days later it finally did. We’re off to a great start! Luckily these are not Zach’s products. He does have some connections in FL where kratom is abundant, and he sells their products under his own name. So the quality at this point isn’t as questionable but the service is god awful. When the package arrived in some old reused rice box, none of the bags were heat sealed- they were taped shut. TAPED. What the F***? 

We tried the product and some of it was pretty good, but nowhere as magical as was claimed. Zach liked to oversell every one of his offerings as if it was god’s gift to man and maybe didn’t realize we know more about kratom than the average bear. So I could tell he was full of shit, but some people are just like that. Another period of time went by where we just couldn’t reach him only to find weeks later he was taking a Jewish holiday but notified nobody of his absence. As far as is understood, not even the customers of his retail website were notified that his business essentially stopped functioning for 2 weeks. I feel bad for anybody who’s dealt with this man. Eventually a couple other deals were made, and I had a basic grasp of how to handle Zach. He was flaky, a bit dodgy, and seemed like a snake oil salesman- but I didn’t want to give up those connections just yet because the people that were making these products were legit even if he wasn’t. If he’s making a few bucks being a third rate wholesaler, oh well… I have a business to run and his situation is not unusual in this industry. The next orders were still taped shut, no heat seals, and the labels were ghetto as all hell if they existed at all. Every single bag was different as if he was reusing other vendor’s packaging or something. It was the strangest thing to witness, but I chalked it up to possibly the true source suppliers having different packaging. 

After those couple deals he comes to me with an extract saying it has 6% 7-OH and 27% MIT. He talked around all my questions and provided a lab report on it. So I figured what the hell, I’ll try it. The pit of my stomach was turning the whole deal though. As soon as this new extract came in I ordered another lab on it from our preferred option, Columbia. $600 for a full panel work up and comprehensive residual solvents. Plus the cost of sending 15g+ to the labs in order for testing to be performed. I patiently waited almost 2 weeks to receive this lab report just hoping they’d come back with something I can feel good about. My heart sunk and jaw needed to be picked up off the floor when the report showed up. I had to triple take to ensure I wasn’t seeing the numbers improperly… 12.9% MIT and 0.00% 7-OH the report read. No way in hell… I emailed the lab to make sure there was no mistakes and they said they were expecting 7-OH so they tested it TWICE to be sure, and both of the tests came back with NOTHING for 7-OH. On the upside, it was clean of residual solvents and theoretically safe to consume- but not at all what I paid for. 

Naturally, I’m fuming at this point. Looking at the original labs, maybe they are fake? I call the lab to see what the hell is going on. The administrator KNEW who sold me the extract because I wasn’t the first business to call with problems. He explained to me there was an extract that had some unique wavelengths when analyzing the alkaloids. So a one-off test was performed for the original source to say “what if” those unique wavelengths were 7-OH. This experiment was unofficial and labs should’ve never been released past the original company. The lab administrator said he had no idea how Zach got a hold of the labs or the extract. There is a rumor that these materials were stolen or otherwise acquired in a shady manner but that cannot be confirmed at this time. The official lab tests for the extract (from the original analysis) list 0% 7-OH and 27% MIT.  I told the administrator my labs came back at 12.9%MIT, and none of the other alkaloids were anywhere close and he said “you didn’t get the one we tested then”. I DIDN’T EVEN GET THE ONE ZACH WAS ALREADY LYING ABOUT!? 

I confront Zach with my lab results, armed with information… I told him to give me a refund and I’ll send the extract back to him. We could both walk away and although I will never do business with him again, he could salvage what was left of his reputation and live to fight another day. He ignored me for over a day. I gave him an ultimatum once more that I was receiving a refund and sending the bunk product back, or I will expose everything and NOBODY will be doing business with him. This still leaves me out $600 for the labs, but if he was a godly man serving religious principles and helping people, I figured it was MORE than fair for him to fix his scam and get to walk away free of charge. If you were stealing a TV from a store, and the cops caught you and said if you put it back then you can walk away- would you turn the chance down??? The timeline of the refund was by the end of the day. He made one final offer to swap the extract out, and even tried to gaslight me by saying he talked to the lab and “yes it does have 7-OH you just need to use a different test to detect it blah blah blah”… Little did he know I talked to the labs, and he was still full of shit. It’s very apparent now he’s a scammer and has no intentions of fixing anything. He was keeping up the scam to the very end. Shameless and sociopathic behavior 100%. I denied his offer to replace the extract for obvious reasons and repeated saying refund by the end of TODAY or get exposed. He ignored this ultimatum thinking he could keep skating by scamming like he has for years now. This article is the consequence of his actions.