The Sherbinskis Handover

Ryan Bartholomew starts working with cannabis at 16Documented

Northern California. High Times later dates the beginning of his involvement to roughly 1998–99.

Mario Guzmán licenses as a realtor at 20, moves to the Bay AreaDocumented

Raised in Sacramento and Roseville; played high-school football alongside Tedy Bruschi. When the property market turned he began growing in a garage to cover bills, then moved into the Prop 215 / SB 420 dispensary supply world full time.

Earliest "first use in commerce" date later claimed for the SHERBINSKIS markDocumented

Asserted in serial 87275013. This is the register's own account of when the brand began trading.

Bartholomew attends his first High Times Medical Cannabis Cup in San FranciscoDocumented

Described in the 2021 High Times profile as the networking moment that set up everything after it.

Sherbinskis' own site dates the brand to this yearDocumented

"Founders of the world-famous Gelato strains, based in Los Angeles, CA. Est. in 2014." Sunset Sherbert and the Gelato line — Bacio, Mochi, Gello, Acai Berry, Pink Panties — come out of this period. Guzmán's strains have since been name-checked in over 300 hip-hop records.

LMS International, LLC registers five SHERBINSKIS marksDocumented

The first time the name is claimed as property, it is claimed by a company — not by Mario Guzmán as an individual. Everything downstream follows from this.

Aphaea, LLC appears on the register with the Sherbinskis "S" logoDocumented

A second corporate vehicle now sits behind the brand. Aphaea goes on to hold the GELATO mark and every subsequent SHERBINSKIS filing; its Brandfolder account manages Sherbinskis California and Sherbinskis Arizona assets.

Will Htun is named CEO and co-founder of SherbinskisDocumented

In the vaporizer launch release, Guzmán is "Mr. Sherbinski, founder and master cultivator" and Htun is "CEO and Co-Founder." Guzmán has therefore not been the sole principal since at least 2018 — nearly eight years before the video in which he says he was removed. This is the single most load-bearing fact in the dispute.

ComplexCon exhibit, 510 cartridge launch, apparel lineDocumented

The lifestyle-brand build-out — the phase that requires outside capital.

New York Times profiles Sherbinskis; flagship dispensary opens on FairfaxDocumented

NYT piece in spring; the Los Angeles flagship opens 25 November 2019. Peak brand equity.

Aphaea, LLC files the GELATO markDocumented

The crown jewel of the catalogue is registered to the holding company, not the breeder.

Zaftig, LLC registers the entire Doja portfolio — and DARWIN FARMSDocumented

DOJA EXCLUSIVE, DARWIN FARMS and EVOLVED EXTRACTS in November 2020; five DOJA PAK marks across 26–28 January 2021; DOJA in February 2023. Fourteen marks in total, none in Bartholomew's name. Zaftig also holds the Doja Exclusive California retail licence.

High Times runs "Top of The Dealer Pyramid"Documented

Establishes the Doja model: curation and distribution rather than cultivation, reviewing roughly a hundred packs to select one or two. Names Wizard Trees, Deep East, Connected and Darwin Farms as partners.

PrimeTime Capital builds up in CaliforniaDocumented

Founders Oleg Spektorov and Anthony Messina move from Massachusetts to California in 2018. By 2021 the company has gone from vape manufacturing into terpene formulation and wholesale flower distribution, founded the Boutiq retail brand, and reports roughly $120 million in parent-company revenue. "Our specialty is product development," Spektorov says — hardware, packaging, and what goes inside the vape.

Sherbinskis partners with Final Bell for CanadaDocumented

First expansion outside California and Michigan. Guzmán speaks for the brand as founder. Launch product: Orange Sherbs live resin AIO.

Sherbinskis is distressed — and PrimeTime opens talksDocumented

By PrimeTime's account the brand is carrying millions in debt, has been "sold repeatedly," is struggling operationally and is largely absent from California shelves — doing under $100,000 a month in the state. "Only a select group of people knew about their inability to operate," Spektorov says; the global reputation was intact. PrimeTime is one of several interested parties.

The merger closes — and Guzmán is let go within monthsDocumented

Structured as a merger, not a straight acquisition: "We gave up eighteen-and-a-half percent of our equity, and we paid off a lot of debt and took on the liability." Total exposure roughly $10–11 million. Then: "We pretty much let go of every single person that worked for Sherbinskis at the time" — executive leadership, project managers, and former CEO Mario Guzmán, who stayed on briefly. "We weren't able to work out a good working relationship. So we ended up letting him go a few months later." This is the event the September 2026 videos are about. It happened three and a half years earlier.

The rebuild, and the numbers turnDocumented

"When we came in, the quality was bad all around — the products, the flower, the genetics. We had to change everything." By 2024 PrimeTime reports Sherbinskis at over $1 million a month in California. The brand is licensed in Arizona, New York, Florida and Canada, with the UK, Germany and Australia in development. New product includes Quattro, a four-coil dual-tank vape Messina calls "the Ferrari of vapes."

Zaftig, LLC sues Ryan BartholomewDocumented

LA Superior Court, case 23STCV06365. Five causes of action including trademark infringement and false advertising. Bartholomew cross-complains that he created the Doja mark and that Zaftig held only a non-exclusive licence. The core question is who first lawfully used the mark commercially — complicated by California not recognising cannabis trademarks until 2018.

Judge Randolph Hammock denies Bartholomew's motion to quashDocumented

Bartholomew had called Zaftig's subpoena to Crown Genetics, LLC "a fishing expedition which makes no effort to limit itself." The court orders Crown Genetics to produce records from 1 January 2018 forward. No sanctions.

The case settlesReported

Per Alien Labs' Ted on X: "A trademark dispute that was settled." Terms are not public. Bartholomew keeps operating as Doja Pak, so the settlement evidently went his way or close to it.

Guzmán is appointed Global Head of Genetics at B NobleDocumented

He also founds Voice of the Plant and relocates to New York after legalisation there. Worth noting the title: the exact role Bartholomew is now taking at Sherbinskis is one Guzmán already held elsewhere.

Bartholomew, in Honeysuckle: "You've got to select your partners carefully"Documented

The interview never mentions the Zaftig litigation. It emphasises trust and transparency in choosing who you go into business with.

High Times publishes the whole thing — including Bartholomew's appointmentDocumented

Rolando García's interview with Spektorov and Messina runs under the headline "Sherbinskis Was Dying. PrimeTime Took the Risk." It lays out the debt, the merger terms, the firings and the rebuild on the record. It also contains the line the industry apparently missed for seven months: "We're bringing in Ryan Bartholomew from Doja as head of genetics" — with the note that Bartholomew "had been involved with Sherbinskis in its early years." Also disclosed: a live-resin partnership with Casa Flor and a genetics licensing deal with Sens Seeds. The Internet Archive captures the page three times that day. It is the only substantive journalism that exists on this deal, and it is no longer on the site.

The feud surfaces publicly for the first time — six months earlyDocumented

A post attributed to TheBlacklistxyz: "So now it's Doja vs Sherbinski. Lawsuits. Former friendships. Unanswered calls. And a legacy brand sitting in the middle like a custody battle nobody wants to admit is happening. Ryan from Doja and Mario from Sherbinski used to be friends." This is the fact that reframes everything: the September videos are not a sudden rupture, they are the end of a process that was already visible in March.

Doja Pak launches into Germany and the UKDocumented

Partnership with CP Medical; distribution via Bloomwell in Germany and Mamedica in the UK; GACP cultivation in Thailand; processing at Blossom Pharma in Portugal. Doja is expanding into regulated pharmaceutical frameworks — the profile of a brand with real capital behind it.

Aphaea re-papers SHERBINSKIS through a cannabis debt-finance firmDocumented

Serial 99821896: a fresh application across classes 5, 34 and 35 covering vapes, flower, prerolls, concentrates and retail — the whole business, not a gap-fill. Counsel of record is Hannah Strassburger of Feuerstein Kulick LLP, a firm known for lender-side and opportunity-fund cannabis work. Four months before the announcement.

The same reporter publishes "Beware of the Chads"Documented

Rolando García again — the byline on the January PrimeTime interview. Berner's term for investors who "arrive with contracts and agendas and no feel for the plant," on a new wave of institutional money and what the last one did to MedMen, Flow Kana, Canopy and High Times itself, framed around "what the term sheets did, and what the founders who kept control did differently." Six days before the videos, from the writer who had told the buy-side version in January.

Sherbinskis × Doja product is already moving at wholesaleDocumented

Imperial Club posts the Sherbinskis × Doja Pak vapes on 8 September. A wholesale listing on 9 September offers Sherbinski × Doja 2g AIO live resin, 50-piece and 100-piece tiers. Co-branded product was in distribution the same week the videos went up — and a product does not get manufactured, packaged and placed with wholesalers in a week. Whatever was agreed between these two companies was agreed a long time before any of this reached an audience.

The story breaks on XDocumented

Terpadelics: "What's everyone's take on the Doja/Sherbinski beef?" — laying out the role reversal in two lines. The Vault Network: "Went to Instagram for 10 seconds and couldn't believe my eyes." Roughly 5,100 views within hours.

Both videos are mirrored to XDocumented

Posted with "Plz make your own opinions. We are waiting to fully see Dojas response." Bartholomew's clip, filmed against a Sherbinskis backdrop with a RYAN | HEAD OF GENETICS lower third, is 45 seconds and says only that "the company is under new ownership." Guzmán's runs nearly four minutes and is a point-by-point rebuttal ending with "We're in New York. We're coming for you head on."

The industry splits into two readingsReported

Against Guzmán: Alien Labs' Ted ("Sherbinski sold his brand brother"), Golden State Labs ("Mario been pushed out of Sherbinski's for a while now"), and a reading that he lost the IP long ago and is unhappy with a deal he made. For Guzmán: that a founder's blessing matters more than the cap table, and that Bartholomew of all people should recognise the shape of this. Terpadelics, who started the thread, later softens: "Multiple sides claims and premises in the air. Need to see what else has come out."

The High Times piece is goneDocumented

hightimes.com/business/sherbinskis-primetime/ now returns 404. It is absent from the site's Business category listing and from its internal search for "Sherbinskis," which still returns articles from 2018 through 2023. The Wayback Machine holds three captures, all from 30 January 2026, and none since — so there is no archival record of when it came down, only that it was live on publication day and is not live now. Given that it is the only place PrimeTime's account of firing Guzmán appears, its removal is itself part of the story.

Doja Pak has not respondedDocumented

No statement on the brand's X account, which has been dormant since June 2025. No trade publication has covered the dispute. The silence is consistent with a deal that has closing conditions or confidentiality terms attached.

The deleted article is the loudest thing in this story.

It is the only reported account of the deal that exists. It has PrimeTime saying, on the record, that they fired the founder. And it is gone from a site that still carries Sherbinskis coverage going back to 2018. A takedown, a legal letter, or a website migration would all leave the same 404 behind — but they are not the same event, and right now there is no way to tell which one happened.

Somebody got 18.5% of PrimeTime, and it may not have been Guzmán.

That equity went to the Sherbinskis side. If it reached him, "I never sold a share" is true but incomplete. If it did not — because he had already been diluted, or because the brand had been "sold repeatedly" before PrimeTime ever showed up — then he watched his own name change hands and got nothing for it. That is a much harder story than the one being argued, and it turns on a number nobody has published.

There are owners between Guzmán and PrimeTime that nobody names.

"Sold repeatedly" is Spektorov's phrase, not mine. LMS International and Aphaea are two vehicles on the register; Will Htun was CEO and co-founder from at least 2018. Whatever happened to Guzmán's stake most likely happened in that stretch — years before the merger everyone is arguing about.

The trigger is the missing beat.

He was let go in 2023. Bartholomew's appointment was announced in January. So why did this surface in September? A product hitting shelves, a contract running out, or a man simply reaching his limit. Something moved, and none of the public record says what.

Guzmán's whole claim rests on Voice of the Plant, and the register is silent on it.

There is no trademark under that name. That is not damning — the register does not record who owns genetics. Breeder contracts and seed-licensing paperwork do, and none of that is public.

The Florida deal decides the only real contradiction.

He says he closed one, eighteen months in. Spektorov says he was gone within a few months. Sherbinskis is licensed in Florida. Whichever way that date falls, one of these accounts does not survive it.

Nobody has confirmed a case is actually filed.

"I had to get my legal team involved," and a reference to lawsuits back in March. That is a long way from a docket number.

And there are two PrimeTimes.

PrimeTime Capital — Spektorov and Messina, Massachusetts to California in 2018, parent of Boutiq. And a PrimeTime Holdings that raised C$29.9m in convertible debentures in 2021 under a different CEO, also with a Venice retail brand called BOUTIQ. Almost certainly the same group. "Almost certainly" is doing work there, and it matters more than it looks if a public listing is involved.