Here at Dab Connection, we try to leave no stone unturned when it comes to investigating cannabis product brands, in the interest of informing the public. However, sometimes the more we investigate, the more questions that turn up. We’re going to tell you everything we know about Cake vapes and let you readers decide the verdict. Right now, this investigation is anything but a cakewalk.
We know there are fake Cake vapes out there
Most readers will want to know: can I trust Cake vapes? And we’ll have to answer that question with: Not always! We see plenty of counterfeit Cake cartridge packaging for sale at the usual suspects, DHGate, CartsPackaging, and Made-in-China.
So that much is clear. That is incontrovertible evidence that there are fake Cake carts hitting the streets. We’re still fuzzy on the nature of any actual company behind this brand, but we can conclude with 100% certainty that it is at least frequently counterfeited. This means that you should not trust Cake brand carts from a plug, or from sketchy retail offerings such as gas stations and vape shops in unlicensed states.
In addition, we see that Cake cartridges have aroused plenty of suspicion when they find their way into the public’s hands. On our /fakecarts forum on Reddit, questions come in about this brand all the time. And of course, we find no end of sketchy third-party websites hawking Cake vapes.
Here’s a rare occurrence: Another cannabis site has also called Cake a risky brand. DailyCBD ranks Cake as a likely “scam company,” saying:
> “While it’s possible some Cake products are legit, there are too many fake products on the market for this to be considered a safe brand to buy. You can essentially roll the dice on what’s going to be inside these carts.”
They did some legwork and found no actual company website, and all the usual markers of a ghost company. HOWEVER, stay tuned because this story has more twists than a season of Twilight Zone.
Somebody sent us Cake carts to review!
Thanks to our policy of never accepting affiliates or paid promotions, many cannabis product companies are eager for a good review from Dab Connection. They know that when we review a product, we assure the public an unbiased, consumer-focused opinion. However, given our record of busting fake vape carts (and being the first site on the Internet to do so), it’s a mystery why anyone would intentionally send us boof carts to review.
Yet our reviewer received boof in Cake disposables! They reported mouth, throat, and lung irritation, virtually no effects, and all the signs that we’d gotten a severely cut cartridge. This has never happened before. Boof cart brand vendors usually avoid our attention.
We have of course tried to reach back out to our mystery contact only to see them vanish, no reply back yet. In the meantime, we still find no official company website beyond a blank parking page for a slew of fake lab tests. When we see “R&D testing” and “Encore Labs,” we know to read no further. Also, all these tests appear to be for gummy edibles, but we found this page starting from a vape cartridge.
And yet clearly there is somebody with a vested interest in this brand, because it shows a lot of legal activity.
Cake sues everybody
As pointed out by our reviewer, there have been multiple lawsuits regarding this Cake brand – pressed by the brand against others. No less than Law360 reported that this Cake company had sued other California distributors claiming copyright infringement and rip-off brands. The company making Cake is officially identified by Law360 as “AK Futures LLC.” Over time, we’ve found this brand suing four other companies:
* Limitless Trading Co. LLC
* Green Buddha LLC
* Smoke Tokes LLC
* Boyd Street Distro LLC
Here is an example of the docket history of one of these suits, against Smoke Tokes. We also find a ruling (PDF link) resolving the Green Buddha case as a default – nobody showed.
The legal trail doesn’t end there. There was also a lawsuit against one of the company’s own founders, Peter Amato, claiming – to loosely summarize – conduct unbecoming a founding partner.
While cake boxes are sometimes labeled “Orange, CA,” (maybe county or city?) we find AK Futures to be listed as a Santa Ana, California, company. Their listing in Corporate Wiki doesn’t give us much to go on beyond confirming they exist.
Then there’s the trademark filings. AK Futures LLC has filed a series of trademark applications with the USPTO. The trademarks include several variations on the cake logo, a “Caviar” logo which others have noted also seems to be associated with part of the Cake brand, and a stylized “C” over a layered cake silhouette. As others have pointed out (and we’d have to be blind to miss), the Cake logo font and the capital “C” resemble the Cookies brand enough that Cookies could probably sue for trademark infringement.
Furthermore, at least one of the trademark filings for the “Cake” logo by AK Futures LLC is filed in the category of clothing products. We have been seeing this tired old gimmick for years; a black market vape cart brand will have a website selling hoodies and hats, with no carts in sight, even though nothing but black market carts make it out to the street while conspicuously nobody is buying branded hoodies.
Is the Cake a lie?
What the crackers is going on? All the legal activity we tracked down above happened in 2021, so this seems to be a new brand getting established. Yet we find no legit distributors of Cake vapes. This brand was seemingly copied and spread all across the black market before the legit brand could reach dispensary shelves.
Here is a video review from February of 2021, and the hosts claim they see these carts “everywhere,” so we see they were likely hitting the streets before all the trademarks were filed.
Yet USPTO filings cost money. Attorneys to file lawsuits also cost money. Registering an LLC costs money. The papers didn’t all jump off a desk and file themselves. So who is this brand, where is this company, where is all this coming from? Casper the Friendly Ghost?
Without all the paperwork, we would suppose that this was simply a case of the usual black market packagers in China cooking up a brand out of thin air like always. With the paperwork, perhaps this is a new tactic by black market packagers to make their brand seem legit. Or maybe we have another case like Muha Meds and Big Chief, long-standing black market brands which tried to go legit only to find that their period of non-licensed operation allowed counterfeits to get out of hand.
Readers, we leave the mystery in your lap. Report any findings of Cake carts or any sign of a legit owner here in the comments or in our forum.
