Simplifya, the leading provider of regulatory compliance software for the cannabis industry, announced today that banking regulation expert and former senior Department of Justice official John Vardaman will join the company as Chief Compliance Officer and General Counsel on June 17.
Mr. Vardaman spent 15 years in senior positions in the U.S. Departments of Treasury and Justice, focused on the enforcement of federal policies concerning money laundering and other financial crimes.
In 2014, as Assistant Deputy Chief in the Justice Department’s Asset Forfeiture and Money Laundering Section, Mr. Vardaman drafted the DOJ policy regarding marijuana banking, which set parameters for banks to serve marijuana-related businesses.
“John Vardaman helped write the book on cannabis compliance,” said Simplifya founder and CEO Marion Mariathasan. “Our mission at Simplifya is to help cannabis businesses protect their most valuable assets – their licenses. With John at the head of our legal team, Simplifya puts an unmatched expert at the fingertips of every one of our clients.”
John Vardaman’s Experience in Cannabis
Mr. Vardaman joins Simplifya after serving for three years as General Counsel at Hypur, a compliance-based cannabis banking and payments company. As fellow companies dedicated to bringing enhanced compliance to the cannabis industry, the addition of Mr. Vardaman to the Simplifya team will only strengthen the connection between Simplifya and Hypur.
“Based on my experience at both the DOJ and Hypur, I appreciate how complicated cannabis regulations can be,” said Vardaman. “Whether a cannabis business can manage those regulations will always be one of the most important factors in its success. The beauty of Simplifya’s solution is that it makes it easy for every employee on a cannabis business’s team to protect the business’s compliance. That’s why I’m excited to join this company.”
Simplifya was founded in 2016 by a group of attorneys, compliance experts, and software development professionals. Simplifya’s compliance team analyzes complex legal, regulatory, and licensing requirements at the state and local level, then breaks them down into a series of yes/no questions and checklists that make it easy for licensed cannabis businesses to ensure compliance at every level.
Cannabis retailers, cultivators, and product manufacturers are currently using Simplifya to protect their licenses across more than 12 states.
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About Simplifya
Simplifya is the nation’s leading regulatory and operational compliance tool for the cannabis industry, empowering small and large businesses to proactively manage compliance tasks across all facilities and license types. Simplifya’s web-based self-auditing system distills complex state and local regulations into a simple series of yes-or-no questions to facilitate self-audits, identify areas of non-compliance, hold employees accountable for remediation, and generate management and audit reports. Simplifya’s SOP feature automates the assigning, tracking, and versioning of standard operating procedures, while its Smart Cabinet digital filing system houses all of a business’s required compliance and operational documents in one place