A lawsuit filed in Union County Superior Court puts two questions at the center of a dispute involving New Jersey State Senator Raj Mukherji and cannabis businesses: whether consultant Justin Shoham was owed money for his work, and whether he held a majority stake in a Springfield dispensary. The complaint’s claims are allegations, not findings by a court.
The claims and the disputed stake
Shoham alleges he was owed $230,000 for consulting work connected to Best Buds and a related Union Township venture. Separately, he says he owned 60 percent of Story Dispensary of Springfield, a stake he valued at at least $180,000. The suit names Mukherji, Best Buds Union LLC, Aaron Epstein, Joseph T. Kelley, Jason Vedadi and Story Dispensary of Springfield as defendants, according to Hudson County View’s account of the filing.
The complaint alleges a broader arrangement in which minority recruits were used as nominal figures to obtain social-equity benefits while others retained practical control and economic returns. It also alleges that affiliated companies shifted work and profits through lease, management and consulting agreements, and that Mukherji’s advisory firm, CannTech, helped coordinate deals. Those allegations have not been independently established.
Shoham says the Springfield dispensary opened in April 2025 without his signature or notice to him, and that he remained a 60 percent owner until a later buyout. Mukherji disputes Shoham’s account of the business relationship. He told Hudson County View that he had left the company years earlier and characterized $191,500 paid to Shoham as an advance related to a buyout, rather than compensation still owed. Mukherji also said the venture lost millions.
Defense attorney Lee Vartan said the business dealings complied with the law. He attributed the dispensary’s losses to business difficulties and said Shoham was deemed unfit for a cannabis license because of unpaid parking tickets and missing tax returns. The complaint, as reported, also says the dispensary carried $3 million in debt. The parties’ competing accounts leave the ownership terms, the purpose of the payment and the business’s financial history in dispute.
The licensing context—and what it does not show
New Jersey’s rules require cannabis license holders to submit proposed management-services agreements and remuneration details to regulators, a safeguard intended to address outside management exercising unapproved control over social-equity applicants, according to the state regulations. That framework helps explain why allegations about nominal ownership and management arrangements matter, but it does not establish that any defendant violated the rules.
The New Jersey Cannabis Regulatory Commission listed 967 conditional retail license awards as of its September 9, 2026, public meeting. The commission’s totals count awards, not open storefronts; they therefore do not determine who owns or controls the Springfield dispensary at issue in the lawsuit.
The filing’s claims and the defendants’ responses leave key questions unresolved, including the legal effect of the ownership paperwork and what the $191,500 payment was for. The information reported so far does not establish a court ruling on those questions.
