Seattle-based cannabis data analytics company Headset has agreed to pay more than $1 million to resolve allegations that it improperly received and obtained forgiveness for a federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan.

The settlement, announced Monday by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Washington, stems from a May 2024 whistleblower lawsuit filed by Sidesolve LLC under the False Claims Act. Sidesolve is a data analytics company that uses AI algorithms to hunt for potential pandemic loan fraud across public records.

The government alleged that Headset was ineligible for the Small Business Administration (SBA) loan it received in February 2021 — and had forgiven in August 2021 — because its work supporting the marijuana industry conflicts with federal law.

Under the terms of the deal, Headset paid $100,000 within 30 days of signing the agreement in early August and will pay the remaining balance of more than $900,000 over four years through August 2030. The company made no admission of wrongdoing, stating it agreed to the payments to avoid the risks and expense of litigation.

Headset was founded in 2015 by Cy Scott, Brian Wansolich, and Scott Vickers. The trio previously co-founded Leafly, the popular online cannabis strain database and marketplace, which was acquired by Privateer Holdings in 2011. After departing Leafly, they launched Headset to bring business intelligence and real-time sales metrics to the legal pot industry.

The startup functions like a Nielsen for the cannabis sector, aggregating point-of-sale data from dispensaries and retailers to provide market trends, pricing insights, and consumer demographics.

Over the years, the company has raised $29.4 million in total funding from investors including Poseidon Asset Management and Canopy Rivers, expanding its data coverage across legal state and international markets.

Remember the original Quest headset that Meta (then Oculus) trumpeted back in 2019? Meta seems to hope you don't, since the company officially stopped supporting the wireless VR headset in 2023 to focus on the more popular Quests 2 and 3. However, tinkerers haven't abandoned the hardware and recently released a new root-access exploit and bootloader that gives "developers and enthusiasts full control over Quest 1 hardware."

The QuestStack project integrates previously known vulnerabilities in the Quest's Android fastboot process into a privilege escalation chain that leads easily to full root access on the device. The bootloading process is now streamlined enough that it can be completed without any downloads through a web interface after connecting the headset to a PC.

With this exploit, the original Quest hardware can now be officially divorced from any reliance on Meta's servers or services to be useful. That means enterprising Quest owners should be able to sideload apps without needing to register for a Meta Developer account and activating Developer Mode through Meta's mobile app. It also means users should be able to go through the initial setup and login steps for a fresh Quest headset even if and when Meta decides to shut down the servers that currently support this process.

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