Downstairs, an iconic KC shop. Upstairs, a drug maker hit by federal raid, lawsuits
On a Wednesday last fall, 20 federal agents marched with guns drawn into the building Nick Allen has called home for nearly 15 years, Allen told The Star last week.
FDA. DEA. Missouri State Highway Patrol. They breezed past the vintage Persian rugs and midcentury modern chairs on the first three floors of 1324 W. 12th St. and headed straight upstairs, where his neighbor was cooking up something the feds very much wanted to see.
Allen owns Bella Patina, a vintage shop that’s been an anchor of Kansas City’s West Bottoms antiques scene since 2011. The first weekend of every month, thousands of people flow through his building hunting for faded treasures.
His upstairs neighbor the last few years has been Chad Hueffmeier, who runs Poseidon Resources, a company that manufactures dietary supplements sold at gas stations and smoke shops. Before Poseidon, Hueffmeier ran a company there called Neptune Resources, which made a product called Neptune’s Fix — a tianeptine-laced cocktail sometimes called “gas station heroin” that sent people to the ICU, led to at least two wrongful death lawsuits, and prompted an FDA action that forced the recall of 1.2 million bottles.
That was late 2023. The feds came back again in the fall. And still, Hueffmeier’s operation only seems to have grown.
“They’re running a massive production operation on the upper floors,” Allen said. “And (Bella Patina) is stuck downstairs between a rock and a hard place.”
The rock: a building with about 60 vendors trying to make a living selling retro glassware and vintage furniture. The hard place: a neighbor moving hundreds of thousands of units of controversial products daily through a 100-year-old structure that wasn’t built for it.
The problem isn’t just philosophical discomfort with a sketchy neighbor. Sean Jacobs, who runs Lucky Cat Furnishings out of Bella Patina, can tell you about the chemical leak that came from upstairs and destroyed $1,600 worth of his inventory — dressers, clothes, a record player, multiple rugs.
“But that’s just one of many leaks,” Jacobs said. “They’ll leave the valves on up there, and water will just pour through the ceilings from floor to floor down like a waterfall. Everything’s soaked. That’s happened five or six times.”
Then there are the freight elevators, broken from overloading. The loading dock, damaged by trucks backing into it. The process servers who, according to Jacobs, show up almost every month during First Fridays trying to find Hueffmeier.
“We had hoped the feds raiding him would change things,” Jacobs said. “But it hasn’t. It’s the same problems. I think Chad feels like he’s invincible. He’s a volatile guy. And we’re downstairs, you know, selling quilts.”
The DEA referred questions to the FDA, which said it wouldn’t comment on enforcement actions. The Missouri State Highway Patrol didn’t respond to a records request. Hueffmeier didn’t return calls or texts. The landlord, Monty Summers — who sold the building in 2023 to Somera Road, a New York developer that is investing $500 million in West Bottoms revitalization, but continues managing it — hung up when asked about his tenant. Grant Hromas, vice president at Somera Road, didn’t respond, either.
What is Poseidon Resources?
Hueffmeier previously worked at CBD American Shaman, the subject of a recent Star series about its production of 7-OH, another gas station drug. An online job profile lists him as the former “president of smokable products” there. Vince Sanders, Shaman’s founder, said Hueffmeier left in 2022, though he kept him on payroll through 2024 so Hueffmeier could maintain health insurance. Sanders called him “a sharp guy.”
At July’s CHAMPS Trade Show — a gathering of smoke shop vendors in Las Vegas — Ray Miley, Poseidon’s head of sales and another former Shaman employee, described the company’s flagship product, Boujee Bliss, as “a proprietary blend of kava and cat’s claw.”
“It’s a lot of fun — it’ s an alcohol alternative, but it won’t harden your intestines or organs, but still gives you that party feeling,” Miley told The Star.
Miley said that after leaving Shaman he started a company that manufactured mushroom gummies “similar to psilocybin but not the same exactly.” Then Hueffmeier asked him to join his company. They’re now selling 144,000 bottles of Boujee Bliss a month, Miley said.
Allen and Jacobs believe it. They watch pallets wrapped in black plastic leave the building multiple times daily.
Avoiding liability
Christopher Haggarty, 37, died after consuming Neptune’s Fix purchased at an Ohio gas station. His family sued. Their attorney, Jordan Lebovitz, secured a default judgment against Neptune Resources but couldn’t get anyone at the company to respond.
“Haggarty left behind a young daughter and a grieving mother,” Lebovitz said. “These manufacturers are preying on the most vulnerable — people struggling with substance use disorder. By marketing their products as ‘happiness in a bottle,’ they target addicts with the false promise of safety.”
New Jersey attorney Mike Pender has won multiple default judgments against Neptune Resources on behalf of customers who experienced respiratory failure requiring emergency intubation, acute encepthalophy, seizures, and injury to kidneys and other organs. Pender said some of his plaintiffs collapsed after taking a single dose.
Because Neptune Resources is defunct, Pender doesn’t expect to recover money from the company and is instead pursuing others in the supply chain, including the product’s distributors and retailers.
“There’s a reason CVS doesn’t put stuff like Neptune’s Fix on its shelves,” he said. “It’s a liability. But that kind of scrutiny about products you sell tends to be missing in mom-and-pop smoke shops, gas stations, and nutritional supplement stores that are chasing big margins and repeat customers.”
Product liability law, Pender explained, “can be effective when there are gray areas in the criminal law.” It is designed to hold every link in the distribution chain responsible when unsafe products reach consumers. Even if a manufacturer vanishes or declares bankruptcy, the law allows plaintiffs to pursue damages from retailers and distributors who put the product into commerce.
FDA documents at the time of the Neptune’s Fix investigation listed Shaman Botanicals, a sister company to CBD American Shaman also owned by Sanders, as a distributor of Neptune’s Fix. Sanders has denied that he had anything to do with Neptune’s Fix.
Back at 1324 W. 12th St., Allen is weighing his options. Fifteen years in the West Bottoms. All those vendors depending on him. And constant headaches coming from upstairs. He suspects that Summers, his landlord, wants to believe the best about Poseidon.
“If he found out Chad was making federally illegal narcotics, I think Monty would kick him out of the building,” Allen said. “He’s evicted people for a lot less. But this stuff upstairs, it’s a gray area.”
This story was originally published October 2, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
