"The stakes got a lot higher. There was a lot more activity, and it was scrutinized a lot closer," Burt said during a recent town hall held by the state Marijuana Enforcement Division. "We aren’t gouging the industry. We look at this risk in two buckets: There was legal risk and threat of criminal prosecution. Then there was the compliance risk. A lot of people assumed we charged a premium for the legal risk, and that wasn’t the case." Burt, who is also on the board of the Denver branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, said that his bank quickly came to terms with the legal risk after various announcements and legal memos from President Barack Obama's administration suggested that the U.S. Attorney's Office take a hands-off approach to state-legal marijuana industries. However, once the money started to really come in, "the regulatory requirements became much more intense," he noted.