ASD And Golden Panda: Sunday Odds, Ends, Analysis
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Sunday ASD Investigation Odds And Ends
There has been a number of attempts to intimidate journalists and writers who are featuring content on the ASD case. A member of the AdSurfZone, for instance, today started a campaign to file Federal Trade Commission complaints against Tulsa Today for its coverage of the ASD case.
Let's see: This ASD member wants others to file complaints with the Federal Trade Commission -- the Federal Trade Commission, for heaven's sake -- because Tulsa Today is exercising its 1st Amendment right to have an opinion on the ASD case.
Yep.
This follows on the heels of ASD members who are trying to get Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum to investigate WCTV, a Florida television station, for deceptive trade practices. Yes, they want to charge a television station with the high crime of reporting news that is not always flattering to ASD.
Yep.
Yesterday an ASD member suggested this Blog should be investigated because its cartoon spokesman makes the claim that he is a famous Child Star.
Yep.
For the record, this exceptionally handsome cartoon character also makes the claim that he's a Poster Model, Teen Idol, and Hollywood A-Lister who:
- Is known as the "Sensational Master Of Eye Candy."
- Has a fragrance named after him.
- Has been on thousands of magazine covers.
- Has appeared on TV hundreds of times.
- Is a constant presence in Tabloid newspapers, which report he suffers from Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, gout, chronic alcoholism and morbid drug addiction.
- Caused an International Incident when he respectfully asked the Queen of England if she'd care for more bread with her meal.
- Was singularly responsible for increasing U.S. grape and raisin sales after being "accidentally discovered" by a famous photographer who snapped a picture of him trying to decide between "delicious purple" and "delectable green."
- Was voted "The Most Beautiful Little Boy In The World."
- Attended more slumber parties (as a wall poster) than any Teen Idol in history.
- Was drafted out of the stands by the Pittsburgh Pirates at age 49 and went 4-for-4 in his Major League debut, clouting two homers, pounding a screaming double, laying down a perfect drag bunt and playing all nine positions in the field, pitching right-handed to righties and left-handed to lefties while employing a mix of 97-mph fast balls, a deadly palm ball and a dastardly knuckle ball and change-up.
- ** Has walked on the moon.
Here's a snippet from the Patrick Pretty backstory.
"And to think it all started with a quirk of fate just a year earlier. That's when famed photographer Hedda Christensen just happened to stop at Venturella's Golden Dawn Grocery for a pre-lunch snack of grapes and snapped that famous picture of me.
"I remember it like it was yesterday: There I stood, barely at eye-level with the grape tables, my attention riveted utterly on the tiny, colorful objects emitting a sugary cloud of flavor that made my mouth water. There I stood, friends, wearing the wide-eyed look of a child faced with an impossible choice:
"Delicious purple? Delectable green?
"Hedda captured that look for the ages. Within weeks I became "the child's face" of the U.S. Grape Federation. When grape and raisin sales skyrocketed in the months that followed, I was pretty much on my way.
"Can you believe it? I'm a small-town boy from Siverly, Pennsylvania. Who'd dare dream they'd be "discovered" by a famous photographer who had a can't-say-no hankering for grapes while taking a leisurely, cross-country drive from New York to Los Angeles?
"But that's enough of my little trip down memory lane for right now . . .
"Marvin assured me that he and our other business partners would do their level best to cast aside their jealousies over my appearance.
"But he had one proviso, and it was a healthy one: "Patrick," he said. "You have to stop hiring out the basics and learn to do it yourself. The feeling you'll get when you realize you've made an actual contribution to a product will erase any doubts in your mind that the only reason you've been successful is because you're so intoxicatingly beautiful."
It's interesting that these folks claim to understand advertising and know for certain that ASD is not a Ponzi scheme, but can't distinguish a cartoon character from reality.
Our interest in publishing news and commentary on the AdSurfDaily case is to educate, enlighten and inform our readers about matters of importance to online merchants and Internet Marketers. We have a point of view:
We want people to embrace online commerce, which is becoming more and more important to the global economy. Online merchants cannot succeed if customers don't feel safe and don't have confidence in the enterprise. We believe the government is acting in the public interest and has a responsibility to follow the evidence in the ASD case wherever it leads.
The ASD investigation is not an attack on free enterprise. It is, rather, an investigation to determine if free enterprise itself is under attack.
These are lean times for many people. Money is tight. A corrupt money supply only adds to the U.S. and global economic woes. For a moment, though, let's take the money issue off the table. There is a more basic reason the Secret Service is behaving reasonably and should be applauded, not condemned.
Claims were made that the President of the United States and the Vice President of the United States had singled out ASD President Andy Bowdoin for lifetime business achievement. These claims proved untrue. It would be the height of irresponsibility for the Secret Service not to peel back layers of the ASD onion, to get to the heart of the matter.
One layer agents peeled back -- and this layer is fundamental to one of the core missions of the Secret Service, its duty to protect the President and Vice President -- is the claim that Bowdoin had a singular, commonplace run-in with law enforcement: a speeding ticket in North Carolina.
This claim also proved untrue. Bowdoin, in fact, has a criminal record for bilking investors. In other words, agents looked at two layers of the onion and found two untruths. One of the untruths involved the President of the United States.
In other words, some ASD members tried to create the impression that the President of the United States had vouched for Bowdoin.
This, alone, makes this case worth investigating.
Another layer the Secret Service peeled back is the business relationship between Andy Bowdoin and Golden Panda President Clarence Busby. When agents looked at that, they discovered that Busby, too, had been accused of bilking investors.
How'd you like to be a Secret Service agent with the duty of protecting the President of the United States -- and discover Bowdoin never received an award from your boss, that Bowdoin had a criminal record and that Bowdoin was associated with another person (Busby) who'd been ordered by a federal judge to keep on the straight and narrow on matters pertaining to investments?
If a court order by a federal judge is to mean anything, the government must investigate ASD.
We're only three layers into the onion at this point, and already three things are setting off alarm bells. Throw in tens of millions of dollars that suddenly began to appear in bank accounts, real estate paid for in cash, a payment account in Canada with several million dollars on deposit, an offshore account in Antigua -- well, is that enough yet?
Actually, no. Throw in incongruous visuals -- people standing in line by the hundreds to purchase "advertising" and others launching a petition drive to investigate prosecutors and Secret Service agents who are investigating a man who has a history of bilking investors amid serious, new allegations of fraud -- and the alarm bells ring relentlessly.
Have you ever seen people standing in line by the hundreds to buy advertising? Have you ever seen a smear campaign against Secret Service agents? These incongruous images demand the government pay very close attention.
Say you've done your research. Say you peeled back a couple more layers of the onion and discovered that some ASD members were making the false claim that deposits were FDIC insured and that others were advocating click fraud against Google.
Still not persuaded this is worth pursuing? Next imagine you discover that some members of Bowdoin's business are threatening reporters, newspapers and television stations and calling public servants Nazis, that some of them actually are making the claim that the United States orchestrated the 9/11 terrorist attacks and placed explosives in the World Trade Center to bring down the Twin Towers.
Now imagine that the man at the helm of ASD is rallying troops with appeals to religion and even comparing honorable public servants -- the people in charge of prosecuting criminals and making sure your currency is worth something tomorrow and keeping the President of the United States safe -- to Satan.
Tell me, now, that ASD is not worth investigating amid these facts:
- Members traded on the name of the President of the United States.
- Members claimed ASD deposits were FDIC-insured.
- Members instructed other members to click on Google ads fraudulently.
- Company president is a convicted con man.
- Associate of company president previously was ordered by a federal judge to keep a clean house.
- Company president has standalone signature authority over tens of millions of dollars people entrusted to him and has large sums on deposit in at least three countries.
- Company president paid cash for real estate costing hundreds of thousands of dollars.
- Company used a business model closely associated with Ponzi schemes.
- Company had unique ability to get people to stand in line by the hundreds to purchase "advertising."
- Members engaged in orchestrated attacks against against prosecutors and Secret Service agents, despite history of company president.
- Company president made the incendiary claim that the situation confronting ASD was worse than the 9/11 terrorist attacks and compared officers of the government to Satan.
Sunday ASD Analysis
In this Blog post we report on a declaration Clarence Busby has filed with U.S. District Court Judge Rosemary Collyer in Washington, DC. Busby is seeking to sever the ASD case, and move the Golden Panda portion to U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.
Busby asserts that it is unjust to prosecute Golden Panda and ASD together in Washington, D.C., because "[t]he union of the two yields an inevitable tendency, evinced by the complaint itself, to ascribe wrong-doing alleged against ASD to Golden Panda, thereby unjustly prejudicing Golden Panda." Busby also claims the D.C. venue places an undue financial burden on Golden Panda.
Here is our analysis of some of some of Busby's claims:
Claim. "I am not privy to how Bowdoin runs ASDs business and was not privy to any decision Bowdoin made concerning how to allocate funds raised by ASD. I had no involvement in any sales presentations he has made and never knew, prior to my receipt of the complaint in this proceeding, that he had prior run ins with the law."
Analysis: Bowdoin is getting tossed under the bus. Suggests Busby is aware of hyperbolic advertising used by some ASD members -- i.e., Bowdoin received an award from President Bush, ASD deposits were FDIC insured, Google and ASD had a special business partnership.
Busby even notes that he had no knowledge of Bowdoin's previous arrest for selling unregistered securities.
Claim: "As a social courtesy to Bowdoin, I asked a pastor friend of mine, Rev. Charles Green, if he might bring his boat and join me in inviting Bowdoin on a relaxing fishing trip. I imagined that operating ASD involved a lot of stress, and I had heard Bowdoin liked to fish. I also wanted a respite from work. The invitation was extended and Bowdoin agreed to join us."
Analysis: Busby needs to explain his ties to Bowdoin. Both of them, after all, have a history of encounters with law enforcement over securities issues. This claim seems designed to neutralize the "birds of a feather flock together" argument. What could be more innocent than a fishing trip arranged by a pastor so Busby and Bowdoin could talk business?
Claim: "On that [fishing] Day Bowdoin surprised me by recommending that I start a Chinese version of ASD. Bowdoin suggested that I organize the business without him. He said, 'I can't handle the business I already have,' stating that I should be the one to create, own, and operate this Chinese version of ASD."
Analysis: This claim is truly odd and may prove important. If Bowdoin can't "handle the business" he already has, why was he collecting huge, additional sums at rallies in U.S. cities? Why would Bowdoin -- out of the clear blue sky -- ask Busby to create an advertising business that competes with ASD unless he knew advertising wasn't the real product? Why would he suggest Busby run the company when Busby appears to have no experience running an advertising firm? Why would Bowdoin, in effect, offer Busby an ASD franchise ("Chinese version of ASD") without charging a franchise fee?
Claim: "Bowdoin's business is named Ad Surf Daily Income Generator. I named my business Golden Panda Ad Builder. I chose that name. I now have come to realize that the last two words of each name are telling. While the focus of ASD may be income generation based on my read of the complaint, the focus of my business was advertising (building greater audiences for web based advertising)."
Analysis: Seems Busby is claiming to have had an epiphany after reading the government's complaint against ASD. This epiphany again throws Bowdoin under the bus.
Claim: "[U]nlike ASD, we do not guarantee any advertisers that he or she will receive any amount of money from the cash out fund."
Analysis: This seems to suggest Busby understands the peril ASD is in and believes the government's case against ASD is compelling. Throws Bowdoin under the bus again.
** Emphasis added.
posted by Patrick Pretty @ 1:31 PM,
