Archive for December 2008

Dear Readers,
Our best to you with the dawning of the new year — and our thanks for making this Blog one of your stopping points.
If you have a moment in the coming days, think about leaving a comment that answers this question: What will you remember most about 2008?
One of the things we’ll remember most [...]

WordPress recently released version 2.7, which I use on this and three other Blogs. Three of the four Blogs all made the conversion without incident. One of them, however, lost the WordPress Visual editor that appears when you’re making a post.
The editor is supposed to appear as a tab marked “Visual.” A second tab marked [...]

Reports online suggest MegaLido members are receving paltry refunds of less than 10 percent from the payment processors they used to fund their MegaLido accounts
The precise percentage of the refunds is unclear. What is clear is that MegaLido is yet another autosurf that went bust.

MegaLido was widely promoted by members of AdSurfDaily in the aftermath [...]

Bernard Madoff was charged with securities fraud Dec. 11. The story about the alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme hasn’t been out of the news since then — not even for a few hours.
Over the weekend we reported that the assets of the Elie Wiesel Foundation had been wiped out in the alleged Madoff fraud. Not [...]

In a stunning announcement, the Elie Wiesel Foundation For Humanity said it lost “substantially all” of its assets in the alleged Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme.
It has been known for two weeks that significant foundation money was under Madoff’s management. But the foundation now says it had entrusted $15.2 million to Madoff, in essence the entirety [...]

When the $700 billion U.S. government bailout plan was announced, some people warned it could lead to a slippery slope. Banks, the auto industry and the home-building trade now want a share, and there’s a chance the incoming Obama administration will package a stimulus plan that will trickle down to consumers in the form of [...]

A few readers asked to see a picture of Maddy the Wonder Puppy. Today she makes her world debut on the PatrickPretty.com Blog.
It is Christmas Eve, Maddy’s first. She began her day at 4:30 a.m. with a call to nature in freezing rain. She seemed even to like icy cold precipitation, as she [...]

BLOG UPDATE 2:19 P.M. EST (U.S.A.): La Tribune, a French business newspaper, is reporting that a founder of Access International Advisors, a hedge fund with large sums invested with Bernard Madoff, has been found dead in his New York City office building.
Rene-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet, 65, was found this morning. The French newspaper called [...]

Dear Readers,
A couple of updates about our move to a new host after database problems we experienced a couple of weeks ago.
Today we uploaded a new version of Sticky PDF, our free PDF-creation software. It is ad-sponsored software and is available at StickyPDF.com.
The software is fundamentally the same. The new build was necessitated by the [...]

This morning we read an early pitch for Ad View Global (AVGlobal), a new “advertising” company that is coming online in the wake of the $100 million government seizure of assets tied to AdSurfDaily Inc.
AVGlobal, according to the promoter’s ad we read, is positioning itself as a guarantee against the recession and poor economy. You’ll [...]

I first learned about Ad Surf Daily and Andy Bowdoin in July, prior to the asset seizure, back when I served as a Moderator at the Warrior Forum. ASD members swore by the company, flocking to the forum in droves when Andy Bowdoin had become a topic of widespread conversation on the Web.
Some of the [...]

W. Mark Felt died peacefully yesterday in a California hospice. He was 95, a legendary figure among journalists — and known best by his secret name:
Mark Felt was “Deep Throat.”
It was a code name whose roots were unseemly, but it emerged a powerful brand and captured the public imagination for more than 30 years. [...]

Members of an autosurf known as DailyProfitPond are reporting the website is offline and that they fear they’ve lost their money.
DailyProfitPond is yet another autosurf that launched in the wake of the August seizure of tens of millions of dollars and real estate linked to Andy Bowdoin’s AdSurfDaily, also known as ASD Cash Generator.
One [...]

We’ve written previously that members of an autosurf known as MegaLido had reported their support requests had been ignored and they they were seeking refunds from AlertPay and SolidTrustPay.
MegaLido members now say the site itself has gone offline.  The paid-to-surf site rose to prominence in the weeks after the government seizure of AdSurfDaily’s assets, with [...]

BLOG UPDATE 12:12 P.M. EST (U.S.A.): A bail hearing for Bernard Madoff rescheduled for today has been canceled. Madoff was ordered last week to produce two additional co-signers to guarantee his $10 million bail, but was unable to come up with them. A federal judge, with consent of the prosecution, now has ordered Madoff placed [...]

UPDATE 1:03 PM EST (U.S.A.): Quoting Stephen Harbeck, president and chief executive officer of the Securities Investor Protection Corp. (SIPC), Bloomberg News is reporting that Bernard Madoff’s financial records are “utterly unreliable.” We’ve added a link at the bottom of the post.
Here, below, our earlier post . . .
If you’ve been following the Ad Surf [...]

A federal judge has appointed a trustee to liquidate Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securtites under the auspices of the Securities Investor Protection Corp. (SIPC).
SIPC went to court earlier today to seek liquidation. Irving H. Picard will serve as trustee. The law firm of Baker & Hostetler will serve as counsel to Picard.
“I will work with [...]

AdSurfDaily Inc. has filed a defense in the civil-forfeiture case brought by the U.S. Secret Service and federal prosecutors in Washington, D.C. The firm is asking for a jury trial.
Among the most interesting defenses is that the case was brought in the wrong court — U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia — and [...]

Nearly a month after being named defendants in a civil racketeering lawsuit filed in Florida, Ad Surf Daily President Andy Bowdoin, Golden Panda President Clarence Busby and ASD attorney Robert Garner have not filed notice with the court naming their attorneys.
Such notices typically are filed by the attorneys themselves and are designed to notify the [...]