Back in the early days of the AdSurfDaily saga, the ASD Member Advocates Forum — also known as “Surf’s Up, Baby!” — emerged as the preeminent cheerleading site for AdSurfDaily Inc. President Andy Bowdoin.

Yes, the alleged operator of a $100 million Ponzi scheme that fleeced thousands of people, paid employees to surf for favored members (family/insiders) and has caused family to turn against family and church members to turn against church members, actually has a fan club.

But Surf’s Up always has been Grand Central for the absurd. Right now, for example, it is leading cheers for Curtis Richmond in his bid to slap around federal judges and federal prosecutors involved in the ASD litigation. A companion site, the AdViewGlobal Members Forum, is doing the same thing.

Richmond, a member of a sham Utah “Indian” tribe whose certified-mail and “arbitration” practices have led to prison sentences for at least two proponents, is being hailed a hero on both forums. Richmond’s own conviction in California for criminal contempt of court for threatening federal judges is merely an afterthought, if a thought at all.

Posting numbers at Surf’s Up, however, have been on the decline recently. Has its loud — and in-your-face advocacy for the bizarre — finally caught up with it?

Hollywood Here We Come!!!!!

If a movie based on the ASD case gets made, the Surf’s Up forum will be a prominent part of it. It’s where most of the color and flavor of this awkward mix of tragedy and black comedy has played out. Any media campaign surrounding the movie necessarily would include liberal use of exclamation points. The Surf’s Up leadership and some forum members never saw a slammer they didn’t like.

To the best of our knowledge, no grandiose prediction advanced on the forum ever has come true. Bowdoin, for instance, has not been cleared. God has not intervened on his side. The prosecutors are still gainfully employed and haven’t been relegated to fast-food work, and ASD Members International (ASDMI), which invited forum members to do the good work of suing the government back to the Stone Age, didn’t manage even to sue it back into last week.

In fact, ASDMI folded — but not until it had collected money from 167 members, only to discover Andy Bowdoin had folded. Bowdoin didn’t tell members that he’d thrown in the towel: They read about it in the newspaper or on Blogs and forums. His lips were sealed.

Indeed, the Surf’s Up forum is the place where old exclamation points go to die. There must be several thousand of them buried over there.

Among other things, Surf’s Up members have advocated for:

• Complaint letters to be sent to the Office of Inspector General to stymie prosecutors before there had been a single finding of fact in the case.
• A drive to have a Florida TV station charged with “deceptive trade practices” for carrying news unflattering to ASD and Bowdoin.
• A “Kool-Aid” campaign to Bill O’Reilly of Fox News. (The advocates were being called “Kool-Aid” drinkers on other forums, and adopted this term of derision as a symbol of unity.)
• A petition drive to politicians, advocating for Ponzi schemes in a down economy — and during an election year with bank failures constantly in the news. (Nine banks already have failed this year, including three on Friday alone. Twenty-five banks failed in 2008.  By comparison, three banks failed in 2007.)
• A “prayer campaign” for a federal judge to do the “right thing” — followed by assertions she was “brainless” and “on the take” if she didn’t see the genius of the ASD business model.
• A million-person-strong show of force in Washington — in the form of a protest march on Labor Day weekend, when politicians are all back home in their districts making speeches at holiday picnics. (As a technical matter, the call for a million-person march predated the Surf’s Up forum, but it was the same people. The idea collapsed when it became clear that no one had done any logistics homework at all. If the Pro-ASD forums were taverns, the advocacy would be called “beer talk.”)
• A plan to get AARP, which advocates for senior citizens, to advocate for Ponzi schemes.

Accompanying the Surf’s Up forum have been virtually constant claims that special members with “inside information” had kernels of knowledge that would be fatal to the government’s case. None of it came true. A claim that Ponzi allegations against Bowdoin had been dropped in Florida wasn’t true, but Surf’s Up members repeated it as though it were fact. And claims that ASD soon would receive a cash infusion of tens of millions of dollars weren’t true, but were repeated as fact.

Memorably, the Surf’s Up forum held an online party after the Sept. 30-Oct. 1 evidentiary hearing, complete with fireworks and champagne — and claims that ASD’s “Perry Mason” lawyers had destroyed the incompetent “Gomer Pyle” who showed up to ask questions for the government. Several weeks later the judge issued her ruling, which can be summarized in two words:

Gomer won.

It’s not so much that Bowdoin’s lawyers lost; it’s that they had nothing to work with. Their client took the 5th, handed the prosecution ammunition during so-called “conference calls” and basically was just a con man who got caught in lie after lie after lie. The forfeiture element of the case always was virtually unwinnable. Possession is nine-tenths of the law, and the government already was holding the money, along with Bowdoin’s rap sheet for conning investors in a scheme a decade ago. Clarence Busby, a Bowdoin colleague, also was implicated in an investment scheme a decade ago.

The “conference calls” were myths, too. Bowdoin arranged them so members couldn’t ask questions, and he held forth unchallenged on a number of critical issues, including the key need for members to purchase VOIP services from him. Members were out tens of millions of dollars, the Holidays were fast approaching, and Andy Bowdoin responded by trying to sell them telephone service.

Not all of the Surf’s Up members are crackpots. But the leadership is. One couldn’t possibly advocate for these things as loudly and persistently as the leadership and not be a crackpot.

Kudos

Shifting gears briefly, we’d like to address a short note to “Seminole Girl,” with whom we’ve never corresponded: When the dust settles, find a way to go to law school or journalism school. You have impressed us with your reasoning skills, your writing skills and your lucidity. People always are getting ripped off in Florida. You might not make a lot of money as a consumer advocate or a prosecutor, but you could help protect people from the marsh sharks and land wolves at the door.

Bravo, Seminole Girl. Bravo.

A Cryptic Closing

Now, back to the topic at hand: The Surf’s Up site also is known for paranoia.

Based on an analysis of public records and other information, we have concluded that it is more likely than not that the ASD case will take a dramatic turn — and it will give the advocates the shock of their lives.

Here is a clue about a possible — tilting toward probable — ASD development:

“A Ceded Liniments Nut.”

Now, don’t you just hate it when somebody does that!!!!!!!!!!