‘Noobing’ Autosurf Has Hearing-Impaired Clientele; Surf Blames Slashed Payouts On Unclear Ruling In ASD Ponzi Case
Sampling of YouTube videos by hearing-impaired Noobing members.
UPDATED 9:11 PM. EST (U.S.A.) An autosurf excoriated in forums for slashing payouts has hearing-impaired clients, according to several videos on YouTube.
At least 15 of the YouTube videos feature sign language and appear to have been created by hearing-impaired members of Noobing. Many of the videos use the word “Noobing” — coupled with the word “deaf” — to generate keyword-search volume.
Meanwhile, Noobing members are asking tough questions on forums, saying they were led to believe the money they spent on advertising would generate returns of 3 percent. Noobing slashed returns to a fraction of 1 percent, and says members weren’t guaranteed any return at all.
Earlier today a Noobing employee blamed the lower rates on the government. Tonight the same Noobing employee said the slash in payouts was because of an unclear ruling in the AdSurfDaily Ponzi case.
“The SEC did not contact us,” explained the employee, on the ASA Monitor forum. “We are simply being smart and not putting ourselves in a bad position to risk losing everything. Once ASD gave up, and we stood without a firm ruling from the courts, the risk was too high. We’d have preferred that ASD won, or that at least we got a clear ruling, as it is now, cautious action is best.”
ASD President Andy Bowdoin surrendered his claim last month to tens of millions of dollars and other property seized by the government in August. Noobing debuted after the government’s move last summer. A second forfeiture complaint against assets tied to ASD was filed in December. ASD has not submitted a claim to the assets, including a boat, water equipment, automobiles and real estate owned by Bowdoin family members.
Prosecutors said the property was purchased with the proceeds of a criminal enterprise: ASD.
Members have complained that Noobing now is paying only a fraction of 1 percent, meaning that money directed at the firm is producing little income. Some members said Noobing should provide refunds, but the Noobing employee said that wouldn’t happen because the company never guaranteed a return.
“If there is a bad guy in this whole story, it’s the government!” the employee exclaimed. “Let’s get mad at them! How can sharing our revenue to help control costs for legitimate advertisers be a bad thing? How can keeping $90+ million dollars to protect the people who worked with ASD be a fair result? It’s madness!!! Our government is the bad guy here, not Noobing.
“Let’s get mad at the source of this challenge!” the employee railed. “Call your congressman, send letters, speak publicly!!”
Some ASD members also are railing against the government.
Noobing members, though, find themselves hamstrung by Noobing’s argument that returns — or “incentives,” as the company calls them — weren’t guaranteed. It’s fundamentally the argument prosecutors said ASD used to insulate itself from Ponzi claims.
And now Noobing is using the argument, even though it is still operating. Noobing also says advertising purchases are nonrefundable, as did ASD.
At the same time, Noobing members are accusing the company of “bait and switch,” saying it never should have opened for business if it didn’t address all regulatory issues up front, including potential challenges for selling unregistered securities and operating a Ponzi scheme.
One of the YouTube videos shows Noobing members how to sign up for a Clickbank affiliate account in case they don’t have their own business to advertise. Over the past two days, Noobing has criticized members who didn’t have a business to advertise for signing up.
See related post.
PYRAMIDIOTS of the world unite!
Only people who would plead “no contest” in court and later proclaim to the world that they did not “plead guilty” and were never “convicted in court” would say that there was no clear ruling in the ASD case. Two things are very, very clear: Judge Collyer went out of her way to state that ASD met every element of a Ponzi scheme (plus some other illegal activities) and Andy Bowdoin took one look at the prosecution’s evidence at the required pre-trial settlement conference and promptly renounced all claims to $53 million in cash + expensive real estate. (And as you reported a few weeks ago, he never bothered to file a claim for the seizure of other property. ) If that’s unclear, first the sentence of this posting!
Patrick, I have to remember your very well reasoned opinion, that I now share, that these people will say and do anything to keep the money coming in. It’s so tempting to think that they are idiots, even though I know that they are calculating and greedy, and very crafty — not idiots in the slightest — not the organizers, I mean.
Hey, they bought advertising, and the rebates were just a bonus, which no one thought could last forever, right????
Noobing is pretty shady in a lot of ways, but let’s face it, Noobing is the successful tweaking of the ASD business model, they simply rebate less than you paid in, what’s the problem?
Hi Gregg,
As always, the problem may be that some folks won’t accept a wink-nod Terms of Service and may file complaints, which could trigger an investigation.
Some people also may look at the TOS and see it as a bid to insulate Noobing from Securities/Ponzi claims.
And other people may not like the idea of Noobing sitting on their $10,000 without providing some kind of certified accounting.
In other words, the usual stuff.
But you already know that. :-)
Patrick
I have to tell you though, I’m having a lot of fun seeing Faith Sloan dancing around the point, she went to KC to set the management straight, and honestly I kind of expected them to offer her a little “incentive” to shut up on the forums. Apparently not but she now has to explain how all her due diligence turned up yet another scam. TO be fair, Faith wasn’t all gung ho on this one at first, but as soon as she dropped he cash in she was all butterflies and Unicorns for a bit. Ken Russo is hip deep in it to, but the pimp in the most trouble is, once again, Jake Amedee, already said to be the subject of a federal investigation into his past activities promoting over 50 scams, including giving his personal endorsement to Noobing
[quote]The info that I gathered today from him sounds really great! Yes we were concerned about the company being US based, but they have clearly explained how they are different. Had ASD been set up the way Noobing was, they would still be running perfectly. Noobing has provided the missing links ASD did not have. I think that Noobing will become huge! I would estimate sales in 2009 at over 300 million usd.
*) Verifiable offline revenue streams “clearly not a ponzi”.
*) Very good legal team
*) Solid business plan
*) Very attractive earning plans
We will be listing Noobling as a Class A opportunity soon![/quote]
Nothing like Jake’s DD. Another note noone over at ASA has caught, the original poster in the thread, ASA Moderator ‘Fastone” has a ref ling that leads to Scott Reese, “the internet minister” and longtime scam promoter. Now, that’s not really important by itself, but several pages later is a large headline post announcing the Scot Reese was adding Noobing to his portfolio, as in certain circles, that almost as good as Jake’s endorsement. What I want to know is, is Scot Reese the moderator Fastone and if he is, why did anyone feel the need to add this plug weeks after he introduced the thread?
Goodness it is rich to see the crybabies whine about not getting more out than they put into their “advertising”. And I’m just about half convinced that the good folks running Noobing have pulled off the perfect scam by not breaking any laws. Sure they used a bait and switch, they got the ref whores to come out and stress the “up to 3%” which can also mean ZERO mind you. Anyhow, MikeKS the admin who posts on ASA is an artist, blaming the government because ponzi schemes are illegal. Someone over there says “noobing has nothing from us”, wrong, they have your money, they have a contract you signed that said you were buying advertising, they’re providing the advertising and you ain’t getting your money back. So this time, they all got exactly what they’ve all been saying they wanted all along, a totally legal way to advertise their business…only they’re paying somewhere to the tune of ten times what google would have charged and the hit’s they get are from people not even looking at the adds, have no intention of buying anything from you and are mad that they’re cought in the same trap.
Stew in it kids, it’s what a totally legal surf looks like.
Gregg,
I think Noobing has some vulnerability to a securities challenge, a Ponzi challenge and a straightforward Deceptive Business Practices challenge. It is possible — and I stress possible — that is also has some special vulnerability because of the participation of hearing-impaired members.
At a minimum, it has a HUGE political problem: Deaf people claiming they got ripped off in an investment scheme. If senior citizens are involved, many states would treat them as a special class under their Consumer Protection Law and move for extra damages.
Larry Atkins of North Dakota just was convicted of a felony for selling seniors/vulnerable adults into a Ponzi scheme. He got eight years.
In any event, Noobing is taking a pounding in forums today. And, you’re right, some folks are showing the wink-nod nature of autosurfs by saying outright that they were treating it as an investment.
One person suggested Noobing would be OK if, say, it took $5,000 and paid back only $4,999 — just short of 100 percent. I’m not sure that argument is strong enough to overcome a securities challenge, and I don’t think there is any way a company can divine itself the right to except itself from a Ponzi/securities claim by a monumentally one-sided TOS.
I mean, they couldn’t exempt themselves from bank-robbery laws or theft laws, so why would a Ponzi scheme be any different?
Finally, all the wailing and gnashing of teeth today provide a glimpse into how ASD members would have reacted if Bowdoin slashed payouts while citing the TOS.
Patrick
Hi Marci,
No, they’re not idiots. Nor are they ignorant.
But some of them are co-conspirators.
Patrick
Hi Patrick. I agree, Noobing has a lot of exposure, I think the requirement of the W-9s is going to be hard to explain, when was the last time you had to fill out tax reporting documents to buy something? It’s also going to get the participants in a spot sometimes. They cannot easily claim the money the spent on advertising, unless they do have a legitimate business that they already fill out a Schedule C for, but they will get 1099s for any payments they receive and they’ll have to pay taxes on it, some of them will have to pay employer contributions for FICA and Medicare tax.
And lest anyone think I’m getting a kick out of people’s misfortune, well, I am, but the ones I’m gloating over aren’t some innocent people who thought it was all legit, the ones over on ASA who are whining are the early joiners, the pros, and certainly they know the score. It disturbs me to see that some of them don’t realize that in order for a company top have profit sharing in their model, they ultimately have to have profits. I don’t know what to grieve over, are they that stupid, or that sociopathic?
Noobing is going to go down, their real problem is going to end up that they are a real company and have a wonderful paper trail of registration documents and bank accounts that will be easy to trace, for both Law Enforcement and dis satisfied customers. I suspect a few of the participants will start calling people in Topeka at the Kansas Secretary of State and eventually set of an investigation that won’t do the members much good but will get the owners in a lot of trouble.
One angle I’m interested in, MikeKS makes some mention of Capstone in Overland Park (I used to live in Overland Park in the middle 80’s), capstone appears to me to be a long established and legitimate company. Now some of the people over at ASA have said Capstone owns Noobing, which I find suspicious, I wonder if maybe Mike works at Capstone and is freelancing one the side, possibly using if not Capstone equipment, but other resources and business contacts. Does anyone at Capstone know about this?
http://www.capstonesite.com/index.html
Checked over there to see, MikeKS himself claims Capstone owns Noobing, a and implies that all the Capstone clients etc… stand behind Noobing, so I really want to call someone over at Capstone to see if they’re aware that their name is tied to this…the more I look at their site the less I believe they are involved. This might get interesting…
Well, I sent an e-mail to Capstone onsite’s media contact address, so I suspect that Noobing won’t be with us much longer. My guess is Mike Reed is a full time employee of Capstone (for now, if I’m right he’ll be available for other engagements very soon) who is running Noobing on the side, possibly using Capstone resources, they are among other things a web server hosting company, their website looks pretty impressive and not like a company that has anything to do with a 2 bit ponzi. Also on their site is a “News” page that fails to mention anything about their new company “Noobing LLC” or anything that I’d expect to see on a company with shady practices….
Maybe this one will die pretty quick now.
The Ponzi definition doesn’t require payouts greater than 100% — that is the condition for mathematical unsustainability. The Ponzi element is the inequitable redistribution of wealth from late-comers to the first people that joined. Not sure what the lower threshhold would be for the payouts to be ruled a Ponzi — I wonder if the low payouts from Noobing would hit that threshhold, if the senior members received more than the junior members (even if none of them got more back than they put in.
Hi Entertained,
Noobing is engaged in some furious damage-control spin on the ASA Monitor board, but the presence of well-known Ponzi pushers within the organization severely damages its credibility.
There does appear to have been inequitable distribution. There does not appear to have been any public accounting, which means likely means Noobing was willing to collect money while still planting the idea that payouts could be 3 percent.
And no one knows how much the owners took.
To me, the most interesting thing is the sudden, furious, ASD-like attack on the government. Like ASD, Noobing insists it was an “advertising” business. And it says payouts were slashed as a result of an unclear ASD ruling.
But the question is, Why did it even launch? And why did some people get 3 percent and others did not? And where is the money?
And why did the ASD ruling have anything to do with Noobing?
It either passed regulatory muster prior to launch and had huge income streams beyond ad sales or it did not.
Patrick
Hitting on the deaf sounds like yet another variation of affinity fraud to be noted down.
Hi alasycia,
It is clear that deaf people knew about Noobing and were promoting it. What’s unclear is what sparked their interest.
I don’t recall seeing any advertisements that featured sign language for ASD, for example. It’s clear that members of the deaf community were pushing Noobing, though.
Patrick
Faith Sloan I think made a comment on the fact that one of the Noobing promoters was fluent in sign language, and that all of their video presentations would have sing translators on them. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of them has a deaf family member, and if so, using that to pimp a scam is just that much more despicable.
Gregg,
Capstone LLC’s web site does look professional when compared to any of the scams (and I note that they don’t claim that they “ARE OFFSHORE, OUT OF THE REACH OF THE SEC”, “SEC LAWYERS HAVE REVIEWED OUR BUSINESS PLAN AND FOUND IT TO BE 100% LEGAL”, etc. In additiion, I note that their Terms of Service comprises 3 sentences, a far cry from ASD/AVG/Noobing and the like……
I know I’ve written a lot here, and I hate to do this, but sometimes a quote just makes a point so clear it needs to be put in lights and hung from the tallest building in town….this is from a Noobing member who just found out he was actually buying advertising, and not an investment.
.
.
.
If I promote Noobing as an advertisement platform letting everybody know that it costs 33 cents to show ones web site they will start
laughing about me, they all gonna think I am crazy. And if I let them also know that they can advertise their web site for $500 for
about 5 weeks I am afraid they will want to put the white jacket on me and haul me away. wink.gif
Well 33 cents aint a bad deal if you think ASD, AVG and AdGate are a better deal than Google and Facebook! lol
I think I read somewhere that ASD worked out to be $1 a throw. I guess the advertising was very good value indeed at that price.
RE the government conspiracies – bad news for anti-government, anti-tax, anti-IRS believers. Wayne Hicks, owner of ALFII and MyICIS, and with connections to the “Liberty Dollar” “alternative currency”, is sent to prison.
http://www.dgcmagazine.com/blog/index.php/2009/02/15/wayne-hicks-returns-to-prison-owing-clients-7-20-million-in-restitution/
Many of the anti-government arguments vented by the pro-ponzi players have also been used by the “Patriot Movement”, and Wayne Hicks & his followers.
http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/dc/Victim_Witness_Assistance/adsurfdailyinformationform.html
This may not count as an official legal opinion but I thought it was a hoot that when the Department of Justice mentioned “ad packages” on their claim form, the term “ad packages” is encased in quotation marks. (Inverted commas for Jenny.) It’s subtle, but very telling.
Name used to purchase “ad packages”
Website “ad packages” were purchased from (choose all that apply):
Hi Marci,
That’s a neat observation. I’ve noticed the new surfs are tripping all over themselves to find a word other than “rebate” and are giving members all sorts of fancy titles.
And they’re calling “ad packages” by different names, too: “ad impressions” and such.
Patrick
[…] See related post. Also, see this related post. […]
I am sorry to say. I am a victim of Noobing. Please if you are planning to join Noobing LLC… Then DON’T! If you do! May God save you from Noobing. Because Noobing pulls you in a trap!
Never been stable 3 percent incentive earning. Only little as of 5 dollars to 20 dollars per 1st and 15th of the month. That is Terrible!
We have to plan to sue Noobing into Court. Because I lost the money as I deposited into Annual Ad Cost! That is awful non-refundable that is bad excuses. Because of they make excuses to keeping our money and never give us money just the stupid incentives!
Soory to hear about your situation. Noobing is just another garden-variety scam. Please don’t be enticed to try to “make your money back” by joining another program. All HYIP (high yield investment programs) are scams. If they are advertising greater than 1% per month return, you can bet everything you have that it is a scam. Consider that high yield bonds today pay 5-8% per YEAR, and they are considered junk bonds. 12.6% per year (=1% per month) is WAY out of line with market returns. Patrick has a list of scams on this site. (In)famous names include AVG, AGW, PBX, and others. AVOID anything that Faith Sloan attaches her name to — she has a long history of promoting scams. Avoid like the plague, or get ready for a rerun of your Noobing experience.
What should I do to join other the best jobs as I could afford and try to earn more than thousand dollars? All of them are all scammers! Which ares are not?
Can you tell me about http://www.getthebar.com
Or about Chat to TEXT website?
Or whatever you name it which are not matrix, hyip, autosurfing, which are those company are scams!
Thank you for your responses
Hello victim of noobing,
You’ll serve yourself ill if you join any HYIP/autosurf. They are all scams, and forum posts from people announcing they got paid are not proof they aren’t scams.
Just before Aggero Investment tanked this week, the admin was sending people to forums to post about getting paid. All it did was create more victims.
Take care.
Patrick
Hi VON,
Please see this link for info and commentary on getthebar:
http://www.smileytraffic.com/board/index.php?s=3105318af36bafab7ba131085c2dd783&showtopic=305&pid=1882&st=0&#entry1882
I personally would stay away. Looks like you would not lose money easily (but beware if they ask for $$$). They also do not list who owns/runs the company, or what their business address is. That is ALWAYS a red flag. Some speculate that the getthebar project is really designed to go after personal information on YOUR computer, turn your machine into a spam generating machine, of a denial of service attack machine. I would hesitate a VERY long time before installing such software on my machine. Identity theft is just too expensive….
Unfortunately, the web is filled with unscrupulous scammers after your money or your personal information. There are very few, if any, legitimate prgrams out there. If they sound too good to be true, they are. There really is no easy way to make a lot of money, on line or elsewhere. The best way to make money on line is to sell REAL products, or to represent someone else’s REAL products, and to work hard at it. It is tough in these very challenging economic times to ignore the attractive pitches that the scammers sell on line, but they lead to trouble. Talent, hard work, and perserverance are the best solution (just like our mothers taught us…..) Good luck!
yeah good thing that I have asked everyone’s opinion about http://www.getthebar.com
I have joined 1 year Usana Health project! It’s great! But, the cons are 40 dollars as I earned and I have about 20 people who ordered health products connected to us as preferred customers.
I quit last Janurary.. because I only receive small amount of money. It is hard to sell products as you think it is good company.. but it is not!
[…] had a considerable presence in the deaf community, and at least 15 YouTube videos featured sign […]
[…] some ASD promoters have been linked to any number of failed schemes, including MegaLido, Noobing and Regenesis 2×2, which now is under investigation by the U.S. Secret Service in Washington […]
I TALKED WTIH FTC TODAY. FTC SAID YOU TELL EVERYONE (DEAF) MUST CALL 877 382 4357.
CONSUMER FRAUD, SHE SAID DEAF PEOPLE MUST CALL 877 382 4357.
YOU ASLO CALL FTC 877 382 4357.
PLEASE LET ME KNOW SOON
CAROLYN
Carolyn,
Is there an email address to write to for those deaf people who do not have someone to make the telephone call for them?