Jacks Arons Purportedly Sued By Larry Friedman

UPDATED 12:40 P.M. EST (U.S.A.) A person posting as “Bob Guenther” at the ASD-Biz forum reports Jack Arons, a mainstay in the AdSurfDaily case and a driving force behind an effort to get the ASD Members Business Association (ASDMBA) to provide a verifiable accounting of association spending, has been sued by Larry Friedman for slander and libel.

Arons also was accused of defamation, business disparagement and tortious interference. Arons said he had not yet been served. The case was filed in Texas, Friedman’s home. Arons lives in Florida.

The claim was made under a headline titled “Jack Arons Sued, Served and Shut Up, Finally . . .” The purported author was Bob Guenther, known for a lack of decorum.

Some ASDMBA members have been encouraging others to file complaints against Friedman with the Texas Bar for his handling of ASDMBA’s affairs. Others have suggested that complaints should be filed with the office of Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott.

Friedman is an attorney for ASDMBA, which is not associated with AdSurfDaily Inc. ASDMBA was formed in August in the aftermath of the seizure of tens of millions of dollars from ASD amid allegations of wire fraud, money-laundering, selling unregistered securities and running a $100 million Ponzi scheme.

Some ASDMBA members have demanded Bob Guenther provide a straightforward accounting of how the association spends its money. Members said they believed Friedman would file a lawsuit to protect their interests, but no lawsuit has been filed to date.

Guenther has served as a spokesman for ASDMBA, sometimes catching the ire of ASDMBA members for what they describe as his use of menacing or threatening language and refusal to provide a detailed accounting of how ASDMBA spends its money.

“Anyone involved with his illegal activities or false accusations may suffer the same consequences,” the poster claiming to be Guenther said. Arons was referred to as “Rookie” in a separate post.

The lawsuit described Arons as a felon and a vigilante and a menace who has damaged Friedman’s reputation.

Why ASDMBA has not produced the type of accounting that would ease members’ concerns is unclear. Also unclear is why litigation ASDMBA members said they were expecting hasn’t been filed. The dispute has been raging for weeks.

ASDMBA has been collecting money for months. At least one member who contributed funds went on to file his own motion in the ASD case — a motion not related to ASDMBA, but one that used the Curtis Richmond litigation blueprint. Richmond is associated with a sham Utah “Indian” tribe known for filing vexatious litigation.

Months after ASDMBA began collecting money — and while it still was collecting money — a prominent Washington, D.C., law firm brought a class-action lawsuit against AdSurfDaily, accusing it of racketeering. Three ASD members were named the original plaintiffs.

ASDMBA members who’d been wondering since August when the association litigation would be filed once again complained about being left on the sidelines. They cite confusion over how ASDMBA money is being spent and the association’s litigation plan.

In what some ASDMBA members described as a bid to chill speech and undermine their efforts to have authorities investigate Friedman and ASDMBA, the lawsuit seeks a temporary restraining order. Among other things, the complaint seeks to restrain parties from “filing false complaints with state agencies against F&F [Friedman & Feiger] and encouraging or duping ASDMBA investors to file false complaints to state agencies or other entities.”

A judge purportedly has granted the restraining order.

It is illegal to file false complaints, and people can be charged criminally and sued civilly for doing so. It’s hard to imagine any jurisdiction that discourages or bans the filing of truthful complaints.

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23 Responses to “Jacks Arons Purportedly Sued By Larry Friedman”

  1. As you’ve -pointed out, Mr Arons resides in Florida (a state which has anti SLAPP legislation) whereas the TRO appears to have been filed in Texas (which does not have anti SLAPP legislation)

    It is my understanding of US law that courts usually look favourably on those sued outside their resident state when it comes to applying anti SLAPP legislation to protect their rights of free speech.

    The outcome of this attempt to muzzle Mr Arons should be interesting.

  2. This truly will be interesting. What I find really funny and kinda defeats the purpose is that according to the Order I can not have any contact with F&F. So I guess that I can not send him copies or have him served with my counter suit for 10 million dollars.

    Both Bob and Larry come to the court with Unclean Hands.

  3. Hmmm… Perhaps Mr. Arons should call upon the Pro Advocate Group – a “Private Member Association” that provides, among other services, assistance for people who’d like to be “pro se” – their own attorneys – when dealing with the legal system.

  4. Jack, if you do decide to go with the Pro Advocates group, I’d go for the “Pro Se with SUPER APPEAL” package. LOL After reading the documents, I wonder how Lawyer Larry ever passed the Bar exam.

  5. Oh, I forgot, I still cannot find these dosuments on the Dallas Counry Clerk’s website, as of Noon today… or there abouts.

  6. OK, found it, finally. F&F likes to sue folks… http://courts.dallascounty.org/CaseDetail.aspx?CaseID=4355242

  7. I haven’t read the original post, only what is posted above. And I’m the futhest from a lawyer that is possible.

    The case was filed in Texas, Friedman’s home. Arons lives in Florida.

    IMHO, that has the possibility of stopping the case from the start. I would call that a mistake that is quite basic. Possibly, in lawyer terms, that may be called a “rookie” mistake.

    The lawsuit described Arons as a felon and a vigilante and a menace who has damaged Friedman’s reputation.

    I believe the “felon” bit is true – Jack has admitted some brushes with the law and, I believe, had paid the price. Being a “menace” is hardly a crime, a “vigilante” may be positive as long as the law isn’t broken. In order to have a reputation damaged some one needs to have a reputation in the first place. If it can be shown that association with someone with questionable actions has been made, that “repudiation” could hardly have been damaged.

    Why ASDMBA has not produced the type of accounting that would ease members’ concerns is unclear. Also unclear is why litigation ASDMBA members said they were expecting hasn’t been filed. The dispute has been raging for weeks.

    This could be shown as to be why the ASDMBA was set up in the first place. The in-action could be shown as good reason for the robust comments from Jack. Also, Jacks opinions are protected by the US constitution as free speach.

    I suspect that any litigation submitted by “Bob” against Jack would and could be thrown out of court due to the incompetence of both “Bob” and any lawyer he has a long time relationship with.

  8. Tony H: I haven’t read the original post, only what is posted above. And I’m the futhest from a lawyer that is possible.

    The case was filed in Texas, Friedman’s home. Arons lives in Florida.

    IMHO, that has the possibility of stopping the case from the start. I would call that a mistake that is quite basic. Possibly, in lawyer terms, that may be called a “rookie” mistake.

    The lawsuit described Arons as a felon and a vigilante and a menace who has damaged Friedman’s reputation.

    I believe the “felon” bit is true – Jack has admitted some brushes with the law and, I believe, had paid the price. Being a “menace” is hardly a crime, a “vigilante” may be positive as long as the law isn’t broken. In order to have a reputation damaged some one needs to have a reputation in the first place. If it can be shown that association with someone with questionable actions has been made, that “repudiation” could hardly have been damaged.

    Why ASDMBA has not produced the type of accounting that would ease members’ concerns is unclear. Also unclear is why litigation ASDMBA members said they were expecting hasn’t been filed. The dispute has been raging for weeks.

    This could be shown as to be why the ASDMBA was set up in the first place. The in-action could be shown as good reason for the robust comments from Jack. Also, Jacks opinions are protected by the US constitution as free speach. I suspect that any litigation submitted by “Bob” against Jack would and could be thrown out of court due to the incompetence of both “Bob” and any lawyer he has a long time relationship with.

    If one can believe Bob G, he no longer has an association with F&F and Larry Friedman acting as his attorney. Bob G now has a new attorney, and has requested Larry F forward all of his files to this new attorney.

    My reason for mentioning this is this might be of interest to the court as to why this action was taken, since it does tie to Jack.

    What is also interesting is that Larry F is licensed in Florida, so it is obvious as to why he filed in Texas. Discovery is going to be one fun adventure.

    Oh and one more thing. There is much more nonsense to come. The lawsuits aren’t over by a long shot.

  9. It has long been my perception that Bob G’s original goal of the ASDMBA was to install his buddy Larry as receiver for the ASD money. At least when I read the things he wrote after he and Larry went to Washington, it looked like that was the agenda he had.

    If that’s correct – and the trust contributions were used to fund that little campaign – handing Jack’ the right to discovery might nail the two of them.

  10. I have just received another email service of process by Larry Friedman. There is no law in any state including Texas that gives an Attorney of 30 years the right to serve process by email. Since I have not been served by the only means recognized by the legal profession then I will continue to post.

    Under Texas Law the Defendant has a right to be heard including TRO’s. The denial of that right is and can be a denial of civil liberties which now becomes a Federal Case.

    Mr. Friedman claims that I had no standing in the ASDMBA which had he not relied on the miss information supplied by Bob he would know that I have emails from members who have given me standing and that now through his so called lawsuit gives me even more standing.

    Mr. Friedman has claimed in his Lawsuit that my wife is a minister and performs marriage without a license and even implies that she charges outrages fees. That is totally incorrect. My wife is a Notary in good standing in Florida and as such she can perform a marriage. The State of Florida sets the fees that can be charged and she has never charged for the one marriage that she performed. We now have grounds to sue Larry for Slander. In the future Larry should check his facts like I do and not rely on the rantings of an individual with a not so clean record of his own.

    Much of the information that has been posted on the internet is in response to both Larry and Bobs postings, documents,webinaire’s and emails. If they are claiming this information is not correct then they have had more than enough time to correct that information which they have failed to do.

    Filing a lawsuit to deny the postings of ASDMBA members and non members concerning their postings or lack thereof is frivolous and is causing F&F more harm than to have answered the same questions as to where the money was spent.

    The filing of a lawsuit still does not answer the questions being asked nor will the questions cease to be asked. Although it may well delay the answers in the end they will come out.

    My question to both Larry and Bob is what are you hiding from that requires the actions that you have taken?

    My right to post information is protected under the constitutional rights for freedom. Any use of the collective descriptions and shared knowledge from any of my posts are at the sole discretion of the reader.

  11. Until there is service, there is no lawsuit. Jack Arons therefore has not been sued, served nor has he shut up. If he is EVER served by the Texas Court his first motion I am sure as a Florida resident is a dismissal of the action. F&F acting as their own counsel once again prove the old adage about having a “fool for a client’.

    Clearly Larry Friedman is upset because of all the complaints now being sent into the Texas Bar Association and the Texas Attorney General’s Office, and well he should be because they have the power to sanction him or remove him from the Practice of Law. Larry Friedman worked in concert with Bob Guenther to solicit over $100,000 for a ‘legal defense fund” and Friedman made claims that these contributions retained his services for purposes of legal representation. Friedman made made these statements publicly and often and recordings exist. Solicited contributions were even sent to his offices. It now appears that the only purpose or use of these contributions has been to enrich Larry Friedman and Bob Guenther and the continued refusal by Friedman as the counsel retained by the people sending him a retainer to give any accounting of services or full refunds in lieu of the accounting constitutes malpractice. To the extent these retainers for legal services ended up in the possession and for the enrichment of Bob Guenther, Mr.Guenther is guilty of Theft by Deception.

    As these complaints continue to be received by the Texas Bar Association, the Texas Attorney General’s Office and perhaps by Federal Agencies because of the interstate nature of the fraud perpetuated by Guenther and Friedman, I am sure ‘Peer Review” will show that Friedman in asking for these retainers was guilty of malpractice as there was no chance that his ‘clients’ could ever have achieved any standing in the Department of Justice Case in the Washington DC Federal Court as Friedman claimed would happen.The fact Friedman failed to file even as much as an appearance in the matter to ‘represent his clients sending him retainers’ basically proves the malpractice.

    If you read the language in this lawsuit, Larry Friedman is attempting to silence anyone who chooses to post any information about this matter on the Internet, including Patrick Pretty’s Blog and other Forums. I would be willing to predict that even more information and more comments by more individuals will be posted in more places as Friedman comes to realize that dedicated ‘bloggers’ expressing free speech are very similar to ‘cockroaches’. F&F better call the ‘Orkin Man’ What say you fellow cockroaches, GAME ON?”

    Wayne W. Tidderington, Jr.

  12. In all of this, I think some of my best writing involved my early attempts to discourage people to send Bob Guenther money for the ASDMBA to begin with, and it’s a darn shame that Kath Danch deleted everything I wrote at the time and since from the forum where it was posted because at the time she was cheerleading for Bob and the ASDMBA and now that much of what I wrote has come to pass anything I write about it tends to make her look bad, so sadly, what I think is a lot of good stuff is gone to the ether.
    Don’t ever, really, don’t ever, send money to a group of people for legal fees. If you need a lawyer, go find a local lawyer to talk about it with and if he can’t do it, he can at least refer you to someone who can. The problem with paying a lawyer as part of a group is that you have no control over the group and thus no control over the lawyer. In this case, Bob controlled the group and Bob controlled the lawyer. And in the end, it looks to me like Bob got his money back from ASD, well, wort of, anyhow. Bob looks like he got his money from the ‘contract labor’ fees from the members who thought they were paying for a lawyer. I hate to say I told you so, but, well,,,,

  13. I remember one exchange between Larry and Jack that went something like this:

    Jack: Can you at least explain why you never filed a civil RICO case against ASD, as another group of former ASD members recently did, for just the cost of the filing fee?

    Larry: Shut up! I’m going to sue you if you don’t stop posting lies about me.

    Also, Lynn wrote:

    “If one can believe Bob G, he no longer has an association with F&F and Larry Friedman acting as his attorney. Bob G now has a new attorney, and has requested Larry F forward all of his files to this new attorney.”

    If that is true then where is the ASDBMA member’s money? Who has it? Does boB have the legal right to walk away from F&F empty handed, or is he NOT leaving empty handed? Some ASDBMA members made their checks payable to F&F, mailed them to F&F, and had them cashed by F&F. Reporting their inability to get F&F to account for their funds based on “attorney/client” privilege is disingenuous. How does Larry plan to prove he wasn’t their attorney? If he wasn’t their attorney then why did he cash their checks? He knew the sole reason for sending the checks was for “legal services,” to file a lawsuit against the government. He kept their money but no lawsuit, no accounting, then when someone raises a ruckus to try to get answers, Larry issues a TRO. That in itself should go to the Bar disciplinary committee. A simple answer would have worked and an ethical attorney would have not only given his own accounting but forced BOB to do the same. If he didn’t have anything to hide, that is. Trying to intimidate your critics speaks volumes about the attorney, not about a person exercising his right to free speech.

    Since Larry hates free speech so much, he should consider getting his own ning.com site. He can claim it’s a Larry Advocate’s site and call everyone who isn’t pro Larry a troll. Then he can begin deleting all postings he doesn’t agree with, until it’s time for the ultimate thrill: BANNING! I can’t imagine why he hasn’t thought of that before now.

  14. Larry Friedman et al v. The Internet

    I made my post here after reading the lawsuit against Jack and his unnamed co-conspirator, ‘The Internet”. Just in case F&F are NOT monitoring this great website and blog, I decided to send my post directly to Lawyer Larry inasmuch as he has threatened to sue me too in the past. Here is the email I sent to him along with the post:

    A lot is wrong with the World. The economy is bad, the Internet is full of crooks, the Courts are full of crooked lawyers and con artists like Bob Guenther continue to steal money and commit investment fraud. But the shinning light is that the First Amendment and Free Speech is alive and well….. and you will have to pry my keyboard from my cold dead hands if you want to deny my right of free speech.

    In the matter of Larry Friedman et al v. The Internet now comes hundreds of counsels to represent Truth in Information seeking justice for those harmed by deception and the theft of monies from Friedman’s misrepresentations. The collective counsels representing the Internet are not armed with Law Degrees, nor will they attempt to use the Court System for their own ends to ‘quash’ the information and documentation that has every right…..that right protected by the First Amendment….to be in the Public Domain. The Truth will be permanently ‘burned’ into the archives of Cyberspace, for access by the Citizens of the Internet….perhaps even the future clients of F&F, the Dallas Media or any other interested party for that matter. Blogs, comments, posts and other information forced to be temporarily deleted from the Internet by threats from Friedman or Guenther have been electronically preserved and will once again appear on multiple servers giving that data new life and even higher rankings in the Internet Search Engines. Unfortunately you lose in a ‘digital war’, just as you will lose when the complaints and issues are finally examined in a ‘Peer Review” by the Bar Association or the Texas Attorney General.

    Copied below is my post made today on several public Internet Forums. It is a call to arms for the victims of the Bob Guenther/Larry Friedman ASDMBA Scam to pursue their rights for the return of monies taken from them under false pretenses. Wayne

  15. Jack,

    There are so many things in the TRO and lawsuit that should cause the Texas Bar to take a closer look at Larry but one of the most egregious acts is the personal attack on you and your wife. We all recognize his attempt to “poison the well” for exactly what it is and don’t believe a word of it, but doesn’t the Bar have professional standards and wouldn’t the things Larry wrote about you and your wife fall far, far below even the lowest standards? What right did he have to criticize your wife at all? It isn’t a reflection on you at all, but it screams “uneducated low-life” about Larry. I don’t care if he has a JD, an educated person wouldn’t stoop to the level Larry did. It must be the only way he knows how to think or write. And didn’t he libel or slander your wife AND all the couples she married, and all their children? He called them “bastards,” right??

  16. You are correct Marci. It seems that Mr.Friedman is listening to his Best buddy Bob. If you take the time to clear your mind and then remember how Bob writes and what Bob has to say you will see that Bob and Larry are joined at the hip. Every single thing that Larry put into his lawsuit is verbatim of much of the same things that Bob sent to me in many of his emails. I have also noticed that many of the Larry Friedman postings and letters that Bob had posted on several sites including the Steve Watt (of I take no sides site) has by some strange reason disappeared. Mr. Friedman in one of his court filings claims that I am to insure that no files are deleted and then he instructs his client Bob to destroy the evidence.

  17. If Larry Friedman has been slandered and libelled, they would have to prove it. Something that should be simple for them to do would be to show exactly what & where such a thing has happened. Jack, in your correspondence, has Friedman, Guenther or his ego shown exactly where they have been slandered and libelled? Or have all three just said a vague “stop saying bad things, or else”?

  18. This is a sad reflection of our times. Opportunism appears to be the driving force behind so many actions. The attorney and “trustee” of a group set up to help members of ASD, who face all the problems that face the “scammed, are now suing those same people for their own ends.

    It leaves a very large question mark as to why an attorney of Larry Friedman’s standing should feel the need to bring an action like this, as an alternative to providing a very simple request to those who paid him – an accounting – and to request that the Trustee of his clients should do the same.

    It is patently untrue that Larry Friedman was unaware of the complaints about the actions of Bob Guenther and his refusal to give information to members of the ASDMBA trust that Friedman represented. He received many calls, letters and emails about this during the past months. He should surely understand that it is his and his firm’s public acquiescence to this behaviour that has brought his own conduct in the public domain.

    Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to testify that Jack Arons was doing no more nor less than expressing the views and questions of many who were to scared to do so themselves – in the face of Guenthers publicly made threats to those who tried.

  19. I’ve said many times Larry is the attorney of the trust, not the attorney for the contributors to the trust which is a very important distinction. Larry cannot tell anyone anything about the trust, he’d almost certainly be disbarred if he did, the problem with the accountability is all Bob Guenther’s mess.
    With that said, I read the complaint and something struck me about it. As a law student, I’ve read hundreds of complaints in the last few years, and what makes this one stick out it it has no backup in the paragraphs. For instance, a typical suit is written in paragraphs, each of which stands on it’s own and almost always begins with ‘the statements and allegations made in paragraph 1-XXX above are hereby incorporated …..”that says “all above again” then they state the claim “Defendant did willfully and with malice slander the plaintiff” and then they provide a concrete example “by publishing the following remark” and then they quote where you called the client a lying no good scum bag. The lawsuit against Jack doesn’t do that last, it say “Jack said things about me” but doesn’t say what. I’m just an amateur, but it looks to me more like a suit designed to scare the crap out of someone but not like a suit someone intends to actually litigate. If it was me, I’ file a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim. There is no substance to the case, the complaint is all hearsay.

  20. For the price of the 210$ filing fee, Friedman seems to be willing to waste a lot of public time and money on defending “his honour” in what seems to be, t best, a frivolous” filing.

    It makes you wonder. Will Jonathan Goodman now be filing TROs against Andy Bowdoin for his libellous remarks and draw even more attention to the fact that Akerman Seiffert became involved in an unwinnable case? Or will he have the common sense and professionalism to realise that disgruntled clients are part of the real world and ignore him. I would hope for the sake of HIS reputation, he chooses the later.

  21. This gets even more ridiculous. Word has it that someone posing as an “attorney” tried (and temporarily succeeded) to get Jack Arons internet connection taken down!

    This is beginning to look like the rule of the wild west has taken over the court rooms

  22. This has now, indeed, entered the realms of high farce.

    It can only be hoped that someone in a position of influence brings this sorry saga to an end, sooner, rather than later, so the focus can be bought back where it belongs, on Bowdoins’ $100 MILLION dollar scam.

    Still, long term observers of the HYIP ponzi “scene” certainly don’t find these distractions unusual following the demise of yet “another” ‘net scam.

    The usual suspect “steroidal puppets” are probably laughing up their sleeves at how well the attention has been diverted from the REAL crime/s.

  23. THE TEXAS BAR ASSOCIATION

    It would seem Larry Friedman’s attempt to use the Legal System to silence Jack and by innuendo WARN OTHERS that posting any information on the Internet about the ASDMBA and their scam “Legal Fund” or Larry Friedman Attorney or his firm will be met with a swift and punitive Civil Lawsuits, has backfired.

    Working with a gal who had sent $300 to the ASDBMA who called me because she was really pissed that Friedman and Guenther would attempt to use the legal system to threaten and intimidate someone for doing exactly what she has been doing, trying to contact the ASDBMA to get an accounting or a refund. She sent her money in directly to Friedman last year right after the first couple of National Conference calls…..she like everyone else expected Friedman would be representing them and taking some legal action….that was the promise you know.

    Together we did a 3 way call to the Texas Bar Association to find out what she had to do to file a complaint against Larry Friedman. The Gal taking the call at the Bar Association said that they had been getting a lot of calls about this lawyer recently but today ……well this was the third call she herself had taken…..she did not know how many complaints they had received so far because they go to another location. The complaint process is very simple, there is a PDF form you can print out, fill out and then mail along with any documents you might have like copies of canceled checks, correspondence, etc. Here is where you go to get that PDF Document:

    How Do I File A Grievance?

    The first step in filing a grievance is to complete a grievance form and mail it to the State Bar Chief Disciplinary Counsel’s office at P.O. Box 15466, Austin, TX, 78761, or fax it to 512-380-9064.

    ‘grievance form’ is a hyperlink on their website and that pulls up the form.
    at http://www.texasbar.com/

    I have digital recordings of Larry soliciting the ‘retainers’ to represent the members and I will be making a copy of the calls to send her to submit with her complaint along with some ‘suggested language’

    Based on the conversation with the gal at the Bar Association, it appears this Lawsuit against Jack has had the opposite effect from ‘shutting people up’…..it has galvanized them to do something about the Freidman/Guenther ASDBMA scam. The Texas Bar Association will hold Larry Friedman accountable and with enough complaints Lawyer Larry might begin to give everyone ‘cheerful refunds’……Let us hope. Wayne