AdSurfDaily President Andy Bowdoin still hasn’t responded to a Jan. 15 racketeering lawsuit filed against him by three ASD members seeking class-action certification.
Meanwhile, Bank of America, a non-RICO defendant accused in the complaint of aiding Bowdoin and others in a fraudulent scheme, has added two additional attorneys who specialize in complex financial litigation to its legal team.
At the same time, Steven Berk, an attorney for the plaintiffs, has notified U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia that he has left the law firm of Chavez & Gertler and has started his own firm, Berk Law LLC of Washington, D.C.
Berk filed papers yesterday to ask the court to delay the due date until May 26 for the plaintiffs’ response to a motion to dismiss Golden Panda Ad Builder President Clarence Busby as a defendant in the case. The response had been due May 11, but Busby’s attorneys have agreed to a 15-day delay.
Like Bowdoin and ASD attorney Robert Garner, Busby was named a RICO defendant, amid allegations he engaged in racketeering with Bowdoin, Garner and unnamed others. Bowdoin is the sole named RICO defendant who hasn’t responded to the complaint.
Although he is an attorney, Garner filed a pro se pleading asking to have until May 22 to respond to the complaint. It is unclear if he intends to continue to represent himself or if he’ll retain counsel.
Busby, through his attorneys, said he should be dismissed from the RICO case because he already has settled a separate case filed by the government in August 2008.
Why Bowdoin hasn’t responded to the RICO complaint, which was filed in January and amended April 27, is unclear. He filed at least four pro se motions in the government forfeiture case in February and March and authored a special statement to ASD members released through the pro-ASD Surf’s Up forum that said other filings he planned “should really get” the attention of prosecutors.
Prosecutors, however, said Bowdoin had signed a proffer letter in the case and had acknowledged to law enforcement that ASD had been operating illegally. Proffer letters sometimes mean that the one who proffers is trying to minimize exposure while providing information that may help in the prosecution of others.
Bowdoin’s pro se litany began at the same time the AdViewGlobal (AVG) autosurf introduced members to Pro Advocate Group, a company that says it can help people practice law without a license. Pro Advocate Group is associated with Karl Dahlstrom, who was sentenced to 78 months in federal prison in the 1990s for securities fraud.
Securities fraud is one of the allegations cited in the government’s August forfeiture complaint against assets tied to ASD and Golden Panda. Both Bowdoin and Busby have had previous run-ins with securities regulators. In separate cases in the 1990s, Bowdoin was almost jailed in Alabama, and Busby was ordered in Georgia not to break securities laws after the SEC alleged he had pushed three fraudulent prime-bank schemes.
AVG has family and promoters’ ties to ASD. Bowdoin’s stepson, George Harris, is listed as an AVG trustee. The government filed a second forfeiture complaint against assets tied to ASD in December, implicating Harris and his mother — Edna Faye Bowdoin, Andy Bowdoin’s wife — in the ASD scheme.
Also in March, Andy Bowdoin appeared in a video for an upstart surf firm known as PaperlessAccess, which he positioned as a company that could help ASD members earn back funds seized by the government in August.
Bowdoin’s PaperlessAccess video went missing after only a few days, and Surf’s Up reported he had been misled by the company. While all this was happening, AVGÂ announced the sudden resignation of Gary Talbert, its chief executive officer and a former ASD executive.
Talbert’s March 20 resignation was followed three days later by an AVG announcement that its bank account had been suspended. Earlier this week, AVG announced that it had struck a deal that would enable customers to wire money for advertising purchases to an offshore bank, but a company AVG identified as the beneficiary of the funds — KINGZ Capital Management Corp. — issued a denial that it had any business relationship with AVG.
Michael P. Krywenky, president and chief executive officer of KINGZ, said the company was “very shocked” and “appalled” by the claims, noting that attorneys for KINGZ were monitoring the situation.
Krywenky said KINGZ believed a scam of some sort was under way at AVG.
AVG yesterday ignored Krywenky’s denial, instead issuing a statement that advised members it was looking at other wire “options” and expected to announce “additional funding solutions within the next 2 weeks.”
Late last month, the plaintiffs in the RICO case alleged that ASD had hired the “majority” of the staff of Bank of America’s branch in Quincy, Fla., as ASD employees, paying the Bank of America employees more than other ASD employees doing the same work.
One of the plaintiffs’ arguments was that Bank of America knew its employees also were working for ASD and should have detected that the company was up to no good.
Bowdoin promised ASD members in March that he would have a conference call to update members. The call never occurred, and Bowdoin has not explained why he has not responded to the RICO complaint.