Dear Readers,
We are plugging our nose as we publish this document (link at bottom of post). You should know up front that we converted the document to PDF format after receiving it in Microsoft Word format. We did so based on the belief that many readers may not own Word but likely have a free PDF reader among the programs on their computers.
We obtained the document from a source. An email introducing the document prompted recipients to “Please forward this to as many of our people as you can.”
The PDF conversion altered the format of the original document, causing certain typesetting errors to appear — but the text content of the body of the document is unchanged. We did not edit the body text in any way. For the sake of convenience, we named the PDF file declaratoryreliefdraft.
The Word original is titled “T&D v USA UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT.” It purports to be a draft of a “Complaint for Declaratory Relief” some AdSurfDaily members say they intend to file in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. The document lists ASD members Todd Disner and Dwight Owen Schweitzer as pro se plaintiffs.
It is unclear if other plaintiffs will emerge. Previous ASD pro se litigants appeared to have shared a do-it-yourself litigation template. U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia was inundated with ASD-related, pro se filings in 2009.
No other plaintiffs are listed in the caption of the draft. The defendant is listed as:
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
c/o United States Attorney’s Office
555 Fourth Street N.W.,
Washington, DC 20530
The address is the office of U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr. No individual defendants are named. The document, which references U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer of the District of Columbia, misspells her name as “Collier.”
Disner lost a pro se round in the civil forfeiture complaint against Andy Bowdoin’s assets filed in the District of Columbia in August 2008. His petition — and the petitions of dozens of other ASD pro se filers who sought to intervene in the case amid claims the government “confiscated” their assets “wrongfully” — was denied for lack of standing.
In the original set of pro se pleadings in Collyer’s D.C. court, former Assistant U.S. Attorney William Cowden’s last name was misspelled as “Crowden.”
ASD President Andy Bowdoin advised Collyer in a sworn affidavit nearly three years ago that the seized assets in the U.S. Secret Service probe belonged to him or ASD, not individual members. In short, Bowdoin agreed with the prosecution’s view of the case with respect to the ownership of the seized assets.
In its current form, the draft appears to advance the notion that individual ASD members can gain standing in Florida after having been denied in the District of Columbia, get a judgment against the government and undo the government’s remissions program organized by the Secret Service and federal prosecutors in the District of Columbia. Prosecutors have said the ASD Ponzi scheme case may have 40,000 or more victims.
Among other things, the draft asks a Florida federal judge to declare that the government conducted an “illegal search and seizure in that it failed to meet the requirements of the fourth amendment to the United States Constitution and that therefore the search and seizure of their assets was illegal and void.”
At the same time, the draft appears to suggest ASD had a subset of members who should have been treated differently than ordinary members whose lives were altered by the alleged Ponzi scheme. Meanwhile, the draft makes a puzzling argument that ASD’s Terms of Service superseded federal law.
(In this snippet from the draft, the PP Blog added the emphasis to this Blog post.)
“Among the items seized were the accounts, funds and records specifically identified as belonging to the plaintiffs which were separately accounted for on the computer programs and data seized as they were members of ASD, having bought ad packages as specified in the rules and regulations of the ASD business model,” a section of the draft complaint reads.
“Consistent with the rules and regulations applicable to the plaintiffs’ their information was confidential and could only be accessed by them through the use of their password protected account with ASD and their accounts were separate and distinct from any other individuals or businesses who were participants in the ASD advertising program,” the section claimed.
If the document does get filed in a final form — and if the U.S. Attorney’s Office in D.C. gets served and files a response — we sincerely hope the government moves instantly to protect ASD victims at large from further restitution delays caused by pro se sideshows.
Make no mistake: This is gamesmanship.
An email currently circulating among ASD members and attributed to Disner even describes it as such.
“Let the games begin!” the email declares.
It’s as though the first round of games were not enough for some ASD members.
“Here is a draft of the complaint Dwight finished today,” the email, which is dated today, reads.
“I think you will be impressed.
Patrick
