UPDATE: CenturionWealthCircle, ‘Program’ Pushed By Club Asteria Cheerleaders On The Ponzi Boards, May Be Trying To Address Ponzi Collapse By Implementing ‘Feeder’ Ponzi; ASD Tried The Same Thing, Only With ‘Autosurfs,’ Court Filings Say
CenturionWealthCircle (CWC) appears to be moving from the ridiculous to the absurd, fueled in no small measure by serial, wink-nod scammers on the Ponzi boards. Members of Club Asteria, an “opportunity” that suspended cashouts weeks ago amid reports its PayPal account had been frozen, were among CWC’s early cheerleaders.
Club Asteria promoters also have been linked to Florida-based autosurf purveyor AdSurfDaily. ASD President Andy Bowdoin was arrested in December on charges of wire fraud, securities fraud and selling unregistered securities. He potentially faces decades in prison, if convicted.
Bowdoin now is seeking to raise $500,000 to pay for his criminal defense, according to a video featuring Bowdoin released last month.
CWC began to emerge as a Ponzi darling in mid- to late June, after Club Asteria’s problems had become known. By late July, however, CWC’s website appears to have been suspended for spamming — and the site disappeared. The site appears to have switched servers, even as members were complaining about low or absent payouts.
In an apparent bid to re-plumb a collapsed Ponzi that already had been the subject of spam complaints, CWC now appears ready to suck up more cash by implementing a “feeder” program that at least one Club Asteria cheerleader (manolo) is describing on the TalkGold Ponzi forum as a “Mini cycler” or “The Tornado.”
Among other things, manolo claims that “more exciting updates are coming on top of the above news.”
Various incongruities dot various posts about CWC on both TalkGold and the MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi forums, where some posters have declared in public that CWC is in need of new money to survive.
CWC has not said whether it is confident that its income stream is not polluted with proceeds from various Ponzi schemes. The nature of the cycler business itself is to recycle money from one group of members to another. One of the allegations against ASD was that it was a classic Ponzi scheme that recycled funds.
These words (see next paragraph) appear in a February 2009 affidavit originally filed under seal by the U.S. Secret Service in the ASD Ponzi scheme forfeiture case. (NOTE: The document identifies certain ASD promoters and was used to seize their ASD-related funds.)
“Based on his experience with 12daily Pro, and his review of the SEC’s filings against it, Bowdoin knew that a paid auto-surf program that promised returns of that magnitude and recycled (emphasis added) member funds was a business model that was both unsustainable and illegal. He also knew that selling an unregistered investment opportunity to thousands of investors was illegal. Nevertheless, after the collapse of 12daily Pro, Bowdoin agreed with his 12daily Pro sponsor to start a similar autosurf program. Both individuals were aware that, before its collapse, 12daily Pro had taken in millions of dollars from its members.”
Among the other allegations against ASD is that it formed a new autosurf Ponzi to address a collapsed, old autosurf Ponzi — and later launched more autosurf Ponzis to sustain the deception that legitimate commerce was under way.
CWC appears to be doing the same thing — only with cyclers, as opposed to autosurfs.
Corporate Frauds Watch is now being contacted by a minority of former core-adherents of ‘Club Asteria’ who are prepared to confess that not only did they lose their own cash, but they also lured others into the same swindle – genuinely believing that they were helping their fellow human beings to achieve a better life.
The overwhelming majority of destitute’Club Asteria’ victims remain silent. Andrea Lucas and her criminal associates have used, and continue to use, co-ordinated, devious techniques of psychological and social persuasion, designed to shut down their victims’ critical and evaluative faculties, and convince them that failure to make money was entirely their own fault.For obvious reasons, the courageous few who have come forward to confess that they were victims, and promoters, of a fraud, exhibit classic psychological deterioration symptoms; particularly, overwhelming feelings (guilt, shame, anger and embarrassment). Such problems are also generally indicative of the victims of abuse.
Corporate Frauds Watch continues to redirect the few visible victims of the ‘Club Asteria’ swindle to US law enforcement agencies. It now seems very probable that Andrea Lucas, and her associate-parasites, will finally be held to account. However, given the scale of the ‘Club Asteria’ swindle, what would it be appropriate to charge its instigators with?
Perhaps the time has come for legislators to identify the growing-problem of ‘financial crimes against humanity.’
David Brear (copyright 2011)
Why sugar coat things ??
No ifs or buts about it,
it’s fraud and, what’s more, fraud over a prolonged period and on a large scale.
IM(very)HO, there exist no extenuating circumstances which would preclude the maximum penalties under the relevant statutes being applied.
Again, IM(very)HO, it’s only a lack of political will which will prevent Club Asteria and its’ management from facing the full force of the law.
[…] even as they were promoting and collecting commissions and “earnings” from, say, Centurion Wealth Circle or AutoXTen or JSS Tripler or Exotic FX after earlier promoting and collecting commissions from, […]