Zeekers Share Their Conspiracy Theories At Newspaper Site

zeekmemdayThe Dispatch of Lexington, N.C., published a story June 7 to update readers on Zeek Rewards-related litigation — specifically the date of a hearing on a motion by certain Zeek members (alleged net winners) to dissolve the receivership. (See link to story/Comments below.) As of this morning, about 27 comments appear below the story. The comments appear to be from Zeek supporters. Zeek was based in Lexington.

Zeek, the SEC said in August 2012, was a $600 million Ponzi- and pyramid fraud that duped investors into believing they were receiving a legitimate return averaging about 1.5 percent a day. Zeek’s business model was similar to AdSurfDaily, a Florida-based Ponzi scheme that collapsed in 2008. Federal prosecutors said ASD had gathered about $119 million.

ASD became infamous not only for its purported payout of 1 percent a day, but also for the extremely strange behavior of some of its supporters. Curtis Richmond, one of the scheme’s cheerleaders, was a purported “sovereign” being once sued successfully under the federal racketeering statute for his role in various bizarre plots advanced by a purported “Indian” tribe in Utah known derisively as the “Arby’s Indians.” (The “tribe” once held a meeting in an Arby’s restaurant.) Among other things, the “tribe” issued arrest warrants for public officials and litigation opponents and used the address of a Utah doughnut shop as the address of its purported “Supreme Court.”

Richmond accused the judge presiding over the ASD case of dozens of felonies, saying she was guilty of “TREASON.” Moreover, Richmond claimed the judge’s supervising judge was conspiring with the judge to deny ASD members justice. For these claims (and more), Richmond was accorded the title of “hero” on the “Surf’s Up” forum, an ASD cheerleading site set up after the U.S. Secret Service raided ASD in August 2008. Among the Surf’s Up faithful was Terralynn Hoy, who later presided over at least one conference call for Zeek. (See this PP Blog Comments thread from June 2012. Props to GlimDropper of RealScam.com.)

Many highly peculiar narratives were advanced by ASD supporters. One of them held that the U.S. government took about $80 million seized in the ASD case and plowed it into a secret fund through which it almost immediately generated $1 billion in interest that the United States used to pay for black ops. Another held that all commerce is lawful as long as the parties agree that it is lawful, a position that would legalize slavery. Yet another held that the ASD judge was on the take and “brain dead” if she ruled against ASD. Still another held that undercover agents who joined ASD to get the lay of the land had a duty to inform ASD management.

On Surf’s Up, an ASD supporter claimed that a “militia” should storm Washington with guns. Another claimed a federal prosecutor should be placed in a medieval torture rack. Beyond that, a purported “prayer” was circulated that called for federal prosecutors to be struck dead.

Given that ASD operator Andy Bowdoin once described himself (from a stage in Las Vegas) as a Christian “money magnet” and later claimed that the Secret Service was “Satan” and compared the agency to the 9/11 terrorists who killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington, it’s no surprise that it became next-to-impossible to keep track of all of the ASD conspiracy theories.

What is surprising is that any number of Zeekers seem willing to buy into the same sort of mind-numbing mind-set.

At The Dispatch site, apparent Zeek supporters are claiming that:

  • the “SEC messed us all up.”
  • the court-appointed receiver “should be on trial.”
  • “someone paid these guys off with MINIMAL evidence!”
  • “Gestapo/KGB/SS tactics” are being used against Zeek by people in the “Executive Branch.”
  • the government is “not allowing anyone to [grow] economically.”

Friends, a 1.5-percent-a-day “program” pushed on well-known fraud forums such as TalkGold and MoneyMakerGroup is a scam. Period. The SEC acted in the best interest of Zeek investors — and in the best interest of the people of the United States who are sick and tired of seeing their country used as a playground for HYIP scammers or worse. The security condition created by “programs” such as Zeek, Profitable Sunrise, JSSTripler/JustBeenPaid and others is untenable.

Kenneth D. Bell, the court-appointed receiver for Zeek, has been doing a commendable job amid extremely trying circumstances. (In terms of the number of victims, Zeek may be the largest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history.) Bell is a former federal prosecutor known for having once successfully prosecuted a Hezbollah terrorist cell operating in the United States. He was appointed by a federal judge who is a former Naval officer. Claiming Bell should be put on trial is pure idiocy. So is clinging to a belief that the government somehow has outlawed the growth of business in the United States.

No one got “paid off” to do anything against Zeek — and the evidence that Zeek had an insurmountable mountain of unfunded liabilities and was paying members with money from other members is overwhelming.

Claims about Gestapo, KGB and SS tactics also were made by ASD members. Dwight Owen Schweitzer, later of Zeek, sued the United States (with fellow ASD and Zeek member Todd Disner). Among other things, Schweitzer and Disner claimed they were “unaware of any remission payments having been made” through the government-sponsored restitution program — this despite the fact the government had returned tens of millions of dollars to ASD investors and had issued news releases repeatedly about the program.

For good measure, Schweitzer and Disner also claimed that undercover agents who joined ASD “should have reported their own violations of the ASD terms of service” to ASD management. The pair made this bizarre claim long after ASD lost in the District Court and in the U.S. Court of Appeals. Amazingly, the claim also was made after prosecutors pointed out that some ASD members were recruiting for ASD even though they knew it was a Ponzi scheme and that Andy Bowdoin’s silent partner in ASD was his sponsor in the 12DailyPro Ponzi scheme broken up by the SEC in February 2006 — months before ASD launched and years before Zeek launched.

So, if you’re inclined to call accused Ponzi schemer and Zeek operator Paul R. Burks a genius while ranting against the government, you are according that title to a man who appears to have learned nothing from the ASD and 12DailyPro (and Legisi and PhoenixSurf and CEP and Imperia Invest IBC) prosecutions. If you are unhappy that the government’s Zeek action froze money you were counting on — well, that’s understandable. At the same time, however, there is a good chance you don’t understand the context of your own unhappiness. Zeek and Burks are to blame, not the SEC and the receiver.

If you joined another Zeek-like “program” after the SEC action, the best that can be said is that you are slow to learn. The worst is that you are a budding “Ken Russo,” perhaps the most intransigent Ponzi-board scammer in the Western Hemisphere. Zeek member “Ken Russo” sells people into Ponzi misery for a fee.

Repeatedly.

What ASD and Zeek both appeared to be was a bid to dupe investors into believing that, if 12DailyPro’s return of 12 percent a day for 12 days for thousands of members was impossible, the “smaller” daily returns of ASD (1 percent) and Zeek (1.5 percent) for between 90 and 150 days for hundreds of thousands of members somehow were more plausible.

Read story and Comments thread in The Dispatch. While you’re doing so, remember that Zeek once auctioned sums of U.S. currency (while wrapping itself in the American flag) and told successful bidders they could pick up their cash via offshore payment processors that enable fraud schemes like JSSTripler/JustBeenPaid and its 2-percent-a-day “program” globally.

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5 Responses to “Zeekers Share Their Conspiracy Theories At Newspaper Site”

  1. Patrick:

    I wish that the receiver, the SEC, etc. would just lay out the simple math as they uncover it.

    If they would just show these simple facts and show them in each and every ponzi scheme that is shut down it would go a long way towards mitigating the “It was okay until the SEC/Feds/EvilGubment stepped in” argument:

    (1) Total Amount of Cash and Receivables on Hand
    (2) Total Amount of “Earnings” (i.e. liabilities) that Accrued to that day.

    The item represented by (2) Will always, Always be larger than Item (1).

    It would be nice to see the receiver, etc. provide that number to show, in every case, that the liabilities of such programs always grow faster than the assets.

    The ASDelusional people of the world, the Zeeker without math skills, will still want to believe that the authorities took away the punch bowl while the party was still going.

    But, those on the periphery, that just learned about such programs recently, would stop, take a look and say, “Wow, no way is that legit”.

    It would just be nice to have the receiver and others responsible to use the shutdown of such evil programs as a “teaching moment”, too.

    I’m just saying…..

    ARWR

  2. ARWR: I wish that the receiver, the SEC, etc. would just lay out the simple math as they uncover it.

    Hi ARWR,

    I understand the point you are making here and believe I understand why you are making it. It would seem that Zeekers who had a better understanding of the math would be well-served if the SEC laid it out in easy-to-understand terms.

    We may differ in the sense that I believe the SEC already has done that — and that it made no difference to Zeekers predisposed to hitch their wagons to conspiracy theories and to advance their own narrative of convenience.

    This PP Blog story is more than 10 months old and spotlights some of the SEC’s math from the August 2012 Zeek complaint.

    http://patrickpretty.com/2012/08/17/urgent-bulletin-moving-sec-calls-zeek-600-million-online-pyramid-and-ponzi-scheme/

    See SEC statement/complaint here for more of the math:

    http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2012/2012-160.htm

    You’ll recall, of course, that the math as laid out by the SEC in simple terms was MEANINGLESS to Zeek’s committed Stepfordians — just as the math from the ASD case was meaningless to ASD’s committed Stepfordians.

    In the earliest days after the SEC’s Zeek action, folks like Robert Craddock and T. LeMont Silver started advancing a narrative that ignored the math and the general scamminess of Zeek. Craddock, for example, started demonizing the SEC and the receiver and even tried to raise doubts about Paul Burks’ lawyer and the judge.

    Silver helped Craddock advance the narrative — this before Silver started pitching GoFunPlaces and, after that, JubiRev. Both “programs” as launched were Zeek-like, only from purported offshore locations — with both nevertheless still using wires to pluck the people of the United States.

    ASD’s Andy Bowdoin was sitting in jail in Washington, D.C., in part because he was pitching OneX — another T. LeMont Silver “program” — after the collapse of the ASD Ponzi scheme. All of this apparently was meaningless to Silver.

    The point I’m trying to make is that laying out the simple math may have an effect on people not predisposed to ignoring evidence or conflating new realities to deal with an unpleasant fact set. But it may have little or no effect on people who earn their livings by recruiting people into repeated scams. The money is too powerful a lure.

    It’s like Wes, quoting David Hume, says at Quatloos: “A wise man proportions belief to the evidence.”

    Some of the Zeekers simply will not do that. And the committed Stepfordians even will insist that no evidence exists. Hell, the ASDers clung to the “no evidence” narrative even though the Aug. 1, 2008, forfeiture complaint included multiple evidence exhibits.

    Even after Judge Collyer conducted an evidentiary hearing in which the evidence was discussed and direct examination and cross-examination were conducted, the Stepfordians still insisted there was no evidence. Some of them later joined Bowdoin in AdViewGlobal, the ASD reload scam, and followed Bowdoin into OneX.

    I do appreciate your input, ARWR. The points you raise are valid, but X number of the folks never will take a drink from that well because they are committed to their own delusions.

    Patrick

  3. ARWR: I wish that the receiver, the SEC, etc. would just lay out the simple math as they uncover it.

    It was laid out, both in the initial complaint, and in the settlement offer.

    And the Zeekheads, who rather believe in a conspiracy, will claim those ain’t the real numbers any way.

    There’s no point in disclosing more info to combat a conspiracy. Conspiracy is “self-healing”. The more information you disclose, the more they will interpret it as evidence of a conspiracy against them, or they’ll simply shift to something else they claim. You can never “disprove” a conspiracy theory. They’re the lunatic fringe of the scam victims.

  4. I stand completely corrected by two people I highly respect!

    Thanks for the heads up, it was laid out in the SEC complaints and follow up information as you indicate.

    $225,000,000 in assets and $4.5 Billion in claims against that cash as “profit points” is all the simple math that any 4th grade math student could use to connect the dots.

    The Stepfordian ASDelusionals choose to ignore.

    I’ll go back to being quiet and reading more than posting, LOL

    ARWR

  5. ARWR: The Stepfordian ASDelusionals choose to ignore.

    If they don’t ignore facts they wouldn’t be involved in scams in the first place.

    The problem here is there’s an instinctive distrust of the government among the Ponzi heads and sheeple. That why they get along so well with those “sovreign citizens”, and talk much the same way.