AdSurfDaily

UPDATED 4 P.M. EDT (U.S.A.) Former members of AdSurfDaily who lost money in an alleged $100 million Ponzi scheme are not the only prospects being targeted by affiliates of MPB Today. Recipients of federal benefits administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) also are being targeted. If you receive federal assistance for food — [...]

BULLETIN: (UPDATED 11:27 A.M. EDT (U.S.A.) The Federal Trade Commission has lowered the boom on Clean Credit Report Services Inc. of Florida and three individuals associated with the firm. In a settlement from a case brought in October 2008, the FTC has obtained a judgment of $14.4 million. The defendants must surrender their assets, including [...]

BULLETIN: (UPDATED 9:32 P.M. EDT (U.S.A.) William L. Walters has been extradited to the United States from Argentina to face Ponzi scheme charges in Colorado, prosecutors announced. “This extradition is the culmination of years of work and cooperation between my office and the FBI,” said Colorado Attorney General John Suthers. “In this case, justice delayed [...]

UPDATED 7:11 P.M. EDT (U.S.A.) When U.S. District Judge James Rosenbaum sentenced Ponzi schemer Trevor Cook to a quarter of a century in federal prison earlier this week, the judge used some powerful words to describe Cook’s colossal fraud. Rosenbaum described the scheme that bilked investors out of at least $158 million as “wretched, tawdry [...]

BULLETIN: Ponzi schemer Trevor Cook has been sentenced to 25 years in federal prison for his role in an international Forex Ponzi scheme that gathered more than $190 million and fleeced victims out of more than $158 million. In ordering the prison term, U.S. District Judge James Rosenbaum sided with the prosecution’s recommendation of a [...]

Growing up a child of Andy Bowdoin and advancing through adolescence and adulthood was hard because of Bowdoin’s habitual scheming, according to Scott Bowdoin, Andy Bowdoin’s son. “He uses religion — always,” Scott Bowdoin, 42, said flatly of his 75-year-old father, noting he had not spoken to Andy Bowdoin in about 15 years because the [...]

EDITOR’S NOTE: The arrest of Vladislav Horohorin is notable on a number of levels. First, the arrest in Europe was a result of an online fraud scheme that allegedly crossed international borders and made its way to the United States, where criminal charges were filed.  At the same time, the crime allegedly involved the transfer [...]

EDITOR’S NOTE: Some readers will recall that one of the Secret Service’s allegations in the AdSurfDaily Ponzi case is that pitchmen tried to sanitize the scheme by making false claims that ASD President Andy Bowdoin had received an award for business acumen from President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Others will recall [...]

The website of AdViewGlobal (AVG), an autosurf with close ties to the alleged AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme, has gone offline. Why AVG’s site was offline was not immediately clear. One person told the PP Blog that the site had been “down for days.” AVG’s domain, which lists a registration address in Uruguay and appears to use [...]

Is it the maximum case of Kaboom! — coupled with the maximum case of denial? The government of South Africa hit Maritjie Prinsloo with a whopping 122,000 counts of fraud, racketeering and money-laundering in a pyramid-scheme case that involved an estimated $205 million. (R1.5 billion.) Prinsloo was found guilty last month. South African media now [...]

BULLETIN: Yet-another bizarre paperwork attack on U.S. law enforcement has occurred. A California man has been charged with filing “false liens” in Nevada against federal officials and employees of the SEC, the Secret Service, the IRS, four federal judges and staff members of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California, federal prosecutors [...]

EDITOR’S NOTE: The PP Blog has covered a number of stories in which U.S. residents living overseas were extradited to the United States to face Ponzi charges. The case against Ronald Paul Shade is another one — and it’s one that demonstrates that an extradition can occur even if a defendant is not charged with [...]

UPDATED 4:51 P.M. EDT (U.S.A.) A convicted felon who emerged from prison and almost immediately launched a $1 million fraud scheme known as PPSN threatened to prosecute and sue a consumer who had filed an online complaint, federal prosecutors said. Although the threat caused the consumer to withdraw the complaint against Philip Pestrichello, Pestrichello’s bid [...]

A California man and his company have been accused by the SEC of running a “Fraudulent Touting” scheme that pumped the penny stock of Praebius Communications, a company the alleged AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme once claimed would generate $200 million for its coffers through a joint “advertising” venture. Charged by the SEC with fraud were Songkram [...]

EDITOR’S NOTE: It has become increasingly clear that regulators and the law-enforcement community are rallying around a common theme that web-based promoters are using discussion forums and social-networking sites in bids to sanitize HYIP Ponzi schemes by positioning them as attractive investment opportunities and even a thrilling form of gambling that pays commissions. Today the [...]

UPDATED 12:39 P.M. EDT (U.S.A.) An upstart autosurf pushed by members of the alleged AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme has announced a confusing tweak in a confusing manner. In its announcement, AdPayDaily (APD) quoted 12 words from an attorney — and the quotation did not appear to be on the subject of legality. Rather, it appeared to [...]

EDITOR’S NOTE: We were researching an unrelated matter last night, and came across this gem (outlined below). In 2008, a number of autosurfs that became popular in the aftermath of the seizure of tens of millions of dollars from the personal bank accounts of AdSurfDaily President Andy Bowdoin tanked just prior to Christmas. One of [...]

A 67-year-old fraudster who did not listen to his attorney and embarked on a bizarre legal strategy was sentenced to a longer prison term as a result, the AP is reporting. Meanwhile, the AP is reporting that Neville Solomon met several other defendants in jail and shared his strategy, resulting in longer sentences for inmates [...]

The Atlanta Journal Constitution and the Florida Times Union are reporting that three Jacksonville-area residents have been charged in an alleged $425 million fraud scheme involving mass solicitations for the renewal of dubious “Yellow Pages” listings. Separately, the brother of one of the defendants is listed as an international fugitive by the U.S. Postal Inspection [...]