ASD

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 — [...]

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: 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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

It’s enough to fuel the AdSurfDaily conspiracy theorists for years: Pamela Marsh, who represented ASD President Andy Bowdoin in a pyramid-scheme case in state court in Florida, has been confirmed by the U.S. Senate as the new U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Florida. Meanwhile, Jonathan Goodman, one of the attorneys who represented Bowdoin [...]

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story originally was published June 30. The PP Blog later encountered a database problem, which caused the site to go down and resulted in the temporary loss of some data. The data now has been retrieved. This story is about a new site known as “WebsiteTester.biz,” but some background is in order. [...]

Detectives from the office of Richmond County District Attorney Daniel M. Donovan Jr. have arrested a Staten Island man on charges of stealing $2.5 million from investment clients. Separately, a New York newspaper is reporting that Thomas Carson used some of the money to pay for 30 separate treatments for varicose veins on his legs. [...]

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a post in which the introduction is longer than the actual story (below). The story demonstrates the dangers of jumping on bandwagons before giving them careful thought. Longtime readers of the PP Blog will recall our coverage of Curtis Richmond, “Professor” Patrick Moriarty and ASD Members International (ASDMI). Each was a [...]

Dear Readers, We have received a few inquiries about a new surfing program called AdPayDaily (APD). Our initial take is that the program is a dressed-up version of AdSurfDaily, AdViewGlobal, BizAdSplash and AdGateWorld and that the operators are persuaded they’ve found a word combination and legal structure that will neutralize critics and law enforcement should [...]

An email DataNetworkAffiliates’ (DNA) members received today led with a pitch that participating in DNA could result in large tax deductions for mileage. DNA purports to be in the business of paying members to record license-plate numbers for entry in a database that would be potentially useful to law enforcement and the AMBER Alert program [...]

Kaboom! It has happened again. Explosive court filings by the government show that kneejerk apologists and defenders of High Yield Investment Programs (HYIPs) and autosurfs are quickly running out of cover when they assert that anything is noble or even real about the programs they relentlessly push for their share of purported profits from introducing [...]