On April 2, a video depicting President Obama as a fan of the MyAdvertisingPays “program” appeared on YouTube. An “Obama voice” was dubbed into the video, which also shows the Presidential Seal. Text below the video reads, “Mr. President speaks about the new advertising revolution.”
Depicting then-President George W. Bush as a fan of the AdSurfDaily MLM HYIP “program” backfired in spectacular fashion in 2008, drawing the attention of the U.S. Secret Service. Federal agents eventually seized more than $80 million in an asset-forfeiture case. ASD President Andy Bowdoin, accused of operating a cross-border Ponzi scheme, was indicted. He later pleaded guilty to wire fraud.
Bush left the White House in January 2009, after Barack Obama was elected President. By August 2010, according to the FTC, “medical discount” hucksters were trading on Obama’s image.
MPB Today operator Gary Calhoun later was charged with racketeering. Assets were seized. A conviction followed.
In 2013, with Obama now in his second term, he was depicted in a promo as a pitchman for a scheme known as Ultimate Power Profits. That “program” had promoters in common with Zeek Rewards, which the SEC described in 2012 as a combined Ponzi- and pyramid scheme that had gathered hundreds of millions of dollars.
Against this backdrop, a YouTube video that appeared online today positioned Obama as a pitchman for MyAdvertisingPays, a Ponzi-board scheme like ASD, MPB Today, Ultimate Power Profits, Zeek and many others.
News about the 0:33 MAPS’ video titled “My Advertising Pays, Obama” first appeared on the RealScam.com antiscam forum.
Former President George W. Bush has announced on Facebook the passing of “Barney,” America’s “First Dog” between Jan. 20, 2001, and Jan. 20, 2009. Barney was 12. During his White House years, Barney had his own website. Barney was much beloved by the Bush family.
From President Bush on Facebook (italics added):
Laura and I are sad to announce that our Scottish Terrier, Barney, has passed away. The little fellow had been suffering from lymphoma and after twelve and a half years of life, his body could not fight off the illness.
Barney and I enjoyed the outdoors. He loved to accompany me when I fished for bass at the ranch. He was a fierce armadillo hunter. At Camp David, his favorite activity was chasing golf balls on the chipping green.
Barney guarded the South Lawn entrance of the White House as if he were a Secret Service agent. He wandered the halls of the West Wing looking for treats from his many friends. He starred in Barney Cam and gave the American people Christmas tours of the White House. Barney greeted Queens, Heads of State, and Prime Ministers. He was always polite and never jumped in their laps.
Barney was by my side during our eight years in the White House. He never discussed politics and was always a faithful friend. Laura and I will miss our pal.
“Barney” on the White House lawn. (Facebook.)
Whether Barney had any sense that he was America’s “First Dog” and that his owner was the President of the United States are, of course, imponderable questions.
What’s not imponderable is that dogs provide a special kind of joy as they go about the business of simply being a dog.
His mother was “Coors,” owned by former New Jersey Gov. and EPA Director Christine Todd Whitman. Barney’s father was Kelly of “Champion Motherwell Stormwarning.”
It’s a good thing that a President can have a dog, but it’s a better thing yet that a dog can have a President — or any other loving owner.
The PP Blog holds President George W. Bush in the highest esteem for his service to his country. He is an eminently decent man.
Barney was not yet one when his owner, speaking to school children in Florida, was told that an airliner had just hit the World Trade Center . . .
America’s current “First Dog” is “Bo,” a gift to the Obamas from the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, a brother of President John F. Kennedy.
Thinking of the Bush family today and of how dogs can help even Presidents caught up in extraordinary circumstances reestablish a sense of the ordinary.
“Barney,” 2000-2013. Sense of surroundings: imponderable. Favorite toys: volleyball, golf balls. Official activities: White House holiday tours. Diplomatic relations. Outreach. (Has own IMDB listing.) Joy provided the Bush family during the President’s pressure-cooker days in the White House: inestimable. Career highlight: Called a “lump” by Karl Rove and criticized by Vladimir Putin, who opined that world leaders should own larger dogs. Loyalty to President Bush: unquestioned. (Once bit a Reuters reporter.)
UPDATED 11:08 A.M. ET (U.S.A.) On a day Americans cherish as a great symbol of the continuation of Democracy, images of their President are being used to create the impression he has endorsed a “program” HYIP hucksters sought to popularize in the aftermath of the August 2012 collapse of the Zeek Rewards “program” amid SEC allegations that Zeek was just another massive Internet scam.
“Just join their team and you will receive all the help you need to grow your own business,” an animated Obama tells prospects in a video promoting Ultimate Power Profits. “By doing so, your earnings will increase. There is no hidden agenda. They showed me how their system worked and I was impressed. It is a fully legal and U.S.-patented system they use to make money.”
Obama’s image previously was used in affiliate promos for MPBToday, a purported MLM “grocery” program whose operator was arrested on a racketeering charge in Florida last month. A building that housed MPB Today’s operations is the subject of a federal forfeiture action in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida. The forfeiture case was filed July 31, 2012.
Less than three weeks later — on Aug. 17, 2012 — the SEC alleged Zeek was a $600 million Ponzi and pyramid scheme. Zeek and MPBToday are known to have promoters in common, including serial Ponzi scheme pitchman “Ken Russo,” also known as “DRdave.”
On Aug. 18, only a day after the SEC’s Zeek action late on Friday afternoon, the PPBlog began to receive spam about the UltimatePowerProfits “program.” (See Comments thread below this story. The Blog established a Ponzi-forum tie between Zeek and Ultimate Power Profits.)
On Aug. 20, the office of North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper — which also had been investigating Zeek — issued a warning on “reload scams” in the wake of the SEC’s Zeek action.
Ultimate Power Profits is not the first “program” to make a claim about a “U.S. patent.” The JSS/JBP scam, which purported to pay an annualized return of 730 percent and purportedly was operated by former AdSurfDaily Ponzi-scheme pitchman Frederick Mann, also made a claim about a U.S. patent.
It is not uncommon for HYIP scams and MLM frauds to plant the seed that a “program” is endorsed by an agency of the U.S. government or a U.S. politician. ASD’s Andy Bowdoin was accused in 2008 of trading on the name of George W. Bush, then the President of the United States and Obama’s predecessor.
Images of former President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were used in the massive Mantria “green” Ponzi scheme in 2009.
In 2012, JSS/JBP came under the lens of CONSOB, the Italian securities regulator. Some promoters, however, didn’t miss a beat. (Compare the images in the screen shots below. The first is from a promo for an emerging “program” known as RicanAdFunds; the second is from a promo for Zeek; the third is from a promo for JSS/JBP.)
From YouTube sales pitch for BidsThatGive by Randy Jeffers. (Children's faces masked by PP Blog.)
EDITOR’S NOTE: It is true that far too many of the world’s children live in poverty. It also is true that children may become the objects of criminals who engage in human trafficking and that children are exploited in the sex trades. It is equally true that legitimate charities exist to combat these horrific situations and that one MLM “program” after another has tried in recent times to tug at the human heart and “marry” their “programs” to a purported cause. If you desire to improve the human condition for the masses of children, it likely is best to donate directly to a legitimate charitable organization, rather than joining a get-rich-quick scheme that says it is doing good work behind the scenes.
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UPDATED 6:57 P.M. EDT (U.S.A.) WARNING: The following development in MLM La-La Land may be harmful to your gag reflex.
Zeek Rewards, the U.S.-based MLM “program” that wraps itself in the American flag, collects sums of up to $10,000 from participants, plants the seed affiliates can earn a return of between 1 percent and 2 percent a day while insisting it is offering neither securities nor an investment program, has a payout scheme similar to the AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme and securities swindle, is married to a penny-auction site known as Zeekler that has told successful bidders for sums of U.S. cash that they can receive their money via offshore payment processors and preemptively denies it is a pyramid scheme, has some emerging, U.S.-based competition.
The name of the “program” is “BidsThatGive” — and it unabashedly tugs at heartstrings while at once asking prospects to imagine themselves behind the wheel of a grand automobile and feeling good because they also could become a “Contributor” for $10 a month, a “Guardian” for $50 a month, a “Benefactor” for $100 a month” or a Global Ambassador” for $250 a month and pile up mountains of cash while they’re displaying a social conscience.
Two of the core aims of the “program,” according to a nine-minute video promo running on YouTube, are to help impoverished children and children who’d been exploited and became “sex slave[s].” The prelaunch of BidsThatGive appears to have been timed to coincide with the Independence Day holiday period in the United States.
One of the assertions in a the YouTube video is that the “rewards” the company provides include “an orphanage and a school, church or hospital built in your name.” All of this apparently is possible because BidsThatGive has a “global business model” and employes a “concept” known as “PPSC,” which stands for Private Profit Sharing Company.
But before we get to the uber bizarre, let’s address the run-of-the-mill bizarre in this latest entry in MLM La-La Land.
BidsThatGive is a little bit Andy Bowdoin. Indeed, the emerging penny-auction company with an MLM-style compensation plan, claims it’s not an MLM program and tells prospects they’re “probably not going to sleep at night” once they understand the profit potential. Bowdoin, the infamous AdSurfDaily Ponzi schemer, told prospects that ASD was not a “network marketing company” and used largely the same line about all the sleepless nights excited prospects would experience.
Meanwhile, BidsThatGive is a little bit like AdViewGlobal (AVG), a collapsed 1-percent-a-day Ponzi autosurf federal prosecutors said in April 2012 had ASD ties. AVG once claimed that one of its desires was to save the rainforest through charitable contributions. BidsThatGive also resembles ClubAsteria, which offered outsize weekly returns ranging from 3 percent to 8 percent and told prospects that its charitable arm would provide relief to victims of the devastating earthquake in Japan last year. ClubAsteria also purported to provide aid to children and claimed its mission was to elevate the word’s poor out of poverty.
And BidsThatGive also resembles DataNetworkAffiliates (DNA), which tied itself to the U.S. AMBER Alert system for rescuing abducted children and said its “token system” could help prevent child poverty.
“Help DNA Feed A Million. OVER 1000 AN HOUR DIE. The DNA Token System Can Prevent This!” the company exclaimed.
Among other things, DNA used a YouTube video to trade on the name of Adam Walsh, the 6-year-old who was abducted and murdered in Florida in 1981. Adam’s father, John Walsh, became a prolific advocate for children and later became the host of the “America’s Most Wanted” television series.
DNA, which was associated with longtime MLM huckster Phil Piccolo, appears not to have helped a single abducted child or a single child living in poverty. Affiliates, though, tried to plant the seed that the DNA “program” was backed by Oprah Winfrey and Donald Trump. When DNA’s CEO resigned suddenly in 2010, the company waited nearly a week to announce the departure — and then misspelled the former CEO’s name.
BidsThatGive Operator
Randy Jeffers, an MLM aficionado, is the purported operator of BidsThatGive, according to promo videos on YouTube. Jeffers also presides over a nonprofit entity known as “Liberty Kidz,” which says its “[v]ision is to empower a child to be all that he or she is created to be, by providing homes, help and hope for discouraged, displaced and distressed children of the world.”
A similarly named Jeffers’ entity known as Liberty International LLC filed for bankruptcy in August 2010, listing about $1.94 million in debt and $641 in assets, according to federal records. The assets consisted of the balance of a business checking account.
What follows are comments from Jeffers in the nine-minute sales pitch for BidsThatGive on YouTube (italics added):
You know, there are so many terrible things that happen to children all over the world. Right now a little boy is dying of hunger, a little girl just got sold by her mother and is being forced into life as a sex slave.
Right now, children are being physically abused, and then there’s so many children that are just left by themselves and there’s no one there to love or care for them. I don’t know why bad things happen to innocent little children, but they do. But here’s what I do know: All of us can do something about it.
You see, that’s our No. 1 purpose. This company was founded to be a true partnership between those children, the children’s charities that it supports and its affiliates who make it all happen.
A ‘Founding Member’
One of the founding members of BidsThatGive is Glen Woodfin, according to 6:56 promo video dated July 2 and running on YouTube.
Woodfin describes himself in the video as an American who once moved to Brazil to be with his “multimillionaire” fiance who had 90 employees. Enjoying the “good life” on the beach while sitting around drinking “coconut milk” was fun for a while, but ultimately led to a desire to become more productive and to develop an online skill set. Woodfin ultimately discovered he had a talent for search engine optimization and that clients were interested in those services.
Glen Woodfin, who says he's done SEO for a Presidential candidate, does a little dance in his Bids That Give sales pitch on YouTube.
His SEO skills ultimately became so good that “I was hired by somebody running for President . . .,” according to Woodfin, who narrates the video. He did not identify the candidate.
Woodfin, however, goes to to explain that he was fortunate to know author and White House adviser Doug Wead, who wrote “All The President’s Children,” a New York Times Bestseller. (Wead’s Wikipedia entry says he advised GOP Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.)
Apparently in the market for SEO advice, Wead turned to Woodfin, according to the video.
“He said, ‘Glen, we’ve got one of the Presidential children about to get married in three weeks, and we don’t have a website up. Can we get in there and get to the top of the search engines with it?’” Woodfin recalled.
That Presidential child, according to Woodfin, was Chelsea Clinton, daughter of former President Bill Clinton and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Over the weekend Chelsea Clinton got married, Woodfin said, his SEO techniques on Wead’s behalf put a site known as ChelseaClintonWeddingWatch.com at the top of the rankings. (Chelsea Clinton was married on July 31, 2010.)
When NBC News anchor Lester Holt was interviewing Wead, Woodfin said, Holt mentioned the website Woodfin had put at the top of the rankings, apparently attributing the feat to Wead.
Neither BidsThatGive nor Jeffers is mentioned in the first three minutes of the Woodfin video. But at roughly the 3:03 mark, Woodfin announces, “I’m going in business with a gentleman named Randy Jeffers. Randy Jeffers started the No. 1, fastest-growing MLM of all time, called Destiny. They put in 1 million distributors in 18 months.”
Woodfin goes on to say that Jeffers recently called him and offered him a “founder’s membership” in BidsThatGive.
“While he’s talking, the hair start[s] standing up on my arm, and I got thrilled,” Woodfin recalled. “As a matter of fact, every time I get off the phone with him now, I’m just, ‘Thank you for putting this together.’ It’s based on penny auctions . . .”
It’s not known whether Woodfin contacted the White House, Wead, Clinton and Holt as a courtesy to let them know he’d be using their names in a YouTube pitch for Jeffers’ BidsThatGive. What is known is that namedropping is common in the MLM sphere — often without the knowledge of those whose names are dropped.
Although the Woodfin pitch did not imply that any of the celebrities or institutions mentioned in the pitch endorsed BidsThatGive, the implication was clear that BidsThatGive prospects who joined under Woodfin would gain access to an SEO expert who’d worked for a Presidential candidate and knew a Presidential adviser.
Neither the Jeffers’ video nor the Woodfin video referenced the Liberty International LLC 23-month-old bankruptcy filing. Nor did either video address any of the potential problems BidsThatGive could encounter from regulators.
Like the Zeek Rewards’ business model, the BidsThatGive model resembles that of ASD. In 2008, the U.S. Secret Service seized more than $80 million from ASD-related bank accounts, including $65.8 million in the personal accounts of Andy Bowdoin.
Court records showed that ASD was trading on the name of then-President George W. Bush. Analysts saw it as a transparent bid to sanitize the “opportunity” by trying to link it to the White House.
Major politicians from both sides of the aisle have seen their names used in promos for “opportunities” that proved to be Ponzi schemes.
Former President Clinton’s name and image were used by the Mantria Corp. Ponzi scheme. Clinton is a Democrat.
The SEC has gone to federal court in Los Angeles and obtained an emergency asset freeze for what it described as a $4.5 million life-settlement fraud and Ponzi scheme operated by a man who spent more than $5,000 in investor funds on “cowboy boots,” nearly another $5,000 on a “dating service,” $1,300 on designer sunglasses, more than $200,000 on luxury cars — and $55,000 in a tribute to the late pop icon Michael Jackson.
The alleged scam also directed enormous sums toward other purchases, the SEC charged. A photo on a website linked to the principal defendant in the SEC’s civil case features an image of former President Bill Clinton, with the White House as its backdrop.
Of the $4.5 million gathered in the fraud, only $90,000 — about 2 percent — was applied to its “avowed” purposes, the SEC charged.
Even the avowed purposes — purchasing life settlements, developing coal leases in Kentucky purportedly worth $11.8 billion or developing interests in gold reserves in Nevada — were dubious or not carried out, the SEC said.
Charged in the case were Daniel C.S. Powell, 29, of Los Angeles, and his company Christian Stanley Inc. Two Powell-related entities — Christian Stanley LLC and Daniel Christian Stanley Powell Realty Holdings Inc. — were named relief defendants.
About 50 investors were fleeced, the SEC said.
“Powell and Christian Stanley created the façade of an actual business when in reality they have virtually no revenue,” said Rosalind Tyson, director of the SEC’s Los Angeles Office. “Most of the money raised from investors has been used to finance Powell’s extravagant lifestyle and for other purposes that have not been disclosed to investors.”
“As of August 23, 2011, only $29,396.55 remained in Christian Stanley’s bank accounts,” the SEC charged.
The “Message From Our Chairman” page of “Christian Stanley’s website features a photo of Powell and former President Bill Clinton with the White House as its backdrop. The photo appears to include a disclaimer of some sort, but the type in the disclaimer is small and washes out, making it difficult or impossible to read.
A similar photo featuring an image of Powell and Clinton is displayed elsewhere on the site, but appears to be cropped in a different fashion — and also in such a way that any disclaimer language was lost.
Images of Clinton also were used in promotions for the Mantria “green energy” Ponzi scheme in 2009. It is common for fraud schemes to use images of celebrities to sanitize offers. In 2008, for instance, members of the alleged AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme painted word pictures that then-President George W. Bush and the White House had given a special award to ASD President Andy Bowdoin.
This list is not all-inclusive, but here are some of the alleged purchases and sums consumed in the alleged fraud by Powell and Christian Stanley:
$212,000 for cars, including a Porsche, a Ferrari, a BMW and a Dodge Ram.
More than $290,000 in debit card transactions, mostly consisting of payments of Powell’s daily living expenses, including gas, groceries, pharmaceuticals, dry cleaning and retail goods.
Cash withdrawals and checks payable to Powell or to cash totaling almost $240,000.
More than $160,000 toward Powell’s exorbitant lifestyle, including almost $90,000 for hotels, more than $49,000 for nightclubs, more than $17,000 for restaurants and more than $4,800 for limousines.
More than $100,000 in rent paid on behalf of a woman who Powell has described as “like a mother” to him and another woman with no apparent connection to the company.
Donations totaling $91,000, including $55,000 toward a tribute to Michael Jackson and $35,000 to the rapper Usher’s New Look Foundation.
Miscellaneous luxury purchases, including $8,700 for jewelry, almost $5,000 to register for a dating service, more than $5,000 for cowboy boots and more than $1,300 for designer sunglasses.
Investors believed they’d receive returns of between 5 percent and 15.5 percent per year, the SEC said.
U.S. District Judge George H. King of the Central District of California has ordered an asset freeze and appointed a temporary receiver, the SEC said.
“A life settlement is a transaction in which an individual with a life insurance policy sells that policy to another person, who then assumes responsibility for paying the premiums,” the SEC said. “Typically, the seller no longer wants the policy or can no longer afford to pay the premiums. In exchange, the insured party typically receives a lump sum payment that exceeds the policy’s cash surrender value, but is less than the expected payout in the event of death.”
In its complaint, the SEC charged that Powell and Christian Stanley were selling unregistered securities and that Christian Stanley “has not purchased a single life settlement.”
The scheme has operated for at least seven years, the SEC said.
Last week was an odd one for millions of Americans. President Obama was announced the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, and no one really knew what to do.
The Peace Prize is the big one, the Nobel people remember for generations. But Obama has been in office only months, and the Nobel committee more than hinted he’d been named the Peace Prize recipient because of idealistic speeches, not because he’d been able to implement his ideas.
Obama seemed almost embarrassed by the prized accolade. It instantly created a political problem for him. Opponents were quick to seize on the point he had been in office only nine months and has had trouble implementing his domestic plans, let alone his grander vision for the world.
It was easy — and arguably even justified, given the names of recent Peace Prize recipients and the committee’s inclination to politicize the award — to view any world figure who opposed the policies of former President George W. Bush as worthy of the Prize.
Bash Bush. Get a Nobel.
Even people who support Obama were baffled by the selection. The award is too serious, of course, to spark a ticker-tape parade to honor the recipient. But Obama’s allies in the Congress and in the voting pool were not able even to puff out their chests in a convincing way. It was hard to call the award a win for America, no matter how one views the President.
And this brings us to this week’s issue of Time magazine, which features one of the most thought-provoking columns we have ever read. Before we describe what the column is about, perhaps we should take a moment to explain why we’ve spent some time today to write about politics when this Blog normally writes about crime.
It’s because the Time magazine column challenges people to think and to question their views — something we try to do around here. No, we’re not Time. We’re a small Blog in an ocean of Blogs. Even so, we try to provide readers with some brain fodder and always are pleased when they respond with posts that help us shape our thinking, even if their posts don’t help us change our mind about the issues we write about.
The Time column by David Von Drehle poses a question we never before had contemplated:
Should the Nobel Peace Prize be awarded to nuclear weapons?
Von Drehle says yes — and he makes a thought-provoking argument. Noodle it if you have the chance.
UPDATED 4:32 P.M. EDT (U.S.A.) It’s only getting stranger . . .