When Words Fail: ‘Stunning’ Can’t Describe ASD Disconnect
The level of disconnect is stunning — and it is accompanied by a level of brazenness that is equally stunning. In fact, stunning understates it; it is more like an unapologetic, myopic commitment to felonious self-indulgence.
But what would you expect from a group whose motto is “ASD — Keep Fighting The Good Fight!”
There is nothing good about the fight by the ASD Member Advocates Forum — “Surf’s Up, Baby!” for short or just plain “Surf’s Up!” — to make the world safe for Ponzi profits delivered by ASD President Andy Bowdoin and others.
Surf's Up and related sites show their affection for Ponzi schemes.
One of the others is AdViewGlobal, which has ASD’s fingerprints all over it (see this, see this, see this) and purports to be operating out of Uruguay. Some of the Surf’s Up Mods have a forum for AdViewGlobal, too. In tune with Valentine’s Day, both forums currently are showcasing their love for Ponzi schemes by using a graphic of a big, beautiful red heart. Like the “Surf’s Up” forum, the AdViewGlobal forum is using the hosting services of ning.com in a bid to portray Ponzi schemes, money-laundering and wire-fraud operations as businesses with intrinsic social value. Never mind that nearly $100 million has been seized in the ASD case, that Bowdoin is a serial scam artist who, quite literally, could name an All-Felony Team from within his own ranks. What’s important, here, according to the serial promoters of ASD and AdViewGlobal, are the fabulous commissions they can earn by fleecing downline members by ignoring facts they deem inconvenient.
“Happy Days Are Here Again!” assures the AdViewGlobal members’ forum. How the promoters will be able to persuade a judge or jury they were acting in good faith if the need arises apparently is a worry for another day. The promoters have ignored the August ASD forfeiture complaint, the December forfeiture complaint, a RICO lawsuit (against Bowdoin and co-conspirators), the recent failures of MegaLido, Frogress, DailyProfitPond, Instant2U and others, and all previous autosurf litigation.
AdViewGlobal sells “ad impressions” as opposed to “ad packs” — window dressing to be sure — but window dressing that shows planning. Another thing that shows planning is the purported Uruguay registration. If the company is named in any future litigation, the words “conspiracy” and “co-conspirator” are apt to be part of the government presentation.
For its part, Surf’s Up has been deleting members for insisting on discussing the truth and the ramifications of all of this. This is perfectly consistent with the forum’s history. It once published a post from a member who said the prosecutor in the ASD case should be placed in a medieval torture “rack” and that members could draw straws to see who got to tighten the wheel.
In a play on the middle name — Rakestraw — of federal prosecutor William Cowden, a Surf’s Up member suggests putting him in a torture “rack” and drawing “straws” to see who gets to tighten the wheel.
If the Feds do move, it will be like shooting fish in a barrel. Regardless, the forum mods in recent days have announced that they’ve “had enough” of people who insist on living in the real world.
So, no, stunning — normally a strong, descriptive word — doesn’t quite do the job.
….and still, people who lost money in ASD will willingly join………
Hi Entertained,
Yes — and when a celebrity serial Ponzi operator celebrates a birthday or anniversary of some sort, they’ll shower him with cards and perhaps even send a luscious dessert.
Patrick
Hi, Patrick;
The greed of the perpetrators and major promoters is, at least, understandable to me, for greed I understand.
The willingness of the apparent “innocents victims” to continue in their irrational beliefs regarding the goodness of the perps and the validity of the “business model” has, however, been a continuing source of amazement.
The ease with which many victims have been led into other scams has been even more astounding. There’s a book to written about all this, I tell ya’!
Having had my account deleted twice in as many days, I can vouch for the complete lack of reality on the part of one of the moderators. I sort of think she works alone at this “crusade” against negativity. I also noticed that the level of posting is dropping off, as people realize how silly and irrelevant that forum has become. “All Andy, All the Time” All they have succeeded in doing, in my opinion, is to further the idea that ASD was not a company but a CULT.
Hi Pat,
And criminal greed, to boot.
This morning I noticed that one of them was re-birthing the lie that “Ponzi” allegations had been dropped — and this after Bowdoin had totally folded (without announcing the fact to members, BTW). They read about it in the newspaper and on Blogs and forums.
And a movie, too: Jon Voight as Andy?
The shortest explanation that accommodates all the facts is that they’re criminals.
Patrick
It’s already been done…..well……sorta,
This book could almost become a handbook for online scammers.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Just-Numbers-Screen-Marsdens-Pipsters/dp/0954888316
Hi Don,
There is a reason the prosecutors described them as “followers” and members of a Bowdoin-controlled “flock.” Their criminality is different than, say, the extreme criminality of the Manson family or some of the Koresh followers, but it is the same sort of self-delusional behavior.
So is trying to enforce rigid thinking. It works only inside the universe that needs rigid thinking to sustain itself. If one reality gets picked apart and exposed as a fraud, they’ll simply conflate another one.
Patrick
The mods who heavily moderate a forum are also exposing themselves to civil litigation when the walls come tumbling down. While courts have generally held that ISPs are not liable for comments transmitted via their facilities, and likewise bloggers are not held accountable for the comments they allow others to post on their sites, there is an exception. When a forum allows all comment to stand on it’s own merit or lack thereof, or if they edit for clear and reasonable standards such as language or decency, there is a court case in the 9th district that is being heard on appeal before the whole circuit bench right now that as ruled on in lower courts holds liable the owner of a forum who deleted posts with which he disagreed and allowed posts that furthered the the scam he was endorsing. When the scam folded, several of his readers sued the forum operator. The case centered on the fact that by enforcing a certain view, he was exercising editorial control of the message and was therefore responsible for it. It’s an interesting case and if upheld the next venue for it is the US Supreme Court which I find unlikely, we’ll see.
hmm, something happened with my last post, a sentence is missing in the middle of it. What I wanted to say was a person can edit for language, decency etc… and still enjoy some protection from liability. When they edit content they don’t like, they are taking responsibility for that which they allow to stand.
hey Don nice to have you over here!!! lol. Boy,the girls loved me for the first 4 months on “surf up” when I was a koolaid drinking believer. but after the first lose in court and taking my head out of the sand and opening up my eyes, I found out how stupid I was,and how illegal this auto-surfing business is. I will not have any pity on the members who know going in,that what ther are doing is illegal. The only way to stop this is for the goverment to go after the promoters who live in America and who are sponsering other Americans into this scam. Freeze they accounts and lock them up personnal, and do it quickly !! before this thing gets to big, and hurts others
Hi Gregg,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. The deletion of comments at Surf’s Up in recent days — on the heels of videos, screen shots and real-time reports by members about the AdViewGlobal graphics appearing on (and then being removed from) the ASD webroom — smacked of a cover-up.
Patrick
Hi everyone… I remember when the ASD surfs up site first began.. it was a great place to get some kind of information on what was going on… later when they started their campaigns like the kool-aid to Bill O’Reilly I had second thoughts.. as time progressed people were not so happy or trusting of Andy and ASD but seemed like every time someone put a negative comment in they were called a Troll…lol… I didnt even know what a troll was either I do now but I think a Troll is better than the kool-aid drinking cheerleaders who continue to try and brainwash people into thinking any of these Ponzi scams will make you money and that ASD will be back.. they need to get their heads out of the clouds…I have also had most of my posts deleted from their site .. geepers creepers…like whatever..LOL.. so now I dont even bother to respond they dont want to listen…
Hi Mark,
Seems as though your Kool-Aid days were brief had no long-term effect on you. Some people won’t be so lucky.
Take care.
Patrick
Hi Brenda,
Yes, the O’Reilly Kool-Aid campaign backfired because it brought the madness front-and-center, creating the condition otherwise rational people needed to confront their severe doubts. People almost always will suspend their disbelief briefly. What often happens, though, is that other people will cause them to acknowledge the little birdie inside that has been telling them, “This isn’t me. Why am I a part of this?”
Kool-Aid campaigns? Letters to politicians (during an election year) asking them to tarnish their reputations by becoming a public advocate for Ponzi schemes? Complaints to the Inspector General to bring the prosecutors up on charges for enforcing money-laundering laws?
What the advocates refused to acknowledge is that, very often in this case, “troll” equaled “truth.”
Regards,
Patrick
My thoughts are only this, if someone gets this surf business right in all aspects is going to be very wealth and not on the F.B.I.s most wanted list.
As a former believer in the ASD model it did make a lot of sense.
1) pay people to view advertising of the group
2) grow the group to untold numbers
3) offer the groups services to large corp advertisers
(the clincher)
4) buy services of the group and roll profits back to the advertising company to sustain rebates.
The above makes sense and makes to world go round.
The thing ASD missed is having the advertisers roll a percentage of profits generated as a dircet result of advertising back into the company to sustain the revenues, this would produce hundreds of thousands of income streams. i.e. no ponzi.
The person who figures out how to make it trackable and enforceable to get the profits back to the company is going to be bigger than Bill Gates.
Anyone think I got it right? contact me at bodatheman@gmail.com with your thoughts and we can start our own legal advertising company. I for one have had enough of the lies.
J
Patrick:
I think it’s SO important that you’ve developed and are maintaining this website, with contributions from Gregg and Lynn and other experts, on how scams like this flourish. No one who chooses to participate in AVG or a similar scam will be able to use the “I performed due diligence and found nothing negative” argument. Your site and others are also provoking AVG to create a written record replete with material misstatements intended to deceive potential investors about the safety of sending their funds to Uruguay. I especially like the whopper they told about hidden ownership being a standard operational tactic with private corporations. There are private corporations whose ownership isn’t public, but it’s a rare privately held corporation that tries to entice public investors while concealing the information about who they’re trusting with their money.
Jimmy,
There are lots of ways to make these types of businesses legal. The recipe is simple. Lots of external revenue as you have alluded (that’s the Black Box sustainability angle). No preferential payback to old members from new members’ money (that’s the Ponzi angle). I’ve posted a dozen legal variantions of the ASD model elsewhere. None of them will ever create “thousands of millionaires.” None of them are high rate of return programs. None of them will ever be mistaken for the current dozens of “get rich quick” schemes that are out there now (including AVG) that are knockoffs of ASD, which in turn is a variation of older autosurf Ponzi schemes.
For me, I’ll continue to earn my income the old-fashioned way — hard work in a field that someone places value on.
Jimmy
The biggest difficulties that I see with attracting corporate advertisers are these
-1f they can get the same rebates LEGALLY as the rest of the members, why wouldnt they want rebates? And if they couldnt do this legally (i.e. by not beingpaid by new members purchases) – they wouldnt be interested
– even assuming they wouldnt want rebates – how much would a corporation pay for 15 second views on a members only website with a membership less than a million? fractions of a cent?
-100,000 members for a Statewide site might be interesting for a low cost advertisement for a company operating a one state
– the only service of interest that these companies give, is surfing to get back money – even targetted, it does not have the same advertising value as an advert on a site with content.
I think that Entertained’s conclusion that the model could only work WITHOT generating large sums is regretfully the right one
Without enormous amounts of capital to start off a scheme like this, it is not possible to build up the membership first with a rebate scheme already in place and THEN add the external income afterwards. That has to be provided simultaneously to the payment of any rebates.
One topic brought up on the scam.com site was how the the dymanics of the Surf’s Up and other related forums were impeccable examples of “Groupthink”. It’s been an interesting last couple of weeks watching it collapse as their members began to challenge the group’s assumptions and the moderators struggled to maintain the dynamic. And yes, it’s amazing how some people continue to hold those beliefs.
Hi JJ,
The “groupthink” discussions were indeed thought-provoking. And the prosecutors recognized the cult-like behavior in their “followers” and “flock” assertions.
Some of the Surf’s Up advocates are scared out of their wits right now because they’re mostly out there alone. They advocated from the rooftops, policed the board to enforce rigid thinking, formed ASDMI, launched attack after attack against the prosecutors.
And the prosecutors are still standing after all of it and have reduced ASD to rubble. The ringleaders have nothing to show for their efforts, unless one wants to count favored treatment in AdViewGlobal.But that’s a mirage, too.
Thanks for your note.
Patrick
The members of the “Surf’s up Baby” forum were/are a bunch of simpletons who are all in denial of the fact that ASD is over, over and over, that AVG is its “Evil Twin” and that they all have been royally had by their “Money Messiah” Andy Bowdoin who, by the way, has been mysteriously “absent” and has disappeared into the woodwork without so much as a “Sorry Folks” posting on ASD’s Breaking News page ? Are they hoping that he is going to arrive in and step out of a spaceship doling out laundry baskets full of money ? Anybody posting what they call “ugly rhetoric” (speak the Truth) on that forum is either warned, reprimanded or banned altogether by the “Troll Patrol”(?). That forum should be renamed the “ASD Jerry Springer Show” !
I got suckered into the advglobal and purchased $2000.00 in page impressions,and everytime I try to contact them with support ticket I never get any answers.A sucker is born every minute huh? These people have no conscience!! Beware of advglobal!! Tom
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