Bowdoin’s Proffer Talk Of The Autosurf World

In the end, prosecutors saved their best for last. Ordered by a federal judge April 3 to respond to a series of pro se motions filed by ASD President Andy Bowdoin in a federal forfeiture case involving tens of millions of dollars, prosecutors first addressed Bowdoin’s motion to dismiss the case for lack of fair notice.

Then they addressed Bowdoin’s motion to set aside the forfeiture because the court lacked jurisdiction over him in the forfeiture action. The first two prosecution responses occurred between April 6 and early in the day on April 24.

Finally, late in the day on April 24, prosecutors responded to Bowdoin’s motion to rescind a decision he made in January to submit to the forfeiture.

That’s when prosecutors dropped a bomb, telling U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer that Bowdoin, prior to submitting to the forfeiture, had told “law enforcement agents that the material allegations that the government made in its forfeiture complaint in this case were all true.”

Bowdoin even had signed a proffer letter, prosecutors told Collyer. Prosecutors used the words “confirmed” and “acknowledged” in their memo to help drive home their points (emphasis added).

• “Mr. Bowdoin confirmed to law enforcement officials that he modeled his enterprise on another’s failed fraud scheme”
• “[H]e acknowledged that there was almost no revenue independent from what he secured from the ‘members'”
• “Mr. Bowdoin also confirmed that the revenue figures of the enterprise were managed to make it appear to prospective members that the enterprise called Ad Surf Daily was a consistently profitable, and brilliant, passive income opportunity”

Web buzz over the weekend focused as much on what prosecutors did not say as what they did say: Prosecutors, for example, did not say precisely what else Bowdoin had told the government. They did not reveal if he had named names. They did note that the proffer letter Bowdoin signed “informed him that his proffered statements would not be used against him in the government’s case-in-chief in any criminal prosecution of him — other than a prosecution for perjury, giving a false statement, or obstruction of justice.” (Emphasis added.)

But they added (emphasis added) that Mr. Bowdoin’s proffered statements could be used for “other” purposes.”

Prosecutors did not reveal what “other” purposes they had in mind.

Proffer letters sometimes are used when prosecutors believe the one who proffers can contribute to an ongoing investigation and perhaps even aid in the prosecution of others.

In the end, prosecutors said that Bowdoin, who’d been hailed a business genius by supporters who engaged in one letter-writing campaign after another to clear his name, admitted that ASD had no meaningful revenue streams other than member payments and fudged its numbers to create the appearance of brilliance — something that takes arrows out of the quivers of his supporters and destroys the credibility of all those letters written on his behalf.

Bowdoin himself had encouraged all the letter-writing, but he didn’t tell members about his confirmations and acknowledgments to the government. And he didn’t mention the proffer.

Not even the Mods at the Pro-ASD Surf’s Up forum — grand central for Bowdoin apologists — had anything to say about Bowdoin’s confirmations and acknowledgements and proffer letter this weekend.