BREAKING NEWS: Plaintiffs In RICO Action Say AdSurfDaily Hired Bank Of America Employees, Paid Them More Than Others Doing The Same Work; Accuse Bank Of Turning A Blind Eye To Ponzi Scheme Involving Tens Of Millions Of Dollars
Lawyers for three plaintiffs who accuse AdSurfDaily President Andy Bowdoin, ASD attorney Robert Garner and Golden Panda Ad Builder President Clarence Busby of racketeering have filed an amended complaint that accuses Bank of America of turning a blind eye to a Ponzi scheme.
Bank of America is not named a RICO defendant in the amended complaint filed today — as was the case with the original complaint filed in January. Rather, the bank is accused of aiding and abetting a fraudulent scheme — and the plaintiffs say that, rather than reporting unusual banking activities to authorities, Bank of America employees in Quincy, Fla., went to work for ASD while still holding down their jobs at the bank.
“As the inflow of money increased rapidly after [ASD] rallies [in U.S. cities], Bank of America employees from the Quincy, Florida branch began paid work for ASD at the ASD office in Quincy, Florida,” the plaintiffs charged.
On March 20, Bank of America said it had done nothing wrong and asked for the original complaint to be dismissed.
Tens of millions of dollars connected to ASD, Golden Panda and LaFuenteDinero were seized by the U.S. Secret Service in August, amid allegations of wire fraud, money-laundering, selling unregistered securities and operating a Ponzi scheme.
“Banks are not guarantors of their customers’ conduct,†BOA argued in its motion to dismiss. The bank further argued that the complaint was vague and speculative, lacking in facts to such a degree that U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer of the District of Columbia must dismiss BOA as a defendant.
Today’s filing by the plaintiffs included allegations not listed in the original complaint, including the allegations that Bank of America employees had taken second jobs with ASD and that a “majority” of the employees of the bank’s Quincy branch also worked for ASD.
“Among other things, these employees assisted ASD in processing incoming funds, including funds acquired through Visa transactions,” the plaintiffs said. “Bank of America management knew that its employees also worked as ASD employees. To say the least, this involvement of Bank of America employees in the day-to-day operations of ASD provided Bank of America with additional knowledge of the RICO Defendants’ financial transactions.”
The bank helped “increase the scope” of damage done by ASD’s racketeering scheme by not seeing things for what they were, the plaintiffs charged.
One of ASD’s employees also employed by Bank of America was the branch manager in Quincy, the plaintiffs said. They further asserted that a Bank of America vice president of business banking from Tallahassee visited ASD’s headquarters and reported nothing unusual.
Bank of America workers who took second jobs at ASD were paid higher wages than other ASD employees performing the same work, the plaintiffs said.
Attorneys for plaintiffs Mike Collins, Frank Greene and Nature’s Discount Inc. — all former ASD members — said the bank helped ASD carry out the scheme. The lawsuit was brought as a prospective class-action. Bank of America and Garner have responded to the lawsuit, which was brought in January. Bowdoin and Busby have not.
ASD was having trouble processing payouts because of a $2 million daily limit on electronic transactions imposed by Bank of America, the plaintiffs said.
“Bank of America subsequently modified the RICO Defendants’ accounts to provide ASD with the opportunity for a higher capacity of electronic transactions,” the plaintiffs said. “The Quincy, Florida branch office of Bank of America initiated this upgrade in the RICO Defendant’s account or accounts, and Bank of America management outside of the Quincy, Florida branch validated the upgrade after conducting an in-person investigation [that] included a visit by a Vice President to ASD’s offices.”
The bank failed to spot problems at ASD, even with bank employees working for ASD, the plaintiffs said.
Among other things, according to the plaintiffs, Bank of America failed to:
- Recognize the illegitimacy of ASD.
- Stop the RICO defendants from using the bank’s products and services in furtherance of illicit purposes.
- Halt the bank’s atypical involvement in the scheme.
Two other banks in Quincy refused to maintain back accounts for the RICO defendants, the plaintiffs said.
“Bank of America did not,” the plaintiffs said, alleging that the bank had “teamed up with the RICO Defendants to perpetrate this fraud.”
About $53 million remained in Bank of America accounts linked to the RICO defendants when the U.S. Secret Service seized the funds in August, the plaintiffs said — “and hundreds of millions of dollars had been dissipated.”
….not good for BoA…..even if technically they probably cannot be held accountable for the behavior of their employees on their second job (we’ll see), at the very least this is pretty bad publicity in that it looks like the local folks in Quincy for BoA were up to their eyeballs in this Ponzi…..if the allegations are correct.
This does not come as a total surprise.
Quincy is a very small town and ASD was a massive account for a small branch office. It is difficult to imagine that the BoA branch senior staff were ignorant about ASD’s business. In fact, given the size and amount of movement on the ASD/Bowdoin/dba accounts, it is even harder to imagine the P and VP of BoA at Quincy had not studied ASD in some detail. As bankers, THEY would understand the business plan and be very aware of revenue and its origin.
Even if the BoA manages to find a way out of this – there is strong evidence of what appears to be gross negligence.
Alasycia,
It strikes me as a bit odd that a small bank branch in Norway reported Frode Jorgensen and Plexpay to the authorities precisely because of the (ponzi) pattern of transactions but BofA was clueless, including their “on the ground” management in Quincy regarding ASD. Stranger things have happened but when management gets involved, it’s a lot less likely that the “knew or should have known” gets tossed out of court.
I originally thought the BofA portion of the lawsuit was “cuz that’s where the money is” but I am a bit more open to the implications than I was previously. This could get interesting.
DB – your comments are very apt. Plexpay suffered a police raid in perfect style, leaving computer cables without their equipment, etc in a very much more sophisticated version of the ASD Raid.
However, we mustnt forget that Norway is a highly computer literate country and their banking system is not only far more highly regulated than that of the US, but they take their white collar internet fraud as seriously as non internet fraud.
And judging by the furor that ASD caused in Quincy, and the close relationship it had with its BoA branch, it is completely impossible not to imagine that the senior staff not only knew how ASD’s system and administration ran, but silently condoned it. We know that the reporting system for suspicious activities is slow, but a growth of 10s of millions of $s on a private account does not account for a delay of well over 7 months with the consequent potential loss to members.
Everyone seems so sure that “technically” they cant “get” BoA, but if another bank with a far less attention grabbing account was capable of recognising, closing and reporting an account for suspicious activity, so was BoA. Or if they DID in fact report ASD, they took their time on taking any action themselves – in fact THEY took no action until the AG came in with a court order.
ooops – should read “completely possible NOT to imagine”.
Patrick – no edit facility! Waaaah! lol
Hi alasycia,
Fixed it for you. :-)
I’ll look to see if the Quote plug-in has been updated to include an editing facility.
Patrick
Test of plug-in edit faculty — oops, I meant facility.
Well, this seems to add a WYSIWYG editor, but I’m not sure if it provides posters a post-post edit facility that enables them to edit their existing posts.
Patrick
No, it looks as through there is no post-post edit facility, so posters will have to continue to “correct” their existing posts in a separate post as the need arises.
And there appears to be a conflict with the existing Quote software, which I’ll try to fix. If I can’t fix it quickly, I’ll have to remove the new WYSIWYG editor — at least temporarily.
Patrick
Sorry, Folks. The new WYSIWYG editor and the existing Quote Comments plug-in weren’t working well together; I installed the updated Quote Comments plug-in, but that didn’t fix the problem.
When I tested the Quote Comments software with the WYSIWYG editor, I received an error message about theme incompatibility.
So, I removed the WSYIWYG editor, because the Quote Comments software is used heaviliy here — and I thought it would be more important to readers to have it, rather than a WYSIWYG editor.
As time permits, I’ll see if I can get both plug-ins to work well together.
Patrick
Bottom line BoA knew!! period. In late spring Andy had Robert Fava come into Quincy and give a prestation to the Chamber of commerce. Who do you think goes to those things? the banker that has the account and the other bankers in town that want the account.
Quincy is so small, I can’t beleive the business banker did not see the red flags with how many wrong type of checking accounts Andy had. BoA should have closed it down in spring after the rallies up North.
One more thing before I go, in either December or early Janurary, when recuiting was tough, one of the big promoters sent me an e-mail that used the “ASD accounts are in a BoA, and do you know how tough it is to get one of those?” “BoA doesn’t do business with scams” Oh yes they do.
Is it known that BoA did NOT report suspicious ASD activity and consequently told to keep it quiet until the authorities were ready to act?
We had a recent case here in the UK involving suspected terrorists where news about a raid was leaked and the police had to act earlier than they had planned. All of the suspects (12) have since been released. Whether that was because of innocence or because they hadn’t been given enough time to hang themselves I don’t know but there could very well have been method in BoA’s perceived madness or negligence.
I suspect it will all come out in the wash.
From the end of 2007 to the summer of 2008 ASD grew from a less than 10,000 member operation with a couple of millions, to a 120000 member operation with tens of millions passing through the account on a weekly basis. The accounts were privately held and not corporate accounts.
During that period, the liabilities of ASD grew from a couple of millions to a possible 3000$ MILLIONs or more when the bank accounts were seized. With or a report to the Government, the BoA had a responsibility not to permit the situation to continue in any event. The other bank did act.
Had BoA taken action earlier, that in itself would have seriously damaged the credibility of ASD and members might have raised a lot more questions a lot earlier.
It is not known how much money went offshore out of the ASD funds, it is anyone’s guess, but from comments made by members who recall conversations prior to the raid, it seems that that was the intention of Bowdoin and Co
Pistol,
I think you might be right. There could even be different actions within BoA (looking the other way by the low-level folks in Quincy), but reporting and compliance by BoA corporate. I strongly suspect that banks have automated data analysis software that flags unusual activities (much like credit card companies use), and once unusual activity is noticed, and investigated, reporting would occur. At any level of significance within BoA, the Bowdoin accounts would be too small to be of consequence, so there would be no reason to not report the unusual activities.
If you would like to know what US Banks are required to report, read the entry in Wikipedia, which reviews the various laws, dollar threshholds, etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_Secrecy_Act
Bank Secrecy Act
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The Bank Secrecy Act of 1970 (or BSA, or otherwise known as the Currency and Foreign Transactions Reporting Act) requires U.S.A. financial institutions to assist U.S. government agencies to detect and prevent money laundering. Specifically, the act requires financial institutions to keep records of cash purchases of negotiable instruments, and file reports of cash purchases of these negotiable instruments of $3,000 or more (daily aggregate amount), and to report suspicious activity that might signify money laundering, tax evasion, or other criminal activities. Many banks will no longer sell negotiable instruments when purchased with cash, requiring the purchase to be withdrawn from an account at that institution. BSA was passed by the Congress of the United States in 1970. The BSA is sometimes referred to as an “anti-money laundering” law (“AML”) or jointly as “BSA/AMLâ€. Several anti-money laundering acts, including provisions in title III of the USA PATRIOT Act, have been enacted up to the present to amend the BSA. (See 31 USC 5311-5330 and 31 CFR 103.)
Contents [hide]
1 Types of Reports
2 Affected transactions
2.1 Currency Transaction Report (CTR)
2.2 Monetary Instrument Log (MIL)
2.3 Suspicious Activity Report (SAR)
3 Sanctions
4 How it affects American citizens
5 Additional information
6 References
7 See also
8 External links
[edit] Types of Reports
The BSA regulations require all financial institutions to submit five types of reports to the government. (not an exhaustive list of reports)
FinCEN Form 104 Currency Transaction Report (CTR): A CTR must be filed for each deposit, withdrawal, exchange of currency, or other payment or transfer, by, through or to a financial institution, which involves a transaction in currency of more than $10,000. Multiple currency transactions must be treated as a single transaction if the financial institution has knowledge that: (a) they are conducted by or on behalf of the same person; and, (b) they result in cash received or disbursed by the financial institution of more than $10,000. (31 CFR 103.22)
FinCEN Form 105 Report of International Transportation of Currency or Monetary Instruments (CMIR): Each person (including a bank) who physically transports, mails or ships, or causes to be physically transported, mailed, shipped or received, currency, traveler’s checks, and certain other monetary instruments in an aggregate amount exceeding $10,000 into or out of the United States must file a CMIR
Department of the Treasury Form 90-22.1 Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (FBAR): Each person (including a bank) subject to the jurisdiction of the United States having an interest in, signature or other authority over, one or more bank, securities, or other financial accounts in a foreign country must file an FBAR if the aggregate value of such accounts at any point in a calendar year exceeds $5,000. (31 CFR 103.24)
Treasury Department Form 90-22.47 and OCC Form 8010-9, 8010-1 Suspicious Activity Report (SAR): Banks must file a SAR for any suspicious transaction relevant to a possible violation of law or regulation. (31 CFR 103.18 − formerly 31 CFR 103.21) (12 CFR 12.11)
“Designation of Exempt Person” FinCEN Form 110: Banks must file this form to designate an exempt customer for the purpose of CTR reporting under the BSA (31 CFR 103.22(d)(3)(i)). In addition, banks use this form biennially (every two years) to renew exemptions for eligible non-listed business and payroll customers. (31 CFR 103.22(d)(5)(i))
It also requires any business receiving one or more related cash payments totalling $5,000 or more to file form 8300.[1]
[edit] Affected transactions
[edit] Currency Transaction Report (CTR)
Cash transactions in excess of $10,000 during the same business day. The amount over $10,000 can be either from one transaction or a combination of cash transactions. Filed with the Internal Revenue Service.
[edit] Monetary Instrument Log (MIL)
Cash purchases of monetary instruments, such as money orders, cashier’s checks and travelers checks, totaling from $3,000 to $10,000, inclusive. This form is required to be kept on record at the financial institution, and produced at the request of examiners or audit to verify compliance. A financial institution must maintain a Monetary Instrument Log for 5 years.
[edit] Suspicious Activity Report (SAR)
Any cash transaction where the customer seems to be trying to avoid BSA reporting requirements (e.g., CTR, MIL). A SAR must also be filed if the customer’s actions indicate that s/he is laundering money or otherwise violating federal criminal law. The customer must not know that a SAR is being filed. These reports are filed with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (“FinCEN”).
[edit] Sanctions
There are stiff penalties for individuals and institutions that fail to file CTRs, MILs, or SARs. There are also penalties for those that disclose to its clients that it has filed a SAR about a client. Penalties include extremely high fines and long prison sentences if found guilty.
[edit] How it affects American citizens
This article’s tone or style may not be appropriate for Wikipedia. Specific concerns may be found on the talk page. See Wikipedia’s guide to writing better articles for suggestions. (December 2007)
CTRs include the individual’s bank account number, name, address, and Social Security Number. SAR reports, required when transactions indicate behavior designed to elude CTRs (or many other types of suspicious activities), include somewhat more detailed information and usually include investigation efforts on the part of the financial institution to assess the validity or nature of the transactions. A single CTR filed for your account is usually of no concern to the authorities, while multiple CTRs from varying institutions or a SAR indicates that activity may be suspicious. A financial institution is not allowed to inform a business or consumer that a SAR is being filed, and all the reports mandated by the BSA are exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.
Businesses that primarily deal in cash, such as bars and restaurants can be exempted from having their deposits and withdrawals reported as CTRs, although this exemption is rarely granted. Instead, most banks have computer systems which retains the CTR information and allows duplicate CTRs to be created seamlessly.
[edit] Additional information
An entire industry has developed around providing software to analyze transactions in an attempt to identify transactions or patterns of transactions, called structuring, which requires a SAR filing, that qualify for reporting. Financial institutions face penalties for failing to properly file CTR and SAR reports, including heavy fines and regulatory restrictions, even to the point of charter revocation. These software applications effectively monitor bank customer transactions on a daily basis and, using customer historical information and account profile, provide a “whole picture” to the bank management. Transaction monitoring can include cash deposits and withdrawals, wire transfers and ACH activity. In the bank circles, these applications are known as “BSA software” or “Anti-money laundering software”.
[edit] References
^ IRS article.
[edit] See also
Anti-money laundering
Anti-money laundering software
Bank regulation
Central bank
Customer Identification Program
FATF Blacklist
Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering
Financial Crimes Enforcement Network
Financial Services Authority
Know your customer
Mann Act
Money Laundering
USA PATRIOT Act
[edit] External links
Banking Secrecy Act Comptroller’s Handbook Department of the Treasury, Comptroller of the Currency, Administrator of the National Banks December 2000.
31 USC Sec 5311-5332
Retrieved from “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_Secrecy_Act”
Categories: Monetary reform | United States federal currency legislation | Financial terminology | Financial software | Financial regulation in the United States | Commercial crimes | Tax evasion
Hidden categories: All articles needing style editing | Wikipedia articles needing style editing from December 2007
Roxy Lewis
Nine #9
I am not as convinced as some of the lack of culpability of BoA. The sums may have been low, at national level, for corporate accounts, but not for personal accounts. Equally there are internal banking rules and regulations to avoid perpètuating any bank involvement in illegal enterprises and those have clearly been broken.
It is my guess that if any reporting was done, it was tardy and insufficiently stressed.
As has already been said, it will all come out in the wash, but with the information now coming out about the close involvement of the branch of BoA with ASD, they may not be as blameless as they would like to claim.
Any ex-ASD member who is looking for a convenient scapegoat to blame for the loss of their money and/or future income could do no better than to look at themselves first.
It has been said before but it is worth repeating. Without people willing to invest in a scam the scam wouldn’t get off the ground.
Exactly.
BTW if the BoA employees were also working for ASD, is there any reason to suppose that they couldn’t have been asked to take those jobs by the Bank/Secret Service? To act as sort of double agents, if you like?
I imagine the police etc. would think it an ideal situation to have their own man/woman or someone working for them at the operations hub. No?
Before any more jumping to conclusions, it may be prudent for observers to seek out similar prior cases against which to compare.
Many “new” autosurf players may not be aware of the similarities to the Stormpay/12Daily Pro case, where the payment processor, Stormpay, came under prolonged and vitriolic attack by “losers” from the 12Daily Pro autosurf scam.
In fact, there were more than a few forums and websites dedicated solely to demonizing Stormpay and various credit card and banking companies.
Stormpay (and other payment processors) were by no means “innocent” in enabling the scam/s. However, to date they remain prosecution free, despite extensive scrutiny by relevant agencies.
In fact, subsequent revelations indicate that that Stormpay, among other financial institutions, was amongst the first to report 12DP to the powers that be, and was instrumental in providing evidence to the prosecutors.
Members should remain aware that it is the best interests of steroidal puppeteer “playas” to divert attention away from the fact that these “things” are scam, all scam and nothing but scam, from start to finish.
BoA may well be liable, but I wouldn’t mind betting they were, in fact, one of the “reliable sources” mentioned in the original complaint.
Well now that we all don’t really know what the truth is, and we will have to wait. The point I want to make. If this is true about BoA helping, wouldn’t BoA just come out and say that in the reponse it came out with on March 20th? You know “your honor we were on top of this, reported to the Feds, on this date, and then help the feds with the case.” I don’t see any reason for BoA to spend money on lawyers not to say “we even had our know people inside getting info.” this is a reponse to a reponses. Now BoA with have to pay money to the lawyers again to tell the Judge there side of the story It just doesn’t make sense, but then again what does. Hopfully the feds will be on the AVG boat (is AVG still doing the cruise this weekend?)taking good notes.
I will agree that markets and such are more regulated in Norway and that Norwegians tend to be educated to a certain extent. BUT, Norway has been in the thick of numerous Ponzi’s starting with World Games and including the “5 Percent Club (per month)”, PIPS, Plexpay, etc.
At one point, the Norwegian newspapers published a list of 5 Percent Club members under the banner of “40,000 Dumbest Norwegians” but that doesn’t seem to have caused Ponzi’s from losing their popularity.
Banks and financial institutions in the US are required to conform with a number of different but related reports under the B.S.A. (Bank Secrecy Act), including: FinCEN Form 104 Currency Transaction Report (CTR), FinCEN Form 105 Report of International Transportation of Currency or Monetary Instruments (CMIR), Department of the Treasury Form 90-22.1 Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (FBAR), Treasury Department Form 90-22.47 and OCC Form 8010-9, 8010-1 Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) and “Designation of Exempt Person” FinCEN Form 110.
Most of the reporting is automatically done by software and it seems improbable, given the extreme sanctions available to lawmakers, that BoA would have “missed” any suspicious activities.
It is worth noting the name of the relevant act: It’s called the bank SECRECY act for a very good reason. The act itself is extremely clear on the rights and responsibilities of the reporting bank.
There are stiff penalties for individuals and institutions that fail to file CTRs, MILs, or SARs. There are also penalties for those that disclose to its clients that it has filed a SAR about a client. Penalties include extremely high fines and long prison sentences if found guilty.
I couldnt agree with you more, Norway probably has far more computers per capita that the US and the rest of Europe (all that bad weather. lol) and there are some very accomplished scammers that have come out of the Scandinavian stable too. The point I was making is that they are a little more upto date with the legislation and the necessary actions to take on internet fraud.
In many countries the legislation is way behind the reality of online business, even if it is enforced.
The next item on the anti crime agenda for law enforcement agencies and legislators in many countries really needs to be an thorough education on internet crime.
Please don’t update so we can edit. Bob will be all over it to wipe out his comments when they become inconvenient and we’ll have to resort to quoting him. Just a thought….it’s obviously your call.
I second that! People make typos all the time, we’ll just have to overlook them. Like mine above where I typed “Nine #9” instead of “Ning #9.”
Roxy Lewis
Ning #9
so I guy walks into the bank with $50,000,000.00 in cashier’s checks and red flags don’t go off. LOL This will be like watergate “what did you know, and when did you know it. The rumor is the reason $40,000,000.00 in un-depoisted cashier checks in July was that Andy didn’t know what to do with the them at the time. of course there is fines and jail time if you get caught. Just like there are fines and jail time if you run a ponzi scam, but no one is being arrest yet. only time will tell
Please don’t update so we can edit.Bob will be all over it to wipe out his comments when they become inconvenient and we’ll have to resort to quoting him.Just a thought….it’s obviously your call.
Another oops – db has made a very good point – perhaps we need to check our spelling before posting and leave it at that.
I think you’re missing the point, Mark.
The BSA means that, while the banks are required, by law, to report relevant suspicions, they’re also prevented, by law, from informing ANYONE they have done so.
The penalties for both failing to report AND disclosure of having reported can be severe.
The apparent paradox was one of the financial institutions main objections to the imposition and subsequent strengthening of the BSA. Based on the fact it places the financial institution between a rock and a hard place, as is occuring with ASD.
Damned whether they do or don’t report and unable to defend their position.
it ain’t the first time I missed somthing. Let me tell you the time I bought advertsing from a internet company called ASD. LOL.
anyway, good point, now I have not taken the time to read the reponse from BoA on March 20th but again why wouldn’t the bank tell the judge,that they did everything right includeing reporting this ponzi to the feds, and how the bank work with them, and even went under cover. that’s all I’m saying
Because:
Since the 1992 passage of the Annunzio-Wylie Anti-Money Laundering
Act and the creation of SAR obligations, plaintiffs have tried to obtain SAR documentation to support claims that banks should have prevented the misdeeds of their customers, or that banks engaged in defamation of their customers or employees through SAR reporting. In a June 17, 2005 decision that will reduce the risk to banks resulting from complying with their federal law enforcement reporting responsibilities, the California Court of Appeal in Union Bank of California, N.A. v. Superior Court, 2005 Cal. App. LEXIS 977 at *34, CONCLUDED THAT AN OCC REGULATION REQUIRING NATIONAL BANKS NOT TO PRODUCE OR OTHERWISE DISCLOSE ANY SAR SUBMITTED TO FEDERAL AUTHORITIES, OR INFORMATION THAT WOULD DISCLOSE WHETHER A SAR HAD BEEN PREPARED OR FILED, ALSO APPLIED TO PREVENT DISCLOSURE OF INTERNAL BANK REPORTING DOCUMENTS
typically leading to the preparation of a SAR. Nixon Peabody’s Financial Services Litigation
Team represented Union Bank of California, N.A. in this matter
http://72.14.235.132/search?q=cache:4NjsKI8dbpAJ:www.nixonpeabody.com/linked_media/publications/RFI_06232005.pdf+bank+reporting+requirements+DISCOVERY&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au
thank you
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