DEVELOPING STORY: Is It All Over For Surf’s Up? Pro-AdSurfDaily Forum Shows Same Message Former AdViewGlobal Forum Displayed When It Vanished
UPDATED 5:25 P.M. ET (U.S.A.) Has the Pro-AdSurfDaily Surf’s Up forum followed in the footsteps of a Pro-AdViewGlobal forum and disappeared for the ages?
The URL for Surf’s Up — http://asdmembers.ning.com — is displaying the same message the AVG forum displayed when it vanished last summer after the controversial autosurf with close ASD ties stopped paying members. Surf’s Up also is known as the ASD Member Advocates Forum.
Surf’s Up received the official endorsement of ASD in November 2008, just days after a pivotal court ruling went against ASD.
“This social network has been taken offline by its owner,” the Surf’s Up site now says. Although there is an additional note that “It’s likely that the owner will bring it back online shortly,” the AVG site had the same note and never returned.
Other autosurfing-related sites hosted on ning.com have displayed the same message — never to return.
The note on Surf’s Up began to appear at some point today today. A “Page Not Found” message is found in the upper-left corner of the screen. The precise time the site went offline is unclear.
Also unclear are why the site went offline and who took it offline.
At one point, Surf’s Up had moderators in common with the AVG site. Recently, though, the Surf’s Up Mods who maintained the AVG forum have made few — if any — appearances on Surf’s Up.
The AVG forum debuted in the early days of AVG’s existence. References to AVG began to appear online in December 2008, less than a month after a Nov. 19, 2008, ruling by U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer that ASD had not demonstrated it was a lawful business and not a Ponzi scheme at an evidentiary hearing it requested.
AVG said it was headquartered in Uruguay. Members promoted it as a safe, offshore alternative to ASD that was outside the jurisdiction of U.S.-based regulators and law-enforcement agencies. Some participants later said Bowdoin was the silent head of AVG.
AVG suspended members cashouts in June 2009.
Surf’s Up made news during the Christmas holiday by publishing holiday greetings from ASD President Andy Bowdoin, implicated in an alleged $100 million Ponzi scheme. The forum also published a third-party note in which Bowdoin purportedly asked members for help in obtaining video of ASD “rallies” that might be helpful to his case.
Some ASD members said they were shocked that Bowdoin appeared to be addressing members as though it was business-as-usual for the embattled firm, which may owe members millions of ad impressions. Federal prosecutors said the surf engaged in wire fraud, money-laundering and the sale of unregistered securities — all while operating a massive Ponzi scheme.
Patrick: It is about time. Their forum has been a joke for a long time now, well at least to the sane. Whether they come back or not, I had to laugh at their desire to keep all “trolls” and “negative posts” off their forum. It didn’t work. I was able to post there many times and they did not delete the posts. But I bet if they really knew it was me, they would have banned me immediately. I did have a few posts deleted immediately, but was never banned. Then I responded to a post about how the “Trolls” had been right and all the “experts” from Surf’s Up had been wrong, and I think that post lasted about 1 minute. Then to post again I had to plead with the Mod’s for them to allow me back on the forum if I begged to be a good girl. Yes, they all thought I was a girl, even though in my bio I said I was a man. I certainly was not going to beg them to be let back on the forum when what I posted was the truth.
What was more fun is all of them telling me I didn’t know what I was talking about, how ignorant I was, that some of my posts were nothing more than rants from a woman during that time of month mentality. Not one of those brilliant people who claimed ASD was a legal program, just managed wrongly, had no clue who I really was but they knew how to do research. LOL!
Even posting this here, I doubt if very many of them will even still know who I was over there.
My guess is that they are upset because they havent won the Patrick Pretty Blog Poll for being the most interesting characters in the ASD affair. LOL
Barb just posted on the Biz forum. According to her Terralynn is the originator of the forum and responsible for shutting her down. Being the wonderful person she is, Terralynn failed to inform the other moderators (Barb, Kat and Laura I guess) of her intentions..how considerate of her! Just the type person you want to be associated with..right? Barb states they are trying to find Terralynn and get her to pass the baton over to one of them and get Surfs Up back on line. IF she doesn’t cooperate, they will shrug there shoulders and go on with their lives (more less).
I am halfway surprised that Bob Guenther doesn’t claim responsibility for the demise of “Surf’s Up”. After all, he has most likely threatened them in the past, as he does to most everyone, including myself. “Surf’s Up” had become sort of a dead zone with no one was posting for days/weeks and the primary topic of late was Kali and his declining health. Even with the run-ins I had with Kali, I hope he gets well.
But, I am still waiting for Andy to bring back ASD in 2010, so I can buy more Ad Packs!!!!
I was researching something the other day and ran across a post somewhere that all the ASD/AVGers were pumping that tazoodle scam now. Don’t know if it’s true but perhaps the ‘regulars’ are posting on a similar board in relation to that.
Whip:
I also heard that tazoodle is in trouble, but have not had time to thoroughly check it out to see if it is true or not. Wouldn’t be surprised, but several of the “Players and Management Team” from ASD are on tazoodle’s board. So it is safe to say they brought along a lot of former ASDers to this scam too. Some never learn.
I find it interesting that they have the homepage hidden from search archiving yet, this is their premise:
[quote]Earn Income
Do you use a search engine? Of course you do. So, why not use a search engine where you can earn income? With Tazoodle, you can. Here’s how it works…
Register a user account with Tazoodle. No credit card is required and there are no monthly fees. No monthly cost means no monthly cost!
Log into your account and search for information on the Internet as you would any search engine. In addition to general information, the search results page may show our advertisers. If you view an advertisers website, you’re on your way to qualifying for sharing in the days revenue pool. Continue using Tazoodle throughout the day to search the Internet. Your income is based upon the number of advertiser websites that you view. If you view a minimum of one and up to a maximum of twenty advertiser websites per day, you qualify to receive income. It’s just that simple. But, there’s more!
You’ll earn a cash commission by introducing Tazoodle to website owners that advertise. Plus, you’ll earn even more income if the person that you introduced Tazoodle to subsequently introduces Tazoodle to someone else who advertises. Wow!
Tazoodle offers you a way to earn income for something that you already do and that’s using a search engine. To register, click here. [/quote]
Well Whip, if they put the home page on, then people would just use it and not bother to sign up and pay.lol Like we really need yet another second rate search engine.
Now if someone offers me cheap shares in Google search, or MSN, then we are talking
But it’s going to be bigger than Google, Yahoo, bing they tell ya!
Hmm, I seem to recall ASD, AVG, AGW, BAS, Megalido, CEP, 12DP, PheonixSurf, MrsVIP, Paperless Access all saying the same thing. Wonder what happened on the way to overtaking Google, Yahoo and Bing? LOL!
I was reading one forum (either talkgold or mmg) and it was all the same garbage that accompanies all these scam surfs. You could easily interchange any of their names and it wouldn’t matter.
But they would have been if the evil gubmint and the trolls hadnt stepped in and wrecked everything! lol
Interesting that Terralynn took down the forum. Wonder if she was worried about future events involving her? Afraid people would be asking questions she didn’t want to answer there? Just wondering.
Terralynn has not been at her home in Tallahassee for over a month and just like her Good Buddy and fellow scamster Andy is out of sight. The Quincy home that belongs to Andy’s wife is also empty as is the home at 8 Gilchrist. Perhaps she is with Andy trying to figure out how to leave the country without anyone knowing that they are gone.
Maybe she needs to contact Bob Guenther since he has all the inside information and with his many trips to Mexico can explain the best way to avoid detection.
Hi Kathy,
It has just struck me that ASD no longer has an endorsed forum. Andy has only back channels now and no gatekeepers. His distance from the troops may be at an all-time high and his ability to influence opinion may be at an all-time low.
Less clear is what has become of Sara Mattoon. Haven’t seen any missives since late September or perhaps early October.
In any event, Surf’s Up proved to be expendable without notice — apparently even without notice to the members or the other Mods.
Poof, it seems, applied even to Surf’s Up in the end.
Patrick
Hi Don,
If the laws of supply and demand apply to the surf world, there should be tremendous downward pressure on the price of ad-packs in any Bowdoin-connected enterprise.
Oops! Never mind. How silly of me to think the tremendous oversupply caused by 200 percent — and even 250 percent — matching-bonus programs could not simply be wiped away or taken off the books and placed in the freezer.
That freezer has frozen so many ad-packs in the past couple of years that it must have unlimited storage, an unlimited capacity to freeze and also must be as cold as a Paul Bunyan winter in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan.
Heck, there perhaps are millions of AVG ad-packs (page impressions) frozen at this very minute. BAS and AGW also froze ad packs in recent months.
So, I guess the autosurf world proves that the laws of supply and demand don’t apply if you have a big-enough freezer — or a “rebates aren’t guaranteed” clause.
Patrick
Whip,
I went to Tazoodle and did a search. The first ad that popped up after the search said, “GET RICH IMMEDIATELY.”
“IMMEDIATELY,” I guess, is even faster than “quick,” the old standby.
Or, looking at it another way, “quick” no longer is fast enough when you can get rich “IMMEDIATELY.”
Patrick
Maybe Andy and Faye are at the condo since it was not seized in the forfeiture? Since Andy claimed the condo, house on the lake, and all the water toys were for the members of ASD, maybe Terralynn is staying in the guest bedroom at the condo.
I have still not been able to figure out why the Condo was taken off the list for forfeiture. The only thing that I can think of is that it was not fully paid for and more was owed on it than what the Government could get at a sale.
Anyone have any other ideas why it was not taken?
David Courtney is absolutely positively pimping tazoodle. He is also pimping Gold Nugget Invest, in fact he claims is a big winner. He says:
He also says GNI is – wait for it….. Take a guess. What do many ponzi schemes do near the end of their life?
Yes, the good old “going private” ploy. As used by AVGA, amongst others.
[…] 2010, about a month after the egg-themed promo had appeared on Surf’s Up. Surf’s Up went offline just days prior to the collapse of GNI, which was explained in bizarre […]