PROSECUTION: ASD Member Funded Account With Transfer From E-Bullion And Used Ad Rotator To Pitch ‘StreamlineGold,’ Apparent Pyramid Scheme; Records Show E-Bullion Founder Charged In Wife’s Murder In California
An AdSurfDaily promoter whose cash was seized in February 2009 and now has been targeted for forfeiture funded one of her three ASD accounts in part with a transfer from E-Bullion, a shuttered payment processor whose founder was charged in 2008 with operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business and hiring a hit man to kill his estranged wife, according to records.
The E-Bullion allegation raises troubling new questions about the sinister worlds of autosurfs and HYIPs, how ASD and its members were exchanging money and whether ASD and top promoters were employing secret conduits. In 2008, prosecutors asserted ASD had a relationship with E-Gold, a payment processor accused in 2007 of money-laundering. Yesterday’s assertion that ASD also had a relationship with E-Bullion marked the first time that prosecutors have raised E-Bullion’s name in the ASD case.
Erma Seabaugh, known among ASD members as the “Web Room Lady,” used E-Bullion in November 2007 to transfer $10,510 to ASD, according to a forfeiture complaint filed yesterday.
SCREEN SHOT: Federal prosecutors asserted yesterday that ASD member Erma Seabaugh funded one of her ASD accounts by transferring $10,510 from E-Bullion.
E-Bullion founder James Fayed was jailed in California in August 2008, the same month as the seizure of tens of millions of dollars from ASD and nine months after the firm was used to transfer money to ASD, according to records. He initially was charged in an indictment unsealed in August 2008 by federal prosecutors with operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business that had processed more than $20 million in Ponzi scheme payments. The scope of E-Bullion’s alleged Ponzi business is unclear, but the company now has been linked to at least three alleged Ponzi schemes.
In September 2008, Fayed was charged by the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office with the July 2008 murder of his wife, Pamela Fayed.
In June 2008, a month before she was killed in a California parking garage by a man who allegedly had accepted $25,000 from James Fayed to carry out the plot, Pamela Fayed had informed federal prosecutors in California that she wished to cooperate in the investigation of E-Bullion, according to records. E-Bullion is referenced in court files as a payment processor used by Gold Quest International (GQI), an alleged Ponzi scheme operating in Las Vegas that was charged by the SEC in May 2008 and also was charged by Canadian regulators.
A total of four people, including James Fayed, now have been charged in the murder plot. As with many things in the miserable worlds of HYIPs and autosurfs, the prosecution of GQI by the SEC turned into Theatre of the Absurd.
GQI, accused in May 2008 by the SEC in a $29 million Ponzi case, sought to derail the case by filing a lawsuit for $1.7 trillion against the agency. Company officials absurdly asserted that GQI was immune to U.S. law because its Las Vegas operations enjoyed purported sovereignty that was portable from an “Indian” tribe in North Dakota and that GQI also was off-limits to prosecution in the United States because it was registered in Panama.
Chillingly, E-Bullion also is referenced in documents filed by the Ontario Securities Commission in a case against Ponzi swindler Brian David Anderson, a former Christian clergyman from Vancouver, British Columbia. Anderson was sentenced to prison in the United States earlier this year for his role in a Ponzi scheme known as Frontier Assets.
Anderson also was linked to a mysterious scheme known as the “Alpha Project.” U.S. and Canadian investigators also identified Anderson as a pitchman for an international HYIP known as Flat Electronic Data Interchange (FEDI). FEDI’s operator, Abdul Tawala Ibn Ali Alishtari, also known as Michael Mixon, was convicted in September 2009 of financing terror and fleecing investors in the FEDI scheme.
In addition to the ASD account funded by the E-Bullion transfer, Seabaugh had at least two other ASD accounts, prosecutors charged in the forfeiture complaint. She used one of her accounts to advertise a mysterious business known as StreamlineGold, which was described by investigators as a probable “pyramid scheme dealing with the sale of memberships that are sold to customers.”
The account through which Seabaugh promoted StreamlineGold was funded by a transfer from La Fuente Dinero, yet-another Ponzi scheme associated with ASD, prosecutors said.
StreamlineGold’s website now throws an error message, but web records show it was promoted on the MoneyMakerGroup and TalkGold forums, two websites that are associated with Ponzi schemes and referenced in federal court records as a place from which the alleged Pathway To Prosperity Ponzi scheme was promoted.
“StreamLine Gold is literally what it says,” a poster crowed on the MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi site in November 2007, the same month Seabaugh allegedly was promoting the same scheme through ASD. “[I]t can provide you with an unlimited income through the combination of Precious Metals and Cash with a business model whose time has come PLUS the most advanced and lucrative pay plan ever devised.”
Records suggest StreamlineGold had failed in an earlier iteration — and then failed again after rebirthing itself.
I wonder when they will get around to Rayda Roundy and Robert Fava??
Mindy Bales, Mindy Bales, Mindy Bales please….well, along with all the others.
How about Bob Guenther and his big downline, as well as his lawyer buddy pal.
The person who recruited me into ASD (after I had made a purchase from him on eBay) was under Gary Talbert and had been (according to him) in ASD from very early on. He put ad pacs in my account and had me send him a check. He said he would just call the office and get the whole process in motion. I had never been in anything like this before so I saw nothing wrong with that nor even understood it. I knew nothing about “internal transfer”. I sure understand it now! This must have been pretty common practice with the insiders.
It’s been common practice of insiders almost as long as ponzis’ have existed.
The People in Profits System (P.I.P.S.) even had it’s own internal currency, known as “PicPay” to facilitate the practice.
The story put out by the fraudsters was that P.I.P.S. had become so successful, the company itself was unable to process the funding in a timely manner, so, out of the goodness of their hearts, the insiders would make their own P.I.P.S units available for new members, using PicPay.
IOW, swap their “PicPay” for US dollars.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
I am an educated person (RN for 27 yrs) but this was the 1st online experience I had had with something like this and honestly wasn’t even sure what a Ponzi scheme was till the seizure. I was only in it for a barely 3 mo. before the seizure. Unfortunately 3 mo too long. I do believe my sponsor knew what was going on, or at least knew how to play it, and I have told him so with no response. I know he reads Patrick’s site so he’ll read it again I guess.
And then the story changed….it turns out their international bankers could only handle 13 transactions per day so Bryan needed to buy his own bank.
It was all for the good of the members you must understand.
snailspace,
Your sponsor may well have known what was going on. Regardless, your sponsor does have a civil liability toward you (if you lost money) should you choose to sue him/her.
Remember when it became so “good” for the “Pipsters” of the Irish town of Kells and the Alaskan city of Ketchikan it almost destroyed the towns ?????
http://www.sitnews.us/0805Viewpoints/082105_david_hanger.html
Yes, I remember. Hanger is still writing to the editor of SitNews at a furious pace.
What I remember most is the fine quality of the editors of both Ketchikan papers. Their concern for their community and their determination to help Ketchikan heal after PIPS was absolute. We had many long conversations.
Sadly, Dick Kauffman of SitNews and Lew Williams, Jr of Ketchikan Daily News are no longer with us. RIP Dick, RIP Lew.
What about Mr. MLM Scientologist Tari Steward, without whom the second incarnation of ASD might never taken off so fast – along with his friend Bob Cefail.
Dawn Stowers and her Daddy, Clarence Busby should be somewhere on this list. She was with AdSurfDaily from the start, and he and Bowdoin dreamt up Golden Panda later on.
Patrick,
The reporting you’ve done over the past couple of weeks has been fascinating — interesting to read, and extremely well written. Please keep it up!
Can’t someone find out how the US DOJ and Secret Service reacted to Gary Talberts email? Unless I’ve missed something, he is nothing more than Bowden’s mouthpiece, albeit a higly placed mouthpiece within ASD. He’s sure to be arrested soon himself, but it seems like his email would generate a lot of government interest with regard to Uncle Andy being out on bail. You know that there are wiretaps and datataps on all their communications, so tying Andy to Talbert shouldn’t be much trouble.
The wheels of the DOJ grind slowly, I guess, but they’ll continue to make arrests and seize money for the next year or so. If I was an ASD insider like Talbert, I’d be turning myself in and getting a deal, and to heck with the other soon-to-be dead broke felons!
Does Talbert read your on-line magazine? Do the Feds? Or would that be a dumb thing for you to acknowledge??!!!
If this were an episode of Law and Order, you’d know the answer to that question before the next ad break.
It’s highly unlikely anyone will know anytime soon, if ever, the answer.
Unless the details become available during Bowdoins’ court case, it is entirely possible the matter could be disposed of without any or all of the information being made available to the public via the media.
IOW, without a PACER account and knowledge of when and where to look, we may remain blissfully unaware of what, if anything, happens
A sentence which, if written by someone without C-Nile disease would have read:
“It’s highly unlikely anyone will know the answer to your question anytime soon, if ever”
LRM, firstly, we do take into account that you sometimes speak like Yoda, “Know the answer, you will…”
I have been looking at PACER almost daily, and nothing is showing up, It also does not help that they are docketing things like the “USA v $150,345 in some Bank”. Makes it difficult to track it down to whose money they are grabbing. I would think that forfeitures not withstanding, if should start coming out either in “The Trails of Andy Bowdoin”, or perhaps, in the criminal complaints against the “Inner Sanctum”.
I’m betting Andy will fire his lawyers and try to go Pro Se, after all, he is much smarter than any attorney. Notice, he didn’t ask Robert Garner to represent him? After all, he was the “Legal Mind” that vetted ASD?
It’s not my habit of speaking like Yoda which worries me so much.
It’s trying to scratch sensitive areas with those damned claw like fingernails and having to sit in the corner at parties wrapped in a blanket and making squealing noises that drives me mad.
Oh, and let us not forget about Bruce and Todd Disner. I was looking around today for some information regarding ASD, and ran across this picture-
Here’s a quote from Mike Mason’s WordPress blog:
Bruce Disner invested $1,000 during an ASD rally in Miami, Florida. His brother, Todd, bought $2,500 worth of ad space with the company. Disner says he began making money immediately, “our income was coming out to a 1% daily return based on the amount of AD Packs you have. $400.00 for me and $3800.00 daily for Todd.”
And, according to the report, here’s some more damning information:
Unlike many ASD members, Todd Disner says he took some of his money out of his ASD account before the Feds seized it and was able to walk away with a hefty profit of $59,000.
Talk about quotes that will come back to haunt you.
if you really want to laugh I saw a brief clip of the Imformercial that was flimed at the convention in Tampa and David Meade looking like a proud peacock looked into the camera and said ” I making $10,000.00 a day!!!!
According to something I found on the net, “David Meade, VP of Sales and Marketing for ASD.” Wonder when he will be indicted?
That would be this man… David D. Meade, Sr.
http://www.apsense.com/abc/cashnfun
http://web.archive.org/web/20071023051218/http://www.giblink-global.com/
http://web.archive.org/web/20080127115842/http://www.myhomebizmoney.com/
http://community.konnects.com/profiles.jspf?MemberId=227106
http://www.plaxo.com/profile/show/193275327531?pk=494ca9c6976fa9eb947c41ceef868f43c65e38d7
If I’m not mistaken, http://www.successwithmeade.com is his personal website.
His son appears to be rather lacking when it comes to good taste in headgear:
http://www.socialcigar.com/profile/DavidDMeadeJr
Professor:
In regard to your comment:
His son appears to be rather lacking when it comes to good taste in headgear: http://www.socialcigar.com/profile/DavidDMeadeJr
It was standard wearing apparel when you were on the Surf’s Up, JoyLuckClub and the ASDMBA forums.
Brings to mind Augie Doggie from the Quick Draw McGraw shows’ catchcry:
“Oh, father, I am sooooo ashamed”
Man did that bring back fond memories from the past. I had totally forgotten about Augie Doggie, Snaglepuss “Sufferin Succotash,” Quick Draw McGraw “I’ll do the thinin around here,” and the gang. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.
You forgot “El Kabong” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmemBa1HAzU
LRM: I totally know what you mean! Marci
It’s still easier than German.
Warum haben Sie dass gesagt?
Ich bin ein Berliner. (I am a donut).
Ich haben dass gesagt because it’s true. I still can’t figure out why the key word in a sentence has to be at the end. (gesagt = said)
[…] week, the PP Blog reported that the U.S. Secret Service and federal prosecutors had established a link between California-based E-Bullion and Florida-based AdSurfDaily. E-Bullion is a shuttered payment processor whose owner, James Fayed, is awaiting trial on charges […]
[…] Seabaugh, known among ASD members as the “Web Room Lady,” used E-Bullion in November 2007 to transfer $10,510 to ASD, according to a forfeiture complaint filed in December […]
[…] court records show that prosecutors asserted an AdSurfDaily pitchwoman funded her ASD account through e-Bullion, which also has been tied to mysterious scams such as Gold […]