EDITORIAL: Was ‘Andy’s Fundraising Army’ Website Launch And Video Release Deliberately Put Off Until AFTER Andy Bowdoin’s July 22 Appearance Before A Federal Judge In Washington? (And Is Bowdoin Risking A Massive Spam Fine In A Purported Email ‘Blast’ Scheduled For Monday?)

UPDATED 7:42 A.M. EDT (July 31. U.S.A.) Accused Ponzi schemer Andy Bowdoin of Florida-based AdSurfDaily twice has tried to prevent U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer of the District of Columbia from presiding over Bowdoin and ASD-related matters. In December 2009, Bowdoin tried to have Collyer disqualified from hearing the civil-forfeiture case in which the U.S. Secret Service had seized $65.8 million from his personal bank accounts. In January 2011, Bowdoin sought a change of venue that would have taken the criminal case away from Collyer and put it in the hands of a federal judge in Florida.

Both of Bowdoin’s bids failed.

Bowdoin, though, now appears to have shifted strategies. Instead of continuing to insist that Collyer should be removed from the case or that the case should be removed from her courtroom in the District of Columbia and assigned to a federal judge in Florida, Bowdoin is now acting as spokesman-in-chief for his own slime machine. He is suggesting in a fundraising video that ASD lost the civil case “because of” Collyer, whom he described as a “single, lone” judge without mentioning her by name — and that ASD members should send him $500,000 to prevent him from losing the criminal case and being sentenced to prison by Collyer.

AndysFundraisingArmy.com — the web venue through which  Bowdoin is seeking to raise half a million dollars to pay for his criminal defense — missed two advertised launch dates this month before finally launching late Tuesday (July 26).

The site first advertised a launch date of on or before July 15. Missing that date, it then advertised a July 20 launch, which it also missed. The need for additional “testing” delayed the launch, according to the promos.

But documents show that Bowdoin had a court date in Washington July 22 before Collyer.

The missed launch dates pose an intriguing question: Were the launch dates deliberately postponed because Bowdoin and “Andy’s Army” knew he had made a video in which he slimed Collyer without identifying her by name — and wanted neither Collyer nor the prosecution to know until he was safely out of Washington that he intended to use Collyer as a reason ASD members should fund his criminal defense?

The “Andy’s Army” fundraising video in which Bowdoin claimed he lost the forfeiture case “because of a single, lone judge” was not released until July 26, four days after Bowdoin’s most recent appearance before Collyer.

Because the video appears to have been produced weeks in advance of Bowdoin’s July 22 date in Collyer’s courtroom — and because Bowdoin himself was the “star” of the video and knew what he had said in the fundraising pitch — it is apparent that Bowdoin knew even as he was asking Collyer on July 22 for a six-month continuance that he’d already hatched a scheme by which he’d transfer blame for his legal predicament to Collyer as a means of raising defense funds. In the video, Bowdoin also suggested his former attorneys, federal prosecutors and the U.S. Secret Service were responsible for his legal woes.

Collyer denied the continuance on July 22, according to the case docket. The video debuted four days later.

Bowdoin’s fundraising video made no mention of the fact that the U.S. Court of Appeals had upheld rulings made by Collyer. Indeed, it was hardly the case that a “single, lone judge” had the only say in the forfeiture case. A three-judge panel on the appeals court unanimously ruled against Bowdoin and ASD.

The appeals panel issued its ruling on March 25, 2011 — about three months prior to the production of the fundraising video.

Among Bowdoin’s assertions in the forfeiture case was that he had tricked into releasing his claims to $65.8 million seized by the Secret Service in August 2008. The tricksters, according to Bowdoin, included at least one of his paid attorneys and also federal prosecutors.

“Despite Bowdoin’s protests to the contrary, his own affidavit shows that he understood well that he was receiving no promise in return for relinquishing his claims,” the appeals panel ruled.

“Moreover,” the panel ruled, “far from being negligent, appellants’ attorney had sound reasons for recommending that they cooperate with prosecutors by relinquishing their claims.”

The panel also concluded that “the witnesses AdSurfDaily offered at the evidentiary hearing to prove that it operated a legitimate business contradicted each other . . . and at least one actually undermined the company’s position.”

Bowdoin, however, makes no mention of the appeals-court decision in the fundraising video. Nor does he explain what happened to millions of dollars ASD allegedly had moved offshore — some of it to Canada, some of it to Antigua.

An email attributed to ASD member Todd Disner was received by some ASD members on July 25, three days after Bowdoin’s Washington appearance but one day before the release of Bowdoin’s fundraising video. (Read story based on email.)

“I talked to Andy the other day,” the email read in part. “He was in Atlanta airport coming home from his hearing in Washington.”

It is unclear whether Disner watched Bowdoin’s fundraising video prior to its public release on July 26. What is clear is that Bowdoin was in Collyer’s courtroom in Washington on July 22 when Bowdoin had the knowledge that, weeks earlier (as early as June 24), he’d taped a fundraising commercial asking ASD members to send him money and painting Collyer as one of the reasons they should pony up $500,000.

The video does not reveal that Collyer, in 2008, granted ASD a two-day evidentiary hearing in the “interests of justice” in which ASD called a series of witnesses to make its case that it was operating lawfully.

Nor does the video reveal that Collyer gave ASD extension after extension to file pleadings and once moved a hearing to a larger courtroom so more ASD members could observe the events unfolding in public.

When ASD members stayed away in droves, Collyer moved the proceedings back to a smaller courtroom — only to be pummeled later by dozens of pro se pleadings from ASD members, including members who accused her of “treason” while championing Bowdoin through the U.S. mail.

While Collyer was deliberating the issues raised by attorneys for Bowdoin and attorneys for the government during the evidentiary hearing, ASD announced on its Breaking News website that it expected a revenue infusion of $200 million from a penny-stock company.

Bowdoin did not address the $200 million claim in his fundraising video, choosing instead to position himself as a victim of a “single, lone” judge — and a victim of his attorneys and federal prosecutors and Secret Service agents who had “crucified” him.

Bowdoin As Christian Flag-Waver

That Bowdoin, a self-styled Christian “money magnet,” is wrapping himself in the American flag and other patriotic symbols on the “Andy’s Army” website adds yet another layer of the absurd to the long-running ASD saga.

On Sept. 11, 2008, the seventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, an ASD member released a “prayer” that asked God to strike federal prosecutors dead.

“Pluck them out of their dwelling place!” the prayer commanded. “Root them out of the land of the living! Let evil slay them, and desolation be their lot!”

God, among other things, was asked to “Send divine angelic prophetic assaults against
all diabolical intelligence!” and to “Release divine viruses (emphasis added) to invade satanic databases (emphasis added) and command that they be consumed and destroyed!”

For good measure, God was asked to “Let all satanic manifestations cease and let divine abortive measures and miscarriages occur in satanic wombs and incubators!”

All in all, the “prayer” included 38 specific pleas for ASD/Bowdoin help from God. Included in the 38 was a plea that federal officials be “afflicted and tormented WITHOUT RELIEF.”

“Heavenly Father, you have given us a great work to accomplish! We war for the releasing of our finances and all resources that belong to us! Let those that hold on to our wealth longer than they should be afflicted and tormented WITHOUT RELIEF until they release what rightfully belongs to us!

“We command satan to cough it up! Spit it out! Release it! Loose (sic) it and let it go!!!!”

Nearly three years later, the prayer remains unanswered. It is almost certainly the case that, to Christian members of ASD who value intellectual honesty, the nonanswer was the answer. Indeed, asking God to let evil visit federal employees and cause their deaths is decidedly unChristian. No person with genuine faith in God ever would embrace an appeal for God to slay Bowdoin’s litigation opponents, whom the prayer defined as “satan.”

Since the prayer’s September 2008 debut, Bowdoin has lost two civil forfeiture cases, including one in which he did not even bother to file a claim. Bowdoin-connected assets have been targeted in a third forfeiture case. Meanwhile, he has been sued by some of his own members for racketeering — and, as was the case in the second forfeiture action, he did not bother to enter an immediate defense.

After nearly three years, it has come down to Andy Bowdoin blaming events on Collyer, Bowdoin’s attorneys and the agency that guards the life of the President of the United States while also guarding the U.S. financial infrastructure.

Even as Bowdoin is demonizing the U.S. justice system, he is clinging to his purported faith in God and using it as a reason to send him half a million dollars. Bowdoin, according to Bowdoin, has been attacked by the U.S. government under the direction of “Satan” himself.

Is Bowdoin Risking An Enormous Spam Fine?

In recent hours, some ASD members have received an “Andy’s Army” email (from a Google “gmail” address) that claims 75 people have ponied up “over” $3,000 for Bowdoin so far.

Why the email came from a Google address was unclear. What is clear is that some ASD members once tried to scam Google by encouraging ASD members to commit click fraud against Google. It also is clear that Google’s logo once was used in a promo for ASD that claimed Google and 23 other famous companies were ASD advertisers.

So, Bowdoin’s ASD — which at one time had members in its ranks who tried to defraud Google — apparently now has a subset of members (“andysdefensefund”) who are using Google’s gmail service and the “AndysFundraisingArmy” website to communicate with fundraising prospects. The email includes the name of “Andy Bowdoin” as the sender, and provides an “andysdefensefund” gmail address for return correspondence.

The email claims that an email “blast” will occur Monday “to the ASD Members List of Over 77,000.”

“This coming Monday, we will begin our email blast to the entire ASD Members list, and we will keep blasting this list every day or so, with different emails, until we get the Networking Momentum kicked in and turned on, causing rapid growth in our Fundraising Statistics, which will easily carry us to reaching our Goal” of $500,000, according to the email.

Sending “blasts” and repeating “blasts,” however, could trigger spam complaints if the intended recipients never agreed to receive email from “andysdefensefund” at a gmail address and had agreed only to receive email from ASD itself — not a defense fund or “Andy’s Army.”

The state of Florida dissolved AdSurfDaily Inc. in September 2009 and revoked its registration as a foreign corporation headquartered in Nevada. The state of Nevada also revoked ASD’s corporate registration.

A plan to “blast” 77,000 ASD members leads to questions about whether “andysdefensefund” at a gmail address and “Andy’s Army” are permitted to contact persons with whom they have no business relationship with a commercial proposition to send money to Bowdoin to pay for his defense.

And if ASD no longer is a registered corporation — and records in Florida and Nevada show that it is not — questions can be raised about how a dissolved entity is authorized to contact subscribers who no longer exist because the corporation itself has been dissolved.

Questions also can be raised about whether ASD, a dissolved corporation, is permitted to transfer an asset — its email list — to the “andysdefensefund” and the “Andy’s Army” fundraising entities without the express permission of former ASD members.

Bowdoin is not popular in all ASD circles. In 2009, some ASD members expressed disgust after they received a purported Christmas greeting from Bowdoin. Earlier, in March 2009, some ASD members expressed horror after they viewed Bowdoin pitching a mysterious, purported opportunity known as “Paperless Access” after the ASD-related seizures.

Still more horror surfaced in June 2009, when the AdViewGlobal (AVG) autosurf tanked. AVG, whose name is referenced in the 2009 racketeering lawsuit against Bowdoin, had close ties with ASD. The AVG collapse followed on the heels of a series of 200 percent “matching bonus” offers for both enrollees and their sponsors.

“Each separate email in violation of the “CAN-SPAM Act is subject to penalties of up to $16,000,” according to the FTC.

Even a small number of spam complaints triggered by the advertised email “blast” could be costly for Bowdoin if the “andysdefensefund” entity and “Andy’s Army” contact ASD members in unauthorized fashion.