BULLETIN: ASDCashGenerator Website Now Returns A Server Error; PP Blog Observed Error After Clicking On Link In 2008 ASD Promo That Featured Photo Of Current Club Asteria Pitchman Hank Needham

This 2008 ad for AdSurfDaily features an image of Hank Needham and continues to appear online. Last month, an old ASD Cash Generator affiliate link within the ad began to resolve to a page for an opportunity known as Ad Sales Daily International. Today, however, the link is resolving to a page that returns a server error. The reason why was not immediately clear. In a video released last month, Needham identified himself as a principal of Club Asteria. The video was released after Club Asteria, which trades on the name of the World Bank, acknowledged that its PayPal account had been frozen and claimed that it had suspended payouts to members. Club Asteria blamed the developments on members. But some Club Asteria members, including "Ken Russo," have claimed that they continue to be paid by Club Asteria through AlertPay, a Canadian payment processor. "Ken Russo" posts as "DRdave" on the TalkGold Ponzi forum. Talk Gold, which is known for helping HYIPs and other "programs" that promise or suggest preposterous weekly or even daily payouts to members achieve virality on the Internet, moved ClubAsteria to its scam folder last week. The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) said in July 2010 that "HYIPs are old-fashioned Ponzi schemes dressed up for a Web 2.0 world." Some "programs" have tried to distance themselves from the term "HYIP" by declaring themselves "revenue-sharing" programs or using other language tweaks in their offers. Some Club Asteria members have claimed that the firm's program paid out up to 520 percent a year -- while preemptively denying Club Asteria was an HYIP or Ponzi scheme and describing it as a revenue-sharing program. Other members described Club Asteria as a "passive" program that provided a weekly return on investment and an income of more than $20,000 a year if members paid only $19.95 a month.

BULLETIN: (UPDATED 10:16 A.M. EDT (AUG. 22, U.S.A.) As the PP Blog first reported on July 12, the ASDCashGenerator.com domain once controlled by accused Ponzi schemer Andy Bowdoin had returned online and was promoting a mysterious opportunity known as “Ad Sales Daily International.”

But the ASDCashGenerator website now is throwing a server error and returning this message: “The server encountered an unexpected condition which prevented it from fulfilling the request. The script had an error or it did not produce any output . . .”

In July, the PP Blog observed that the ASDCashGenerator domain had become operational again after clicking on a link from a 2008 ASD affiliate promotion that featured a photograph of Hank Needham. After his days in 2008 as an ASD pitchman and lead generator, Needham emerged as a principal in Club Asteria.

Club Asteria, which trades on the name of the World Bank and targets its offer to the world’s poor, announced weeks ago that its PayPal account had been frozen and that it had suspended payouts to members amid a serious cash crunch. The firm blamed the developments on members.

Claims about Club Asteria are under investigation by Italian regulators.

Some Club Asteria promoters claimed Club Asteria was a “passive” investment program that paid a return of up to 10 percent a week. The news section of the firm’s website has not been updated since July 21. The last Club Asteria news update occurred nine days after the PP Blog reported that the old ASD Cash Generator URL associated with Needham was sending visitors to the purported Ad Sales Daily International opportunity, which appears to have been an upstart that did not fully launch.

Precisely when the old ASD Cash Generator domain became operational again is unclear. The domain, however, appears to have directed all old ASD affiliate links to the purported Ad Sales Daily International opportunity, which had its own logo.

The PP Blog observed the server error on the ASDCashGenerator site today after it again clicked on the old ASDCashGenerator affiliate link in the 2008 ASD promotion that featured Needham’s photograph. On July 12, the same affiliate link returned a pitch page for the mysterious Ad Sales Daily International program.

Federal prosecutors declined to comment in July on the curious return of the ASDCashGenerator website and the reactivation of the ASDCashGenerator domain name, which previously had been associated with Bowdoin and the alleged ASD Ponzi scheme.  The site had been reregistered in the name of Barbara Cruz.

Cruz was associated in 2009 with an ASD cheerleading site known as ASD2Day that made confusing claims about the then-Bowdoin controlled ASDCashGenerator site, including a claim that ASD could not be a Ponzi scheme because the script employed by ASD could not be programmed to permit a Ponzi scheme to occur. The ASD2Day site also asserted that U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer was on an Aug. 28 [2009] deadline “to determine if the US Attorney General’s case against ASD should move forward.”

Collyer, who presided over the civil-forfeiture cases involving Bowdoin and ASD Cash Generator and now is presiding over the criminal case against Bowdoin after he was arrested for wire fraud and other crimes in December 2010, was under no such deadline. Although a deadline did exist at the time, it was not one that applied to Collyer.

Rather, it was a deadline imposed by Collyer on Bowdoin to file pleadings in one of the ASD civil-cases or face the forfeiture of more than $65.8 million seized by the U.S. Secret Service in August 2008. After not having heard from Bowdoin for more than two months, Collyer issued the order to Bowdoin in July 2009.  Bowdoin then asked for a series of delays to comply with the order, saying he was in negotiations with federal prosecutors.

Collyer ultimately gave Bowdoin until Sept. 14, 2009, to comply with the order. Bowdoin ultimately complied, apparently after his negotiations with prosecutors had broken down.

A supporter of the ASD2Day cheerleading site for ASD claimed on the PP Blog on Oct. 23, 2009, that Cruz was his mother and that “we where (sic) one of the biggest [ASD] leaders earning over $8,000 daily.”

Little is known about the purported Ad Sales Daily International “opportunity” that, at least for weeks, was accessible through Bowdoin’s old ASDCashGenerator website that had been reregistered in the name of Cruz. The ASD2Day website, which also had a Cruz tie and promoted Ad Sales Daily International, now is displaying a page that beams advertisements.

The domain registration for ASD2Day appears to have expired Aug. 19. AdSalesDailyInternational appears not to have a domain registered in its own name.

Today’s strange developments follow on the heels of a bizarre bid by Bowdoin to raise $500,000 to pay for his criminal defense through a series of “blast” emails to the very individuals he is accused of defrauding: ASD members.

Bowdoin disses Collyer in a fundraising video released July 26 — without mentioning Collyer by name.

ASD is known to have ties to so-called “sovereign citizens.”