Andrey C. Hicks, accused civilly by the SEC last week of orchestrating a domestic and offshore fraud, now has been charged criminally with wire fraud, federal prosecutors in Massachusetts said.
Kardashian and Humphries have been married barely two months. The divorce papers were filed today: Halloween Day. TMZ said Kardashian cited “irreconcilable” differences” with Humphries.
Hicks operated a purported hedge fund known as Locust Offshore Fund Ltd. and an entity known as Locust Offshore Management LLC of Delaware.
“Locust” is a term associated with a destructive bug capable of wiping out vegetation. How the firms allegedly operated by Hicks got their names was not immediately clear.
Trading on the names of destructive insects, however, is not unprecedented in the fraud sphere.
In May, a bizarre firm known as “Insectrio” was promoted on Ponzi scheme forums such as TalkGold, MoneyMakerGroup and DreamTeamMoney. Insectrio apparently collapsed in late August.
The SEC said Hicks made up two degrees from Harvard as part of his “Locust” scam, which involved more than $1.6 million, according to court filings.
We’ve mentioned it before — and we’ll mention it again. In July 2010, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) described the HYIP sphere as a “bizarre substratum of the Internet.”
It was as good a description as any, and here is yet another case in point:
The MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi forum said today that it “temporarily” closed its thread for the “JustBeenPaid” Ponzi scheme owing to bickering between “10BucksUp” and “lolalola.” JustBeenPaid, which is trading on the names of Warren Buffett and Oprah Winfrey, makes users affirm they are not government spies and purportedly began a transition in August to “offshore” servers. Members have been grumbling for weeks.
“10BucksUp” rose to Ponzi forum prominence earlier this year through his efforts to promote the Club Asteria HYIP, which is trading on the names of the World Bank and the American Red Cross. “10BucksUp” also promoted the JustBeenPaid HYIP while discouraging members from filing chargebacks with AlertPay for the good of all JustBeenPaid investors.
“lolalola” now is hawking something called JSSTRIPLER2 or T2, which apparently is trading on the name of JustBeenPaid’s purported JSS Tripler arm.
Although “10BucksUp” insists the purported new program is merely a “copycat” of the JustBeenPaid program, “lolalola” claims that, “[F]rom what I understand from the Admin is they did not trademark the brand or do they hold a copyright on the name… so he is free to use it.”
In essence, two fraud programs now appear to be trading on the same name — but both “10BucksUp” and “lolalola” appear to be more concerned about clashing with each other than whether the schemes have (or are) stealing cash on a grand scale.
Or something like that . . .
“lolalola” is simultaneously promoting something called Zeek Rewards.
“10BucksUp” recently has promoted Club Asteria, JustBeenPaid, Ad2Million and Cherry Shares. All of the programs are in a state of decay or outright disappearance. Cherry Shares is cited in litigation in Canada, and Club Asteria is cited in litigation in Italy.
MoneyMakerGroup is listed in U.S. federal court filings as a place from which Ponzi schemes are promoted. So is TalkGold, another Ponzi forum.
In this frame from a cash-gifting video dated May 3, 2008, then-AdSurfDaily pitchman Hank Needham opens an envelope from a cash-gifing scheme — and five $100 bills purportedly from "George" spill out. The date on the video coincides with a period of time in which Needham's image appeared in an ad for ASD. Needham later would emerge as a Club Asteria principal and purported owner of the "program," which suspended cashouts earlier this year and caught the attention of regulators in Italy.
Is anybody at home at Club Asteria and the purported Asteria Philanthropic Foundation? And where, precisely, is home?
The Club Asteria Blog on a .US domain has not been updated since Oct. 15. In the recent past, the Blog had been updated approximately every three (or so) days, according to the date notations on the site. Updates were posted on Oct. 15, Oct. 12, Oct. 9, Oct. 6, Oct. 3, Sept. 30, Sept. 27, Sept. 24, Sept. 21, Sept. 16.
Fifteen full days have passed since the most recent update.
Separately, the Club Asteria “News” page on its .com domain has not been updated since Sept. 12, a period that encompasses more than a month and a half.
Although the American Red Cross sent the Asteria Philanthropic Foundation a cease-and-desist letter six days ago amid concerns of brand leeching, Club Asteria continues to publish the Red Cross logo and name in its October house organ. The firm uses the publication, an emagazine, for recruiting.
It is common for fraud schemes to plant the seed they are affiliated with a legitimate entity.
Meanwhile, the Asteria Philanthropic Foundation, which also is known as the Asteria Foundation and uses street addresses in the United States and Hong Kong, also continues to publish the Red Cross name and logo on the foundation’s .org site.
Before suspending member cashouts earlier this year, Club Asteria issued payments via wire from a purported Hong Kong entity known as Asteria Holdings Limited, according to “I Got Paid” posts on infamous Ponzi scheme forums.
Last month, Club Asteria removed from its house organ an image and purported “interview” with actor Will Smith. A “JOIN NOW” button had been placed near the Smith-related content. In this month’s house organ, a “JOIN OUR MISSION” button was placed inside a quotation from Mahatma Gandhi, the slain Indian champion of freedom. Gandhi’s name was misspelled in the promo.
Virginia authorities said on Oct. 20 that Club Asteria was not registered as an issuer of securities in the state. They declined to say whether a Club Asteria probe was under way.
In May, CONSOB, the Italian securities regulator, banned promos for the firm in Italy.
In a video dated May 3, 2008 — prior to the apparent formation of Club Asteria and the Asteria Foundation but during a period of time in which Club Asteria principal Hank Needham’s image appeared in a promo for AdSurfDaily — Needham appeared in a video for cash gifting, the PP Blog has learned.
Needham is seen in the cash-gifting video opening an envelope from a courier service that contained a smaller envelope. The package purportedly was sent by “George.”
When Needham opened the smaller envelope, five $100 bills spilled out.
“Thank you, George, ” Needham said.
Needham then fanned the bills in front of the camera.
In August 2008, the U.S. Secret Service seized tens of millions of dollars in the ASD case, amid Ponzi allegations. It is known that some ASD members also were cash-gifting enthusiasts. After the ASD-related seizures, some ASD members sought to recruit others for cash-gifting, autosurf and HYIP schemes, claiming the schemes were excellent ways to make up for ASD losses while highlighting the purported “offshore” locations of some of the “programs.”
A bulletin board accessible only through the back offices of members of the purported “OneX” program includes a message that the program has disabled a “Transfer Funds” option because a “recent investigation” has determined that members “have been depositing funds from stolen credit cards and transferring this tainted money to hundreds of other members of the organization,” a source tells the PP Blog.
The bulletin-board announcement was dated yesterday and attributed to “the administration.” No OneX owner or operator was identified in the announcement, but members of OneX were told there was no choice left “but to disable the ‘Transfer Funds’ option indefinitely,” according to information provided by the source.
AdSurfDaily President and accused Ponzi schemer Andy Bowdoin emerged Monday as a OneX pitchman.
There was no corresponding announcement on the site that OneX or its staff had alerted authorities that members were joining with stolen credit cards, the source said.
Who conducted the “investigation” — the company or some other entity — was not made clear in the announcement.
“The Company must take a hard stance against this type of financial fraud in the interest of those hardworking, honest members who are legitimately building their businesses and depend on the survival of this Company for all the great financial opportunities that it represents,” the post on the bulletin board claimed, according to the source.
OneX is a purported 4×4 matrix linked to a purported 3×9 matrix known as QLxchange that purportedly operates from Panama through a server purportedly located on Isle of Man in the Irish Sea.
In a webinar Monday, Bowdoin told ASD members that they could earn $99,000 “very quickly” through OneX, a program he intended to use to pay for his criminal defense.
Bowdoin, who has participated in at least three webinars this week in which he sang the praises of the purported opportunity, was charged with wire fraud, securities fraud and selling unregistered securities last year.
In 2009, an autosurf known as AdViewGlobal (AVG) reportedly disabled a button that permitted members to transfer money to other members. AVG, which had close ASD ties, purportedly was based in Uruguay.
OneX purportedly has 750,000 members.
On Monday, Bowdoin claimed God had led him to his strategy of using OneX to raise defense funds for his Ponzi battle against the government.
“I believe that God has brought us OneX to provide the necessary funds to win this case,” Bowdoin said.
A PP Blog reader (“Tony”) reported at 6:45 p.m. EDT today that a OneX/QLxchange-related “press release” dated Oct. 11 had appeared on PRLog, a news-release distribution site. The release, which also referenced cash-gifting and a “pay it forward” strategy, was attributed Bryce Jackson, a purported “Business Mentor” and “Success Coach.”
“God truly wants you to be a blessing to other people during these bad economic times,” the release read in part.
Links in the press release lead to sites where people who register reportedly are given information about OneX/XLxchange. One of the sites is called “godsmoneyfeeder”; another is called “whatablessing.”
Bowdoin also is promoting a “pay it forward” theme for OneX, according to his webinar remarks.
In essence, “pay it forward” — also known as PIF or “benefactoring” — is a practice by which money theoretically stays in constant motion and flows to schemes because sponsors pay fees for recruits and encourage recruits to to the same for their recruits.
EDITOR’S NOTE: If you’ve been keeping a “Bubba Blue” notebook on ways to have your Ponzi scheme as opposed to shrimp, here is another entry . . .
BULLETIN: A California man, his wife and his Indiana-based mother have been arrested in an alleged $2.5 million Ponzi scheme tied to a bogus insurance company known as “State Bonding California,” which purportedly was in the business of arranging bail, authorities said.
Anthony Trae Carlson, 42, was charged with 40 felony counts. His wife, Mariah Waterfall O’Brien, 40, was charged with 23 felonies. Meanwhile, his 68-year-old mother — Arvina Joyce Carlson — also was charged with 23 felony counts.
Bail for Anthony Carlson was set at $2.5 million. Bail for his wife and mother was set at $1.9 million each.
“This family conspired to rip off honest investors,” said Dave Jones, California’s insurance commissioner.
The scheme began in February 2005 and ran through December 2008, investigators at the California Department of Insurance (CDI) said. Among the claims were that the bogus bonding firm conducted business in nearly all of the U.S. states (at least 44 of 50) and produced more than $1 billion in annual revenue.
Such a purported widespread geographic presence and such purported fabulous revenue numbers apparently tricked investors into believing they’d receive “guaranteed” annual returns of between 19 percent and 21 percent after purchasing “membership interests.”
At least seven people plowed more than $2.5 million into the scheme, investigators said.
“At least one suspect used fraudulent multimillion dollar State Bonding California dividend checks to persuade victims to invest in the bogus company,” investigators said.
But “State Bonding California was never licensed to sell insurance by CDI nor was it licensed to offer securities by the California Department of Corporations,” investigators said.
The probe “revealed that the only address associated with the company was a post office box located in Hollywood,” investigators said. “In addition, none of the defendants were licensed to offer securities in the State of California.”
Anthony Carlson and his wife lived “a lavish Hollywood lifestyle” in the hills of Los Feliz, investigators said.
If Anthony Carlson is convicted on all counts, he will face a potential sentence of more than 27 years in state prison, investigators said. His wife and mother could be sentenced to 21 years each in state prison, if convicted on all counts.
UPDATE: Awaiting his Ponzi scheme trial on charges of wire fraud, securities fraud and selling unregistered securities, AdSurfDaily President Andy Bowdoin has participated this week in at least three webinars for a mysterious program known as “OneX.”
OneX is a program pushed on Ponzi boards such as TalkGold and MoneyMakerGroup. It appears to be an MLM-style 4×4 matrix feeder program for a purported Panamanian entity known as QLxchange, which may be operating a gold- and silver-themed investment program and 3×9 matrix from Isle of Man in the Irish Sea.
“Tonight we’ll be talking about a financial bailout program for the average person,” Bowdoin said last night, in preliminary remarks about OneX.
In presentations that appear to have been heavily scripted, the accused Ponzi schemer sang the praises of OneX in at least two webinars Monday, touting it as a way for ASD members to make $99,000 “very quickly” by joining what effectively would be an ASD downline group in OneX through which incoming recruits could benefit through leverage delivered by Bowdoin and former members of the defunct autosurf.
Bowdoin or his handlers, however, appear to have altered the script after a listener raised a concern in Monday’s first webinar that purported “leads” for incoming OneX recruits would come from ASD’s database and be awarded to new enrollees in violation of members’ ASD agreements.
On Monday, Bowdoin said he intended to use proceeds that flowed from OneX to pay for his criminal defense. Last week, U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer set the ASD patriarch’s trial date for Sept. 24, 2012.
In yesterday’s webinar, Bowdoin told listeners who perhaps were members of OneX prior to the creation of an ASD downline group that they could create a second OneX account that would be placed in the ASD group. The accused Ponzi schemer suggested that it was possible to create even more OneX accounts.
“You can create a new [OneX] account in your spouse’s name, family-member name or friends,” Bowdoin coached, noting that the accounts would require the use of different email addresses and usernames.
“You can work both at the same time,” Bowdoin said.
Earlier in the Thursday pitch, he offered his congratulations to webinar attendees who’d purportedly exercised the prudence to listen to him and become “more successful in life.”
“This puts you in the top 10 percent, because most people never look outside the box to improve their financial situation,” he assured listeners.
Bowdoin faces up to 125 years in federal prison if convicted of the Ponzi charges announced by federal prosecutors in the District of Columbia in December 2010. Bowdoin previously was implicated in an Alabama securities swindle, according to court records. One of his business partners was implicated in three prime-bank swindles.
Despite the serious criminal charges against him and civil judgments totaling tens of millions of dollars against ASD-related assets, Bowdoin suggested yesterday that he and ASD had a “tremendous” success record for marketing on the Internet.
In yesterday’s webinar, Bowdoin introduced Rayda Roundy, whom he identified Monday as a former ASD trainer.
Roundy thanked Bowdoin for the introduction.
“I appreciate being here with you,” Roundy said of Bowdoin.
Whether OneX is thrilled to have Bowdoin, an accused Ponzi schemer who has been formally indicted for wire fraud and securities-related crimes, driving traffic to its scheme is unclear.
BULLETIN:Thanh-Viet “Jeremy” Cao, the California Ponzi schemer and purported “sovereign citizen” who was sentenced in May to 30 years in federal prison for the Ponzi caper, now has been sentenced to an additional 41 months for a Nevada crime in which he filed false liens for hundreds of millions of dollars against government officials.
Under investigation by the U.S. Secret Service, the Justice Department, the SEC and the IRS, Cao reacted by filing 22 false liens against against “SEC attorneys, U.S. District Court Judges, U.S. District Court Magistrate Judges, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California, Assistant U.S. Attorneys, USSS special agents and special agents of the IRS,” the Justice Department said.
Cao pleaded guilty to six counts of filing false liens in which he listed the federal officials as “debtors,” prosecutors said.
It was not immediately clear if Cao’s sentence in the liens case will run concurrently or consecutively to the 30-year sentence in the Ponzi case. In May, U.S. Attorney Laura E. Duffy of the Southern District of California described Cao as a “financial predator.”
The Ponzi scheme sentence was among the longest in the history of Southern California, and investigators said Cao kept his victims in a state of terror by telling them he knew people who previously had “chopped up” a baby in front of the baby’s parents, and then killed the baby’s mother,” prosecutors said.
As part of his liens fraud, Cao developed a “hit list” in which he promised to obtain certain personal information of government offcials “so he could ruin them financially,” prosecutors said.
In yet another bizarre and disturbing development on the fraud front, the SEC went to federal court in Massachusetts yesterday, leveling spectacular allegations of financial deceit against Locust Offshore Management LLC of Delaware and Cambridge, Mass., and its principal, Andrey C. Hicks of Boston.
Named a relief defendant was Locust Offshore Fund Ltd., a purported hedge fund in the British Virgin Islands that is alleged to have been the bogus recipient of ill-gotten gains.
Neither of the Locust entities was registered with the SEC, and claims that Locust was properly registered and in good standing in the British Virgin Islands were false, the agency alleged.
Although Hicks, 27, planted the seed he had both undergraduate and graduate degrees from Harvard, the claims were false, the SEC said.
Nor was Hicks ever employed by Barclays Capital as he claimed, the agency charged.
Meanwhile, Ernst & Young — contrary to the claims of Hicks — was not the auditor of the Locust Fund, the SEC charged. At the same time, Credit Suisse was not the fund’s prime broker and custodian, and the fund was not incorporated in the British Virgin Isles as Hicks had claimed, the agency added.
The scheme operated in part through a website designed to trick investors, the SEC said. Despite high-sounding claims on the site that the “firm’s quantitative strategies are based on mathematical models developed by the fund’s manager, Andrey C. Hicks, during his tenure at Harvard University and are executed by computer software,” Hicks attended Harvard for only three semesters as an undergraduate — and flunked out twice, the SEC alleged.
He was not permitted to re-enroll after his second dismissal, the SEC charged. During his brief time at Harvard, Hicks took only one math course, carding a D-minus, the agency said, quoting records from the prestigious university.
None of these things, however, kept Hicks from creating a website and using it to mask the fraud and sanitize the scheme, establishing Locust Offshore Management LLC as a Delaware corporation, opening business and personal checking accounts, creating offering materials for his unregistered firm purportedly operating offshore — and hawking his fraud scheme, the SEC charged.
Hicks met one of his customers on an “airplane,” telling his fellow voyager that Locust had $1.5 billion under management , that he had a PhD in “applied mathematics” from Harvard and had developed his trading skills at Barclays before setting out on his own at Locust, the SEC charged.
Among other things, Hicks told his airplane mark that Barclays was a “large investor” in the Locust fund and touted the Locust website. The pair exchanged business cards, the SEC said.
After meeting Hicks on the plane, the investor visited the Locust website last month, viewing purported data about the firm, including a claim that the fund had more than $1.2 billion under management and had generated “an incredible year-to-date return of 78.59 percent,” the SEC alleged.
“All of the financial data appeared on web-pages that described the data as ‘powered by Credit Suisse,’ creating the false and deceptive impression that the data came from Credit Suisse,” the SEC charged.
In reality, the SEC charged, bank records showed that the enterprise had only about about $1.7 million under management.
Based on the false information provided by Hicks, the investor plowed $100,000 into the scheme, the SEC said, alleging that, within days of the September investment, Hicks moved the money into his personal checking account.
Between June 2, 2011 and Oct. 11, 2011, other investors from Massachusetts, Minnesota and Iowa appear to have plowed more than $1.6 million into the scheme — with $83,000 being the low-end investment and $500,000 being the high end, the SEC alleged.
“Substantially all” of the money was transferred to to “checking and savings deposit accounts in the sole, personal name of Hicks,” the SEC charged.
U.S. District Judge Richard Stearns ordered an asset freeze, the SEC said.
Part of today's unusual traffic pattern of multiple international IPs simultaneously pulling the same "old" story. (Also see screen shot below.)
At approximately 2:06 p.m. EDT Monday, the PP Blog began to experience an unusual traffic pattern. In the past, such patterns have been the precursors of sustained electronic assaults against the Blog.
The unusual pattern reoccurred yesterday, and the Blog contacted a federal law-enforcement agency. The agency is aware of a server-killing assault on the Blog that began a year ago this week. It also is aware of subsequent attacks. The Blog believes that one or more criminals is responsible for the unusual traffic pattern, which mostly features multiple international IPs attempting to pull the same “old” stories simultaneously.
Although Monday and Tuesday’s unusual traffic eventually dissipated, the pattern resumed today and caused the Blog’s server briefly to exceed its normal operating parameters. Not all of the unusual activity is captured in the screen shots published in this post.
PP Blog Today Discloses Nature Of April Incident
In April 2011, the Blog reported an unusual incident to the same federal law-enforcement agency referenced above. The incident involved a claim of responsibility for a crippling springtime botnet flood against the Blog by a person who claimed to have carried out the attack on behalf of a specific, U.S.-based company with an international presence. The “opportunity” purportedly provided by the company was widely promoted on Ponzi scheme boards earlier this year, and the person also claimed to represent other companies. In making the claim of responsibility, the person described the Blog as “your little vicious blog.”
The Blog provided the agency information about the April event, which the Blog viewed as a bid to chill its reporting. The implication of the April incident was that the attacks could continue at the will of a self-described “master of execution” for online investment schemes until such a time the Blog devoted between $60,000 and $72,000 a year to deflect the traffic.
In the claim of responsibility, the self-described attacker used the phrase “TOP HYIPs” and the name of an HYIP purveyor. He described himself in menacing language.
Although the Blog is maintaining a full publishing schedule and its server has returned to normal operating parameters today, the signatures of certain “calls” to the Blog’s editorial well are troublesome and will be monitored closely in the coming hours and days.
URGENT >> BULLETIN >> MOVING: The American Red Cross, which opened a probe last week into the potential misuse of its name and logo by the Asteria Philanthropic Foundation, has sent the foundation a letter to cease and desist.
Anne Marie Borrego, a spokeswoman for the Red Cross in Washington, D.C., said this morning that the letter went out yesterday. The Asteria Philanthropic Foundation, also known as the Asteria Foundation, uses a Hong Kong street address and has issued at least one undated “press release” that uses a dateline of Reston, Va.
The foundation is linked to Club Asteria, a purported earnings “program” that traded on the name of the World Bank and became a darling of the Ponzi boards earlier this year before suspending cashouts.
The Red Cross logo and name appeared in Club Asteria’s October 2011 house organ, which the firm uses for recruiting. The Red Cross name and logo also appears on the Asteria foundation’s .org domain.
Claims about Club Asteria caught the attention of CONSOB, the Italian securities regulator, in May. Officials in Virginia last week said that neither Club Asteria nor Asteria Corp. was registered to sell securities in the state. Asteria Corp. is Club Asteria’s apparent parent company.
Virginia officials declined to say whether a state-level probe into the activities of Club Asteria was under way.
A 2008 promo for AdSurfDaily features an image of Hank Needham, a purported Club Asteria principal. ASD later was implicated by the U.S. Secret Service in an alleged Ponzi scheme involving at least $110 million.
Club Asteria was widely promoted on Ponzi boards such as TalkGold and MoneyMakerGroup. Promoters later turned their attention to “programs” such as Centurion Wealth Circle and JustBeenPaid, which is trading on the names and images of Warren Buffett, Oprah Winfrey, Benjamin Franklin and “Mr. Spock” of the Star Trek movie and televison series.
Last month, Club Asteria removed an image of actor Will Smith from its house organ. This month, the company is trading on a quote from Mahatma Gandhi, the slain champion of freedom in India. A “JOIN OUR MISSION” button was placed inside a quote from Gandhi, whose name was misspelled in the publication.
AdSurfDaily President Andy Bowdoin told members yesterday that they could "earn $99,000 very quickly" in a program known as OneX. The Florida-based ASD patriarch claimed to hope he could fund his defense to U.S. securities-related charges through OneX, which appears to be tied to a Panamanian firm that uses a domain name with a Montenegro extension and may operate from Isle of Man in the Irish Sea.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The PP Blog may have more on this developing story in the coming days.
In a bizarre development, accused Ponzi schemer Andy Bowdoin of AdSurfDaily told webinar listeners yesterday that he intended to fund his criminal defense to charges of wire fraud, securities fraud and selling unregistered securities through a purported business opportunity known as OneX, the PP Blog has learned.
OneX, which uses a domain extension assigned to the European country of Montenegro and a webserver apparently positioned in the Irish Sea nation of Isle of Man, is described in MLM-style web promos as a 4X4 matrix feeder program for a Panamanian investment firm and commodities enterprise known as QLxchange.
Whether OneX or QLxchange have any securities or commodities registrations in the United States or other countries was not immediately clear.
Serving as the webinar host, ASD figure Tari Steward, who is helping Bowdoin raise funds for Bowdoin’s criminal defense and is listed in Bowdoin court filings as a potential ASD witness, described OneX as a winner while introducing Bowdoin.
OneX has “already proven to be hugely successful here in the U.S.A. and all around the world,” Steward said.
Mixing commentary on his Ponzi case with his OneX sales pitch, Bowdoin, 76, managed to work in a dig against the federal judge presiding over the criminal case against him. Bowdoin also chided federal prosecutors in the District of Columbia.
Saying he was pleased that his trial date had been set nearly a year from now in September 2012 and describing it as an act of divine providence made possible after prayerful introspection, Bowdoin suggested the judge and prosecutors were disappointed that Collyer’s busy scheduled did not permit an earlier trial date.
Both “Judge Collyer and the prosecution was wanting the closest time possible because they didn’t want to give us much time to prepare,” Bowdoin claimed, shortly after greeting webinar listeners with a “Hi, Folks.”
Isle of Man highlighted in red: Source: Wikipedia.
And Bowdoin, who did not identify the operators of OneX or speak to whether the purported program was required to be registered to market securities and commodities to U.S. inhabitants, sang the praises of the firm.
“This program can provide you with earnings beyond your wildest imagination . . .” he claimed.
Bowdoin further ventured that OneX “will produce the legal fees we need and make each one of you a ton of money.”
“Now, when you finish this webinar,” he continued, “you’ll be so excited that you won’t be able to stop thinking about it.”
ASD members will “wake up in the morning thinking about [OneX],” Bowdoin claimed. “For the next three days, you’ll be thinking about it constantly.”
At a May 2008 ASD “rally” in Las Vegas prior to the seizure of tens of millions of dollars from his personal bank accounts, Bowdoin — describing himself as a Christian “money magnet” — urged members to imagine payments from ASD flowing to them “constantly.”
Federal prosecutions referenced Bowdoin’s Las Vegas remarks in the Ponzi indictment announced against him in December 2010. He has been free awaiting trial since his arrest.
Bowdoin went on to claim in yesterday’s OneX pitch that “you’ll soon see how you can earn $99,000 very quickly.”
As part of his OneX pitch, Bowdoin described the firm as “one of the greatest financial vehicles on the Internet today” and asked a series of questions:
“Do you want to get out of debt?”
Do you need to catch up on some house payments?”
“Do you want to pay cash in the next 90 days for a new automobile . . .”
Bowdoin’s pitch also mixed in quotations from scripture.
Based on its research, the PP Blog is reporting today that members of the purported Club Asteria business opportunity and the purported JustBeenPaid opportunity also have promoted OneX. An image of Club Asteria principal Hank Needham appeared in an ad for ASD in 2008. Meanwhile, web records show that Frederick Mann, the purported operator of JustBeenPaid, also was an ASD pitchman.
Among the Club Asteria pitchmen who turned their attentions to OneX are “strosdegoz.” Club Asteria-related claims came under fire from CONSOB, the Italian securities regulator, in May.
Also participating in Bowdoin’s webinar was Rayda Roundy, whom Bowdoin described as a former ASD “trainer.”
Roundy told listeners that a “pay it forward” strategy with OneX will help participants make money and help Bowdoin raise defense funds.
OneX participants could create their own “bailout” program, Roundy claimed.
After Bowdoin took back the webinar helm from Roundy, the ASD patriarch reminded members to send questions about OneX to a Gmail email address.
And then Bowdoin said this:
“Now, from time to time, people ask me, ‘Andy, how do you remain so peaceful?’ My answer is God.”
He went on to claim that God had led him to his strategy of using OneX to raise defense funds.
“I believe that God has brought us OneX to provide the necessary funds to win this case,” Bowdoin said.
Andrey C. Hicks, accused civilly by the SEC last week of orchestrating a domestic and offshore fraud, now has been charged criminally with wire fraud, federal prosecutors in Massachusetts said.
