TelexFree Live Bankruptcy-Court Coverage By Jordan Maglich Of Ponzi Tracker
Jordan Maglich of PonziTracker is providing live coverage of today’s key TelexFree session in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Nevada:
12:44 p.m. Hearing beginning:
Click here.
1:07 p.m. PPBlog note: Based on Jordan’s reporting, it looks as though the U.S. Attorney’s office has filed civil and criminal forfeiture actions. This is similar to what happened in the AdSurfDaily MLM HYIP case in 2008.
1:18 p.m. PPBlog note: One way to view the forfeiture actions is that the United States perceives an attack on the country’s banking infrastructure, opening the door for banks and payment processors effectively to become warehouses and distribution centers for fraud proceeds. For the sake of discussion, let’s say TelexFree has 700,000 members. This could mean there are 700,000 conduits to offload proceeds accumulated during a Ponzi scheme. The FBI has been warning about this type of thing for YEARS.
4:30 p.m. PPBlog note: Testimony resumes after break for lunch. Visit PonziTracker.
Thank you Patrick for providing the link to follow the Telex hearing.
It was great to be able to follow along.
I look forward to reading your thoughts on what transpired.
Hi Dorothy,
Here’s hoping Jordan’s readers help him retire his costs. Button is below the coverage:
http://www.ponzitracker.com/main/2014/5/2/live-blogging-the-telexfree-bankruptcy-hearing.html
My initial thoughts are that some TelexFree members are spreading a sea of misinformation. A couple (at least) also appear to have lifted Jordan’s work without attribution.
Patrick
Effectively moving the status of the bankruptcy proceedings to interesting side issue
My initial thoughts are that some TelexFree members are spreading a sea of misinformation
This may be true but we can take commfort in the fact that no financial transactions are taking place.
They’re being saved from themselves?
Believe me, if history is any guide, you ain’t seen nuttin’ yet.
I don’t know if Patricks’ coverage of the AdSurf Daily case is still available in the archives, but what you’re seeing is “deja vu all over again” albeit on a larger scale.
BIZARRE doesn’t even come close to describing what fraudsters and many HYIP ponzi participants will do in an attempt to delay the inevitable.
@littleroundman
I find it facinating that people are fighting for the ones that stole from them and hate us for trying to help them understand that they’ve been douped. (And at the same time they come here to the so called enemy for advice on what to do against the company who stole from them…)
I wish I was back in college taking my sociology class and my prof. asked us to come up with a study….this surely would be my topic today (although the one I came up with was more interesting..lol). I’ve come to beleive in the phenomenon of mass hypnosis….at a lack of a better word yet… First one I read about was the tulip bulbs in Holland….now that was nuts…so was the cabadge patch doll craze here in USA back in the 80’s…or beenie babies here in USA again… for small stuffed animals people were acting like nuts trying to get their hands on them….paying 600-1000 dollars for a stuffed animal?????
People came to beleive they were going to be worth a ton of money in the future….Helloooooo?
In Colombia, when David Murcia’s huge Ponzi got raided, people did hunger strikes in Bogota, chanting “We believe in God and David Murcia”
In India, when the SpeakAsia ponzi scheme collapsed, an organization called AISPA actually PAID OFF one victim (who filed a lawsuit) to impede government investigation.
In the US, some ASD fans created “ASD Justice” to “avenge” Ad Surf Daily, and actively sued various US agencies, attorney general, undercover agents who gathered the evidence for the case, and the judges, for several years. Their files are available on Asdupdates.com
Quick note: In the ASD case, the following things (below) happened. These notes also include parallels with TelexFree and/or Zeek in brackets:
* Feds quietly infiltrated ASD and watched and listened to all the craziness, including claims by promoters that they KNEW they were in a Ponzi scheme. One promoter (at least) nevertheless offered his/her signup link to an undercover agent. Instructions also were given NOT to call it an investment. [TelexFree and Zeek, of course, also trotted out the “don’t call it an investment” horseshit. MLM attorney Gerald Nehra advanced this TelexFree horseshit from a stage in Newport Beach that appears to have been rented by TelexFree or Tom More, an alleged winner in the Zeek scheme.]
* Feds filed a forfeiture complaint against ASD assets that alleged wire fraud and also cited the RICO statute. Complaint alleged a conspiracy. The complaint became public on a Friday.
* On that Friday, ASD operator Andy Bowdoin claimed God was on the company’s side. [Think about TelexFree’s Carlos Costa in Brazil. Also think about the alleged comments of TelexFree’s Sann Rodrigues that God started MLM and “binary.”]
Ref: https://patrickpretty.com/2014/04/30/sec-telexfrees-sann-rodrigues-on-youtube-god-started-mlm-and-made-binary-i-am-never-going-to-stop-this/
* ASD members circulated false reports that the forfeiture complaint was no big deal and that ASD would be back up in running within a few days. Some ASDers took advantage of the situation and tried to sell fellow members into other HYIPs and cash-gifting schemes. [“Plan B.” Same thing happened in TelexFree and Zeek.]
* On the following Tuesday, the Secret Service and sheriff’s deputies raided ASD headquarters. [Sheriff’s deputies also were involved in the TelexFree raid.]
* ASD’s Andy Bowdoin, an American, sickeningly compared the Secret Service to “Satan” and the 9/11 terrorists, thus creating an MLM storyline that will live in infamy. On Sept. 11, 2008, the seventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people, an ASD downline group circulated a “prayer” that called for the Secret Service agents and federal prosecutors to be struck dead by the hand of God and for the ASD database in possession of the Feds to be divinely erased.
* ASD members planted false stories all over the web that asserted ASD had been cleared or soon would be. [Similar thing is happening now among TelexFree members.]
* Bowdoin and some likely co-conspirators hatched a new HYIP scheme, even as the ASD forfeiture case was still in the courts. The same people they’d ripped off earlier were targeted again. ASD money that hadn’t been seized and had been secreted away almost certainly was used to start the second scheme. [Members paid their uplines directly in some cases. The same thing happened in Zeek and TelexFree.]
* Even as he was knee-deep in a second scheme, Bowdoin signed away the rights to the seized ASD cash. He reportedly had been influenced by a “group” of ASD members to try to reenter the case.
* After firing his paid attorney’s without notice, Bowdoin started filing bizarre pro se pleadings. Some of his co-conspirators helped advance the narrative. The Feds watched and listened, and THEN announced that Bowdoin had signed a proffer letter in the case and admitted the government’s material allegations were all true.
* Curtis Richmond, a purported “sovereign” being, entered the fray, accusing the judge of 60 or so felonies. The ASD zombies cheered and called him a “hero.” Richmond, a Californian, was a member of purported Utah “Indian tribe” that, in a separate case, had issued bogus “arrest warrants” and tried to have a federal judge and litigation opponents jailed. Richmond was sued successfully under the federal RICO statute. In yet-another case, Richmond effectively was ordered placed under house arrest because he was threatening federal judges in California.
* “Sovereign citizen” Kenneth Wayne Leaming and Christian Oesch entered the ASD fray, trying unsuccessfully to sue the U.S. government for billions or trillions for alleged misdeeds. Leaming later filed bogus liens against a federal judge, one or more federal prosecutors and the Secret Service agent who led the ASD investigation. For these and other crimes, including illegally possessing firearms and harboring federal fugitives in a separate “work at home” caper, Leaming was sentenced to eight years in federal prison.
* Bowdoin was sued by some of his own members for racketeering.
* ASD members Todd Disner and Dwight Owen Schweitzer — both of whom went on to become alleged Zeek winners — entered the fray. Disner and Schweitzer asserted the ASD case was a “house of cards” — this after the government had prevailed in both the District Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals.
* Before Bowdoin was sentenced in the parallel ASD criminal case, the government put him in jail, citing his ASD reload scam (AdViewGlobal) and a second scam he’d tried to push. [The second scam was OneX, popularized in part by alleged Zeek winner and Florida “expat” T. LeMont Silver.]
* Disner and Schweitzer pressed forward with their lawsuit, advancing a narrative that the government was picking on an old man and claiming Gerald Nehra and Keith Laggos more or less were the maximum MLM experts. [Nehra’s law firm, of course, also was associated with ASD and Zeek and, later, TelexFree. Laggos was an alleged Zeek winner. He also had a “Plan B”: Lyoness.]
* The judge tossed the Disner/Schweitzer lawsuit on the same day she sentenced Andy Bowdoin to federal prison after earlier banning him from MLM because of his constant scheming.
Patrick
Assuming the Feds are pursuing the same gameplan, can we expect to see RICO charges against the TelexFree 8?
Hard to say. It would be nice to see the TelexFree-related forfeiture complaints/search-warrant applications asserted to exist in filings by the U.S. Attorney in Massachusetts.
Those would provide at least a glimpse into how criminal prosecutors view the lay of the land.
Patrick
Quick note: Jordan Maglich has posted some audios of TelexFree’s bankruptcy hearing yesterday:
http://www.ponzitracker.com/main/2014/5/3/listen-to-the-telexfree-bankruptcy-hearing-here.html
Patrick
One of my favorite lies told by the ASD faithful was that the Secret Service admitted “privately” that they didn’t have a case against ASD and were trying to find a way out that would not embarrass them.
The more things change, the more things stay the same.
My hats off to Jordan for excellent reporting.
Class action lawsuit filed against TelexFREE individuals
http://marlborough.wickedlocal.com/article/20140502/NEWS/140509026
Yes. This one was hatched in the early fall of 2008 at the Surf’s Up ASD shilling site and included a claim that the government secretly had admitted ASD was not a Ponzi scheme.
Among the problems with the claim was that the government later went back to court (December 2008) and filed a SECOND forfeiture complaint — once again alleging ASD was a Ponzi scheme. Despite the fact the government went on to file a THIRD forfeiture complaint, the ASDers clung to the long-ago discredited narrative that there had been a secret acknowledgement that ASD was not a Ponzi scheme.
One of my personal faves from the ASD apologists was a line of high truth from one of the pushers of AdViewGlobal, the ASD reload scam.
“Most if not all of your LEADERS [emphasis added] are joining,” he counseled.
I think of that line every time I view a TelexFree video touting the “leaders.”
Memory Lane:
https://patrickpretty.com/2009/02/02/adviewglobal-touted-as-billion-dollar-company/
Of course, Zeek had “leaders,” too. Some of them went on to help Zeek become the largest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history based on the number of victims.
And the “leaders” appear now to have helped TelexFree become the largest Ponzi scheme in world history based on the number of victims.
Patrick
Zeek floated the EXACT SAME storyline: SEC lawyers knew they railroaded Burks by mistake, didn’t really have a case against Zeek, and was trying to find a way out that would not embarrass them.
And they supposedly leaked this to an OPPOSING attorney (unnamed), who then leaked it to Craddock and crew? Hilarious, man. Hilarious.
Lynn:
My favorite from the ASD faithful was that the Attorney General for Florida had decided to go to work for ASd when he left office.