PatrickPretty.com

Category: Ad Surf Daily

  • DEVELOPING STORY: Are AdSurfDaily Pitchmen Who Also Joined AdViewGlobal And Recruited Members For Collapsed ASD Knockoff Confused — Or Are They Trying To Scam Downline Members And Claims Administrator?

    ASD's Andy Bowdoin.

    This post begins with background because the autosurf world, which is dominated by serial scammers, financial fraudsters and shadowy criminals, is about as murky as it gets.

    On Aug. 1, 2008, tens of millions of dollars in the bank accounts of AdSurfDaily President Andy Bowdoin were seized. Federal prosecutors went on to say that Bowdoin, a recidivist swindler in his seventies, was conducting an international Ponzi scheme involving at least $110 million from the small town of Quincy, Fla.

    ASD allegedly had more than 100,000 members.

    Bowdoin was running the massive scheme through his 10 personal bank accounts and trading on the name of the President of the United States to sanitize the fraud, prosecutors said in a forfeiture complaint.

    A federal magistrate judge in the District of Columbia, the nation’s capital and center of power, ordered the money seized by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security after reviewing a 37-page affidavit by the U.S. Secret Service and a 57-page evidence exhibit. Incredibly, though, some ASD members didn’t take the strong clues that the U.S. government had come to view ASD and others like it as a threat to to the nation.

    The government made sure that the allegations and certain information about Bowdoin, including the fact that ASD was not his first brush with securities felonies and that he was partnered with a man implicated by the SEC in the 1990s in three prime-bank schemes, were available for wide distribution. The forfeiture complaint was published on the Internet in multiple places and was made available at no charge by the government.

    Bowdoin reacted to the seizure by describing it as an act of “Satan” and comparing it to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. A message from Bowdoin on ASD’s answering machine claimed God was on the company’s side. Within days of the breathtaking seizure and a follow-up raid of company headquarters caught on camera by a local TV station, ASD members started pitching other fraud schemes, positioning them as ways to make up for ASD losses. The disconnect of ASD members was stunning.

    They hawked cash-gifting schemes, HYIP schemes, cycler matrices and other autosurf schemes — often using an appeal to religion in their pitches and claiming the “programs,” unlike ASD, operated outside U.S. jurisdiction and thus insulated the players from prosecution. They made the claims despite the fact the “programs” were targeted at U.S. citizens and players were paid in U.S. dollars after using U.S. dollars to join the “programs.”

    On Nov. 19, 2008, ASD lost a key court battle. A federal judge ruled that ASD, which had requested an evidentiary hearing, had not demonstrated it was a lawful business and not a Ponzi scheme. Instead of exiting the autosurf  Ponzi “industy,” some ASD members next turned their attentions to an upstart “offshore” surf known as AdViewGlobal.

    Which brings us to the reason for this post . . .

    A woman who said she believed she was an AdSurfDaily investor entitled to restitution through the government remissions program administered by Rust Consulting Inc. told the PP Blog yesterday that she gave $5,000 to her sponsor, who converted the sum to cashiers’ checks made payable to a murky enterprise known as TMS Association.

    The PP Blog referred the woman to the office of U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr. in the District of Columbia.

    But her transaction, according to the woman, occurred in April 2009 — eight months after the August 2008 seizure of tens of millions of dollars by the Secret Service in the ASD Ponzi case. ASD ceased operations after the seizure.

    Although the woman apparently believed she was investing in ASD, her story strongly suggests that she actually was investing in AdViewGlobal (AVG), one of the so-called ASD “clones” that launched in the aftermath of the ASD seizure. TMS Association was a murky Arizona business linked to eWalletPlus, which reportedly was the in-house payment processor for AVG.

    The woman, saying she believed she was an ASD victim, also said she believed she was entitled to restitution through the remissions program set up for ASD victims through Rust. Her remissions claim, however, appears to have been rejected because the program is for victims of ASD, LaFuenteDinero and Golden Panda Ad Builder, not victims of AVG.

    “I am having troubles with the Ad Surf Daily Remission Administrator on getting the information that my checks I sent in that were endorsed to TMS Association were ‘linked’ to the Ad Surf fraud suit that is going on,” the woman asserted.

    Facts surrounding TMS, eWallet Plus and AVG are exceptionally murky, and there is no remissions program for victims. It is believed that the U.S. government has opened a probe into the companies, and AVG was referenced as an extension of ASD in a 2009 racketeering lawsuit filed against Bowdoin by a group of ASD members seeking class-action certification.

    At least three companies, including a penny-stock firm known as Vana Blue, have claimed to own eWallet Plus, which AVG also claimed to own. Also adding confusion are the presence of company names such as TMS Corp. USA LLC, TMS Corp., Karveck International and Karveck Corp. — all of which haven been referenced in the context of AVG.

    The woman said she contacted the PP Blog because of its reporting on TMS Association.

    AVG, which had close ASD ties, announced it was suspending cashouts two years ago this month. The surf was positioned as a remedy for ASD losses, amid claims it operated in Uruguay outside of U.S. jurisdiction. Its servers resolved to Panama, as did the servers for eWallet Plus.

    One promo for AVG claimed that $5,000 turned into $15,000 “instantly.” Some ASD members have claimed Bowdoin was a silent partner in AVG and fronted the money to purchase eWallet Plus.

    Although AVG purported to have no ties to ASD, it listed George and Judy Harris as its owners. George Harris is Bowdoin’s stepson. The AVG incongruities did not end there. Indeed, AVG’s graphics once appeared on an ASD-controlled website, an event that was bizarrely explained away as an “operational coincidence.”

    Even as AVG was disclaiming ASD ties in early 2009, the person disclaiming the ties was a former ASD employee, Chuck Osmin, who testified on ASD’s behalf at an evidentiary hearing in 2008. Despite the claims, AVG listed its first chief executive officer as Gary Talbert, a former ASD executive who filed a sworn court affidavit on ASD’s behalf in 2008.

    The woman’s claims, however, lead to questions about whether some AVG members are trying to use the ASD remissions program to cover losses in AVG, perhaps with encouragement of their upline sponsors

    Among other questions raised by the woman’s claims is whether ASD sponsors who promoted for AVG despite the ASD seizure told the truth about ASD to their recruits or shielded them from the news, thus denying recruits information they needed to make an informed decision about joining AVG.

    At the same time, the woman’s story leads to questions about whether AVG recruits denied the facts by their sponsors about the ASD prosecution tried to pressure their AVG sponsors for refunds when the truth became known — and whether the AVG sponsors are trying to cover their tracks by pointing their recruits to the ASD remissions program without disclosing that it is reserved for ASD, LaFuenteDinero and GoldenPandaAdBuilder victims only.

    It is likely that any bids to mask AVG losses as ASD losses will fail because the government requires ASD members to certify themselves as crime victims and provide paperwork as proof of investment.

    Based on the woman’s claims, it also seems possible that some AVG members may have been serving as unlicensed brokers and investment advisers by collecting cash or negotiable instruments from recruits, converting the money to cashiers’ checks and then sending the money to AVG.

    If transactions such as that occurred, it leads to questions about whether AVG investors ever could prove they’d actually joined the program. If the accounts were not opened in their names and instead were opened in the names of sponsors who collected their money, there may be no proof at all that the recruit was the source of the funding.

    Even if the AVG accounts were opened in the names of the recruits, it may be hard for a recruit to prove they provided the funds if the money was converted to cashiers’ checks and submitted to AVG by the sponsors

    The extent to which AVG sponsors may be trying to game the remissions system is unclear. What is clear is that the woman’s story is yet another reminder that the universe in which ASD and other autosurfs operated was dark and dangerous to the purse strings.

  • URGENT >> BULLETIN >> MOVING: Jury Recommends Death Penalty For E-Bullion Operator James Fayed

    BULLETIN: The jury that returned the guilty verdict against James Fayed for the murder of his estranged wife in July 2008 has recommended the death penalty.

    James Fayed, 48, was found guilty May 19 in the murder-for-hire slaying of Pamela Fayed. On May 20, the penalty phase of the case began — and the jury returned the death recommendation today.

    Pamela Fayed, 44, was slashed to death in a California parking garage on July 28, 2008.

    James Fayed, the operator of E-Bullion and an emerging figure in the AdSurfDaily Ponzi case, paid $25,000 to have his wife killed and then plotted to kill the hit men, prosecutors said.

    Pamela Fayed was a potential witness against her husband over financial matters. Court records show that E-Bullion had been linked to multiple Ponzi schemes.

    Sentencing for James Fayed is scheduled for Sept. 22.

    Three other men have been charged with Pamela Fayed’s killing.

    Steven Vicente Simmons, 22, stabbed her, prosecutors said.

    Jose Luis Moya, 50, a Fayed employee, was paid $25,000 to arrange the murder, and Gabriel Jay Marquez, 46, acted as lookout, prosecutors said.

    E-Bullion is referenced in court or regulatory documents in the ASD Ponzi case, the Legisi Ponzi case, the Gold Quest International Ponzi case and the FEDI fraud scheme. A  mysterious enterprise known as the “Alpha Project”also is referenced along with FEDI in filings in Canada.

    This chilling document from the Ontario Securities Commission references both FEDI and the Alpha Project — and appears to make a veiled reference to Pamela Fayed.

    From a 2003 filing by the Ontario Securities Commission. Click on link above to read entire document.

    See earlier story.

  • UPDATE: 8 More Women Charged In Michigan Cash-Gifting Probe, Bringing Total Since December To 15; BBB Releases Video That Adds To Prior Warning About ‘Thousands’ Of Gifting Scams Promoted Online

    Just prior to Christmas last year, seven Michigan women were charged with felonies in an alleged cash-gifting pyramid scheme that targeted women.

    Now, just prior to Memorial Day, eight more women have been charged, bringing the total number of women charged to date to 15. The Michigan State Police said last year that gifting schemes were sweeping across the state.

    The Muskegon Chronicle was among the first newspapers to report on the new defendants.

    Separately, the BBB has added a video on cash-gifting scams and added to its previous warning about “thousands” of such schemes using YouTube and the Internet to proliferate.

    In August 2008, after the U.S. Secret Service seized tens of millions of dollars in the AdSurfDaily autosurf probe, some ASD members immediately turned to cash-gifting, positioning it as a way for ASD members to make up their losses. Gifting scams typically pluck heartstrings, targeting people of faith, people down on their luck and people who can ill afford to lose a single dollar, let alone hundreds or thousands at a time.

    “Cash gifting is a pyramid scheme — pure and simple,” the BBB says. “There are thousands of YouTube videos and websites out there touting cash gifting as an empowerment program or a way to make easy money from the security of your home.”

  • Club Asteria Members Posting On Ponzi Boards Turn Their Attention To ‘JSS Tripler’ Amid Claims Daily Payout Of 2 Percent ‘Indefinitely Sustainable’; ‘Bizarre Substatum’ Gets Crazier Yet

    From a YouTube promo for JSS Tripler.

    We’ve previously noted that the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) has described the HYIP sphere as a “bizarre substratum of the Internet.”

    That substratum now is getting crazier yet.

    Three weeks ago, Club Asteria was a great darling of the Ponzi boards. But weekly payout rates that purportedly have been slashed — coupled with a purported freeze of Club Asteria’s PayPal account — appear to have put the “program” in a death spiral.

    Club Asteria stopped short of announcing it had placed a call to the coroner, but did announce a “downward spiral,” according to a post on the MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi scheme and criminals’ forum.

    Not to worry, though: Some Club Asteria promoters on the Ponzi forums have turned their attentions to JSS Tripler, whose site appears to be accessible through multiple domains, including a site known as JustBeenPaid (JBP).

    JBP appears to be tied to something called Synergy Surf, which appears to be another darling of the Ponzi boards.

    “I buyed (sic) new 8 positions for that,” a MoneyMakerGroup poster announced.

    JPB encouraged enrollees to “[s]et up your AlertPay account and fund it, or link your credit card to it,” according to web records.

    These instructions also were provided.

    • Upgrade in JBP by making your $10 or $20 payments.
    • Enter your AlertPay email address in the JBP Member Area.
    • Buy and/or sponsor downline members.
    • Study and apply ‘Upgrade Your Brain’ and the ‘Big Success Breakthrough’ — see ‘Access Our Products’ in your JBP member area.
    • Make JBP’s Synergy Surf (JSS) your primary moneymaker.

    In the spring of 2009 — as the AdViewGlobal (AVG) autosurf was in its death throes before a fatal gurgle — the AVG braintrust pointed the finger of blame at the membership.

    Other surfs that launched in the aftermath of the seizure of tens of millions of dollars from Florida-based AdSurfDaily did the same thing. These included AdGateWorld, which once referenced ASD in what appeared to be a copy-and-paste lift from ASD’s Terms of Service, and BizAdSplash, whose purported “chief consultant” was ASD/Golden Panda Ad Builder figure Clarence Busby.

    Fast forward two years, and Club Asteria, which lists Andrea Lucas as managing director, appears to be doing the same thing — along with serving up some Busby-like syrup for the soul:

    “Greed is a very powerful motivation, but the kindness, generosity and goodness in all of us all are even more powerful,” Club Asteria is reported on MoneyMakerGroup to have intoned.

    “The challenges that we are facing recently have been caused by a small percentage of our members misusing their membership privileges,” Club Asteria is reported to have told members. “As any good company would have done to protect their members and future members, we had to reinforce our Code of Ethics and Conduct, to ensure that our message of a better life for all of us is presented honestly and accurately.

    “We are working very hard to make sure that any benefit from Club Asteria and all of our products and services are accurately represented. Any company, no matter how good their products and services are, can be destroyed with misleading information, bad publicity, false rumors and inactivity of their members/customers.”

    Two years ago, AVG’s death spiral began as the ASD grand jury was meeting in the District of Columbia. The surf first slashed payouts — something Club Asteria reportedly is doing right now — and then eliminated them altogether, while at once announcing an 80/20 program would become mandatory after AVG completed an audit of itself.

    One of the issues complicating matters for AVG was the purported misuse of a member-to-member cash button. Club Asteria members also purportedly misused a money-transfer facility.

    “Bizarre substratum of the Internet” just about covers it — except for the heartache and myriad nightmares created by the various HYIP darlings, of course.

    Thinking Outside The Box

    Our friends at RealScam.com report another nightmare in the making. It’s bizarrely called Insectrio — and it bizarrely has an “Egg” plan purported to pay 103 percent after one day, a “Larva” plan purported to pay 120 percent after five days and other plans advertised to pay even more.

    The sales pitch for Insectrio, apparently an emerging HYIP, touts MoneyMakerGroup, TalkGold and DreamTeamMoney.

    Given JBP’s prompt for enrollees to “upgrade” their brains — which we view as a prompt to think outside the box — the PP Blog concludes this post by providing readers an outside-the-box way to look at the Insectrio offer:

    InSECtrio.

    Indeed, the three letters centering the HYIP’s name are real attention-getters.

  • KABOOM! Is It Real — Or Is It The Feds? Agents Created ‘Payment Processor’ As Part Of Undercover Sting Designed To Infiltrate Corrupt Companies; 11 Bank Accounts And 10 Domain Names Seized; 3 Individuals, 2 Firms Indicted

    One of the domain name seizure notices in a federal sting operation in which agents created a "payment processor" to infiltrate operations alleged to be corrupt.

    Kaboom! In a move that may send shockwaves across the fraudulent HYIP, autosurf, sports-betting and “arbitrage” universes domestically and offshore, Maryland’s top federal prosecutor has released details of a two-year long undercover sting in which federal agents created a “payment processor” to infiltrate illegal gambling operations.

    Using methods straight out of the scammer’s playbook and turning the playbook back on the alleged scammers themselves, the federal operation resulted in the seizure of 11 bank accounts in the United States, Guam, Panama, Malta, Portugal and the Netherlands, prosecutors said.

    Ten domain names associated with illegal gambling sites also were seized.

    “It is illegal for internet gambling enterprises to do business in Maryland, regardless of where the website operator is located,” said U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein. “We cannot allow foreign website operators to flout the law simply because their headquarters are based outside the country.”

    The name of the Feds’ “payment processor” was Linwood Payment Solutions — and its website now serves this message:

    “Linwood Payment Solutions is a Department of Homeland Security Undercover Business set up to identify and prosecute companies accepting and paying out funds for U.S. customers who gamble online illegally.

    “If you have questions regarding funds withdrawn from your bank account for gambling purposes contact the online gambling company you provided your banking information to.”

    As part of the sting, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (Homeland Security Investigations or HSI) “obtained a business address near Atlantic City, New Jersey,” according to court records.

    HSI then created a website for the “payment processor,” opened bank accounts, set up a “payment processing plant” and staffed it until it could process “thousands” of transactions daily.

    Undercover operatives then began to mix with “top managers of gambling organizations,” discussing fees and contracts. Having established ties to the alleged scammers, Linwood began to process payments — in excess of $33 million in all, involving more than 300,000 transactions, according to court records.

    Seized domain names include:

    • Bookmaker.com
    • 2Betsdi.com
    • Funtimebingo.com
    • Goldenarchcasino.com
    • Truepoker.com
    • Betmaker.com
    • Betgrandesports.com
    • Doylesroom.com
    • Betehorse.com
    • Beted.com

    Seizure notices now adorn the websites.

    Indicted were ThrillX Systems Ltd., d/b/a BetEd; Darren Wright and David Parchomchuk of British Columbia, Canada;  K23 Group Financial Services, d/b/a BMX Entertainment; and Ann Marie Puig, 35, of San Jose, Costa Rica.

    “The proceeds from illegal Internet gambling are often used to fuel organized crime and support criminal activity,” said William Winter, special agent in charge of ICE’s HSI unit.

  • OBTAINED: Draft Of Complaint Some AdSurfDaily Members Say They’ll File Against D.C. Prosecutors In Florida; ‘Let The Games Begin!’ Declares Prospective Pro Se Litigant. Document Leads To Questions About Whether ASD Had A Special Class Of Members

    Dear Readers,

    We are plugging our nose as we publish this document (link at bottom of post). You should know up front that we converted the document to PDF format after receiving it in Microsoft Word format. We did so based on the belief that many readers may not own Word but likely have a free PDF reader among the programs on their computers.

    We obtained the document from a source. An email introducing the document prompted recipients to “Please forward this to as many of our people as you can.”

    The PDF conversion altered the format of the original document, causing certain typesetting errors to appear — but the text content of the body of the document is unchanged. We did not edit the body text in any way.  For the sake of convenience, we named the PDF file declaratoryreliefdraft.

    The Word original is titled “T&D v USA UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT.” It purports to be a draft of a “Complaint for Declaratory Relief” some AdSurfDaily members say they intend to file in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. The document lists ASD members Todd Disner and Dwight Owen Schweitzer as pro se plaintiffs.

    It is unclear if other plaintiffs will emerge. Previous ASD pro se litigants appeared to have shared  a do-it-yourself litigation template. U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia was inundated with ASD-related, pro se filings in 2009.

    No other plaintiffs are listed in the caption of the draft. The defendant is listed as:

    THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
    c/o United States Attorney’s Office
    555 Fourth Street N.W.,
    Washington, DC 20530

    The address is the office of U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr. No individual defendants are named. The document, which references U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer of the District of Columbia, misspells her name as “Collier.”

    Disner lost a pro se round in the civil forfeiture complaint against Andy Bowdoin’s assets filed in the District of Columbia in August 2008. His petition — and the petitions of dozens of other ASD pro se filers who sought to intervene in the case amid claims the government “confiscated” their assets “wrongfully” — was denied for lack of standing.

    In the original set of pro se pleadings in Collyer’s D.C. court, former Assistant U.S. Attorney William Cowden’s last name was misspelled as “Crowden.”

    ASD President Andy Bowdoin advised Collyer in a sworn affidavit nearly three years ago that the seized assets in the U.S. Secret Service probe belonged to him or ASD, not individual members. In short, Bowdoin agreed with the prosecution’s view of the case with respect to the ownership of the seized assets.

    In its current form, the draft appears to advance the notion that individual ASD members can gain standing in Florida after having been denied in the District of Columbia, get a judgment against the government and undo the government’s remissions program organized by the Secret Service and federal prosecutors in the District of Columbia. Prosecutors have said the ASD Ponzi scheme case may have 40,000 or more victims.

    Among other things, the draft asks a Florida federal judge to declare that the government conducted an “illegal search and seizure in that it failed to meet the requirements of the fourth amendment to the United States Constitution and that therefore the search and seizure of their assets was illegal and void.”

    At the same time, the draft appears to suggest ASD had a subset of members who should have been treated differently than ordinary members whose lives were altered by the alleged Ponzi scheme. Meanwhile, the draft makes a puzzling argument that ASD’s Terms of Service superseded federal law.

    (In this snippet from the draft, the PP Blog added the emphasis to this Blog post.)

    “Among the items seized were the accounts, funds and records specifically identified as belonging to the plaintiffs which were separately accounted for on the computer programs and data seized as they were members of ASD, having bought ad packages as specified in the rules and regulations of the ASD business model,” a section of the draft complaint reads.

    “Consistent with the rules and regulations applicable to the plaintiffs’ their information was confidential and could only be accessed by them through the use of their password protected account with ASD and their accounts were separate and distinct from any other individuals or businesses who were participants in the ASD advertising program,” the section claimed.

    If the document does get filed in a final form — and if the U.S. Attorney’s Office in D.C. gets served and files a response — we sincerely hope the government moves instantly to protect ASD victims at large from further restitution delays caused by pro se sideshows.

    Make no mistake: This is gamesmanship.

    An email currently circulating among ASD members and attributed to Disner even describes it as such.

    “Let the games begin!” the email declares.

    It’s as though the first round of games were not enough for some ASD members.

    “Here is a draft of the complaint Dwight finished today,” the email, which is dated today, reads.

    “I think you will be impressed.

    “We will schedule another conference call to field any “feed back” to this motion.
    “Please forward this to as many of our people as you can. (As I know you will)
    “BEST OF LUCK TO US ALL!!”
    _________________________________________________________________________
    Click here to read the PDF, which was converted from Word by the PP Blog.

    Patrick

  • URGENT >> BULLETIN >> MOVING: James Fayed, E-Bullion Operator And Emerging Figure In AdSurfDaily Ponzi Case, Found Guilty In California Murder-For-Hire Plot That Led To Brutal Stabbing Death Of His Estranged Wife

    URGENT >> BULLETIN >> MOVING: (UPDATED 10:37 P.M. EDT (U.S.A.) James Fayed has been found guilty of first-degree murder and conspiracy in the death of his wife, Pamela Fayed.

    Fayed, 48, now potentially faces the death penalty. The penalty phase of the case is scheduled to get under way tomorrow at 10:30 a.m. (PDT).

    A jury returned the verdict late this morning on the West Coast. Deliberations began Tuesday, and the jury found “the special circumstances of murder for financial gain and lying in wait to be true,” which brought the death penalty into play.

    James Fayed was the operator of the now-shuttered E-Bullion payment processor. Federal prosecutors revealed in December that AdSurfDaily, a Florida company accused of operating a $110 million Ponzi scheme, used the services of E-Bullion.

    Investigators have linked E-Bullion to multiple Ponzi schemes.

    Prosecutors in Los Angeles said Pamela Fayed was a potential witness against her husband.

    “Pamela Fayed was stabbed 13 times near her SUV parked in a garage at Watt Tower on July 28, 2008,” prosecutors said in a statement moments ago.

    James Fayed paid $25,000 to arrange his wife’s murder, according to court documents. Three others have been charged in the plot and await trial.

    Steven Vicente Simmons, 22, is accused of fatally stabbing Pamela Fayed; Gabriel Jay Marquez, 46, allegedly acted as a lookout.

    Jose Luis Moya, 50,  a Fayed employee, accepted the $25,000 to arrange the murder, prosecutors said.

  • UPDATE: Thanh-Viet ‘Jeremy’ Cao’s 30-Year Ponzi Sentence One Of Longest In Southern California History; Feds Say He Told Story About A ‘Chopped Up’ Infant And Threatened Victims With ‘Extreme Violence’

    Thanh-Viet “Jeremy” Cao, the California Ponzi schemer later accused in Nevada of filing fraudulent liens for enormous sums against public officials and identified by the Anti-Defamation League as a “sovereign citizen,” once threatened to torture and kill his business partner and the partner’s wife and family, federal prosecutors said.

    To keep victims in a state of terror, Cao said 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.

    Those threats led to an extortion and firearms case brought by the state of California.

    And Cao dialed up the terror by referencing an “assassination” and “fatal car accident.” When he was arrested, “he possessed a loaded firearm, and body armor and other firearms were found at his residence,” prosecutors said.

    Cao, who was convicted in the state-level extortion case in 2009, was convicted Monday in the federal Ponzi case, which was brought after an investigation by the U.S. Secret Service. He was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Larry A. Burns to 30 years in prison and ordered to pay victims $12.4 million in restitution. He is scheduled to stand trial in the false-liens case later this year.

    Victims in the liens case included four federal judges, staff members of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California and employees of the SEC, the Secret Service and the IRS, federal prosecutors in Nevada said year.

    The IRS Criminal Investigations unit brought the Nevada case, prosecutors said.

    Cao filed at least 22 fraudulent liens for astronomical sums, according to records. He turned to filing bogus financial claims after law enforcement, acting with the authority of a court order in the California Ponzi case, seized a $200,000 Bentley Cao had acquired with investor funds and sought to equip with armor.

    “Cao is a financial predator who will stop at nothing to cheat his victims out of their life savings,” said U.S. Attorney Laura E. Duffy of the Southern District of California.

    “He continues to show no remorse for his actions, which destroyed the finances of many innocent and hardworking people,” Duffy said. “When law enforcement and the federal judiciary stepped in to stop this fraud, Cao retaliated by trying to ruin their finances through the filing of false liens. The sentence in this [Ponzi] case demonstrates how dangerous predators like Cao can be.”

    A veteran Secret Service agent said bids to injure victims and the U.S. financial system would not be tolerated.

    “The U.S. Secret Service has more than 140 years of experience in investigating criminals like Cao, who target the stability of this country’s financial systems and prey on innocent victims,” said Gregory J. Meyer, special agent in charge.

    Cao faces a maximum sentence of 223 years if convicted of all counts in the false-liens case. He was indicted by a federal grand jury in Las Vegas in July 2010.

    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.

    He also filed for bogus tax refunds, according to records.

    Cao’s purported business career was one marked by “cheating” that got him fired from his job for “fraud and misconduct,” prosecutors said, describing him as a “career criminal.”

    “When victims asked Cao what happened to their investments, Cao taunted them with profanity,” prosecutors said. “Cao’s victims lost their life savings, retirement funds, and their homes.”

    About 190 victims were affected in the Ponzi scheme, prosecutors said, describing his 30-year sentence as one of the longest in a white-collar case in the history of Southern California.

  • URGENT >> BULLETIN >> MOVING: Thanh-Viet ‘Jeremy’ Cao Sentenced To 30 Years In Federal Prison; Ponzi Schemer Also Filed False Liens Against Federal Officials, Prosecutors Said

    BULLETIN: Convicted Ponzi schemer Thanh-Viet “Jeremy” Cao, who also was accused of filing false liens against federal officials and has been linked to the “sovereign citizen” movement by the Anti-Defamation League, has been sentenced to 30 years in prison in the Ponzi case.

    Cao was convicted in December 2010. The U.S. Secret Service and the IRS handled the probe.

    In July 2010, Cao was charged criminally with filing false liens for tens of millions of dollars against federal officials. He also was accused of filing for a false tax refund for the astronomical sum of $82 billion.

    See KFMB website story on Cao’s sentencing in the Ponzi case.

  • ANNOUNCEMENT: PP Blog Outages Possible

    Dear Readers,

    Some of you may experience availability issues today and tomorrow as the PP Blog performs maintenance. Intermittent outages may occur in the next 24 to 48 hours.

    Although the Blog is expected to be largely available, it may not be accessible in all areas until the maintenance is completed.

    Our apologies for the inconvenience.

    Patrick

  • RECOMMENDED READING/VIEWING: Washington Post/Bloomberg Report On ‘The Ponzi Schemer Next Door’; FINRA/AARP Share Tale Of Purported ‘Bank President’ Who Lured Victims While ‘Craving Cocaine’ At Pay Phones From Which He Set Up Marks

    This man purported to be a bank president. In reality, he was an investment fraudster who used pay phones to lure people into scams as he was craving cocaine, according to a remarkable video airing on the Internet and PBS stations.

    The Washington Post and Bloomberg published Bob Carden’s story about how smart people get sucked into investment scams. The story is titled, “Investment fraud isn’t relegated to Wall Street: Beware the Ponzi schemer next door.”

    Carden produced the video “Tricks of the Trade: Outsmarting Investment Fraud.” Editor John Warnock assembled the package, which shows some of the things FINRA and AARP are doing to educate the public about the plague of fraud schemes and how to avoid them.

    Read the story here.

    And make sure you set aside some time to watch Carden’s pointed video (below), which is running on New Hampshire Public Television and elsewhere. The video shows footage of actual scammers talking about how they plied their trade and includes audio of scammers making pitches, including rude ones. You’ll learn about the buttons they push, the manipulation tactics they employ and how people who would seem to know better get duped.

    The video features commentary from psychologist Robert Cialdini, commentary from fraud victims, commentary from fraud perpetrators and commentary from fraud-busters, including Joe Borg of the Alabama Securities Commission.

    Borg, among other things, is famous for prosecuting the case against Greater Ministries International, a colossal Ponzi scheme that traded on faith and operated from Florida.

    Among the many interesting things in the video is footage from the old Candid Camera TV show in which passersby were persuaded the entire state of Delaware was “closed.”

    Watch the full episode. See more Making Sense New England.