PatrickPretty.com

Category: Ad Surf Daily

  • Purported ‘Guenther’ References Arons’ Young Daughter

    UPDATED 12:44 P.M. EDT (U.S.A.) A person purporting to be “Bob Guenther” referenced the 6-year-old daughter of Jack Arons in a post at the ASD-Biz Forum yesterday. The reference was beyond the pale and easily could become yet another matter sprouting from the AdSurfDaily case for law enforcement to investigate.

    The language from the posting is reproduced verbatim below. We took a screen shot and reduced its size to fit into the border of this column.

    “Rookie,” the poster wrote in a message directed at Arons. “Look around you, the Fat Ladies have been singing all day,, See you in court dude, and how old ios that adopted daughter, Texas Court my friend, welcome to the real world…”

    Here is the screen shot:

    guentheraronssmall

    A poster purporting to be Guenther has a history of making menacing comments, including threats to visit people at their homes.

    In an odd twist yesterday, a self-described, purported “30 something female” began to post under the  “Bob Guenther” account at the ASD-Biz forum. The purported female appeared to champion “Bob Guenther.”

    Like “Bob Guenther,” though, the purported female couldn’t resist including a passive-aggressive rant, saying the female posters at the forum needed to watch their diets, start working out “and find a man…. You obviously don’t get out much and need a lot more than a computer can provide…”

    Owing to what we view as an implicit threat against the family of Jack Arons and others, we have made the decision to publish an IP address we have associated with a poster who identified himself as Bob Guenther in January. The comment to this Blog was submitted and published on Jan. 16.

    Here is the IP address: 72.165.15.198. It resolves to Dana Park Office Center in Tucson, Arizona. Over the weekend, the person at the ASD-Biz forum purporting to be Guenther suggested he was near Mexico and planned to travel there. The geographic location to which the IP resolves is near Mexico.

    Meanwhile, this Blog received an email — as distinguished from a comment left on the Blog — from a person who identified himself as “the ‘infamous’ Bob Guenther” yesterday. Given recent developments and a pattern that suggests Bob Guenther routinely engages in menacing behavior, we have made the decision not to respond to the email.

    ASD-Biz members reacted with anger at the post referencing Arons’ daughter. Dallas attorney Larry Friedman sued Arons last week, asserting libel and slander for comments Arons allegedly had made on the Internet.

    The person purporting to be Guenther in the forum announced the Friedman lawsuit in two threads and provided links to PDFs of the documents.

    Friedman is an attorney for the ASD Members Business Association (ASDMBA) Trust. Bob Guenther is the de facto head of the Trust. Posters at ASD-Biz viewed the lawsuit as an attempt to chill speech. Prior to the lawsuit, some ASDMBA members said they had filed complaints against Friedman with the Texas Bar and Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott.

    The lawsuit against Arons followed. Posters at the ASD-Biz forum say Guenther appears to be trying to spread the chill. Forum posters said they would not be silenced by threats.

    Some posters said they intended to file complaints today.

    After threatening additional lawsuits at the ASD-Biz forum — and after an editorial that ran on this Blog appeared over the weekend — the poster purporting to be Guenther at the ASD-Biz forum then appeared at least briefly to switch courses.

    Instead of threatening lawsuits, the person purporting to be Guenther appeared actually to encourage members to file complaints with authorities.

    In one post, the person purporting to be Guenther provided a link to Abbott’s office, the office of Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum and the Internet Crime Complaint Center. At the same time, in an apparent jibe, the poster also provided a link to PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

    The poster then provided a link to the office of Sen. John Cornyn, and then implied he had inside connections in Abbott’s office.

    “By the way if you want to call Greg Abbott, I have his direct line and that of his assistant, would you like that too,” the purported Guenther wrote.

  • EDITORIAL: Larry Friedman, Drop The Lawsuit

    UPDATED 6:33 P.M. EST (U.S.A.) Dallas attorney Larry Friedman represents the ASD Members Business Association (ASDMBA) Trust. Friedman has sued Florida resident Jack Arons for slander and libel, asserting that Arons — a self-styled truth-seeker whom Friedman describes as a “felon” and a “vigilante” and an Internet “menace” — has told untruths and slimed him online.

    The filing of a lawsuit against Arons strikes us as a severe remedy and a warning to others not to ask too many uncomfortable questions. It’s hard not to see things that way when a person purporting to be Bob Guenther, the de facto head of the Trust, appears to be acting as Friedman’s publicist and bouncer — and using Friedman’s law shingle as a weapon.

    Friedman assesses the harm from Arons’ alleged slime at $50,000. He filed a 12-page lawsuit, but swore only to a single paragraph in the document in a verification on the final page. Regardless, Friedman walked away with a temporary restraining order designed to mute Arons.

    Critics at the ASD-Biz forum say the document reads like a broad bid to chill legitimate  discussion about ASDMBA. Prior to the filing of the lawsuit, some ASDMBA members said they filed complaints against Friedman with the Texas Bar and the office of Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott.  The members want to know how ASDMBA is spending money it collected.

    And they want to know why no ASDMBA litigation has been filed to date, whether ASDMBA even can gain standing in a forfeiture case against the alleged proceeds of a criminal enterprise, and why the Trust says it still owes Friedman money. The kinds of questions ASDMBA members say they want answered certainly are reasonable.

    Friedman’s client is the ASDMBA Trust, not the individual members who provided funding and comprise the association. The original plan was for Friedman to communicate with members through the Trust, which effectively is under the control of Bob Guenther, who identified himself a Friedman client in matters that did not pertain to ASDMBA. Guenther introduced Friedman to the members in a conference call when the Trust was being formed last summer.

    The trouble with Friedman’s claim that the Trust is the proper information gateway, according to members, is that Guenther doesn’t answer questions and has released only a broad accounting of how ASDMBA spends its money. These members say the accounting is far too vague. They also complain about verbal bullying from Guenther, who has cited a longtime friendship with Friedman.

    It’s all well and good that Friedman’s client is the Trust. Friedman, in effect, is saying members should turn to Guenther for answers, and that very well could be proper if Friedman has an attorney-client relationship with the Trust. But when members can’t get the answers they seek from the Trust or become the subject of a passive-aggressive rant or verbal threat from Guenther, where do they turn?

    Some of them say they turned to the Texas Bar and Abbott.  The lawsuit against Arons followed — and was announced by a person who purported to be Guenther in two separate threads at the ASD-Biz forum.

    One of the posts announced the announcement, pointing viewers to a separate thread that contained the actual announcement. The poster purporting to be Guenther was the first person to post links to the lawsuit documents, before any information appeared on the Dallas court site and before Arons was served.

    How the lawsuit information was disseminated creates the appearance that Guenther is working as Friedman’s flack and bouncer. Even at the very moment this post is being written, a person purporting to be Guenther is over at the ASD-Biz forum threatening to extend Friedman’s long arm from Dallas and sue other people. The claim is that no one can say they haven’t been warned about Friedman’s ability to file libel lawsuits.

    The implication is that Guenther himself wants to spread the chill. In a juvenile insult, Arons was referred to as “Rookie.” The message was rookies get sued and eaten for lunch by the professionals, so don’t ask too many questions.

    Still, however, there has been no transparent accounting from the complaining members’ point of view. A lack of transparent accounting certainly isn’t consistent with professionalism — and was one of the reasons ASDMBA members said they turned to the Texas Bar and Abbott to address their concerns.

    Members want to know why ASDMBA, for example, appears to have spent thousands of dollars on what was vaguely described as contract services and Internet expenses. It is possible to purchase web hosting for a site that would accommodate ASDMBA’s needs for $24 a year, not thousands of dollars.

    People know that. They also know that vague accounting sometimes is a signature of abuse.  Their concerns are not silly. They could be addressed in minutes by Bob Guenther and the Trust.

    And yet the concerns aren’t being addressed, according to members. Meanwhile, Jack Arons is being called a “Rookie”  and getting sued, and a poster purporting to be Guenther is announcing the lawsuit with great fanfare and opining that 80% of men are “internet pussies who couldn’t work their way out of a wet paper bag.”

    Yes, really.

    “Jack Arons Sued, Served and Shut Up, Finally…” reads the over-the-top headline, in the thread that announces Friedman’s legal handiwork.

    There were reports this morning that Arons’ Internet connection was taken down as a result of documents faxed to his ISP.

    Friedman’s quickest route to restore a reputation he claims was damaged is not to sue Jack Arons; it is to insist that Guenther and the Trust be straightforward in their dealings with members who contributed money and, if they’re not, to fire the Trust as a client.

    As things stand now, the person purporting to be Guenther appears to be staining Friedman’s reputation by acting as a bouncer against people who might be inclined to file complaints with the Texas Bar and Abbott. What’s more, the temporary restraining order is so broad that it appears to restrain people sympathetic to Arons even from contacting Friedman to let him know what’s going on at the forum.

    Appearances matter. It looks like the person purporting to be Guenther is doing Friedman’s bidding for him and seeking to insulate himself from criticism and legitimate questioning by dangling Friedman’s shingle as a weapon. At a minimum, this situation creates the appearance of impropriety. It looks like thuggery.

    The poster purporting to be Guenther shows virtually no restraint. The ASD case has never been about politics, but Guenther — who seems not to possess a thimble full of PR savvy — routinely cites his conservative credentials in forum threads about ASD or ASDMBA. It’s as though he can’t even conceive that ASD and ASDMBA have Democrats and liberals in their membership ranks and that politics has no place in this particular business discussion.

    ASDMBA members weren’t asked about their political leanings when they joined. They were told that the association was going to litigate in their interests. They didn’t join to be told they weren’t conservative enough or Republican enough to be taken seriously. And they certainly didn’t join to be made the subjects of juvenile ridicule by Guenther and threats that they, too, will get sued if they don’t play the game by rules he defines.

    On the ASDMBA website, Guenther is directing bluster at William Cowden, the federal prosecutor handling the ASD case. Guenther had made a big show of emailing questions to Cowden, who is under no obligation at all to provide Guenther any answers. The ASD case is an active, ongoing investigation. Cowden wouldn’t discuss the government’s prosecutorial plans during an active investigation even if Congress were to subpoena him. He’s certainly not going to jump through Guenther’s hoops.

    Larry Friedman should drop the lawsuit against Jack Arons. At the same time, he should stop Guenther from using his attorney’s shingle as a weapon. Little wonder that attorneys are made the subject of jokes and outright ridicule when this kind of thing is happening in full public view.

    ASDMBA should provide a full, itemized, transparent accounting. Bob Guenther should end any involvement with ASDMBA and rid himself of the notion that people are too stupid or too afraid to hold him accountable.

  • Jacks Arons Purportedly Sued By Larry Friedman

    UPDATED 12:40 P.M. EST (U.S.A.) A person posting as “Bob Guenther” at the ASD-Biz forum reports Jack Arons, a mainstay in the AdSurfDaily case and a driving force behind an effort to get the ASD Members Business Association (ASDMBA) to provide a verifiable accounting of association spending, has been sued by Larry Friedman for slander and libel.

    Arons also was accused of defamation, business disparagement and tortious interference. Arons said he had not yet been served. The case was filed in Texas, Friedman’s home. Arons lives in Florida.

    The claim was made under a headline titled “Jack Arons Sued, Served and Shut Up, Finally . . .” The purported author was Bob Guenther, known for a lack of decorum.

    Some ASDMBA members have been encouraging others to file complaints against Friedman with the Texas Bar for his handling of ASDMBA’s affairs. Others have suggested that complaints should be filed with the office of Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott.

    Friedman is an attorney for ASDMBA, which is not associated with AdSurfDaily Inc. ASDMBA was formed in August in the aftermath of the seizure of tens of millions of dollars from ASD amid allegations of wire fraud, money-laundering, selling unregistered securities and running a $100 million Ponzi scheme.

    Some ASDMBA members have demanded Bob Guenther provide a straightforward accounting of how the association spends its money. Members said they believed Friedman would file a lawsuit to protect their interests, but no lawsuit has been filed to date.

    Guenther has served as a spokesman for ASDMBA, sometimes catching the ire of ASDMBA members for what they describe as his use of menacing or threatening language and refusal to provide a detailed accounting of how ASDMBA spends its money.

    “Anyone involved with his illegal activities or false accusations may suffer the same consequences,” the poster claiming to be Guenther said. Arons was referred to as “Rookie” in a separate post.

    The lawsuit described Arons as a felon and a vigilante and a menace who has damaged Friedman’s reputation.

    Why ASDMBA has not produced the type of accounting that would ease members’ concerns is unclear. Also unclear is why litigation ASDMBA members said they were expecting hasn’t been filed. The dispute has been raging for weeks.

    ASDMBA has been collecting money for months. At least one member who contributed funds went on to file his own motion in the ASD case — a motion not related to ASDMBA, but one that used the Curtis Richmond litigation blueprint. Richmond is associated with a sham Utah “Indian” tribe known for filing vexatious litigation.

    Months after ASDMBA began collecting money — and while it still was collecting money — a prominent Washington, D.C., law firm brought a class-action lawsuit against AdSurfDaily, accusing it of racketeering. Three ASD members were named the original plaintiffs.

    ASDMBA members who’d been wondering since August when the association litigation would be filed once again complained about being left on the sidelines. They cite confusion over how ASDMBA money is being spent and the association’s litigation plan.

    In what some ASDMBA members described as a bid to chill speech and undermine their efforts to have authorities investigate Friedman and ASDMBA, the lawsuit seeks a temporary restraining order. Among other things, the complaint seeks to restrain parties from “filing false complaints with state agencies against F&F [Friedman & Feiger] and encouraging or duping ASDMBA investors to file false complaints to state agencies or other entities.”

    A judge purportedly has granted the restraining order.

    It is illegal to file false complaints, and people can be charged criminally and sued civilly for doing so. It’s hard to imagine any jurisdiction that discourages or bans the filing of truthful complaints.

  • EDITORIAL: Andy Bowdoin, Have You No Shame?

    Andy Bowdoin, have you no shame? Once again your closest followers and insiders are asking rank-and-file members to believe you are acting in their interests. They do this after you turned to the membership in August and asked for letters of support while not sharing details members needed to make informed decisions.

    The membership delivered more than 3,000 letters. And then the lies were exposed, and they looked like fools for having lent their voices to this awful chorus. Andy Bowdoin should be held accountable for that. So should the followers and insiders who are helping him cloud the issues.

    Members should ask Bowdoin why he was running an ad for a failed, dissolved business in his own rotator. And they should ask why Bowdoin was paying an employee to surf for his son. They also should ask why a police report never was filed when Russian hackers purportedly stole $1 million from ASD — and why a police report wasn’t filed when others purportedly stole money from the firm.

    Those questions are just for starters, of course. There are lots of suspicious financial transactions involving family members and insiders.

    Playing The Deflection Game

    Some of those pulling strings are doing it because they have financial exposure; some are doing it because they have criminal exposure, and some are doing it for both reasons. Even so, some are almost catastrophically ignorant of the danger they are in. The information is being disseminated by crackpots and filtered through crackpots. Much of it is self-validating drivel, the stuff from which indictments are made.

    If you’re an AdSurfDaily member, you’ll serve yourself ill if you attach any importance to any of today’s self-filed legal pleadings by Andy Bowdoin or if you listen to anything the closest followers and insiders have to say. You got hoodwinked the first time. Don’t let it happen again.

    Think of his principal cheerleaders and major promoters as potential co-defendants in both civil and criminal prosecutions. Ask yourself if you’re being asked to provide cover for criminals before you invest in any of this, including the writing of letters to politicians.

    Bowdoin does not dispute a single fact in today’s filings. All three documents offer technical challenges to the forfeiture actions. The documents paint Bowdoin the victim of a police state despite the fact he hasn’t been arrested or incarcerated. It is a subdued rant against a perceived police state. Nothing more.

    Any person who tells you that Americans are free to sign contracts and engage in commerce for any purpose that pleases them is a crackpot.  If this were the case, drug dealers and customers could escape prosecution simply by agreeing not to call a crime a crime.

    The documents appear to have been written by someone who wishes the case were a criminal indictment, not a civil forfeiture proceeding. The person may get his wish soon enough. Prosecutors wouldn’t have to use a word Bowdoin said in the presence of any Secret Service agent to bring an indictment or get a conviction.

    Bowdoin also appears to be confused about his own case — something that’s not surprising, considering he once told members that Ponzi charges had been dropped against him in Florida when they had never been brought to begin with.

    In his current pleadings, Bowdoin appears to be claiming he submitted to forfeiture under duress. But he never submitted to the forfeiture of the money and property he points to in today’s pleadings. He has submitted only to the forfeiture of money and property seized in August, not December, and Bowdoin appears to be trying to have the December forfeiture reversed while not mentioning the August forfeiture or providing corresponding dates when specific actions took place. At present, the documents appear to show that Bowdoin isn’t challenging the August seizure of $93.5 million and other property, including two homes.

    Members should ask him about that. They need to know if he is challenging the August seizure. They need to know precisely why he appears only to be challenging the seizure of property linked to his family members and Golden Panda President Clarence Busby.

    So Simple, Anybody Can Be A Lawyer

    Earlier Bowdoin had competent attorneys from a prominent law firm. He also paid $24,000 to retain an expert witness. All of these people went to real law schools and are members of the bar.

    Neither the attorneys nor the expert could score a win for ASD at the Sept. 30-Oct. 1.  evidentiary hearing that ASD itself requested. Bowdoin could have scored his own win by producing documents and audited financial statements that demonstrated ASD was not a Ponzi scheme. He didn’t do it. Not only did he not do it, he didn’t even do what his attorneys asked him to do, namely submit documentation to them to aid in the preparation of his case in the forfeiture matter.

    And now he’s doing what Andy Bowdoin does: playing the victim and creating hope where none exists. He did largely the same thing when he was accused of a huge fraud in Alabama a decade ago.

    You see, the whole, ugly mess in Alabama that resulted in felony charges being filed against Bowdoin was not his fault.

    Bowdoin told the St. Petersburg Times that “he ran into trouble in Alabama because his company, Mobile International, sought to raise $1-million through a stock issue, and someone was improperly paid a commission to sell the stock,” according to the newpaper.

    “That nullified the registrations that our attorney had done with the state of Alabama,” he said.

    Bowdoin did not explain why he pleaded guilty to felonies if he had done nothing wrong and how one couple got hoodwinked out of $450,000. Bowdoin and his cronies bought expensive cars and expensive office trimmings with the money.

    World-class crackpots are pulling Bowdoin’s strings now. Don’t be surprised if he gets indicted soon and takes a haf-dozen or more people down with him. An alleged $100 million Ponzi scheme is still extraordinary, despite its seeming smallness when compared to Bernard Madoff.

    The government should leave no stone unturned in its investigation into Bowdoin’s actions. On Aug. 18, Bowdoin filed an emergency motion that asked the court to free up money so ASD could operate post-seizure.

    Bowdoin did not advise the court from which it sought emergency relief in the Aug. 18 brief that ASD had more than $1 million on deposit in a bank in Antigua. Instead Bowdoin told the court that ASD couldn’t pay its bills.

    “ASD needs emergency relief,” Bowdoin said in Aug. 18 filings. ” . . .  In a matter of a few days, ASD has gone from a vibrant internet advertising business with approximately 100,000 members to a hollow shell without a working office and without the means to resume its business . . .  It has also been unable to pay its bills (to creditors, such as its landlord) and is hurtling down into a steep financial tailspin. To provide one concrete example, on August 14, 2008, ASD’s hosting company threatened to shut down the company’s servers because its bill is unpaid.”

    Only after prosecutors pointed to the Antigua money on Aug. 25 did Bowdoin acknowledge its existence in court briefs. He declared an emergency despite the fact ASD had more than $1 million offshore — in an account under a different name — and he didn’t tell members about the Antigua money until prosecutors raised the issue.

    Why not?

    At first, part of the circus surrounding ASD was mildly amusing, despite the fact a $100 million, international Ponzi scheme is very serious business. But all the air is out of the balloon now, and the government should pursue justice that is equivalent with crimes being committed right in plain sight.

    This is not a comedy; it is a tragedy.

  • BREAKING NEWS: Bowdoin, Acting As Own Attorney, Files Motion To Dismiss AdSurfDaily Forfeiture Case

    Andy Bowdoin.
    Andy Bowdoin.

    UPDATE 4:13 P.M. EST (U.S.A.) Andy Bowdoin, acting as his own attorney, has filed a motion to dismiss the AdSurfDaily forfeiture case.

    At the same time, Bowdoin appears to have filed a motion to reverse his earlier decision to submit to the forfeiture of certain property seized by the government.

    Bowdoin’s filing, however, does not appear to contest the forfeiture of tens of millions of dollars seized by the government in August. It appears to apply to property seized from members of his family in December and from Golden Panda President Clarence Busby.

    It is possible that a document is missing from the case file or has yet to be added. The petition to reverse the forfeiture, as filed, references only property seized in the December forfeiture action.

    Today’s Bowdoin filings are dated and signed Feb. 25, 2009, exactly one day before AdViewGlobal (AVG), an autosurf that defines itself as an offshore company and shares common management with ASD, announced it was going underground by forming a private association.

    Incredibly, AVG makes the claim it is not associated with ASD despite the presence of common management, common promoters and at least one common employee, Chuck Osmin. Osmin testified for ASD at the Sept. 30-Oct. 1 evidentiary hearing. Gary Talbert, a former ASD executive who is now the chief executive officer of AVG, filed a sworn affidavit in the case.

    George Harris, Bowdoin’s stepson, is listed as a trustee for the AVG private association. So is Talbert. Property was seized from Harris in the December forfeiture complaint.

    Harris is the son of Edna Faye Bowdoin, Andy Bowdoin’s wife.

    Andy Bowdoin said his decision to submit to the forfeiture was made under “severe duress” and was a “grave mistake and error.” He accused the government of “fraud, trickery and deceit.”

    Meanwhile, Bowdoin has filed a motion to suppress evidence, saying he was illegally interrogated by the U.S. Secret Service. Bowdoin claimed agents did not advise him of his Miranda rights — the right to remain silent.

    In his motion to dismiss, Bowdoin said the court was obligated to dismiss because it lacked jurisdiction. Bowdoin said the case should be viewed as a quasi-criminal matter, not a civil case.

    “There was no probable cause even to file a complaint in this instant case,” Bowdoin asserted.

    Why Bowdoin filed the documents as his own attorney isn’t clear. But the documents have the hallmarks of documents filed by inexpert litigants belonging to underground legal “associations” that purport to help nonlawyers navigate tricky waters.

    AdSurfDaily and AdViewGlobal recently have been linked to such underground associations. One of them is Pro Advocate Group, which says it can help nonlawyers and nondoctors establish private “associations” that enable members to practice law and medicine without a license.

    Bowdoin’s pleadings, in general, are much more respectful than documents other litigants acting as their own attorneys recently have filed in the case.

    Unlike Curtis Richmond and others who used the Richmond litigation blueprint, Bowdoin, for instance, does not accuse the judge and prosecutors of crimes and demand a specific result in a compressed time frame at the peril of prosecution.

    But he did accuse the government of trickery, saying the Secret Service “did not follow the supreme law of the land” in its treatment of him.

    “One cannot break the law in an attempt to ‘uphold the law,’” Bowdoin said.

    Moderators of the Pro-ASD Surf’s Up forum have hinted for days that something special was coming in the case. If this is it, “special” means that Bowdoin now is acting as his own attorney and citing English Common Law as one of his resources.

    How much Bowdoin spent on the lawyers previously handing his case is unknown. His earlier decision to surrender to the forfeiture, however, imperiled ASD promoters who made money. It would be hard for them to claim they were entitled to keep proceeds of what prosecutors said was a $100 million Ponzi scheme when Bowdoin himself surrendered claims.

    Prosecutors, however, always have had the option of litigating against Bowdoin’s promoters no matter what Bowdoin did.

    ASD members have reported in recent days that the Secret Service has seized the bank accounts of some individual ASD promoters, including people who also are promoting AdViewGlobal. Bowdoin has been under pressure from members who were unhappy about his two-month silence.

    He did not tell members about a second forfeiture complaint filed against ASD-connected assets in December. Nor did he tell members about his January decision to surrender the money. Both issues created problems for ASD promoters.

    Read Bowdoin’s motion to dismiss.

    Read Bowdoin’s motion to reverse his earlier decision to forfeit property.

    Read Bowdoin’s motion to supress evidence.

  • Sign Of The Apocalypse? Ning.com Surf Sites Removed

    Ning.com sites by David Courtney that promoted autosurfs have been taken offline without explanation. It is unclear if the removal is permanent, but sites for MegaLido, AdGateWorld and BizAdSplash went offline last night and remain offline this morning.

    “This social network has been taken offline by its owner,” each site said. “It’s likely that the owner will bring it back online shortly.”

    The sites have been offline for at least 11 hours.

    Courtney also promoted Noobing, which is under fire from members for collecting money, paying rebates of up to 3 percent for a while, and then slashing rates to a fraction of 1 percent. Noobing blamed the rate cut on an unclear ruling in the ASD case and implored members to complain to the government.

    The surf also is under fire from the deaf community.

    Courtney said he’ll no longer write about Noobing in his newsletter, and he also announced that he won’t publish information about AdViewGlobal to protect members of a newly formed private association. Meanwhile, Courtney said he’d no longer publish information about the rebate-paying histories of AdGateWorld or BizAdSplash.

    At the same time, Courtney announced he was down on Aggero Investment, which crashed and burned over the weekend after collecting money until the bitter end.

    “Roger from Aggero really dropped a bomb on us over the weekend,” Courtney said. “Whereas just 13 days prior Roger was saying how great and wonderful everything was going, and even raised the maximum investment from $3,000 to $5,000, a mere two weeks later he announced that the program was in trouble and that he was closing.

    “This announcement was further shocking due to the fact that just a couple of days prior, Roger announced that Premium Ads Club was closing up but that those of us in Aggero had nothing to worry about. Less than 48 hours after that announcement, he told us that Aggero was in fact having problems.”

    In other ASD news, an ALL-CAPS POSTER named “David” — not David Courtney — screamed in multiple threads at the Pro-ASD Surf’s Up forum last night for people to wake up and not let ASD’s big winners hang onto their ASD money.

    David implored the winners to turn over their earnings to the government so ill-gotten gains could be distributed among the rank-and-file losers. One poster assured David that the winners weren’t acting in their own self-interest by trying to rally troops to write letters and rail against the government.

    But David didn’t buy it, and continued to post in ALL CAPS. A poster then appealed to the Mods to shelter Surf’s Up members from the high truths he was telling. Eventually his posts were deleted.

  • Purported Joe Shoop ASD Letter Was On Website Registered To Litigant Who Sued Chase Bank By Posting Bond Of ‘Twenty-One Dollars In Silver Coinage’

    UPDATE 8:14 P.M. EST (U.S.A.) With each passing day the AdSurfDaily case reveals new and strange details about a subculture that appears to have firm roots in the organization. It is a subculture of rants against the government for perceived injustices, underground business “associations” that purport to permit nonlawyers and nondoctors to practice law and medicine, and legal filings that seek to undermine banks’ abilities to collect on debts.

    Today a post appeared on the Pro-ASD Surf’s Up forum purporting to take viewers to a page from which they could download a Microsoft Word template  of a letter to send the government to protest its actions in the ASD case. The author of the letter was identified as ASD promoter Joe Shoop, and the website — credittechs.net — was registered to Ricky Jackson.

    In 2004, Ricky Jackson and Regina Jackson sued Chase Manhattan Mortgage Corp. in federal court for the Eastern District of Missouri to overturn a mortgage foreclosure. The documents in the case purported to show that Ricky Jackson had posted a bond consisting of “twenty-one dollars in silver coinage” in a bizarre bid to undermine the bank’s interest in the property.

    The Jacksons, according to filings, ordered the bank to respond to the document within three days or lose all of its rights in the case, which appears to have started in Missouri state court and morphed into multiple federal cases.

    U.S. District Judge Catherine D. Perry ultimately dismissed the Jackson complaint against the bank with prejudice, saying the pleadings were nonsense.

    “This document is even more incomprehensible than the initial complaint, ” Perry said of the 21 Silver Coins filing.

    For days now, the Surf’s Up forum has been suggesting the ASD case soon will take a legal turn for the better — from ASD’s point of view. One Surf’s Up Mod pleaded with a member to “just hold on — a little bit longer now baby.”

    But pleadings filed in the case recently by ASD members have used the template of Curtis Richmond, a California man associated with a Utah “Indian” tribe a judge ruled a sham.

    Four motions to intervene have been filed in recent weeks in the ASD case. All four used the Richmond template. They accused Judge Rosemary Collyer, U.S. Attorney Jeffrey A. Taylor and Assistant U.S. Attorney William Cowden of crimes.

    Richmond, a nonlawyer, has been a thorn in the side of banks from coast to coast. His name appears in lawsuits in which borrowers claimed not to owe lenders money because they had “assigned” their debts to him. Meanwhile, Richmond has tried to have litigation opponents in debt cases arrested.

    On Feb. 26, an autosurf known as AdViewGlobal, which has close ties to ASD, announced it was forming a “private association.” The company to which it turned for advice is Pro Advocate Group, which says it can set up individuals to practice law without a license.

    Karl Dahlstrom, who is associated with Pro Advocate Group, was sentenced in 1997 to 78 months in federal prison for his role in a securities scheme.

    The credittechs.net website registered to Jackson features a media player with the ASD logo, and also appears to host a credit-repair organization set up as a private association.

    “At Credit Techs we are not credit counseling or credit negotiators, we are credit debt ELIMINATORS,” the site says. “We can help stop the credit companies from stealing your hard earned money. Our specialty is credit cards and unsecured debt. We are an organization of members who help one another out with such financial matters.”

    Credit Techs also says this:

    “Members of groups who are competent nonlawyers can assist other members of the group achieve the goals of the group in court without being charged with ‘unauthorized practice of law,’” the site says.

  • BREAKING NEWS: Obama To Sponsor Plan To Curb International Tax Scheming, Treasury Secretary Tells Panel

    obamaThe Obama administration said today that it will crack down on international tax cheats and people using tax havens to evade U.S. regulators.

    In testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said Obama will propose new rules to curtail international scheming.

    “The budget also seeks to close the ‘tax gap’ by tackling tax shelters and other efforts to abuse our tax laws, including international tax-evasion efforts,” Geithner said. “The budget addresses the use of offshore structures and accounts by U.S. corporations and individuals to avoid and evade U.S. taxes. Over the next several months, the President will propose a series of legislative and enforcement measures to reduce such U.S. tax evasion and avoidance.”

    Geithner’s remarks couldn’t have come at a worse time for some AdSurfDaily members. Some members Surf’s Up, a Pro-ASD forum, are engaging in a letter-writing campaign to have the government investigate the prosecutors and federal judge involved in the case.

    Members have sent letters to Obama, Sen. Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and other politicians.

    In August, prosecutors alleged that ASD was a wire-fraud and money-laundering operation whose central component was an international, $100 million Ponzi scheme. ASD had more than $1 million on deposit in Antigua, which later became ground zero in the alleged multibillion-dollar Allen Stanford Ponzi scheme.

    Robert Garner, an ASD attorney who advertised his international financial services in a magazine in 2003, was named a defendant in a RICO lawsuit in January. His co-defendants include ASD President Andy Bowdoin and Golden Panda Ad Builder President Clarence Busby. Assets tied to Golden Panda were seized in the ASD case.

    Promoter say Busby now is involved with another surf — BizAdSplash — which promotes itself as an offshore business.

    Bowdoin’s stepson, George Harris, and two former ASD employees, Gary Talbert and Chuck Osmin, are associated with yet another offshore surf — AdViewGlobal.

    Three autosurfs with ties to ASD sprouted up in the aftermath of the government’s seizure of ASD funds, all touting the benefits of their “offshore” locations in countries such as Panama and Uruguay. One of the surfs, BizAdSplash, is having trouble with a bank in Panama and a payment processor in Panama. The surf announced the trouble after the SEC charged Stanford with fraud.

    Meanwhile, AdGateWorld positioned itself as an attractive option after what happened to ASD. Promoters said AdGateWorld provided protection from the SEC, the IRS and state attorneys general.

    For its part, AdViewGlobal now says it is forming a private association.

  • Shush! AdViewGlobal Promoters Get Tongue-Tied

    Here’s how one AdViewGlobal (AVG) promoter put it in a message to his list:

    “Ad View Global is now known as AV Global Association. AV Global Association is a private membership association. To help protect the members of this private association, I will no longer discuss AVG in my Newsletter.”

    He did not mention that AVG is taking advice from Karl Dahlstrom of Pro Advocate Group.  Dahlstrom, in 1997, was sentenced to 78 months in federal prison for his role in a securities scheme. Nor did the promoter mention that Dahlstrom’s daughter also was sentenced to prison.

    No one at the Pro-AdSurfDaily Surf’s Up forum has mentioned it either. A sister site for AVG set up by some of the Surf’s Up Mods and members, however, also has gone underground. A couple of weeks ago the AdViewGlobal forum anointed Curtis Richmond a “hero” for intervening in the ASD case, but never told members about Richmond’s conviction for threatening federal judges.

    Nor did the AdViewGlobal forum tells members about an order by a federal judge for Richmond and others to pay nearly $110,000 in damages and costs to public officials harmed by an organized nuisance campaign. Richmond is a member of a Utah “Indian” tribe the judge ruled a sham, saying the “tribe’s” efforts to undermine the legal system by filing vexatious lawsuits and trying to collect enormous judgments against public officials amounted to racketeering.

    BizAdSplash

    Here’s what the first promoter cited above had to say about BizAdSplash, yet another surf with ties to ASD that came to life in the aftermath of the government seizure of assets linked to ASD in August and December.

    “I think it is best to leave the percentages off my Newsletter going forward. For those who are already members of Biz Ad Splash, you can see the daily calculations by going to your Ad Package History and then clicking on any one of your active ad packs.

    “Biz Ad Splash announced over the weekend that they are discontinuing the Strict Pay payment processor. Strict Pay is having some problems right now which has caused Biz Ad Splash to stop using them for the time being at least.”

    Early promoters of BizAdSplash linked it to Clarence Busby, the operator of GoldenPandaAdBuilder. Assets linked to Golden Panda were seized in the ASD probe. Busby was called a “special consultant” to BizAdSplash. Other promoters said he was the owner.

    Like ASD President Andy Bowdoin and ASD attorney Robert Garner, Busby has been named a defendant in a racketeering lawsuit.

    The BizAdSplash promoter did not mention banking problems in Panama and elsewhere in Latin America and the Caribbean created by the collapse of the R. Allen Stanford Ponzi in Antigua. Three of three surfs that sprouted up after the government seizure of assets linked to ASD claimed ties to Panama or South America. These included BizAdSplash, AVG and AdGateWorld.

    All three surfs are trolling for cash in particularly odious ways right now — and this on the heels of other surfs that collapsed in the wake of the Stanford Ponzi. The extent of Stanford’s troubles on the autosurf trade is unclear, but two surfs — PAC and Aggero Investment — flamed out in spectacular fashion in the past week, and promoters for both surfs claimed the programs were safe because they were offshore.

    Both PAC and Aggero Investment collected money until the bitter end, saying things were just fine.

    Boom! They were gone.

    And, speaking of “gone,” MegaLido also is gone. The first promoter cited above promoted it, too, and he’s also promoting AdGateWorld.

  • Our Surprise Visit From ‘The White Nationalist Community’

    Given that people hawking private medical associations that enable unlicensed members to practice medicine are playing an increasingly vocal role in the AdSurfDaily case — and that  “Sovereigns” and conspiracy theorists are, too — it shouldn’t come as a surprise that one of our visitors yesterday arrived at the Blog from a hate site.

    But it did come as a surprise.

    Perhaps it was just someone doing research and trying to establish links among the vocal ASD factions. We can only hope.

    We hadn’t heard of Stormfront.org before seeing its URL in our logs. We visited the site, and an instant chill swept over us.  The site invited visitors to listen to “Dr. David Duke” on the radio. Posts included attacks on white people stupid enough to vote for President Obama, attacks on Jews, attacks on the government.

    And you could buy a Ku Klux Klan T-shirt for $12 (plus shipping), and even set yourself up with some Nazi mementos. The site’s slogan is “White Pride World Wide.”

    The site is operated by Don Black, owns its own servers, and operates out of West Palm Beach, Fla.

    “Stormfront has published stories aimed at children, and the Stormfront for Kids section of the website hosts a link to ‘White Power Doom,’ a downloadable white power computer game that allows children the opportunity to hunt and kill Jews and black people,” according to Wikipedia.

    Here’s hoping our visitor from Stormfront.org was just a researcher.

  • Stanford Ponzi Scheme Is Affecting Autosurf Trade

    When the Securities and Exchange Commission charged R. Allen Stanford Feb. 17 with operating a multibillion-dollar fraud scheme through his bank in Antigua, the news created banking pandemonium on the tiny Caribbean island and also in Panama.

    In the days that followed, a surf known as BizAdSplash referenced the banking situation in Panama without referencing Stanford by name.

    BizAdSplash: Trouble in Panama.
    BizAdSplash: Trouble in Panama.

    BizAdSplash was one of three surfs that came to life in the months following the seizure of funds tied to AdSurfDaily Inc., a surf registered in the United States and accused of running a $100 million Ponzi scheme.

    One of the key sales points of BizAdSplash was its purported offshore location. Two other surfs — AdViewGlobal and AdGateWorld — also bragged about being offshore. Promoters for the surfs said the offshore locations provided protection from the SEC, the IRS and state attorneys general. Promotions for the new surfs repeatedly referenced ASD.

    “We want to let you know that even though our banks in Panama are closed for the next day and half, the payment processors are NOT CLOSED,” BizAdSplash said on Feb. 24. “You can still buy Ad Packages through your chosen payment processor. You will get your 100% match today and will continue into next week.

    “So,” BizAdSplash continued, “if you purchased new Ad Packages yesterday from outside your Cash Balance, you received a 100% matching bonus.

    “This 100% matching bonus will continue on today, through the weekend and on through Friday, March 6th!!!” the surf exclaimed.

    On Feb. 27 — just three days later — BizAdSplash told customers it was ending its affiliation with StrictPay, a payment processor with Panamanian ties, but again did not mention Stanford or refer to the regional banking crisis.

    “We are suspending the use of the Strict Pay Payment processor,” BizAdSplash said. “This is due to Strict Pay having some technical difficulties at this time. If you have requested a cash out using Strict Pay this past week, please change this and any future cash out request to one of the following: Alert Pay, Solid Trust Pay or Bank Wire. Please note that using the bank wire, the minimum to cash out is $1,000. Until Strict Pay has corrected the problems we will not allow this processor to be available.”

    Alert Pay and Solid Trust Pay are payment processors headquartered in Canada, and friendly to the autosurf trade.

    AdSurfDaily is another surf with Caribbean ties. Federal prosecutors said ASD had more than $1 million on deposit in Antigua. After prosecutors made the claim, ASD President Andy Bowdoin told members that $500,000 of the sum was a deposit that enabled ASD to process credit-card orders.

    Bowdoin never referenced Antigua until prosecutors referenced it first.

    ASD said it relied on the expert guidance of attorney Robert F. Garner. The Feds now say Garner was a shill for ASD, and Garner has advertised his legal services to help companies establish a presence offshore.

    The extent of the problem the alleged Stanford Ponzi has caused surfs is unclear. But several surfs that purport to be operating offshore have collapsed in recent days