UPDATED 11:07 A.M. EDT (U.S.A.) AdViewGlobal (AVG) members have asked the company to produce a photograph of the company’s purported headquarters building in Uruguay. Meanwhile, members are complaining about slow payouts or no payouts from the autosurf and requesting photographs of the company’s management team.
At the same time, they are complaining about a lack of communication from the company, which purports to be headquartered in Uruguay but recently issued a news release with a dateline of Tallahassee, Fla.
As tensions build, AVG members say they are being left in the dark. And they question why queries do not get answered and why the surf’s payout rate is so “low.”
Although some promoters have suggested the company is conducting an internal “audit” to determine how much fraud occurred within the system because of misuse of a member-to-member cash button, the company itself provided the button.
How the company will determine what constitutes fraud is unclear. Some members acquired millions of page impressions by taking advantage of 200 percent — and even 250 percent — matching-bonus programs that ran virtually continuously for months.
In May, AVG announced a deal that permitted members to wire money to an offshore bank to acquire page impressions (ad-packs). Within days, however, one of the companies AVG identified as a facilitator of the wire transfers denied it had any business relationship with AVG and said it believed it had been targeted in a scam.
AVG withdrew the announcement after the company issued the denial, which raised the prospect that AVG had attempted to route money to itself by using the account of a separate company located in Florida.
A debit card that costs $30 — and permits people to pay AVG for “advertising” but not to withdraw “earnings” — also has led to questions. Members said the company was selling the debit card through PayPal, even though PayPal’s Acceptable Use Policy expressly forbids the company’s services to be used for pyramid schemes and Ponzi schemes.
The company that provides the debit card, Secure Cash Network Inc. (SCN), says in its Terms of Service that the card cannot be used for the purchase of illegal products and services. Many jurisdictions consider the autosurf business model to be illegal, and the U.S. government has successfully prosecuted a number of surf firms in recent years.
It is unclear if AVG has its own PayPal account or if a third-party account is being used to collect the money for the debit card, with the money somehow routed to AVG later. The utility of the debit card itself also is in question, since SCN says the card cannot be used to purchase illegal products or services.
More than 70 percent of AVG’s web traffic originates in the United States, according to one web service.
Many of you are familiar with “Pistol,” one of the posters here. In recent days, Pistol repeatedly sent us communications we deem harassing through our Comments form and our Contact form. When we didn’t submit to his hectoring, he published a video about us on YouTube.
The message, of course, is that if we don’t do as he says, he’ll dial up the harassment to extract the result he seeks.
Pistol has been banned at other sites for antisocial behavior. Some of it was mildly antisocial — steering threads off-topic in ways that squelched productive discussion and shifted attention to himself, for instance.
Some of it, however, was more than mildly antisocial — publishing videos that treated human beings like soulless, unfeeling objects incapable of redemption or even of having a teachable moment, for example.
Early on, we made a mistake by extending to Pistol the maximum benefit of the doubt that he would exercise some restraint and not disrupt things here. The early disruptions were somewhat minimal — Pistol occasionally promoted his videos by spamming in threads, for example.
Eventually, though, the disruptions grew in number, accompanied by an increase in toxicity. Despite his obvious intelligence, Pistol began to pose a daily maintenance problem for this Blog. If this were high school, he would be the brightest kid in the class, but also the most disruptive. Teachers would marvel out loud at his brain one moment, and want to march him to the principal’s office the next.
You knew that kid, right? He was the one who knew the difference between “innumeracy” and “illiteracy” and couldn’t wait for the teacher to confuse the terms so he could scold her for not being as smart as he — or to hold her out as a case study in hypocrisy for presuming even to be a teacher when she could not demonstrate perfect vocabulary at all times.
The problem with Pistol is that he licenses himself to walk into a house and, ultimately — sorry about this, readers — vomit all over the floor.
If you ask him politely to stop, he feigns obtuseness and then engages in sarcasm or passive-aggressive posturing, all the while insisting it’s all justifiable because he doesn’t suffer fools gladly. We recognized our own role in the insanity a few weeks ago, when we found ourselves asking this grown man not to vomit on our floor.
If you’re going around asking an adult not to vomit on your floor, well, you’re the problem. We were wrong to think we could finesse this. An adult who presumes the right to soil your floor needs to be dispatched to the curb, not to be coddled. We should have dispatched him weeks ago.
Pistol has a score to settle with us now — and now we have joined a long line of people he has pilloried on YouTube and elsewhere. Last week we deleted a few posts in which he was being deliberately obtuse, disruptive, disingenuous, baiting and just plain mean to other posters here.
As is his way, Pistol now wants the discussion to digress into a discussion over the meaning of the word “mean.” Other posters also are guilty of meanness, he suggests, and yet their meanness is tolerated so long as it is directed at, say, Pistol or autosurf promoters.
In other words, “Johnny did it! Why can’t I!” This from a man who purports to detest foolishness while using the playground arguments of a child. It’s Pistol’s way of letting us know we haven’t achieved perfection in moderating a Blog, rather like the teacher who confuses innumeracy and illiteracy.
A small number of our posters are less thoughtful in their responses to autosurf supporters than we’d prefer them to be. At the same time, some ASD and AVG posters are less thoughtful to autosurf critics than we’d prefer them to be. No matter what side of the issue these posters are on, however, they do not pose the maintenance challenge Pistol presents — and, of course, he knows this.
One of our posters — one Pistol has pilloried in video — used some choice language after being provoked by Pistol here — and Pistol responded by dialing up the provocation, essentially arguing that posters also must be etymologists.
Pistol, of course, understands the roots of language and the power of words, which is why he uses the handle “Pistol.”
We did not publish Pistol’s responses to the poster’s response to Pistol. Pistol started the problem, provided the fuel for it to escalate, and now asserts disingenuously that this Blog is engaging in censorship.
In other words, Pistol is a victim.
Two days ago it simply became too much work to deal with the maintenance problems Pistol creates. On one hand, Pistol purports not to suffer fools gladly. On the other, he subjects this Blog regularly to his own foolishness.
So, we adjusted our software settings to direct everything Pistol submits to a holding queue. Pistol responded by subjecting us to even more foolishness
We soon heard from “Pistol’sPal,” for example — more foolishness from a man who says he cannot suffer fools gladly.
Yesterday we were hit by this foolishness:
'Pistol' skewers PP on YouTube
Pistol wrote to us Saturday morning through our Contact form, presenting the URL for a YouTube video he had created to skewer us.
After Pistol used the Contact form, he submitted another post headlined “THE THIRD ATTEMPT.”
The strategy, if it can be called that, appeared to be to nuisance this Blog into publishing his comments. When that didn’t work, the strategy shifted to producing a YouTube video — basically, publish my comments or expect to see yourself pilloried on YouTube.
When that didn’t work, the strategy reverted back to haranguing: “THE THIRD ATTEMPT” means that two prior attempts to get a comment published failed: The message: Play my game or you might not like the consequences. It is, among other things, both extortive and foolish.
All this foolishness . . . from a poster who purports not to suffer fools gladly.
What Pistol seems unwilling to do is forgive any human foibles. Some of our posters, for example, are former ASD members who have “seen the light” and now post here and elsewhere to help people steer clear of scams. Pistol has pilloried some of them in videos.
Beyond that, though, Pistol regularly skewers them here, while at once insisting he opposes scams. He is attacking people who are trying to help, using flaws and imperfections he perceives to demean their worth as human beings.
The message: How can they now presume to be teachers — or to have any worth at all?
Other posters here never had anything to do with ASD or AVG, but work to educate and inform the public about scams. Pistol skewers them, too, dismissing or ignoring the value they add and focusing on what he perceives to be their imperfections as human beings.
Every appeal we’ve made to the greater angels of his nature has been met with hostility and obtuseness.
Ever wonder why there are relatively few Blogs and forums that cover autosurf scams? One of the reasons is that there is no money in it. Another is that you pay a price — from the scammers themselves, and from the Pistols of the world, who purport to detest scams while derailing the efforts of people who are trying to do something about them.
Here is the math:
In April, we paid a bill for $153.52 for our PACER subscription. In January our PACER bill was $62. There are other expenses associated with running this Blog, including the enormous investment in time. This story, for example, took two weeks to research and report, and we had to pay for certain documents. We reviewed hundreds of pages of records.
This Blog has generated $448.22 in total revenue year-to-date. May revenue was $70.70. Our “pay” is pennies per day — if that.
And now Pistol, who purports not to suffer fools gladly and to detest autosurf scams and scammers, has joined with them in spreading the lie that this Blog is lining its pockets with advertising fees.
With respect to Pistol and his participation on the PatrickPretty.com Blog, we gave him way too much latitude.
We apologize to readers for doing so.
This Blog is not written for people who agree with our point of view; it is written for the “CORRECTIONs” of the surf world, even though we know CORRECTION and other surf supporters never may agree with us.
But we also know we have made a difference in the lives of people once immersed in the convoluted world of the autosurf, and watching their thought processes evolve has provided joy.
UPDATED 11:04 A.M. EDT (U.S.A.) Plenty of AdViewGlobal (AVG) members are quick to criticize the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve for propping up sick companies.
Under pressure from “advertising” participants, however, the autosurf firm may be on the verge of implementing its own bailout plan for rank-and-file members who are sick of “low” payout rates.
The plan appears to feature accounting tricks and a redistribution scheme of the same ilk some AVG members accuse the government of foisting on the American people. If implemented, it may go down in history as the first example of Autosurfism, an economic theory that apparently holds wealth can be created by taking away vast holdings from some members so other members with smaller stakes can enjoy higher daily payout rates from the company’s advertising rotator.
AVG members say the company is considering a plan that would reduce the maximum number of “page impressions” (ad-packs) an individual member may hold to 250,000. Some members reportedly have more than 1 million page impressions on the books. Their holdings would be reduced to 250,000 by fiat, with the excess placed off the books in a nonearning state of suspended animation for at least 30 days.
After 30 days, members said, AVG would try to place the excess holdings back on the books. It is unclear how the system will be able to sustain the excess then if it cannot sustain it now.
One promoter, with hopeful words, said AVG expected to record multimillion-dollar sales soon by offering a suite of communications services. AVG announced the new services earlier this month, about five months after the surf launched.
Smoke And Mirrors?
Capping the page-impression ceiling at 250,000 may raise serious concerns about solvency, an issue frequently associated with the autosurf trade. Liabilities typically cannot be erased simply by pretending they don’t exist or by hiding them until it is more convenient to own them, anymore than assets can be created by divining them into the system. (See Enron.)
In the autosurf trade, liabilities accrue the instant a member completes a paid-to-surf session. If a surf has thousands of members, liabilities due each surfer accrue daily. A company is insolvent if its liabilities exceed its assets or if it cannot pay liabilities as they mature.
AVG members said the company was considering a scheme by which the maturation dates of liabilities would be pushed back to 210 days. The initial maturation date, members said, was 150 days. In other words, members who expected to receive back 100 percent of their advertising expenditure, plus profit for clicking on ads in AVG’s rotator, would have to wait two more months to get their payouts — while clicking every day during the two extra months to qualify for the maximum payout.
Members said AVG may place millions of page impressions in a state of suspended animation, something that could be construed as a bogus accounting practice. One of the principal accounting tricks of the autosurf trade is to pretend liabilities don’t exist by saying “rebates (payouts) aren’t guaranteed.” This infamous line is what permits autosurfs, in effect, to wipe away liabilities by fiat or to disguise liabilities by treating them as assets.
Despite the plan, which promoters are positioning as a means by which AVG can improve the daily payout rate from its current state of near 0 percent to 1 percent, members insisted AVG has a healthy balance sheet. AVG, however, does not publish audited and certified financials and largely operates in an environment of secrecy, saying it is a “private association” headquartered in Uruguay.
Promoters have said the Uruguay location was chosen to insulate the company from agencies such as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Did The 200 Percent Promotions And AVG Cash Button Backfire? Members Complain About Manipulation And Abuse
AVG created conditions that enabled some members to acquire vast numbers of page impressions, in part through an almost nonstop series of 200-percent, matching-bonus promotions for prospects and sponsors. At the same time, the company provided a member-to-member cash button that reportedly was rife with abuse by promoters who “stacked” friends and family members within their organization to maximize daily earnings within individual downline groups.
The member-to-member cash button — coupled with the matching-bonus promotions — heightened concerns about wire fraud and money-laundering, but some members said their colleagues simply were taking advantage of a service AVG provided. Others disagreed, describing “stacking” as unethical.
Upon the launch of a new website earlier this month, AVG quickly did away with a whopping, 250-percent, matching-bonus program it had implemented to celebrate the website launch. Although the 250-percent program was advertised to last through June 29, AVG moved the expiration date back to June 5.
The surf removed the cash button after a member shared a strategy by which sponsors could gather payments directly from prospects, deposit them in the sponsors’ banks, send checks by overnight mail to processors in Canada and Panama or use the banks’ wire facilities to route the money to the offshore processors, and then cause the processors to wire the funds to AVG.
Under the strategy, sponsors would fund their own AVG accounts with prospects’ money, and then use the AVG system to transfer the money back to prospects’ accounts so they could quality for the 250-percent matching bonuses. The bonuses alone created astronomical liabilities.
Some members, though, described the convoluted, money-transfer process as all in a day’s work for helpful sponsors committed to the success of their downlines. Others called it wire fraud and money-laundering.
A number of AVG members have called for the company to identify members who abused the system and to claw back ill-gotten gains from them. AVG, however, may encounter difficulty defining what constitutes abuse, since the company itself provided the means that made the purported abuses possible.
Moreover, some members favored by management could have benefited from the same practices other members described as abusive.
Processor Problems And New Debit Card
Meanwhile, members are reporting that AVG — which purportedly is based in Uruguay — is having trouble with SolidTrustPay, a payment processor based in Canada. At the same time, members say, AVG is recommending that members cancel current payout requests through SolidTrustPay and route the requests through StrictPay, a payment processor based in Panama.
AVG also is pushing a debit card, which members say costs $30 and one day is envisioned as the preferred payout method. The card currently can be used to pay AVG, but cannot be used for cash-outs.
The card comes with this fee structure:
Monthly fee: $7.95
ATM fee: $2.00
International ATM fee: $5.00
International inquiry/decline fee: $1.50
ATM declined fee: $1.50
ATM inquiry: $1.50
Point-of-sale purchase fee: $1.50
Point-of-sale purchased declined fee: $1.50
Pinless transaction: Free
ACH inbound to card fee: $7.00
U.S. wire inbound to card fee: $10.00
International wire inbound to card fee: $15.00
Moving money from AVG account to card fee: $3.00
ACH outbound fee: $7.50
Domestic wire outbound fee: $25.00
International wire outbound fee: $35.00
Other fees may apply.
The card is known as First Debit Gold, and is issued by a company in Texas known as Secure Cash Network Inc. (SCN). In its Terms of Service, SCN says the card may not be used to purchase illegal goods or services. Many governments view the autosurf trade as an illegal enterprise.
Amounts members place on the card are stored in SCN’s computer system are are not insured by the FDIC, according to SCN’s Terms of Service. The amount members can place on the card is unclear. Some members said $10,000; others said $1,000.
Some members said AVG was selling the SCN card through PayPal. PayPal’s Acceptable Use Policy expressly prohibits use of its services for pyramid schemes and Ponzi schemes. It is unclear if the PayPal account used by AVG is in AVG’s name, but the advertising-rotator facet of its business frequently is associated with Ponzi schemes.
AdSurfDaily, a company with close ties to AVG, was accused by federal prosecutors last year of operating a multimillion-dollar Ponzi scheme and by state prosecutors in Florida with operating a pyramid scheme.
Some members of the AdViewGlobal (AVG) autosurf say they received no paper profits for surfing yesterday. For weeks, members have complained about “low” payouts, not “no” payouts.
Concern now is spreading about the complete absence of payouts yesterday. Some members, however, are saying that complainers have to understand that payouts never were “guaranteed.”
AVG is awash in a sea of incongruities. On one hand, the surf has released a forward-looking promotion that suggests members can earn back the money they spend on “advertising” — plus a profit of 10 percent — in the first six months of membership.
On the other hand, however, current members are grumbling about minuscule payouts — and, now, no payouts at all.
The no-payout development came on the heels of a PowerPoint presentation AVG released that advertised a conversion rate “in the neighbourhood of 37 percent,” a claim that implied the rate could be achieved across-the-board, regardless of the nature of the product, the quality of the audience, the state of the economy, pricing and other variables.
Under the conversion claim, an “advertiser” who pitched free doughnuts could expect 192 conversions out of each 519 AVG visitors. An “advertiser” who sold doughnuts for $10,000 each also could expect 192 conversions out of each 519 visitors.
“Advertisers” could expect to “garner” the rate as long as their sales copy didn’t “suck,” AVG said in the presentation.
The presentation included a “case study” that incorporated events that had not happened and concluded with an AVG surfer “on the beach” two years from now enjoying his success.
One AVG promoter complained that this Blog’s reporting on the PowerPoint presentation was unfair, saying the promotion was “not complete and is still being polished.” The member explained that the presentation was released because promoters were eager to have a new sales tool, but did not explain why AVG ever would release a tool prematurely, especially when the tool paints a rosy picture despite the fact current members are complaining about major problems within AVG.
AVG provided no context and no proof of its 37 percent conversion claim — a claim that was at odds with a separate claim of a “10%” conversion rate elsewhere in the presentation. The 10 percent claim was punctuated with an exclamation point, even though it was 27 points lower than the incredible, 37 percent claim.
Any person who achieved the lower conversion rate reasonably could ask why he hadn’t achieved the higher one — and why the 10 percent rate was something to celebrate with an exclamation point when the advertiser’s ad had underperformed the standard claim by a misery factor of nearly four to one.
Conversion rates vary wildly, as does the definition of a successful conversion rate. Depending on the nature of the product, pricing, market conditions and other variables, some advertisers would celebrate a conversion rate of 1 percent or even lower. A 37 percent conversion rate — especially if the implication is that it can be achieved across-the-board — is absurd on its face.
AVG Members Want Thieves Identified
Meanwhile, amid reports that some members had stolen from the company by abusing a member-to-member button AVG had provided, some members have called for AVG management to identify the thieves.
Earlier this month, an AVG promoter described a strategy by which prospects could pay upline sponsors directly for the purchase of ad-packs, which AVG calls “page impressions” or “viewer impressions.”
Under the strategy, the prospect would pay the sponsor directly, instead of paying AVG. The sponsor, in turn, would deposit the money into his private bank account. In the next step, the sponsor would send a check by overnight mail to payment processors either in Canada or Panama.
Alternatively, the sponsor could use his bank’s wire facility to route his prospect’s money to the offshore processors.
Once the processors received the money, the sponsor would instruct them to wire it to AVG. Once the money reached AVG, the sponsor would use it to fund his own account, and then use AVG’s internal system to distribute it back to the prospect.
The approach raised serious questions about mail fraud, wire fraud, tax evasion, money-laundering, selling unregistered securites and acting as a securities broker-dealer without a license.
AVG now has removed the member-to-member button.
At the same time, members have complained that promoters were misusing the button to siphon windfall profits through a process known as “stacking” — thus the call for AVG to identify the cheaters.
There were calls yesterday for AVG to reclaim the money promoters who cheated were paid. How the surf intends to proceed is unclear.
Some members pointed out that AVG itself provided the member-to-member button, saying that members who used it to their advantage had done nothing wrong and simply were taking advantage of a tool the surf had provided.
AdSurfDaily, a Florida company with close ties to AVG, which purports to be based in Uruguay, had problems with massive internal theft, federal prosecutors said in December.
In one case outlined by prosecutors, more than $1 million purportedly was stolen from ASD by Russian “hackers.”
ASD President Andy Bowdoin never filed a police report, despite the huge theft, prosecutors said. In fact, they added, Bowdoin ignored other thefts, too, because he knew that calling the police could expose ASD to the scrutiny of law enforcement.
Prosecutors said Bowdoin had set up ASD so family members and insiders actually could benefit from theft. In one instance, prosecutors said, ASD paid an employee to surf for Bowdoin’s son, who received rebates for having performed no work.
Bowdoin and family members later set up a separate company, using ASD proceeds to do so, prosecutors said. The separate company was used to retire the $157,000 mortgage on the home of Bowdoin’s stepson, who is a trustee for AVG.
Whether AVG will call the police to report the purported thefts by insiders is unclear.
And the company may face another problem: If AVG tries to reclaim money from promoters who took advantage of a member-to-member button the company itself provided, it is possible that the promoters themselves would consider the action a matter for law enforcement to investigate.
Jurisdiction also is fuzzy. AVG purports to be based in Uruguay, but recently issued a news release with a dateline of Tallahassee, Fla.
Three members of AdSurfDaily Inc. who sued Golden Panda Ad Builder President Clarence Busby amid allegations of racketeering have asked a federal judge to dismiss the allegations against Busby.
Meanwhile, Bank of America has asked the judge to stay the case until a federal forfeiture proceeding invoving AdSurfDaily and Golden Panda is adjudicated.
In essence, the bank is arguing that the forfeiture case provides a remedy for ASD members to gain refunds. The plaintiffs are expected to oppose the motion for a stay.
Bank of America was not named a RICO defendant in the racketeering lawsuit against Busby, AdSurfDaily President Andy Bowdoin and ASD attorney Robert Garner. Rather, the plaintiffs alleged the bank had aided and abetted Busby, Bowdoin and Garner in a fraudulent scheme.
The plaintiffs asked U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer to dismiss the complaint against Busby “with prejudice,” meaning they do not intend to bring it again.
UPDATED 10:23 A.M. EDT (U.S.A.) AdViewGlobal (AVG) autosurf members again are complaining about “low” payout rates, confusion about debit cards and how best to fund accounts. They also are grousing about an absence of comprehensible guidance from the top.
Meanwhile, some members are grumbling about a culture of super-secrecy, a preoccupation by some leading advocates with spies and “plants” and passive-aggressive lectures from insiders who blame the company’s problems on members.
Some members have been clamoring for more “tools” to sell AVG’s surf and the “VIP” payout “opportunity,” viewing the “advertising” rotator as the Main Event and saying nonsurf products and services AVG recently introduced have little appeal to the surf crowd, despite claims AVG has “fortune 500” (sic) clients.
Other AVG members continue to complain about vague messages from the company.
A PowerPoint presentation produced by the company claims that 519 page views “should garner you in the neighbourhood of 37% conversion if not higher,” adding a strange disclaimer: “Given your sales copy doesn’t totally suck.”
The presentation includes charts and graphs, including one that speciously boasts of a “400% increase in Traffic!”
AVG “advertisers” pay to have their sites shown in what the company now describes as a “testing platform.” Because “advertisers” are paid incentives to view the ads of fellow “advertisers,” the quality of the traffic is dubious. The claim of a 37 percent conversion rate — and a claim elsewhere in the presentation of a 10 percent conversion rate — strains credulity.
The conversion rate claim of 37 percent implies it can be achieved across-the-board, regardless of the nature of the product, the quality of the traffic, the state of the economy, the demand for the product or the pricing of the offer. As the PowerPoint presentation stands, a doughnut priced free or a doughnut priced at $10,000 both could expect to enjoy a conversion rate of 37 percent, something absurd on its face.
Surf And Sun
AVG, which has been operating for about six months, also includes what it calls a two-year “Case Study of a BIG thinker.” Why a company that formally launched in February 2009 would choose to call events that have not happened a “case study” is left to the imagination. The “study” includes vague, speculative updates in six-month intervals, concluding with the subject of the two-year study “on the beach” and enjoying his autosurfing success.
As the “case study” subject is enjoying life at the shore and still doing his AVG surfing, the company challenges viewers to “do the math now” without providing any solid numbers that actually would permit members to do the math. The “case study,” for example, does not say how much the subject spent, describing his first purchase vaguely as an “initial quota of Advertising.”
Within six months, the subject — who appears not to do any recruiting — recovers “all of his costs + around 10 percent.”
Although AVG has released the PowerPoint presentation with the speculative, two-year “case study,” current members are grumbling that significant sums of money they sent the company for “advertising” are generating minuscule returns — chump change as opposed to beach money — and that downline members (and family members recruited into the program) are losing faith and having to square off against embarrassment for having joined.
Other Complaints
At the same time, members are complaining about the sudden removal of a member-to-member button that enabled them to move cash or cash-equivalents to other members. They also are complaining about a promotional video with a low-quality voiceover that smacks of amateurism and the company’s inability to solve problems that have dogged it for weeks.
Meanwhile, some AVG members have called for the company to make participation in a so-called 80/20 program mandatory, suggesting that trapping people’s money is the tonic AVG needs to succeed. If implemented, however, such a mandatory program could heighten concerns that AVG was trying to cover up a Ponzi scheme, selling unregistered securities and acting as a bank or financial-services company without a license.
Indeed, the mere existence of a nonmandatory 80/20 program is one of the hallmarks of an autosurf Ponzi scheme that is thumbing its nose at securities, wire-fraud and money-laundering laws. Such programs are designed to stem the outflow of cash — and outflow should not be an issue when a company claims it does not rely on funds from new members to pay older members.
The Accountability Equation
Perhaps the greatest AVG mystery of all is how the company, which purports to be a professional advertising and communications firm based in Uruguay, can send so many confusing messages.
Some of the incongruities border on the comic. Although the company purports to be operating from Uruguay, insiders routinely describe “international” members as those who live outside the United States. If AVG truly was operating from Uruguay, all members from any country other than Uruguay would be “international” members, including members who lived in the United States.
Stop Being So Stupid!
AVG promoters also have a curious habit of scolding fellow members. This habit is accompanied by awkward appeals for loyalty and aggressive, even paranoid appeals that stymie members who ask too many questions.
In March, AVG announced its bank account had been suspended. Incredibly, it blamed members in the very first sentence of its announcement for causing the problem.
“Due to people bank wiring too many transactions over $9500.00 each, the bank we were using for Bank Wires and ACHs suspended our account,” AVG said at the time.
Although AVG announced in May it had struck a deal that enabled members once again to wire money to the surf, one of the companies it identified as a facilitator of the wire transfers issued a public denial it had any business relationship with AVG.
AVG is engaged in a highly questionable “industry.” The U.S. government has destroyed several autosurf firms. Several government agencies have issued warnings about the autosurf trade in general, and the U.S. Secret Service issued a news release last year, noting that it had seized more than $93.5 million from Florida-based AdSurfDaily Inc.
AVG, which launched after the government seized ASD’s assets, has close ties to ASD. Unlike ASD promoters, however, AVG promoters used the surf’s purported offshore location to drive business to the company.
UPDATED 6:41 A.M. EDT (June 12, U.S.A.)BAS appears to have come back online overnight. The site now is resolving to a server. It returned briefly at 9 p.m. yesterday. At 9:05 p.m., the site went down again. Total downtime yesterday was at least 6 hours , perhaps as many as 14, based on reports elsewhere.
The BizAdSplash (BAS) autosurf website has been offline for hours. The site will not resolve to a server.
What is causing the problem is unclear.
Clarence Busby, a central figure in the AdSurfDaily/Golden Panda Ad Builder case, is listed as “Chief Consultant” for BAS.
Federal prosecutors have sought a final order to give the U.S. government control of more than $14 million seized from bank accounts Busby controlled for Golden Panda.
UPDATE 4:38 P.M. The BAS site continues to be offline. A mirrored copy of the BAS News Release page is accessible, although it does not explain the server issue or the downtime and appears not to have been updated for hours.
It does, however, explain that the surf experienced a problem and that “transactions” are “missing” from accounts. The date and time of the posting are unclear:
Notice:Â We are aware of the account issues and will have them resolved shortly!!
As some of you may have noticed already this morning, there are transactions missing from your accounts. This includes any rrsp, commission or ad package purchases made since the 15th of May. This is a known issue created while performing a data transfer last evening and will have them corrected shortly.
UPDATE 6:41 A.M. June 12. The BAS site now is resolving to a server and appears to be back online.
Bank of America has asked U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer to hear oral arguments in its bid to be dismissed as a defendant in a lawsuit that alleged it aided and abetted a Ponzi scheme operated by alleged racketeers associated with Florida-based AdSurfDaily Inc.
Federal prosecutors seized at least $79.8 million from 15 bank accounts controlled by ASD President Andy Bowdoin or Golden Panda Ad Builder President Clarence Busby, saying the funds were the proceeds of a criminal enterprise that engaged in wire fraud, money-laundering and the sale of unregistered securities.
Three ASD members sued Bowdoin, Busby and ASD attorney Robert Garner under federal RICO statutes, claiming the men had engaged in racketeering — including indictable offenses — with unnamed others.
Bank of America was not named a RICO defendant. Rather, the bank was accused of aiding and abetting the RICO defendants in a fraudulent scheme.
The bank said the plaintiffs had failed to show that it had aided or abetted the RICO defendants in any way, repeating an earlier assertion that “banks are not guarantors” of their customers’ conduct.
“No law holds that a bank could be held liabile for conducting legitimate business activities with an entity that, as it turns out, also happens to be committing a fraud against others,” the bank argued. “Nor can there be if banks are to conduct business.”
The lawsuit was filed in January. In April, plaintiffs Mike Collins, Frank Greene and Natures Discount Inc. amended the complaint, alleging that Bank of America employees were moonlighting as ASD employees in Florida while ASD was commiting fraud in plain sight.
Collins, Greene and Natures Discount said that a “majority” of employees of Bank of America’s branch in Quincy, Fla., also worked for ASD, including the branch manager.
Bank of America, however, said moonlighting was “lawful” conduct.
“The alleged moonlighting activities of Bank of America employees did not occur within the scope of duty of the employees’ employment with Bank of America, and Plaintiffs do not allege that they did,” the bank argued.
“This conduct, as lawful as it is, cannot be imputed to Bank of America,” the bank continued. “Regardless, Plaintiffs alleged no facts demonstrating which Bank of America employees knew that ASD’s conduct was fraudulent, how they learned this, when or how they intentionally aided the scheme in some way.”
Bowdoin is the sole defendant in the RICO case not to have responded to the complaint. Prosecutors said he signed a proffer letter in the federal case and acknowledged ASD was operating illegally.
In January, Bowdoin submitted to the forfeiture. He changed his mind in late February and began to file pro se motions, chiding prosecutors by saying his filings “should really get their attention.”
Bowdoin promised to hold a conference call to update members nearly three months ago, but he has not done so. He also did not inform them of the proffer letter prosecutors said he signed or explain why he has not responded to the RICO complaint filed nearly five months ago.
Not long ago, James W. von Brunn challenged Barack Obama’s citizenship, one of the core qualifications to hold the office of President of the United States.
In 1981, von Brunn accused the Federal Reserve Board of “treason,” showing his displeasure by wielding a sawed-off shotgun, pistol and knife at board headquarters, threatening members and claiming to have planted a bomb.
His goal, he said later, was to place board members under “legal” arrest, but he was thwarted by police, prosecutors and judges who didn’t understand the law. Other judges who didn’t understand the law later denied his appeal.
He served six and one-half years in prison.
Today, von Brunn, 88, walked into the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., opened fire with a gun described as having a long barrel and shot a security guard. The guard later died.
Other guards opened fire on von Brunn, a white supremacist, antiSemite and conspiracy theorist. He is being treated at a hospital and is listed in critical condition.
UPDATED 11:22 A.M. EDT (U.S.A.): An affiliate spammer entered PonziNews.com yesterday, leaving what was described as “my friends” (sic) affiliate link for AdViewGlobal (AVG) and an advertisement for AVG.
Seven minutes later, the same affiliate spammer left another ad for AVG, claiming that “I just watched as 2, yes 2 Attorney’s (sic) from D.C. decided that they wanted to advertise on the site, and be a member of the VIP program.”
Affiliate spam is a back-door way of gaining signups for a program or service. One form of affiliate spam is to monitor websites that publish criticism of an “opportunity” favored by the spammer and then post affiliate links as part of the defense of the opportunity.
It is possible (and easy) to defend an opportunity without leaving an affiliate link, thus taking any issue of spamming totally out of play. The affiliate spammer who claimed it was a friend’s AVG link yesterday used the username of “Jeffrey,” and the link resolved to the sign-up page of an AVG promoter who used the same name.
It was not clear if the affiliate spammer also was the AVG promoter “Jeffrey.”
Software employed by Ponzi News captured the affiliate spam. It was not published. A screen shot of the spam was made and reduced in size to fit within the borders of this Blog.
AVG enthusiast sends back-to-back spams, claiming Best Buy, Staples and other prominent companies are AVG advertisers.
The spammer declared that Best Buy, Staples, GoDaddy.com and Delta Air Lines were AVG advertisers. The affiliate link used the identifier 7916, and an email address left by the spammer suggested he was associated with a company known as GuardIt Technologies.
Although the email address used the GuardIt name, it was not tied to the GuardIt server. Rather, it was tied to a server at a free email-hosting company, so the address could have been used without the authority of GuardIt.
AVG, also known as AVGA, publishes an antispam policy:
“If you are found to have spammed, without warning, AVGLOBAL ASSOCIATION reserves the right to disable or terminate your account immediately,” the company said on its website.
“All funds will be forfeited. AVGLOBAL ASSOCIATION may impose a penalty for each spam policy violation. AVGLOBAL ASSOCIATION also reserves the right to determine what violates this policy, in which case, any violation that occurs will result in account termination without refund of any monies,” AVG said.
A website associated with Mark Simmons, whom AdSurfDaily intended to call as a witness at a Sept. 30-Oct. 1 evidentiary hearing in Washington, D.C., promotes both AVG and GuardIt. Simmons was sequestered at the hearing, but never took the stand.
Federal prosecutors say ASD engaged in wire-fraud, money-laundering and the sale of unregistered securities while operating a Ponzi scheme.
On Nov. 19, a federal judge ruled that ASD had not demonstrated at the evidentiary hearing that it was operating legally and not a Ponzi scheme. Within days of the ruling, ASD stop using its own Breaking News website, instead giving the Pro-ASD Surf’s Up forum its official endorsement as an ASD news outlet.
In December, prelaunch buzz began to appear online for AVG, and the surf formally launched in February. At least two forums that use ning.com as a host sprouted up to promote AVG.
Some of the Mods and members of Surf’s Up manage one of the forums, and Simmons started the second forum. One Simmons’ thread pitches members on a technology provided by a website known as ErasableEmail.com, which purportedly permits users to send email and video that “self-destructs” and cannot be forwarded or saved.
Simmons said the product was endorsed by “the better hobo bureau” — a play-on-words of the name of his ning.com forum: The Unemployable Hobo Lifestyle Forum.
Erasable email and video technology can be abused. A promoter for an illicit program, for example, could make false claims about a product or service and then erase the claims so they could not be forwarded to law enforcement.
The legal community has been debating the utility of erasable email for years, wondering aloud if it can be used to thwart the discovery process in litigation and to erase evidence of crimes and misconduct.
NEWS: A member of the Pro-AdSurfDaily Surf’s Up forum says he is willing to “Bear Arms in line with the Bill of Rights” and storm Washington, D.C., if a “militia” can be formed.
In a separate thread, the poster said the government ruined his life last year when it seized assets tied to the Florida autosurf firm and that he is ready to fight to the “DEATH.”
“If anyone from the US Government reads this,” the poster said, “yes[,] look out because you are now my enemy. May God Bless Andy [Bowdoin] and all ASD members. I’m done with working within the system. I will destroy the entire US Government if that is what it takes to serve justice for ASD members.”
The incendiary remarks were contained in two threads, one of which was titled “Letter from Andy.” A poster within the thread had criticized Bowdoin for not conducting a conference call he had promised nearly three months ago in a letter to members published at Surf’s Up, opining that Bowdoin should get “jail time.”
In response to the post critical of Bowdoin, yet another poster appealed to the Surf’s Up Mods to cleanse the forum of “rats.” A Mod assured the poster that, if the purported rat again posted “negative garbage” about Bowdoin, the offending post would be deleted.
The Mod said nothing about the “militia” post.
NOTE: In court filings in a racketeering lawsuit against Bowdoin, ASD attorney Robert Garner and Golden Panda Ad Builder President Clarence Busby, one of Busby’s pleadings defines him as a minister of 30 years’ standing and uses the abbreviation “Rev.” at least 120 times.
Golden Panda has ceded to the government more than $14 million it had gathered in only days last summer as the so-called “Chinese” version of ASD. In the months that followed, a new, Busby-connected surf known as BizAdSplash (BAS) opened, touting an offshore location.
Early promoters identified Busby as the owner, but others defined him as a consultant.
As a marketing proposition, identifying Busby in any capacity of authority at BAS was odd regardless of any title he held, in no small part because he consented to the forfeiture of Golden Panda’s assets in September, saying he had relied on ASD’s assertions that the program was legal.
Only in the incongruous world of the autosurf could a man responsible for a stunning, $14 million loss of investor funds be positioned as a marketing plus.
Work-around?
One seized Golden Panda account contained precisely $6 million, according to federal prosecutors.
Choosing his words carefully in a sworn court filing in August, Busby said none of the Golden Panda money came from Bowdoin or ASD, that Busby had provided an unspecified amount of “seed” capital from his real-estate business and that Golden Panda “obtained all other start up money from 34 founders.”
Amounts Busby provided personally or obtained from the “founders” weren’t disclosed in Busby’s filing.
Busby’s filing, however, did not rule out the possibility that one or more “founders” provided capital from “profits” paid to them by ASD and deposited in their individual bank accounts and that “profits” then were forwarded to Golden Panda.
Nor does it rule out the possibility that Golden Panda seed money from one or more “founders” flowed to the company after the “founders” deposited checks from individual ASD downline members in the “founders’” private bank accounts, shifted a corresponding amount of “ad-packs” to ASD downline members by using ASD’s internal system, and then forwarded the desposit amount or portion thereof to Golden Panda, instead of ASD.
Busby said a prosecution claim that a “majority” of Golden Panda’s funds came from ASD was “false.”
There have been numerous reports that ASD prospects paid sponsors directly for ad-pack purchases, that the sponsors deposited the money in their individual checking accounts at their local banks and then used ASD’s internal system to transfer ad-packs to the individual prospects.
The approach was pitched as a work-around, because ASD was having trouble posting payments from individual members and getting them started in the “rebate” program, which was purported in advertisements to pay 1 percent a day or 30 percent a month.
Given this scenario, it is possible that huge sums paid by ASD “rally” attendees were deposited into the private bank accounts of individual ASD promoters and that the deposits were routed directly to Golden Panda, instead of ASD.
“Neither Bowdoin nor ASD provided any capital,” Busby said.
Busby’s claim about Golden Panda’s seed money would be true — at least in a technical sense — if any of Golden Panda’s “founders” also were ASD promoters who deposited money from ASD downline members directly in the promoters’ back accounts, transferred a corresponding amount of ad-packs to the members using ASD’s internal system, and then forwarded the funds to Golden Panda, instead of ASD.
It is known that at least one of Golden Panda’s “founders” was a highly visible ASD promoter who helped the company organize rallies at which millions of dollars were collected. It also is known that some ASD prospects who attended the rallies paid sponsors directly for “ad-pack” purchases and that the sponsors deposited the money in their individual checking accounts and transferred a corresponding amount of “ad-packs” to the prospects by using ASD’s internal system.
It is possible that a significant chunk of the money seized from Golden Panda originated with one or more “founders” who initiated private ad-pack transactions with individual ASD downline members, deposited the sums in their personal checking accounts and forwarded the funds to Golden Panda.
‘Chief Consultant’
Busby now has officially been declared the “Chief Consultant” of BAS, in a news released marked a “must read” at the BAS website.
Unlike Busby’s court filings in the RICO case, the BAS news release does not identify him as a minister or use an abbreviation such as “Rev.” It simply identifies him as “Clarence Busby.”
Busby was enjoined by a federal judge in the 1990s from breaking securities laws, after he was implicated in three prime-bank schemes by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The government took mercy on Busby, waiving certain financial penalties and not interfering in a bankruptcy petition he filed.
In the BAS news release, Busby assured members that BAS had “spent a tremendous amount of time and thousands of dollars on economists, attorneys and other professionals and with their advice have built this company in a very responsible manner.”
Busby did not identify the economists, attorneys or other professionals. Nor did he mention the past encounter with the SEC or the current litigation involving ASD and Golden Panda Ad Builder. Busby did, however, provide an inspirational quotation from auto tycoon Henry Ford.
Mum’s The Word
Elsewhere on the news pages of BAS, the company urged members not to contact vendors associated with its use of MasterCard with any questions about the BAS program. The information appeared under a bright red headline titled, “URGENT INFORMATION FOR MASTERCARD USERS.”
“At Biz Ad Splash, we have worked very hard to develop great relationships with some of the finest international banking services available,” BAS said. “We continually strive to maintain a good standing with these institutions in order to provide the best services possible to the Customer/Associates of Biz Ad Splash.”
Last year, ASD announced that it was finalizing a deal with a company known as Praebius Communications that would result in a cash infusion of $200 million. ASD withdrew the news release after members responded by contacting Praebius in a bid to confirm or deny the deal.
Some ASD members were infuriated that other members actually questioned the claim, describing even rational doubts as an act of disloyalty.
In its MasterCard news release, BAS openly discouraged members from contacting any vendors to get answers to questions.
“[W]e strongly urge our Biz Ad Splash Customer/Associates not to contact these vendors with questions concerning withdrawal requests or Biz Ad Splash card deposits,” BAS said.
