EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was updated at 9:37 a.m. EDT on May 13 and again on May 17 at 2:24 p.m. to reflect that Kenneth Wayne Leaming is demanding payment from a federal judge in ounces of silver, not dollars . . .
Devitoe Farmer, the purported Tennessee “sovereign citizen” indicted last year on charges of stealing government property in a “quit-claims” caper, has pleaded guilty to three counts of theft.
Meanwhile, Kenneth Wayne Leaming — the AdSurfDaily figure and purported “sovereign citizen” in Washington state jailed after convictions for possessing firearms illegally and filing bogus claims against government officials involved in the prosecution of the ASD Ponzi scheme — now has sent a bill to the federal judge who presided over his criminal trial.
The bill demands payment of 208,000 ounces of “99.9% fine silver” from the judge.
First, the Farmer story . . .
“In the Mid-South, we have witnessed first-hand the potential threat posed by those claiming to be sovereign citizens,” said U.S. Attorney Edward L. Stanton III of the Western District of Tennessee.
Farmer, 46, apparently decided he wanted to own homes — and apparently came up with a paperwork confection in which he transferred three properties owned by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to himself.
From a statement by prosecutors (italics added):
According to an indictment filed on March 21, 2012, and facts of the case revealed during the plea hearing, Farmer took possession of three HUD-owned properties in the city of Memphis during February and April of 2011. His scheme was discovered when employees with a property management firm contracted by HUD to care for the properties discovered that Farmer had filed quit claim deeds to himself with the Shelby County Register of Deeds Office on the properties and placed tenants in them. HUD-contracted real estate agents also noticed that “for sale” signs had been removed from the properties and that locks had been changed.
One of the properties was rented to an individual, who supplied investigators with copies of the lease agreement made with Farmer. Another property was occupied by a relative of Farmer. When asked by Memphis Police Department officers for proof of his ownership of the properties, Farmer presented documents declaring that he was a sovereign citizen.
There have been some very strange events in the Memphis region, including the bizarre case of Tabitha Gentry. Gentry is accused of licensing herself to occupy an East Memphis mansion she did not own.
NewsOne.com has a report on Tabitha Gentry. The site reports that Gentry calls herself Abka Re Bey and claims to have taken over the mansion “in the name of Allah, the most high.”
Also see KSLA report on Gentry, a purported “Moorish American” who allegedly mouthed off to a judge after the eviction from the property and claimed lawyers are “Communists.”
Leaming, 57, was found guilty in the Western District of Washington earlier this year of possessing firearms as a convicted felon and filing bogus liens for billions of dollars against public officials involved in the prosecution of the AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme. One of the targets was a U.S. Secret Service agent.
Both before and after his conviction, Leaming filed blizzards of paperwork. Among his most recent filings is a claim that U.S. District Judge Ronald B. Leighton owes him 208,000 ounces of fine silver. Leighton presided over Leaming’s criminal trial.
AdSurfSaily figure and purported “sovereign citizen” Kenneth Wayne Leaming now claims a federal judge owes him 208,000 ounces of fine silver. Source: Federal court files.
Numerous securities regulators have described Profitable Sunrise as a form of affinity fraud targeted at people of faith. At least 35 agencies in the United States and Canada have issued cease-and-desist orders or Investor Alerts against the HYIP “program,” which had a presence on infamous Ponzi forums such as TalkGold and MoneyMakerGroup.
The website of Profitable Sunrise has been missing since at least March 14. On April 1 — the day after Easter Sunday and April Fools Day — the “program” failed to make good on promised payouts from the bizarrely named “Long Haul” plan. The “Long Haul” was purported to pay interest of 2.7 percent a day. Its claims were similar to other collapsed schemes promoted on the Ponzi boards.
On Dec. 30, the PP Blog reported that Profitable Sunrise appeared to be relying on appeals to faith in a bid to attract investors in the wake of the August 2012 collapse of the Zeek Rewards “program.” Zeek, which allegedly planted the seed it paid interest of 1.5 percent a day, also had a presence on the Ponzi boards. In August, the SEC described Zeek as a $600 million Ponzi- and pyramid fraud.
The PP Blog learned last month that at least one apologist for the NJF Global Group has relied on purported “research” by a notorious cyberstalker known as “MoneyMakingBrain” in an apparent bid to discredit critics of the “program.”
MoneyMakingBrain emerged in 2012 as an apologist for the JSSTripler/JustBeenPaid “program” purportedly operated by Frederick Mann. JSS/JBP purported to pay 2 percent a day. MoneyMakingBrain claimed he’d defend Mann “so help me God.”
JSS/JBP, which appears to have morphed into secondary and tertiary scams (ProfitClicking and ClickPaid) after the August collapse of Zeek, may have ties to the “sovereign citizens” movement. Mann has compared the U.S. government to the Mafia, claiming that government employees were part of “a criminal gang of robbers, thieves, murderers, liars, imposters.”
Profitable Sunrise also may have ties to the “sovereign citizens” movement.
Some “sovereign citizens” have an irrational belief that laws do not apply to them. It is known that the AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme in 2008 also had ties to “sovereign citizens,” including Kenneth Wayne Leaming. Leaming, a resident of Washington state, was convicted earlier this year of filing false liens for billions of dollars against public officials who had a role in the prosecution of the ASD Ponzi scheme.
ASD operated from Florida, planting the seed it paid a return of 1 percent a day. ASD President Andy Bowdoin — now serving a 78-month prison term — also was associated with a 1-percent-a-day scam known as AdViewGlobal. AVG bizarrely claimed in 2009 that it enjoyed the protections of the U.S. and Florida constitutions while purportedly operating from Uruguay. The scam collapsed during the summer of 2009 — but not before issuing threats to members and critics.
In May 2009, AVG bizarrely announced it had secured the services of an offshore facilitator. The announcement was made on the same day President Obama announced a crackdown on offshore scams.
UPDATED 12:46 P.M. EDT (U.S.A.) The evidence against AdSurfDaily figure Kenneth Wayne Leaming was “overwhelming” and led to the purported “sovereign citizen’s” conviction on three counts of retaliating against a federal official by filing false claims, one count of concealing a person from arrest and one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm, a federal judge wrote in court filings.
While making a veiled reference to the ASD Ponzi case brought by the U.S. Secret Service in 2008 in the District of Columbia, U.S. District Judge Ronald B. Leighton of the Western District of Washington wrote in an order dated March 14 that evidence showed Leaming “admitted to filing liens against a group of federal officials for absurd sums, $225 billion in one case.”
“The only link any of these officials had to each other was their participation in the prosecution of a Ponzi scheme on the east coast,” Leighton wrote. “The evidence demonstrated that Defendant was ‘helping,’ as he put it, certain individuals who were aggrieved by the prosecution of the Ponzi scheme.”
Leighton’s order did not identify the individuals Leaming was said to he helping. The order was issued in response to a bid by Leaming, 57, to be acquitted post-verdict amid assertions the evidence against him was insufficient to sustain the convictions.
But Leaming, according to the order, “admitted on the stand that he knowingly possessed the firearms in question because he wanted to challenge the law at the Supreme Court.”
And, Leighton wrote, the evidence “overwhelmingly supported Defendant’s conviction of concealing a person from arrest. The Government established that Defendant knew certain individuals were sought in relation to a postal-scam, that Defendant allowed them to stay in his home, helped them trade cars, and otherwise supported them.”
Those individuals have been identified in court filings as onetime fugitives Timothy Shawn Donavan and Sharon Jeannette Henningsen of Arkansas. They were found with Leaming in Washington state in November 2011. Donavan and Henningsen later were convicted of mail fraud in a home-business caper that gathered more than $2 million, prosecutors said.
ASD was a $119 million Ponzi scheme opearting from Florida over the Internet. ASD’s business model was similar to the model of the Zeek Rewards “program,” which the SEC described in August 2012 as a $600 million Ponzi- and pyramid scheme operating from North Carolina.
ASD and Zeek are known to have had members in common. Some ASD members said that Leaming was providing them counsel, despite the fact he is not an attorney.
The PP Blog reported in November 2010 that Cornell University Law School, Justia.com and Oyez.org removed online profiles of Leaming. The sites previously had listed Leaming as an attorney who practiced law and advertised a fee structure of up to $250 an hour from Spanaway, Wash.
Leaming was arrested by an FBI terrorism task force a year later in Spanaway.
Also see Nov. 13, 2010, PP Blog report on a disturbing email some ASD members received that asserted they could be sued for filing a remissions claim in the ASD Ponzi case.
In October 2011, the PP Blog reported than some ASD members had received an email that encouraged them to file documents at the “county” level and “name” federal officials as “thieves.”
Court filings suggest that Leaming already was under investigation by the FBI when some ASD members were trumpeting him as the answer to their problems.
URGENT >> BULLETIN >> MOVING: AdSurfDaily figure and purported “sovereign citizen” Kenneth Wayne Leaming has been found guilty in the Western District of Washington of filing false liens against public officials, harboring fugitives and being a felon in possession of firearms, federal prosecutors said tonight.
Leaming associate David Carroll Stephenson also was found guilty of filing false liens.
The PP Blog will have a full report when more information becomes available. The case was prosecuted by the office of U.S. Attorney Jenny A. Durkan.
Kenneth Wayne Leaming, aka “Kenneth Wayne,” aka “Keny,” now is calling himself a “live abortion” — apparently in “defense” of home-based businesses.
UPDATED 12:28 P.M. (FEB. 27, U.S.A.) Kenneth Wayne Leaming, a figure in the AdSurfDaily Ponzi-scheme story and a purported “sovereign citizen,” is scheduled to go on trial today in federal court the Western District of Washington with co-defendant David Carroll Stephenson. Leaming is charged with filing false liens against public officials involved in the ASD prosecution. Among his alleged targets were a federal judge, at least two federal prosecutors — and the U.S. Secret Service agent who cracked the ASD Ponzi case in 2008.
Leaming, 57, also is charged with assisting Stephenson in the filing of false liens against two federal-prison officials. Stephenson was in federal prison for a tax scheme at the time the liens allegedly were filed. Records strongly suggest that Stephenson, also 57, would be a free man today were it not for his association with Leaming, given that Stephenson’s prison term in the tax case had been scheduled to end early this year. Instead, he’s facing new charges and potentially more jail time.
But the false-liens charges are just the beginning for Leaming. He also is charged with harboring two federal fugitives wanted in a multimillion-dollar home-business fraud in Arkansas, being a felon in possession of firearms and passing a bogus “Bonded Promissory Note” for $1 million.
If you’re new to the PP Blog and new to the ASD case, a brief review is in order: The Secret Service raided ASD in August 2008, alleging the Florida-based firm operated by Andy Bowdoin was a massive Ponzi scheme operating over the Internet. Bowdoin reacted to the raid and the seizure of tens of millions of dollars by comparing the U.S. government to “Satan” and the Secret Service to the 9/11 terrorists. Now 78 and in federal prison, Bowdoin came out of the gate after the seizure by assuring ASD investors that “God” was on the company’s side.
Some MLMers were quick to accuse the government of targeting a fine Christian man who was helping the United States create jobs with a “program” that purported to pay participants back 100 percent of their investment and a profit of 25 percent in only months. (Ten-thousand dollars in ASD purportedly fetched $12,500 within 90 to 125 days, purportedly more if members “compounded” their “earnings,” kept 80 percent of their money in a continuous state of “roll over” and never fully cashed out.)
Essentially there was only one chance that ASD was not a Ponzi scheme during its approximately 18-month run — and that single chance required nearly a complete suspension of logic to destroy the government’s Ponzi case and get ASD off the hook: Had a crazy billionaire or exceptionally well-heeled financier (who also was crazy) given convicted-felon Bowdoin more money than ASD’s rapidly accruing liabilities — basically an enormous line of credit that didn’t have to be paid back and could be tapped on demand for ASD to pay out $1.25 for every dollar it took in until the line was exhausted — ASD would not have been a Ponzi scheme. Absent a benevolent madman-billionaire and the kind of capital it would take to build a nuclear-power plant and operate it indefinitely with zero concern for profit, however, ASD could be one thing and one thing only: a Ponzi scheme using money from “new” members to fund the redemption requests of “old” members or a Ponzi scheme that sustained itself by simply recycling money among members of a closed group.
No madmen-billionaires sufficiently liquid to bankrupt themselves by funding Bowdoin’s stated plan of creating 100,000 ASD millionaires in three years while at once financing the “profits” of tens of thousands of average people seeking to expand the ranks of ASD millionaires well beyond 100,000 appeared to testify on ASD’s behalf at an evidentiary hearing it requested in the fall of 2008.
Here is just one of the reasons MLM has a miserable reputation: Notwithstanding the fact that Bowdoin already was a convicted felon for an Alabama securities swindle in the 1990s and that one of his business partners was a man implicated by the SEC in the 1990s in three prime-bank swindles, some MLMers decided to improve the already bizarre narrative that the government was picking on a grandfatherly Christian.
Petitions were started to paint prosecutors as the bogeymen. (The shorthand for this in MLM’s HYIP Ponzi land is “evilGUBment.”) ASD critics were derided as “maggots.” A “prayer” went out calling for prosecutors to be struck dead from the heavens. A theory was advanced that a Florida TV station should be charged with Deceptive Trade Practices for carrying news unflattering to ASD. A companion theory held that the Attorney General of Florida should be charged with the same offense and that AARP, which lobbies for senior citizens, should lobby for ASD. Meanwhile, some MLMers tried to enlist the U.S. Senate to turn the focus of the investigation away from ASD and Bowdoin and put it on the prosecutors who brought the Ponzi case. One MLMer called for the government’s lead prosecutor to be placed in a medieval torture rack, with ASD members at large drawing straws to determine who got the honor of making the prosecutor’s time in the rack as painful as possible.
Very few people in MLM had anything to say about the circus surrounding ASD. The few who did — perhaps most notably Rod Cook of MLM Watchdog — were excoriated for dismissing the narrative advanced by Bowdoin and other MLMers. All of this was occurring while ASD was provably insolvent. When Bowdoin failed to take the witness stand at the evidentiary hearing he requested, it was explained that he was “too honest” to testify. Both before and after the hearing, some of his most notable Stepfordian apologists advanced a theory that the government secretly had admitted ASD was not a Ponzi scheme and was clinging to the case in a bid to save face.
One ASD member advanced a narrative that the government had taken about $80 million in seized proceeds and invested it in a secret fund to pay for black-ops. It was from this caldron of conspiracy theories and fantastic idiocy that Kenneth Wayne Leaming emerged.
Like other “sovereigns,” Leaming to date hasn’t focused much of his attention on the actual charges against him, even though his conviction could result in considerable jail time. Rather, Leaming mostly has focused on creating a blitz of paperwork on the apparent theory his best “defense” is to keep the Feds and even local officials scurrying to guard all flanks. Since his November 2011 arrest by an FBI Terrorism Task Force, Leaming has sued the President of the United States, the Attorney General of the United States, various officials (including purported “Does”) and a county sheriff in Arkansas.
Members of Zeek Rewards and other MLM schemes should pay attention to the Leaming trial. There can be no doubt that Leaming-like figures existed within the Zeek enterprise. Like ASD before it, Zeek was a magnet to willfully blind MLM hucksters and actual criminals. Both “businesses” best are viewed as racketeering enterprises that posed an untenable risk to the United States and the rest of the world.
For the remainder of this column, the PP Blog will focus on just one crime alleged against Leaming: the filing of a false lien against the U.S. Secret Service agent — not that the other alleged bogus liens are any more palatable or acceptable. The word “disgraceful” hardly covers Leaming’s alleged actions, and yet some MLMers saw Leaming not only as an inspirational figure, but as the wisest man of all.
The Secret Service guards the lives of the President of the United States and the Vice President of the United States and their families. It also guards the lives of former Presidents and international dignitaries and political figures visiting the United States. As the agency is doing this, it also protects the U.S. financial system.
It is unthinkable — so far beyond the pale that it almost defies description — that Leaming, let alone any other American, ever would target a Secret Service agent in a harassment campaign. The Secret Service is a smallish agency by federal standards, yet it is arguably the most important: Markets become unglued when world figures are assassinated or targeted in assassination attempts. Beyond that, history now has shown that an event such as the 9/11 terrorist attacks actually can close markets and restrict freedom, the very things Leaming purports to be upholding.
People of good will are appalled that Leaming apparently thought it somehow his duty to Democracy and Constitutional government to harass a Secret Service agent. Given the critical duties of the Secret Service and its role in both national security and economic security, no American of good will wants to see an agent’s attention divided by the Kenneth Wayne Leamings of the nation and world.
If Leaming is convicted, he should be sentenced to the longest jail term permissible under the law. Never again should MLM or any MLMer stay silent when an obvious fraud scheme surfaces and is “defended” at the exclusion of all logic.
In both form and substance, Zeek was virtually identical to ASD — and yet ASD members and other MLMers joined Zeek. That’s a problem for MLM. whether it admits it or not.
Those ASD members who joined Zeek? They did so even as Kenneth Wayne Leaming allegedly was targeting public officials, including a U.S. Secret Service agent, in campaigns designed to destroy the thin blue line that protects citizens from anarchy. The most dangerous Zeek members are the ones who hoped he’d succeed.
On Feb. 13, the PP Blog reported that a federal judge who was quoting from a pleading by AdSurfDaily figure and purported “sovereign citizen” Kenneth Wayne Leaming had referenced a domain styled peoplestrust1776.org.
U.S. District Judge Ronald B. Leighton declared Leaming’s filing, which apparently cited the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC), “undecipherable.” The judge exempted prosecutors from responding to a series of recent bizarre pleadings from Leaming, who is jailed near Seattle on charges of filing false liens against public officials in the AdSurfDaily Ponzi case. Leaming, 57, also is accused of other crimes.
Like other purported “sovereigns,” the judge observed, Leaming is “fascinated” by capital letters.
Some “sovereign citizens” appear to believe that pleadings that include capital letters or make UCC claims provide defenses or remedies for everything from murder charges to charges of targeting public officials in harassment campaigns.
Less than two days after the PP Blog published its most recent story about Leaming’s strange defense efforts in the Western District of Washington, the Blog received a would-be comment it is treating as spam because it purported to be in response to a reader who left a comment on the PP Blog nearly two years ago on a different subject. Received at 2:55 a.m. ET today, the unpublished, would-be comment included a link to a post on a Blog whose URL was formed in part with the words “the-full-details-of-kidnapping-of.”
One had to visit the site to determine who allegedly was kidnapped.
The PP Blog visited the link and found a post about Patrick Cody Morgan, a purported Texas “sovereign” who was convicted last year of conspiracy and nine counts of bank fraud in a real-estate swindle involving repeated bids to scam residential mortgage lenders and FDIC-insured banks between 2004 and 2007. The scam involved “trust accounts” and “straw buyers,” prosecutors said. The PP Blog wrote about the Morgan convictions on Nov. 2, 2012. No readers left comments in the thread below the story.
In any event, the would-be commentator apparently wants to generate discussion about the Morgan case and to enlist support for Morgan. Notably, the spammed link received by the PP Blog includes references to the same peoplestrust1776.org domain Leaming cited in an apparent defense bid in his criminal case.
Content on the site whose post link was spammed to the PP Blog overnight appears to be designed to paint government officials or agencies involved in the Morgan case as “the Accused.” Apparently among the purported “Accused” are U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, FBI Director Robert Mueller, U.S. District Judge Lynn N. Hughes of the Southern District of Texas and others. The site also published florid legalese attributed to Morgan that, like Leaming’s prose, made liberal use of capital letters.
Legalese attributed to Morgan asserts he is “Patrick-Cody: Family of Morgan”; Leaming’s legalese asserts he is “Kenneth Wayne, born free to the family Leaming.”
Some “sovereigns” appear to believe that using exceptionally formal prose, capital letters and/or specific forms of punctuation in court filings somehow provide for a winning defense.
Leighton characterized Leaming’s prose as “gobbledygook.”
Morgan — in his apparent defense — appears to claim he was the victim of criminals working for the government. Leaming has made similar arguments in Washington state.
Precisely what role, if any, peoplestrust1776.org is playing in the Morgan and Leaming cases is unclear.
“The Court therefore feels some measure of responsibility to inform [Kenneth Wayne Leaming] that all the fancy legal-sounding things he has read on the internet are make-believe. Defendant can call himself a ‘public minister’ and ‘private attorney general,’ he may file ‘mandatory judicial notices’ citing all his favorite websites, he can even address mail to the ‘Washington Republic.’ But at the end of the day, while sovereign citizens and Defendant cite things like ‘Universal Law Ordinances,’ they are subject to both state and federal laws, just like everyone else.” — U.S. District Judge Ronald B. Leighton, Feb. 12, 2013
Kenneth Wayne Leaming
A federal judge in the Western District of Washington has issued an order exempting prosecutors from responding to wild assertions made by AdSurfDaily figure and purported “sovereign citizen” Kenneth Wayne Leaming.
Like other purported “sovereigns,” Leaming is “fascinated by capitalization,” Judge Ronald B. Leighton said in the Feb. 12 order.
In a recent filing, the judge said, Leaming used the word “REGISTRY” in all uppercase in a pleading that was “undecipherable.” On at least five occasions during the course of the case, Leaming has filed documents that used the phrase “Mandatory Judicial Notice,” including one in which Leaming asserts he “relies in good faith on the public/commercial REGISTRY entries as published at
www.peoplestrust1776.org, inclusive of Universal Law Ordinance, UCC #2012096074 . . . .” the judge said.
“For lack of a better term, this is gobbledygook,” the judge said.
Leaming also recently argued that “the REGISTERED FACTS appearing in the above Paragraph evidence the uncontroverted and uncontrovertible FACTS that the SLAVERY SYSTEMS operated in the names UNITED STATES, United States, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, and United States of America . . . are terminated nunc pro tunc by public policy, U.C.C. 1-103 . . . .,” according to the judge.
“He appears to believe that by capitalizing ‘United States,’ he is referring to a different entity than the federal government,” the judge said. “For better or for worse, it’s the same country.”
And Leighton quoted again from Leaming’s filings:
“COMES NOW, Kenneth Wayne, born free to the family Leaming, 20 December 1955, constituent to The People of the State of Washington constituted 1878 and admitted to the union 22 February 1889 by Act of Congress, a Man, ‘State of Body’ competent to be a witness and having First Hand Knowledge of The FACTS . . . .”
Purported sovereign citizens, “like Mr. Leaming, love grandiose legalese,” the judge said, ordering that “no response is required by the Government.”
Leaming, 57, is detained near Seattle on charges of filing false liens against government officials involved in the ASD Ponzi case. He also is accused of other crimes, including harboring fugitives, assisting others in the filing of false liens, being a felon in possession of firearms and attempting to pass a bogus “Bonded Promissory Note” for $1 million. He was arrested in November 2011 by an FBI Terrorism Task Force.
“Sovereigns” have been known to engage in what has been described as “paper terrorism” to try to hamstring law enforcement. Some “sovereigns” have been linked to various forms of securities fraud and tax fraud.
On Sept. 5, 2012, the PP Blog reported that an “opportunity” known as “Wealth Creation Alliance” was using a strange mix of capital letters in its communications with prospects. Whether WCA has any “sovereign” ties is unknown.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This post originally was published Jan. 24 at 7:33 p.m. It was updated Feb. 8 to include this editor’s note reflecting that Andy Bowdoin now is listed as an inmate at the federal prison camp in Pensacola, Fla. (Pensacola FPC.) The original story published Jan. 24 appears below and includes some edits to reflect the latest information . . .
** ____________________________________ **
UPDATED 9:08 A.M. ET (JAN. 27, U.S.A.) Thomas Anderson “Andy” Bowdoin, the 78-year-old AdSurfDaily Ponzi patriarch, is listed today as an inmate at the Federal Correctional Institution in Tallahassee. His estimated release date is Feb. 7, 2018. [New on Feb. 8: Bowoin has been transferred to Pensacola FPC.)
In August 2008 — after federal prosecutors in the District of Columbia initially filed civil allegations of Ponzi fraud against Bowdoin and ASD after an investigation by the U.S. Secret Service — Bowdoin was defiant. The government was “Satan,” he claimed. And he compared the Secret Service to the 9/11 terrorists.
Bowdoin was described as a head of a “flock,” a man who had “followers.” What transpired in the years that followed was the stuff of fiction — but it was very, very real. After initially demanding an evidentiary hearing and insisting ASD’s online “program” was not a Ponzi scheme, Bowdoin did not take the stand at the hearing he requested.
He was “too honest” to testify, explained one of his followers.
Prosecutors had a different take: Bowdoin, they said, was a recidivist securities swindler with a felony record in Alabama from a previous fraud scheme in the 1990s. One of his business partners also was a veteran swindler who once pushed “prime bank” frauds, according to court filings.
Other Bowdoin followers planted stories that prosecutors secretly had admitted ASD was not a Ponzi scheme but were clinging to the case in a bid to save face. One follower ventured that a prosecutor should be placed in a medieval torture rack. Another ventured that a “militia” should storm Washington.
In the bizarre world of ASD, there were efforts to enlist public support for Bowdoin by mailing packets of Kool-Aid to Fox News host Bill O’Reilly. There was a corresponding effort to enlist support for an investigation into a Florida TV station, apparently for having the temerity to cover negative news about ASD. Some of Bowdoin’s followers also wanted to investigate then-Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum, apparently for holding the view that ASD was a pyramid scheme.
On Sept. 11, 2008, the seventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, some Bowdoin followers prayed for the prosecution to be struck dead.
By July 2010, purported “sovereign citizen” Kenneth Wayne Leaming had entered the ASD fray. He is now jailed near Seattle on charges of filing false liens against at least five federal officials involved in the ASD case: a federal judge, three federal prosecutors and the Secret Service agent who did the early investigative legwork in the case. Leaming, according to court filings, was harboring two federal fugitives from Arkansas, had tried to pass a bogus “Bonded Promissory Note” for $1 million and assisted in the filing of false liens against other federal officials in cases presumably unrelated to ASD.
Leaming, prosecutors said, was instrumental in the founding of the so-called “County Rangers,” an armed enforcement wing for a “sovereign” group in Washington state. The “Rangers” carried fake badges, according to court filings. And when Leaming, a convicted felon, was arrested in November 2011 by an FBI Terrorism Task Force on the false-liens charges, several firearms were found.
One of them was an “AK-47 style assault rifle with a bayonet,” according to court filings.
Bowdoin was charged criminally in November 2010, when an indictment was unsealed. By October 2011, Bowdoin was trying to sell a “program” known as OneX to the members he was accused of defrauding in the ASD case. Conference-call listeners were told they could earn $99,000 very quickly through OneX, which federal prosecutors later described as yet another fraud scheme pushed by Bowdoin.
In May 2012, Bowdoin pleaded guilty to wire fraud, acknowledging that ASD was a Ponzi scheme and that his Florida-based firm had never operated lawfully from its inception in 2006.
Even after Bowdoin pleaded guilty, some of his followers continued to insist that ASD was a legitimate business. Bowdoin was jailed in June 2012, after prosecutors proffered evidence that he continued to promote fraud schemes even after the Secret Service seized $80 million in the ASD case and even after he was charged criminally.
Bowdoin spent the early days of his sentence in a District of Columbia jail. Earlier this month, he was listed as a prisoner at a federal holding facility in Oklahoma City.
And today he apparently has arrived in Tallahassee to serve out the remainder of his 78-month term. [New on Feb. 8: Bowdoin has been transferred to Pensacola FPC.) The prison is only a short [Feb. 8 edit: roughly two-and-a-half hour] drive from Quincy, the town from which Bowdoin pulled off a $119 million Internet fraud.
BULLETIN: (UPDATED 4:38 P.M. EDT U.S.A.) A federal grand jury in the Western District of Washington has returned a superseding indictment against AdSurfDaily figure and purported “sovereign citizen” Kenneth Wayne Leaming.
It is the second superseding indictment against Leaming. The first was filed in 2012.
The new indictment was returned yesterday, a day after the White House and the Justice Department referenced “sovereign citizens” in a policy announcement that pointed to an FBI site that defined “sovereign citizens” as “anti-government extremists who believe that even though they physically reside in this country, they are separate or ‘sovereign’ from the United States. As a result, they believe they don’t have to answer to any government authority, including courts, taxing entities, motor vehicle departments, or law enforcement.”
Leaming is 57. His alleged onetime business colleague David Carroll Stephenson, 57, also is named in the superseding indictment. The indictment formally accuses Leaming of filing false liens against a federal judge, two former federal prosecutors and a U.S. Secret Service agent who had roles in the ASD Ponzi case. The liens were filed in August 2010 and November 2010, according to the indictment.
Meanwhile, the indictment accuses Leaming and Stephenson of filing false liens against two U.S. prison officials in July 2011.
Leaming, meanwhile, was further accused of harboring two federal fugitives in 2010 and of being a felon in possession of six firearms.
At the same time, the indictment accuses Leaming of passing a bogus “Bonded Promissory Note” for $1 million in March 2008, in a bid to defraud the United States.
Leaming and Stephenson are being held at the SeaTac federal detention center near Seattle.
ASD was a $119 million Ponzi scheme brought down by the Secret Service in August 2008. Leaming reportedly was performing legal work for some ASD members, even though he is not an attorney.
Leaming was arrested in Spanaway, Wash., by an FBI terrorism Task Force in November 2011. He has been jailed since then. Stephenson already was serving a federal sentence for a tax crime when Leaming was arrested.
Leaming has an existing federal felony conviction for piloting an aircraft without a license.
AdSurfDaily figure Kenneth Wayne Leaming now claims he’s been subjected to “POISON” and “TORTURE.”
In 2009, AdSurfDaily figure and purported “sovereign citizen” Kenneth Wayne Leaming claimed a city in Washington state targeted him for “DEATH” and threatened to kill him by “HUNTING” him down “in screaming packs and mobs” and using “several armed street gangs” that served as police, according to records.
Leaming, now 57, further claimed the Pierce County city of Puyallup engaged in terrorism by controlling “multiple electronic broadcast media” and employing police who used “chemical and biological weapons,” “machine guns” and “explosives.”
In November 2011, prosecutors said Leaming was found in Spanaway, Wash., with two federal fugitives from Arkansas. Those fugitives now have been convicted of mail fraud for a multimillion-dollar, home-based business caper. Court filings by Timothy Shawn Donavan, 64, and Sharon Jeannette Henningsen, 68, suggest they also were sovereign citizens.
After Leaming’s arrest with Donavan and Henningsen, federal prosecutors in the Western District of Washington said an FBI terrorism Task Force found evidence that Leaming had filed false liens against at least five public officials involved in the AdSurfDaily Ponzi case filed by the U.S. Secret Service in 2008.
Leaming allegedly also filed bogus liens or assisted in filing liens against a former cabinet official in the administration of President George W. Bush, the head of a credit union and at least two U.S. prison officials. In 2012, while detained, Leaming sued President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder, advancing a Birther conspiracy theory.
A federal judge tossed that lawsuit. Court filings by Leaming now suggest he intends to sue Holder anew, this time in the District of Columbia as opposed to the Western District of Washington.
But Leaming also has another active lawsuit against Holder and others in the Western District of Washington. A complaint by Leaming dated yesterday asserts he has been subjected to “POISON” and “TORTURE” during his ongoing detention at the SeaTac federal detention center near Seattle.
In October 2012, federal prosecutors alleged that Leaming “was instrumental in founding the ‘County Rangers,’ the sovereign group’s armed enforcement wing. Members of the County Rangers were issued realistic-looking badges and credentials were required to possess firearms as part of their duties, and held themselves out as law enforcement agents.”
Leaming already is a convicted felon from a case that alleged he had no license and yet piloted an aircraft. When he was arrested in November 2011 in the company of Donavan and Henningsen, several firearms were found in Leaming’s residence, including an “AK-47 style assault rifle with a bayonet,” prosecutors said.
He later was charged with unlawful possession of firearms as a convicted felon.
When agents executed a search warrant, they found “numerous boxes of correspondence and legal paperwork documenting other apparent fraud schemes,” prosecutors said.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This story in the Sun Sentinel was recommended by a reader. Indeed, Florida is serving up another strange one. To set the stage, RoboVault is a secure storage facility in Fort Lauderdale that allegedly is wasting away because its former owner, Marvin Chaney, somehow came to believe the facility is storing “sovereign bonds” worth billions of dollars and that RoboVault will get a cut when they are sold. The building now is under control of a bankruptcy trustee, who allegedly has been exposed to nuisancing.
A purported “sovereign” has entered the fray, reportedly claiming he has “superior jurisdiction” to the judge. James McBride, the purported “sovereign,” asserts he is “Postmaster General of North America” and reportedly claims his authority flows from the Pope in Rome.
Various “sovereigns” — including AdSurfDaily Ponzi story figure Kenneth Wayne Leaming — have referred to themselves as “postmaster.” McBride has done the same thing . . .
On Jan. 17, the Sun Sentinel led with this headline: “Wild RoboVault court hearing leaves one man in handcuffs, 2 others facing possible jail time.”
From the Sun Sentinel:
McBride, who claims to derive his authority from the Vatican, sent letters to the judge and trustee demanding the bankruptcy case be dropped. He previously has been profiled in media accounts as a “sovereign separatist,” someone who believes he is not subject to state and federal laws.
