UPDATED 5:24 P.M. ET (U.S.A.) Is the “joe” who posted here before being blocked for showcasing an utter lack of restraint the same “joe” who pitched four HYIPs on the Pro-AdSurfDaily Surf’s Up forum two days ago?
We don’t know.
We do know, however, that both “joes” have pushed Ponzi programs and displayed an astonishing and unsettling amount of gumption. The Surf’s Up “joe,” for instance, used egg-themed, .info URLs that redirected to HYIPs, despite the fact state or federal prosecutors have brought racketeering charges against three alleged Ponzi schemes this week alone and ASD President Andy Bowdoin and ASD attorney Robert Garner have been sued by members for racketeering.
Meanwhile, our “joe” — who as recently as three days ago still was pelting us with nuisance communications under multiple identities even after his access to posting here was blocked in September and he was warned publicly to cease — insisted we’d restore his posting privileges or else. He then embarked on a smear campaign against this Blog on Scam.com, using multiple posting identities there, too.
Scam.com banned our “joe,” who has purported to have been a Prisoner of War in Vietnam, to have served harder time than the late Mafia figure John Gotti — and also to have been a graduate of MIT, whose curriculum is heavy on mathematics.
Our “joe” hurt himself with the MIT claim. It’s highly unlikely that any MIT graduate could leave the campus without a core understanding of the math of Ponzi schemes. In the unlikely event “joe” did graduate from MIT, he’d be hard-pressed to explain to prosecutors he didn’t understand he was promoting illegal programs such as AdViewGlobal and AdVentures4U.
He’d be equally hard-pressed to explain to POWs how pushing Ponzi schemes, which nowadays are getting widespread, constant publicity for the massive damage they cause, was a noble pursuit.
Our “joe’s” most recent effort to stalk this Blog occurred Dec. 2, under yet another user identity. He used the wires to tell us that he’d be paying attention to our reports about the notorious cyberstalker “unclefesta26,” who is pillorying this Blog on YouTube and also stalking people who post here by publishing videos about them on YouTube.
“By the way I can make excellent videos and have,” our “joe” suggestively told us Wednesday over the Internet. “Ole Festa doesn’t hold a candle to me.” Our “joe” called himself “Jake” in Wednesday’s reminder he was stalking us.
“joe” has sent us dozens of illegitimate communications designed to harass since September. “joe leaves when joe wants to leave,†he said as the U.S. summer was beginning to transition into fall.
â€You’ll be scrambling to put out fires,” our “joe” promised.
“joe” no more has the right to do what he tries to do here than he does, say, to keep messaging his hometown newspaper with harassing communications (or any business) after being warned to cease and desist.
Another thing we noticed about our “joe” during the summer was that he was sensitive to the word “racketeering” and the acronym RICO. He railed against this Blog in June, after it reported that the AdViewGlobal (AVG) autosurf had been mentioned in a racketeering lawsuit against Andy Bowdoin of AdSurfDaily. Indeed, some ASD members sued Bowdoin for racketeering. (See the comments in the thread for the link above.)
Federal prosecutors later made a veiled reference to AVG in court filings in the ASD forfeiture case. Both the August 2008 and December 2008 forfeiture filings against ASD cite a racketeering statute in the body of the complaints. Regardless, plenty of ASD members went on to promote AVG, which formally launched in February 2009 — after two racketeering mentions in forfeiture complaints and after Bowdoin was sued by members for racketeering.
Jaws dropped among people who pay attention to such things. The purveyors of AVG might as well have taken out an ad in the New York Times that read, “Yes, we are racketeers — and here’s how you, too, can harvest hefty profits from our racketeering scheme, especially if you belong to a Christian denomination!!”
It’s clear that law-enforcement agencies with the power of arrest — the U.S. Secret Service, the FBI and state-level strike forces led by attorneys general and local prosecutors and police officers, for example — have had it up to their ears with Ponzi and affinity-fraud schemes and are treating purveyors like mobsters. They’re using both state and federal racketeering statutes to bring down the schemes.
It’s also clear that the SEC, which does not have the power of arrest but can sue Ponzi scheme operators back to the Stone Age and works proactively with agencies that do have the power of arrest — also has had its fill of Ponzi and affinity-fraud schemes.
How could it not? There now are allegations that Trevor Cook, implicated with Christian radio host Pat Kiley in an alleged $190 million Ponzi scheme in Minnesota, bought a private island in Canada with his loot and a submarine to access the island. Cook reportedly told his investors he discovered after purchasing the submersible craft on eBay that the waters surrounding the island were too dark to navigate by submarine, but that he planned to move his two-passenger sub to Panama, a country be believed to have clear waters.
You can’t make this stuff up. It is an embarrassment to free enterprise, an embarrassment to the United States and the rest of the world. The word “Ponzi” has become positively nuclear as more and more senior citizens in their 80s have been fleeced out of their retirements by schemers and go to bed at night wondering how they’ll ever make ends meet.
Basically, the U.S. law-enforcement and regulatory communities have been responding to the schemers’ crimes with nukes. Rarely a day passes without a detonation.
Despite major undertakings by U.S. law-enforcement and regulatory entities such as the SEC, CFTC and state-level attorneys general and securities regulators to destroy Ponzi schemes — and despite racketeering, wire-fraud and money-laundering prosecutions — the “joes” of the Ponzi world apparently continue to believe there is something honorable about banking Ponzi profits earned while banks are failing in the United States, the foreclosure rate is surging in certain areas of the country, people of faith are being fleeced in Ponzi schemes, deaf people are being targeted in Ponzi schemes and 90-year-old men and women are looking for jobs to keep a roof over their heads.
We don’t know if our “joe” is Surf’s Up’s “joe” — but we do know that “joe” is all about greed and the wanton disregard of the rules of a civilized society.
Fact is, we did scramble to put out the fires promised by our “joe.” He did affect our ability to publish and asserted a nonexistent right to harass.
“What I’m saying is get ready for the return of joe and then you can block all of these people from your site,†our “joe” said.
He suggested that, although he is Uncle Festa’s superior in video production, he won’t use YouTube to harass this Blog or its readers.
It’s our “joe’s” way: He dangles a suggestion, and then wraps it in words designed to create plausible deniability. It escapes him that the words alone constitute a crime because they are designed to chill recipients and put them in the position of scrambling to protect their property.
That’s exactly what racketeers do. They suggest. They chill. They let you know there are consequences for not playing ball with them.
“It would be fun [to make videos] but I don’t hate you like [Uncle Festa] does,” our “joe” said three days ago. “[I]n fact i don’t hate you at all. I’ll bet everyone misses me.”
In a final bit of intrigue, it’s possible that the “joe” on Surf’s Up comes from Erie, Pa. That would be ironic indeed if it proved to be true. Erie is the birthplace of Harry Markopolos, the mathematician and financial analyst who exposed the $65 billion Ponzi scheme of Bernard Madoff.
Erie has some fine high schools. Harry Markopolos was a graduate of one of them and went on to become a world-class student of math and authority on Ponzi schemes. The Surf’s Up ” joe,” on the other hand, perhaps left Erie schools and went on to become a cell-phone trafficker facing a $5 million judgment — and a purveyor of Ponzi schemes who said it was important not to have all of your Ponzi eggs in one Ponzi basket, that you should branch out into other Ponzi schemes.
“ALL MY EGGS ARE NOT IN ONE BASKET,” the Surf’s Up ‘joe said. “I MAKE $2000.00 A WEEK.â€
And the Surf’s Up “joe” said it after Erie’s Harry Markopolos made the phrase “Ponzi scheme” impossible to ignore and kick-started the nuclear responses of the state and federal governments to those who would sell financial peril so they could own a Rolls-Royce or a submarine — or even make $2,000 a week on the Ponzi misery of others.
Even as stock-car fans were celebrating the news that Indy-car driving star Danica Patrick would hopscotch circuits and participate in a limited number of events in NASCAR’s Nationwide Series next year, federal prosecutors were putting together a Ponzi scheme case against a man alleged to have obtained $10 million by using NASCAR’s name.
