Growing up a child of Andy Bowdoin and advancing through adolescence and adulthood was hard because of Bowdoin’s habitual scheming, according to Scott Bowdoin, Andy Bowdoin’s son.
“He uses religion — always,” Scott Bowdoin, 42, said flatly of his 75-year-old father, noting he had not spoken to Andy Bowdoin in about 15 years because the elder Bowdoin had ripped off his own mother, Scott’s late grandmother, in a credit-card scheme.
The elder Bowdoin left his own mother “with nothing,” Scott Bowdoin asserted. “The electricity was about to get cut off, the water was about to get cut off. He is a man with no conscience.”
Scott Bowdoin made the remarks about his father in an interview with the PP Blog this morning. The younger Bowdoin said his father had disgraced the family name — and that it was high time the public in general and AdSurfDaily members in particular knew that Andy Bowdoin did not enjoy the uniform support of his family as the ASD Ponzi case winds its way through the courts.
There was a long-ago scheme involving telephone calling cards, Scott Bowdoin said.
And there was an “air-conditioning scam” in Florida, he added, saying his father traded on faith.
“He’d go around and evangelize,” Scott Bowdoin said. “That was a scam. He did something with cell-phone towers. That was a scam.”
Andy Bowdoin has been married five times, Scott Bowdoin said, adding that Andy Bowdoin’s financial scheming devastated Scott’s grandmother late in her life.
“He drained my grandmother,” Scott said.
Separately, an Andy Bowdoin family member who spoke to the PP Blog on the condition of anonymity said Bowdoin “has been doing this since the 1960s.
“I always knew he was a con man,” the family member said. “I just didn’t know he could do it at this level.”
The “level,” according to federal prosecutors and the U.S. Secret Service, exceeds $80 million and may approach $100 million when a final accounting is done. Records show that agents seized more than $65.8 million from 10 Andy Bowdoin bank accounts, including one that contained more than $31 million and another that contained more than $23 million.
In total, about $80 million was officially listed as forfeited in the case. Andy Bowdoin has appealed the forfeitures, which were ordered by U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer. An attempt last year by Bowdoin to force Collyer to withdraw as the presiding judge failed.
Prosecutors claimed in court filings that ASD was a massive international Ponzi scheme masked as an “advertising” business.
“I was a little surprised because I didn’t know he could pull off a scam that big,” Scott Bowdoin said. “But, by God, he did it.”
After the elder Bowdoin scammed his own mother in the 1990s, Scott Bowdoin said, “I told him you are dead to me.” Andy Bowdoin later was implicated in a securities swindle in Alabama. Records show he was making restitution to the Alabama victims even as he was operating ASD in 2008.
“I pity you when you have to face the Lord when you die,” Scott Bowdoin said he told his father after he had fleeced Scott’s grandmother.
In July 2008, years after the Alabama swindle and while ASD was gathering tens of millions of dollars per month, ASD money was used to purchase a Lincoln automobile for nearly $50,000, according to court records. At the time, Bowdoin still owed the Alabama victims about $45,000.
Even more ASD money — more than $1 million — went to acquire real estate, a Honda automobile, an Acura automobile, jet skis, a Cabana boat, marine equipment and haul trailers, according to records. A shell company linked to Andy Bowdoin’s company began to make the purchases in June 2008, less than two weeks after an ASD “rally” in Las Vegas.
While in Las Vegas, Andy Bowdoin urged members to imagine themselves getting large checks from ASD and thanked God for making him a “money magnet,” according to records.
Scott Bowdoin described his father as a “classic con artist.”
“He is a very, very, very smart man,” Scott Bowdoin said. “He knows exactly what he is doing. He uses religion — always.”
And Scott Bowdoin lamented his father’s appeals in the forfeiture case against his assets.
“I don’t understand why this man is not sitting in prison,” Scott Bowdoin said. “He pulled off the ultimate [con] this time.”
Scott said his father left when he was 14 and that father and son had been estranged for years.
Asked what he would do if his father suddenly materialized in the same room with him, Scott said that Andy Bowdoin “won’t come around me.
“I’d probably punch him in the face,” Scott said.
Asked if he had any advice for ASD members, Scott said, “Don’t believe a word he says. He’s a great actor. He is a good bullshitter. He could sell a screen door to a submarine captain.”
Calling his dad a “charmer,” Scott said he was aware that some ASD members continued to cling to hope that his father came as the “Christian” depicted in sales pitches and motivational talks. After the company was raided in August 2008, Bowdoin asked his followers to trust in God, saying the government action against his autosurfing company was the work of “Satan.”
“These people who feel sorry for him thinking he is a good Christian — they have blinders on,” Scott Bowdoin said. “He has hurt more people than just [members of] AdSurfDaily. I can guarantee it.”
Andy Bowdoin wasted his talents chasing schemes, Scott Bowdoin maintained.
“If he had gone the right way, he could have been a Donald Trump,” Scott contended. “[But] he wanted to start at the top, not at the bottom.”
Meanwhile, the other Bowdoin family member interviewed by the PP Blog said that he believed Andy was “a sociopath.”
“I know that whatever he puts his efforts in to is [designed to] con people out of as much money as he can,” the other family member said. “Andy is a sociopath. There aren’t many sociopaths, but he is one.”
Both family members said they were not participants in ASD and learned about the alleged scheme on the Internet.
The family member who spoke on the condition of anonymity explained he had done so in an effort to maintain as much privacy as he could as a sea of allegations swirled around Andy Bowdoin.
“The man is a genius,” he said of Andy Bowdoin, “but he has a criminal mind. Anyone involved with his companies — they’d be sucked into a Ponzi. To me, he is a sociopath; he will drag other people down. People need to be [careful]. A good con has a little bit of truth to it.”
Andy Bowdoin, said the family member, has lived a “sad” life.
“It’s sad because he could have used his talent for good,” the family member said. “I don’t hate the man, but I pity him.”
When he thinks about Andy Bowdoin, the family member said, he thinks about Bowdoin’s father.
“Andy Bowdoin’s father was a good man,” the family member said.