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Tag: Andy Bowdoin

  • EDITORIAL: Another Major Thread Goes ‘Poof’ At Surf’s Up

    UPDATED 9:39 P.M. EDT (U.S.A.) A thread at the Pro-AdSurfDaily Surf’s Up forum went missing this morning after a days-long debate in which federal prosecutors were called “goons” and a member repeatedly insisted that a government attorney had acknowledged that ASD was not a Ponzi scheme.

    The thread was titled “William Cowden Resigned.”

    Various Surf’s Up posters have claimed for a more than a year that ASD prosecutor William Cowden, now in private practice, had said ASD was not a Ponzi scheme. The claim was made prior even to an evidentiary hearing held on Sept. 30 and Oct. 1 of last year, and has been made repeatedly since then.

    On Oct. 10, 2008, nine days after the evidentiary hearing had concluded, for example, ASD mainstay Robert Fava circulated an email in which the claim was made. Fava’s email contained an analysis of the evidentiary hearing and post-hearing filings by attorneys from both sides by an ASD member named “Ken.”

    “Everything really hinges on the fact that it was not a Ponzi and the AG has already admitted to the fact that it WAS NOT A PONZI,” Fava’s email quoted “Ken” as saying. Another section of the email noted that Judge Rosemary Collyer would have to be “brain dead or taking a payoff” if she ruled against ASD.

    The claim appears to be part of a disinformation campaign to keep hope alive that the government does not believe in its own case and that the Ponzi elements could unravel at any moment, thus voiding the prosecution’s claim that ASD had engaged in wire-fraud and money laundering.

    Some Surf’s Up members have asserted that, if the government can’t prove a Ponzi, then it cannot prove other crimes occurred inside ASD.

    At the same time, some Surf’s Up posters have claimed prosecutors are guilty of an Unconstitutional money-grab and denying ASD due process. The claims have been made repeatedly, even though a federal judge reviewed search-warrant applications before approving them and issued warrants to “arrest” ASD’s assets — and even though ASD has argued its case in the forfeiture proceeding in court — a court open to the public and a court in which ASD members themselves attended the proceeding.

    Despite the claim against Cowden, nothing in the record of the case suggests he ever said ASD was not a Ponzi scheme. In fact, the hearing on the Ponzi issues was held without objection from Cowden.

    Then-prosecutor Cowden even cross-examined ASD’s expert witness — MLM attorney Gerald Nehra — who asserted ASD was not a Ponzi scheme.

    Cowden cross-examined Nehra on Nehra’s opinion ASD was not a Ponzi scheme and on the subject of ASD’s “rebate” program. Cowden demonstrated in the courtroom — with Nehra on the witness stand — that ASD had said rebates “will” be paid until a customer received 125 percent of his or her ad spend — in other words, 25 percent more than the customer had paid ASD for “advertising.”

    “Now,” Cowden asked Nehra, who was on the witness stand, “have you ever seen in the ASD rebate program the representation that [ASD] makes that rebates will (emphasis added) be paid up to a hundred and twenty-five percent, correct?”

    “We have discussed that in the — ” Nehra answered.

    “Is that correct?” Cowden asked, returning to his question about whether ASD had said rebates “will” be paid.

    “Yes,” Nehra reponded, “I have seen that.”

    “Mr. Nehra, yes or no answer, that’s what it says, rebates will be paid up to a hundred and twenty-five percent?” Cowden asked again, in a bid to solidify the answer for the record.

    “It does say that, counselor,” Nehra answered.

    “One hundred twenty-five percent is more money than you put in, right?” Cowden asked.

    “Yes,” Nehra answered.

    Months after the evidentiary hearing concluded, dozens of ASD pro se litigants filed templated court documents that accused the government of not producing “any EVIDENCE of alleged wrongdoing.”

    The government, however, introduced evidence at the evidentiary hearing, including evidence upon which Nehra had been cross-examined by Cowden. The government also introduced video evidence and written evidence. The first government filing of evidence occurred on Aug. 5, 2008, and included eight separate exhibits.

    Had Cowden or the government told a federal judge or ASD’s attorneys that ASD was not a Ponzi scheme — before the hearing or after — one of the key prongs of the government’s strategy in the case would have collapsed. There would have been no reason for Cowden to cross-examine Nehra on the Ponzi elements. Bowdoin’s attorneys would have had Cowden for lunch.

    It does not seem even to have occurred to the ASD members making the claim about Cowden that, in the early hours after the hearing concluded, they also snickered about Cowden returning again and again to the subject of ASD paying a rebate of 125 percent. One of the key issues of the 125 percent promise was how ASD was funding the payouts. The prosecution always has argued that the payouts were made in classic Ponzi fashion, with money taken from new members to pay earlier members.

    By snickering about Cowden’s consistent return to the 125 percent theme, the ASD members were disproving their own argument that Cowden had said ASD was not a Ponzi scheme.

    Not only did the Ponzi theory not collapse, the government used information gleaned from the testimony at the evidentiary hearing in a second forfeiture complaint filed against ASD’s assets. The second complaint was filed more than two months after the Surf’s Up posters first asserted that Cowden had said ASD was not a Ponzi scheme — and Cowden signed the December complaint, arguing again that ASD had operated as a Ponzi.

    “ASD operated as a ‘Ponzi’ operation whereby it took money from investors — it termed its investors ‘members’ and ‘advertisers’ — by promising its investors that it would pay to those investors 125% of their out-of-pocket investment,” argued Cowden in December, along with former U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Taylor and Assistant U.S. Attorney Vasu B. Muthyala.

    The court filing was verified by Roy Dotson, a special agent for the U.S. Secret Service.

    Cowden, Taylor and Dotson — at various times — became the subjects of a certified-mail campaign by ASD members to discredit them. They also became the subjects of a letter-writing campaign to Sen. Patrick Leahy in which the senders asked the U.S. Senate to investigate not an alleged $100 million Ponzi scheme, but the public servants who stopped the scheme before it could mushroom globally.

    In the fall of 2008, Surf’s Up hinted that a secret weapon against the government soon would come into play. In October, ASD Members International (ASDMI) was formed. ASDMI’s founders consisted of Surf’s Up members.

    “Professor” Patrick Moriarty was listed in Missouri records as the registered agent of the organization, which had registered as a nonprofit. Surf’s Up Mod Barb McIntyre was listed as Secretary.

    ASDMI solicited money from ASD members to do battle with the government. The organization made the odd claim that it would litigate against the government even if the government was behaving legally.

    If civil litigation did not work, ASDMI suggested, it would see about having the prosecutors charged with crimes.

    Patrick Moriarty, a co-founder of ASDMI, instructed ASD visitors to his personal website to make checks and money orders for $50 payable to “P.M.G.Int.,” which stands for Pacific Ministry of Giving International, Curtis Richmond’s Utah-based entity.

    Moriarty instructed participants in a mail campaign against the prosecutors and Secret Service to mail the checks and money orders to him in Missouri. The $50 fee would be used to defray the costs of notarization, “several certified mailings, typing, paper and other necessary administrative costs.”

    ASDMI itself charged a $20 fee for its own version of presumptive litigation against the government.

    Richmond, who said in court filings that Pacific Ministry of Giving International had lost $41,000 as a result of the government seizure of ASD’s funds, is associated with a Utah “Indian” tribe a federal judge in a separate case ruled a “complete sham.” At least two people who used the services of a sham “arbitration” panel connected to the tribe to litigate against the Internal Revenue Service or other creditors were convicted of federal crimes such as tax evasion and mail fraud and sentenced to prison.

    Moriarty was a key participant in a certified-mail campaign involving the ASD prosecutors, asking ASD members to make checks and money orders payable to Richmond’s Pacific Ministry of Giving International, which is registered in Utah as a “Corporation – Sole” under “Religious Organizations.”

    In March 2009, Moriarty was indicted in Missouri for alleged tax crimes that occurred between 2002 and 2006. In February 2009 — at Surf’s Up — he was positioned as the leader of a letter-writing campaign to Leahy

    “Over 50 individual and notarized DEMAND[S] FOR LEGAL EVIDENCE were sent to Jeffrey Taylor, US Attorney; William Cowden, Assistant US Attorney; and Roy Dotson, Special Agent, US Secret Service,” Moriarty said in a letter to Leahy, D.-Vermont. “Not once did any of these three Government Servants respond.”

    Leahy is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

    “Innocent Americans have suffered and continue to suffer because of these incredulous and despicable acts” by prosecutors, Moriarty said.

    Screen shot: Snapshot of section from Government Exhibit 3, which has been in the public record since Aug. 8, 2008. The exhibit reproduces the AdSurfDaily Terms of Service as the document existed on July 24, 2008, in the opening weeks of a U.S. Secret Service investigation into the company's business affairs. The exhibit shows that ASD advertised that advertisers "will be paid rabates until they receive 125 percent of their ad purchases" and that "Your ad purchase will expire when you receive a 125% rebate of your advertising cost."
    Screen shot: Snapshot of section from Government Exhibit 3, which has been in the public record since Aug. 5, 2008. The exhibit reproduces the AdSurfDaily Terms of Service as the document existed on July 24, 2008, in the opening weeks of a U.S. Secret Service investigation into the company's business affairs. The exhibit shows ASD advertised that advertisers "will be paid rebates until they receive 125% of their ad purchases" and that "Your ad purchase will expire when you receive a 125% rebate of your advertising cost."

    Despite the August 2008 forfeiture complaint in which the U.S. Secret Service and federal prosecutors first made the Ponzi claim — and despite the fact ASD asked for a hearing to demonstrate it was not a Ponzi and that the prosecution did not object to the hearing — and despite the fact Cowden cross-examined Nehra on the Ponzi issues and that Nehra acknowledged on the stand that ASD said rebates “will” be paid up to 125 percent — some Surf’s Up members continue to argue that Cowden said ASD was not a Ponzi scheme.

    Perhaps most striking of all is that the government, including Cowden, reasserted the Ponzi argument in the December complaint (filed 10 months ago tomorrow) — and some Surf’s Up members still are arguing that Cowden had said ASD was not a Ponzi scheme.

    All of the court information contained in this post is in the public record of the case.

    Judge Rosemary Collyer’s ruling that ASD had not demonstrated at the evidentiary hearing that it was a lawful business and not a Ponzi scheme — coincidentally, 11 months old tomorrow — is in the public record. The August 2008 filing in which the government reproduced the ASD Terms of Service showing the surf had said rebates “will” be paid up to 125 percent is in the public record. So are the initial eight exhibits of government evidence against ASD.

    ASD was permitted to continue to sell advertising after the seizure of its assets, but chose not to do so. It is not illegal to sell advertising online. One of the key issues of the ASD case is how the company funded rebates — which generally are not illegal — but can become illegal if a company is skirting securities laws by purporting to be an “advertising” company when it actually is an unregistered issuer of securities sold as investment contracts.

    But the securities allegation is just one of allegations against ASD. Prosecutors said the company was engaging in wire fraud and money-laundering. Meanwhile, private litigants have accused the company of racketeering.

    ASD President Andy Bowdoin has never responded to the racketeering complaint, which was filed in Florida November 2008, in the immediate aftermath of Collyer’s ruling against the firm. The initial racketeering lawsuit was dismissed by the plaintiffs in Florida and refiled in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in January 2009, in the immediate aftermath of Bowdoin’s decision to submit to the government forfeiture.

    Attorneys for the racketeering plaintiffs — consisting of three ASD members who seek class-action certification in the lawsuit against Bowdoin — referenced the AdViewGlobal (AVG) autosurf in a June filing, saying the surf was the next iteration of ASD and employed individuals who worked for ASD.

    On Sept. 25, the government made a veiled reference to AVG in court filings.

    Both ASD and AVG potentially face a ton of trouble in the coming weeks and months — but more than a year after the evidentiary hearing was held, some Surf’s Up posters continue to argue that the government itself, despite all the evidence to the contrary, had said ASD was not a Ponzi scheme.

    At the same time, posts and entire threads continue to go “poof” at Surf’s Up, perhaps especially when other posters argue that the government just might have a legitimate point of view.

  • Bank Failure Brings 2009 Total To 99; Foreclosures Pile Up In California, Florida; Prosecutors Battle Mortgage Fraudsters And Ponzi Schemers

    Andy Bowdoin
    Andy Bowdoin

    UPDATED 1:33 P.M. EDT (U.S.A.) The failure yesterday of San Joaquin Bank in Bakersfield, Calif., brought the total of bank failures in the United States this year to 99.

    With weeks remaining in the year, it is a virtual certainty that failures will top the 100 mark. Banks have been failing at an average rate of slightly less than 10 per month in 2009. Last year, 25 banks failed in the United States. In 2007, only three banks failed.

    As many as 416 names of other troubled banks appear on a confidential list maintained by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC). The hemorrhage of bank failures — in large measure caused by a severe recession, consumer and business defaults, a collapse of real-estate prices in many parts of the country, brazen fraud in the mortgage sector and a contraction of development — is not over.

    Although banks and the government are working together to find ways to curb an explosion in the mortgage-foreclosure rate, foreclosures continue to suck wealth from the economy.

    “Bank repossessions, or REOs, jumped 21 percent from the second quarter to the third quarter, corresponding to jumps in defaults and scheduled auctions in the previous two quarters,” said James J. Saccacio, chief executive officer of RealtyTrac.

    RealtyTrac tracks foreclosure activity in the United States. On Oct. 14, the company said foreclosures in the third quarter set a record and were up 23 percent from the total reported in the third quarter of 2008.

    Foreclosure filings, default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions totaled 937,840 in this year’s third quarter, RealtyTrac reported.

    Although foreclosure filings in September totaled 343,638 — a 4 percent decrease from August’s total — the number still represented a 29 percent increase from September 2008.

    September’s monthly total was among the highest figures reported since January 2005, trailing only July and August of this year.

    “REO activity increased from the previous quarter in all but two states and the District of Columbia, indicating that lenders may be starting to work through some of the pent-up foreclosure inventory caused by legislative delays, loan modification efforts and high volumes of distressed properties,” Saccacio said.

    Florida, California Battered By Foreclosures

    Six states — California, Florida, Arizona, Nevada, Illinois and Michigan — accounted for 62 percent of the foreclosure total in the third quarter, RealtyTrac reported. Foreclosures in the six states totaled 579,541.

    Foreclosures in California totaled 250,054 in the third quarter; Florida posted 156,924 foreclosures, a 23 percent increase from the total reported in the third quarter of 2008.

    Because Florida is an attractive state for retirees — and because those retirees have friends and loved ones in all corners of the United States — the state is an attractive target for scammers.

    Florida also has a large population of immigrants, another attractive target of scammers.

    Agencies Battle Florida Ponzi Fraud

    In the past 72 hours alone, the SEC, the CFTC, the FBI, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, and federal prosecutors have announced three Florida Ponzi scheme prosecutions, a conviction in a separate Ponzi case — and a conviction in a fraud case in which a Florida man created more than 260 identities on eBay and fleeced customers out of $717,000.

    On the Florida Ponzi front:

    • David F. Merrick, Traders International Return Network (TIRN), MS Inc., GTT Services Inc., MDD Consulting Inc. and Go ! Tourism Inc. were named defendants in emergency actions in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida. Merrick, 61, of Apopka, is accused of operating a $22 million Ponzi scheme with ties to Panama, Mexico, Malaysia, Switzerland and the Netherlands.
    • HomePals Investment Club LLC, HomePals LLC (Home Pals), Ronnie Eugene Bass Jr., Abner Alabre and Brian J. Taglieri were charged in South Florida with securities fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud, wire fraud and money laundering. The defendants were accused of targeting Haitian-Americans in a $14.3 million Ponzi scheme that promised investment returns of 100 percent every 90 days. The scheme gathered money from as many as 64 “investment clubs,” the SEC said.
    • Sean Healy, 38, of Weston, Fla., was charged in a 55-count indictment unsealed in Pennsylvania with multiple counts of wire fraud, mail fraud, money laundering and obstruction of justice. The Florida-based scheme led to at least $14.6 million in losses in Pennsylvania alone, prosecutors said, adding that Healy purchased “numerous exotic vehicles and sport cars, including a Bentley and several Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Porsches worth over $2.3 million.” Healy also bought a $2.4 million waterfront mansion furnished with more than $2 million of home improvements, plus $1.5 million in men’s and women’s jewelry, prosecutors said.
    • Michael Riolo, 38, of Boca Raton, was sentenced to more than 24 years in prison for bilking investors in a $44 million Ponzi scheme. Prosecutors accused Riolo of cooking the books and sending false statements to investors that reported “consistent trading profits and increasing account balances.” In reality, Riolo “misdirected money he received from some investors to make distributions to other investors who sought to withdraw money from their investment accounts,” prosecutors said.
    • Andy Bowdoin, 74, of Quincy, Fla., continued his efforts to get back into a Ponzi case in which he had already submitted to the forfeiture of tens of millions of dollars seized last year by the U.S. Secret Service in an international wire-fraud and money-laundering probe. Bowdoin, who submitted to the forfeiture in January, fired his attorneys and began to file as his own attorney in February. In April, federal prosecutors announced that Bowdoin had signed a proffer letter in the case prior to acting as his own attorney and acknowledged his company, AdSurfDaily Inc., had been operating illegally. “Mr. Bowdoin also confirmed that the revenue figures of the enterprise were managed to make it appear to prospective members that the enterprise called Ad Surf Daily was a consistently profitable, and brilliant, passive income opportunity,” prosecutors said. Despite his own acknowledgments of illegal conduct, despite the proffer — and despite the fact Bowdoin had asked the court to grant his request to submit to the forfeiture and that the court granted Bowdoin’s request — Bowdoin climbed back on the litigation saddle. “Mr. Bowdoin says that after discussing this case with his supporters, and concluding that they were smarter than his attorneys, he has changed his mind,” prosecutors said.

    Total funds gathered in the alleged Bowdoin, Merrick, Bass, Alabre, Taglieri and Healy Ponzi schemes in Florida are estimated at $156.3 million, during a period in which U.S. banks are failing, the U.S. economy is confronting the worst business conditions since the Great Depression and mortgage foreclosures are piling up across the country, including hard-hit Florida.

    With the Riolo conviction added to the estimate, the number totals $200.3 million. The estimate does not reflect the massive, $65 billion Ponzi fraud of Bernad Madoff, who wiped out clients in Florida and elsewhere. Nor does it take into account allegations that Arthur Nadel, another man implicated in a large-scale fraud in Florida, may be responsible for tens — if not hundreds — of millions of dollars of Ponzi pain.

    “During these tough economic times, it is more important than ever that those who lie to and steal from the investing public be held accountable for their misconduct,” said Jeffrey H. Sloman, Acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, commenting on the 24-year prison sentence Riolo received.

    “The United States Attorney’s Office will continue to investigate and prosecute those who perpetrate these large-scale fraud schemes,” Sloman said.

  • BREAKING NEWS: Michael Riolo Sentenced To More Than 24 Years In Prison For Bilking Clients In Florida Ponzi Scheme That Collapsed After Nine Years

    To many residents of Florida, Michael Riolo was their Bernard Madoff.

    Riolo, 38, of Boca Raton, was sentenced to more than 24 years in prison (293 months) today for bilking investors in a $44 million Ponzi scheme. The scheme began in 1999 and collapsed in 2008.

    “During these tough economic times, it is more important than ever that those who lie to and steal from the investing public be held accountable for their misconduct,” said Jeffrey H. Sloman, Acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida. “The United States Attorney’s Office will continue to investigate and prosecute those who perpetrate these large-scale fraud schemes.”

    Riolo’s sentence was imposed by U.S. District Judge Kenneth A. Marra.

    Police officers were among victims of Sterling Wentworth Currency Group Inc. and LaSalle International Clearing Corp., Riolo’s companies.

    “From August 1999 to December 2008, Riolo caused more than 80 investors to invest approximately $44 million, based on materially false statements and omissions of material facts,” prosecutors said today.

    Like Madoff, Riolo cooked the books.

    “To encourage participating investors to keep their investments with the defendant, he would prepare and distribute to investors monthly profit and loss statements that falsely reported consistent trading profits and increasing account balances,” prosecutors said.

    “In furtherance of the scheme, Riolo misdirected money he received from some investors to make distributions to other investors who sought to withdraw money from their investment accounts.”

    Riolo took money from new investors to pay old ones in classic Ponzi fashion, prosecutors said.

    “[He] disbursed more than $29.5 million to investors as a purported return of principal and profits, when in fact, most of the returns paid by the defendant to the investors came directly from new investment monies, not profits,” prosecutors said.

    Investigators have exposed two significant Ponzi schemes in Florida in the past 48 hours alone. The alleged schemes occurred on the heels of Madoff’s massive, $65 million Ponzi fraud, and allegations that Florida residents Arthur Nadel and Andy Bowdoin has schemed hundreds of millions of dollars from investors in Ponzi frauds.

    Read story about another Florida Ponzi case Sloman’s office is prosecuting.

    Read story about yet another Florida Ponzi scheme exposed in the past 48 hours.

    Florida’s real-estate market has been battered by the recession. The state has one of the highest mortgage-foreclosure rates in the United States, and some counties have high concentrations of residents vulnerable to scams, including senior citizens and immigrant populations.

    Despite the fact senior citizens are vulnerable to Ponzi schemes, some members of the Pro-AdSurfDaily Surf’s Up forum discussed a plan to ask AARP, an association that advocates for seniors, to advocate on behalf of ASD.

    AARP later joined with Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum in an effort to strengthen securities laws in the state.

  • BREAKING NEWS: Bowdoin’s Attorney Files Motion To Permit New Attorney To Appear In DC Federal Court

    UPDATED 7:51 P.M. EDT (U.S.A.) An attorney for AdSurfDaily President Andy Bowdoin has filed a motion to permit another attorney to appear in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the venue of the civil-forfeiture complaint against ASD’s assets.

    The attorney was identified as Michael R.N. McDonnell of Naples, Fla.

    Murray’s motion was dated Oct. 1. An accompanying affidavit from McDonnell was dated Sept. 30. Ironically the dates on the documents coincided with the one-year anniversary of the dates upon which an evidentiary hearing was conducted at ASD’s request last year.

    Why the documents dated Sept. 30 and Oct. 1 of this year appeared on the docket only today was not immediately clear.

    On Nov. 19, 2008, U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer ruled that ASD had not demonstrated at the hearing that it was a lawful business and not a Ponzi scheme.

    Bowdoin submitted to the forfeiture on advice of counsel in January 2009, and then emerged as a pro se litigant in February, saying he’d changed his mind and wanted to rescind his decision to forfeit tens of millions of dollars.

    In July, Collyer ordered Murray, who had become Bowdoin’s paid counsel, to follow-up on motions filed in May. Collyer initially gave the Bowdoin side until Aug. 7 to file arguments. She extended the deadline until Aug. 28 — and then again until Sept. 14 — after Murray advised her Bowdoin was negotiating with prosecutors.

    Bowdoin met the Sept. 14 filing deadline on the last possible day. On Sept. 15, he filed a corrected affidavit. His initial affidavit appeared to have lines and an entire paragraph missing.

    The Sept 15 filing had 23 paragraphs, as opposed to the previous day’s 22. The Sept. 14 filing jumped from paragraph 3 to 5, skipping paragraph 4. Meanwhile, it also had two paragraph 16s, one apparently complete and one apparently incomplete.

    In a brief filed Sept. 14 by Murray, there was a reference to Bowdoin having found the fees accepted by defense counsel Steven Dobson “astonishing.” The reference cited was paragraph 17 from Bowdoin’s affidavit, but the word “astonishing” did not appear in paragraph 17 — or elsewhere in the document.

    Bowdoin’s Sept 15 corrected affidavit also did not include the word “astonishing” — in paragraph 17 or elsewhere.

    On Sept. 28, the U.S. Secret Service filed a transcription of a recording Bowdoin had made earlier in September. The recording was posted online.

    In a Sept. 28 filing that accompanied the Secret Service transcript of the recording, prosecutors said Bowdoin was “delusional.”

    Prosecutors argued that Bowdoin had told Collyer one story and members another to explain events, calling the recording evidence that “this con man cannot manage to keep his stories straight.”

    “Remarkably, Bowdoin even suggests to those members participating in the conference call that the money taken from his bank accounts and, supposedly, never constituting an investment, belongs, not to Bowdoin, but to the membership.”

    On Sept. 25, prosecutors said Bowdoin was trying to lie his way back into the case and that Murray was engaging in “fantasy.”

    Prosecutors’ Sept. 25 filing was blistering, and included a veiled reference to the AdViewGlobal autosurf.

    “[I]t may be the case that Bowdoin never intended to plead guilty when he agreed to debrief, and was just buying time while searching for a different exit strategy that failed to materialize,” prosecutors said Sept. 25. “Maybe Bowdoin thought that before the government brought its charges he (like some of his family members) could move to another country and profit from a knock-off autosurf program that Bowdoin funded and helped to start.”

    Murray, prosecutors asserted, had filed motions at odds with Bowdoin’s claims.

    “Mr. Murray’s apparent suggestion that Bowdoin made a mistake because he was ‘hoodwinked’ by his prior defense counsel is belied by Bowdoin’s own affidavits,” prosecutors said.

    Bowdoin agreed in January to submit to the forfeiture. In February, he began to file pro se motions in a bid to rescind his decision to forfeit tens of millions of dollars seized by the Secret Service in August 2008.

    In March, on the Pro-ASD Surf’s Up forum, Bowdoin explained in a letter to members that he had made the shift from paid attorneys to acting as his own attorney after consulting with a “group” of ASD members.

    “We will be filing papers in the next couple of weeks that should really get their attention,” Bowdoin said, chiding prosecutors in the letter.

    Murray, who became Bowdoin’s attorney after Bowdoin had filed several pro se motions, contends Bowdoin received poor advice from Dobson, a paid attorney previously employed by Bowdoin.

    Prosecutors disagreed.

    “Mr. Murray’s new accusations are, in any event, utterly inconsistent with Bowdoin’s own affidavit testimony,” prosecutors said.

    “Mr. Murray’s manufactured effort to fault Bowdoin’s prior counsel for Bowdoin’s decision to cooperate and his revised decision to profess ‘my belief in my innocence’ is laughable,” prosecutors said. “Bowdoin knew he should expect no leniency unless he stopped pretending that he honestly earned the millions of dollars that the government recovered from his bank accounts in 2008.”

    In April, prosecutors said Bowdoin had signed a proffer letter in the case and acknowledged ASD was operating illegally.

    Murray, however, says Bowdoin believes he is innocent.

    Read Murray’s motion.

    Read Bowdoin’s Sept. 14 affidavit.

    Read Bowdoin’s Sept. 15 affidavit.

    Read the motion from Murray that accompanied Bowdoin’s Sept. 14 affidavit.

    Read an Oct. 8 motion by Murray in response to prosecutors’ Sept. 28 motion.

  • EDITORIAL: Our Best Wishes To ‘Gomer Pyle,’ AUSA

    William R. Cowden is the man some supporters of AdSurfDaily Inc. love to hate.

    Cowden’s middle name is “Rakestraw.” Such a name posed an altogether too enticing opportunity for one ASD apologist. The apologist opined that Cowden, a federal prosecutor acting on behalf of victims of an alleged $100 million Ponzi scheme, should be placed in a medieval torture “rack” and that ASD members should draw “straws” to determine who got the honor of turning the screw.

    It was only a hint of the deeply troubling excess that would follow.

    After an evidentiary hearing last fall requested by ASD to to explain its business model and to ask for emergency release of funds seized by the U.S. Secret Service in August 2008, Cowden was derided by ASD’s apologists as a hapless, clueless “Gomer Pyle.”

    It didn’t matter that ASD President Andy Bowdoin had entered guilty pleas to felony charges of securities fraud in Alabama a decade previously, the apologists explained. Nor did it matter that Bowdoin’s business partner had been implicated in a securities scheme of his very own in the 1990s.

    What mattered, the apologists explained, was that Bowdoin was a fine “Christian” man who’d invented a miraculous business system for people of faith.

    Cowden, they insisted, didn’t understand technology or the business model. When Andy Bowdoin took the 5th Amendment at the evidentiary hearing, one of his apologists explained that he was “too honest” to testify.

    Another Christian apologist — in a hail of fire and brimstone — called for God to strike the prosecutors dead. Yet another described Cowden as a “Nazi.”

    During the time  ASD’s apologists were deriding Cowden as “Gomer Pyle,” they described Bowdoin’s attorneys as the “Perry Mason” team.

    Perry had reduced Gomer’s case to rubble, the apologists claimed. For good measure, one of them later added that U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer would have to be “brain dead” or “taking a payoff” if she ruled against ASD.

    Earlier, Collyer had been made the subject of a prayer chain that admonished God to intervene so she would do the right thing — namely, rule in ASD’s favor.

    Here is how a Mod who related one-sided reports to members of the Pro-ASD Surf’s Up forum assessed the performance of ASD’s witnesses and attorneys from both sides at the conclusion of the evidentiary hearing:

    [ASD] Witnesses:
    Bob Grayson – Excellent
    Gerald Nehra – Excellent
    Chuck Osmin -Excellent
    ASD Legal Team – Excellent

    US Attorney – Cowden – Not so much.
    Witnesses for the Prosecution: … … … Zero –
    Victims prior to 8/01/08:… … … Zero

    Collyer ruled Nov. 19 that ASD had not demonstrated at the hearing that it was a legal business and not a Ponzi scheme. She chastised ASD’s expert witness — an MLM attorney who had been paid a retainer of $24,000 and opined that ASD was not a Ponzi scheme — for relying on one-sided information from ASD and not performing a thorough analysis of ASD’s business operations before arriving at his opinion.

    ASD did not produce an audited balance sheet at the hearing, thus failing to dent the prosecution’s claim the company was insolvent and using money from new members to pay old ones in a shell game.

    No release of funds would be forthcoming, Collyer said.  Her ruling can be summarized in two words:

    Gomer won.

    After ASD suffered the stinging blow, Bowdoin apologists who once gleefully described his attorneys as the “Perry Mason” team and their performance as “Excellent” apparently decided they’d been too generous in their praise.

    The apologists ignored the fact that Andy Bowdoin had more than two months to produce an audited balance sheet and failed to do so. They also ignored the fact that Bowdoin had failed to provide documentation to his own lawyers when requested to do so and that testimony at the hearing was contradicted by information on ASD’s own website.

    Under a theory that emerged later, both Bowdoin’s attorneys and the prosecution were worthy of condemnation. The only people who could be trusted were among a “group” of ASD members with whom Bowdoin consulted in private. Members of the “group” advised Bowdoin to become his own lawyer.

    “The group said that my attorneys had taken the wrong approach,” Bowdoin said. “The group was very confident that they could help because the government had broken so many laws and had violated our rights as citizens of the United States.”

    This year and last, dozens of advocates for ASD wrote letters to the Inspector General at the U.S. Department of Justice to have Cowden and his then-boss — former U.S. Attorney Jeffrey A. Taylor — investigated and perhaps even fired. One Bowdoin apologist said Cowden would be lucky to find work in a fast-food restaurant after ASD members were done destroying his legal career.

    Some ASD apologists also wrote letters to Sen. Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

    Thirteen U.S. banks failed during the period in which ASD’s apologists were composing those letters and Leahy’s staff was fielding them in the opening days of the year. That number now has increased to 98, with weeks remaining in 2009. There were three bank failures in all of 2007.

    The ASD case, of course, is about keeping banks clean and safe from those who would pollute them with dirty money gathered in domestic and international fraud schemes.

    To describe the smear campaign by some ASD members against Cowden as unjustified does not do it justice. It was insidious, plain and simple. Later, Cowden was attacked by Curtis Richmond , a man hailed a “hero” on the Surf’s Up forum, the site from which the torture rack was proposed.

    Richmond, who once declared that he was immune from U.S. law because he was a “sovereign” being, accused Cowden, Taylor and Collyer of a money grab.

    “The U.S. Atty. and/or U.S. Judge Had No Authority or Jurisdiction to Steal Most of the $93 million of ASD Member Ownership Interest,” Richmond said, using his trademark mix of uppercase and lowercase letters. “All of the ASD Members had a Constitutional Right to Make A Contract With ASD and None of the ASD Members had a Contract With the U.S. Government.”

    Richmond, who has a contempt conviction for threatening federal judges in a separate case and holds the distinction of having been banned from the practice of law in Colorado even though he is not an attorney, advanced his theory of the ASD case:

    “Since the U.S. Atty. could not present any court order giving him Authority to Seize the $40 million of Cashier Checks and deposit them in an Account Of His Choosing, he is Guilty of Misappropriation of Funds [at] a minimum and very possibly Embezzlement,” Richmond claimed.

    Richmond also claimed he had “irrefutable” evidence against the prosecutors and suggested Collyer was conspiring with another federal judge and the government to deny justice to ASD members.

    “This was accomplished by sending by Return Receipt with a ‘Demand For Legal Evidence Affidavit’ to William Cowden, Assist. U.S. Atty., Jeffrey Taylor, U.S. Atty., and Roy Dotson, Special Agent, U.S. Secret Service[,] giving them 7 Days to present Legal Evidence that the Statements Made in the Demand For Legal Evidence[,] including the Listed Constitutional Rights, WERE FALSE,” Richmond claimed.

    “The Demand for Legal Evidence [was] part of Notarized Affidavits and clearly stated “Your Silence will be an Admission that you do not have the Legal Evidence,” he said.

    Cowden, Taylor and Dotson knowingly and willingly defaulted on his demands “because they had no Legal Evidence or believed they were above the law,” Richmond said. “Attorneys & Judges Are Not Above The Law. A Lawful Default Is a Lawful Default.”

    In short, Richmond’s theory of the ASD case is that you can demand a litigation result from federal judges and federal prosecutors by stating what you’d like to see occur, putting a letter containing the demand in the mail, giving the recipients a few days to submit to the demand — and then claim they’ve broken the law by not playing the game you brought to their doors.

    It was not the first time he had played the game. Richmond was among a group of litigants from a sham Utah “Indian” tribe sued for racketeering and ordered last year to pay damages for their conduct, which targeted judges, prosecutors, police officers — and even a family-services worker — in a scheme to place enormous financial judgments against them.

    Acting as an “arbitrator” for a sham company, Richmond signed a fraudulent award against the family-services worker for more than $300,000. The “tribe” placed a sham judgment for $250 million against a county prosecutor. Richmond claimed the federal judge hearing the case owed him $30 million, and the tribe drew up fraudulent arrest warrants against two other judges and Richmond’s litigation opponents in a banking case.

    The tribe fabricated a “Supreme Court,” which used the address of a Utah doughnut shop,  and tried unsuccessfully to force the U.S. Marshals Service to serve fraudulent court documents that called for the imprisonment of judges and Richmond’s opponents.

    After Richmond began to file pro se pleadings in the ASD case in February, others followed, including ASD President Andy Bowdoin, who had fired his attorneys after consulting with the “group” of members. Bowdoin’s pro se pleadings were not as far out as Richmond’s, which is not to say they were grounded on terra firma.

    Bowdoin rewrote the facts of a civil case against money and property seized from him, declaring himself a “defendant” in a quasi-criminal case and saying his paid attorneys had been incompetent. Bowdoin later publicly smeared one of his attorneys.

    Prosecutors now say Bowdoin, who apparently forgot he’d told the Secret Service that ASD had $1 million in a bank on the Caribbean island nation of Antigua before later claiming ASD needed emergency funds to operate, is “delusional.”

    Bowdoin, a defendant in a separate racketeering lawsuit to which he never has responded, claims a former Miss America is one of the inspirations behind his renewed litigation efforts against the government. He’d press on, he said, because Miss America didn’t give up after being denied the title in four previous bids to earn the crown.

    She finally won in her fifth attempt, Bowdoin explained to ASD members.

    He also explained that he was trying to get the government to return money the Secret Service seized from members, even though he always has maintained in court filings that the seized money belonged to him.

    By August, dozens of pro se litigants who sought to paint the prosecution as an unwanted Orwellian Big Brother had joined in the fray. An ASD upline shared a litigation template in which names were swapped in and out. Filers claimed they had been victimized by the government, not ASD.

    Cowden’s name was misspelled as “Crowden” in each of the fill-in-the-blank claims that began to flood the courthouse in August. They were still coming in last week, despite the fact Collyer already had denied the argument contained in the litigation template.

    With a new administration now in power in Washington, new U.S. Attorneys are being appointed and some assistant U.S. Attorneys (AUSAs) are leaving government service.

    There are reports today that William Cowden, AUSA, has left the Justice Department to join the private sector. We wish him the best in his pursuits  — and propose a special honor for his exceptional service to the victims of AdSurfDaily.

    We were unable to determine immediately if “Gomer Pyle” had a middle name on either The Andy Griffith Show or a spinoff, Gomer Pyle, USMC.

    Regardless, it would be nice — if only for today — if the thousands of ASD victims Cowden so capably represented would honor his government service by ascribing the middle initial “R” to the name of the character played by Jim Nabors.

    “Gomer Rakestraw Pyle” has a nice ring to it. “Gomer R. Pyle.”

    No one should be confused: Adding Rakestraw to the noble name of Gomer Pyle is a gesture of high esteem for William Cowden, who has been vilified, ridiculed and scorned by people who said nothing when it was suggested that he be placed in a rack, that straws be drawn and that a winner be declared to carry out the medieval torture.

    Delusional does not begin to describe this behavior. Some of the apologists appear to be constitutionally incapable of accepting the premise that Andy Bowdoin involved them in a criminal enterprise. At the same time, they have displayed the ceaseless constitutional capability of conflating one reality after another to provide cover for a fraudster and to smear one of the career prosecutors trying to bring him to justice.

    In the end, Bowdoin’s apologists could not even get their insults to make sense. Gomer Pyle, USMC, indeed, was a very good man — one held in the highest esteem.

    To the ASD critics of William Cowden, AUSA, we say, Honi soit qui mal y pense.

    And to William Cowden we ascribe the highest titular honor — “Gomer Pyle, AUSA” — and pay our highest regard:  Shazam!

    May there be many more Gomer Pyles at the Department of Justice in the years ahead.

    You see, “Gomer Pyle, USMC”  went off the air as a prime-time TV show in 1969. But the character of Gomer Pyle went on to become synonymous with virtue, a trait sorely lacking among Andy Bowdoin’s apologists.

    In 2001, 32 years after the fictional Private First Class Gomer Pyle left prime time, the real U.S. Marine Corps promoted him to lance corporal. In 2007, Gen. John F. Goodman, commander of the real U.S. Marine Corps Forces in the Pacific, promoted the fictional Gomer Pyle to full corporal.

    Real Marines stood at attention during the ceremony. Gomer Pyle was lauded for honesty, loyalty and devotion to duty.

    You have done well and were in good company, Mr. Cowden.

  • Site That Used ASD’s Name And Made Odd Claims While Bowdoin Was Negotiating With Prosecutors Goes Offline

    A website known as ASD2Day.com that was registered Aug 19 in the name of a Florida woman now is throwing a server error and appears to be offline.

    ASD President Andy Bowdoin was in negotiations with federal prosecutors when the ASD2Day domain name was registered, and some ASD members were participating in a PR campaign that positioned themselves and Bowdoin as victims of a government prosecution run amok.

    Among the claims on the site was a puzzling assertion that U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer was on an Aug. 28 deadline “to determine if the US Attorney General’s case against ASD should move forward.”

    Collyer was on no such deadline, and the prosecution’s case was not teetering on the edge of disaster. At the time, Bowdoin was the subject of an order from Collyer to follow-up on pleadings he had made earlier in the case. On July 24, Collyer, noting that neither Bowdoin nor his attorney had followed up on pleadings made in May, ordered them to respond by Aug. 7.  That deadline, which applied to Bowdoin, later was extended to Aug. 28 — and then until Sept. 14 — when Bowdoin’s attorney notified the court that Bowdoin was negotiating with prosecutors.

    The ASD2Day site featured Pro-ASD content by an unnamed writer and a headline titled “Inside Information.” It described ASD’s “business concept” as a “proven reality” and used meta descriptions such as “Picture of a Flight Simulator Plane, to give an emotional feel.”

    ASD2Day.com claimed, among other things, that ASD could not be a Ponzi scheme because the script employed by the autosurfing firm could not be programmed to permit a Ponzi scheme to occur.

    Using overblown, confusing reasoning and language, the site claimed:

    “As we all know, ASD has been ruled for an irrelevant acquisition of `PONZI SCHEME OR PYRAMID` ruling. ASD Utilized a well known Traffic Exchange Script in the Online Marketing industry. The Script was named Pats Pro. I myself am a Programmer as well. I have worked with this script before to develop websites and add-ons. By the pure mechanics or functions in the Pats Pro system, there is no function of, that such can be ruled ponzi or pyramid. The PATS PRO system does not work as Ponzi, the written code in the software has no leads to such acquisition either.”

    Although the language appeared to be an attempt to suggest that ASD President Andy Bowdoin could not be guilty of operating a Ponzi because the script did not support a Ponzi model, federal prosecutors always have argued that the internal actions of ASD and Bowdoin — not the actions of a script — resulted in criminal instances of wire fraud and money-laundering.

    The writer did not say how the script would protect Bowdoin and ASD from another core allegation in the case: that ASD was engaging in the sale of unregistered securities, meaning the company was selling investment contracts and operating as an unregistered issuer and dealer of securities.

    Meanwhile, the site claimed that “The well known Internet Giant `Google` Ad sense service is not all that different from the ASD Advertising System (Pats Pro).”

    Many ASD supporters have argued that Google and ASD employed a similar business model, but have never explained why Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page — both of whom have personal fortunes estimated at $15.3 billion by Forbes magazine and are tied for 11th spot on the list of the richest Americans — never plunked down $100 for a script that would permit Google to do things like ASD.

    Why the ASD2Day site now is offline is unclear. The site included at least two calls to action: “Defend Our Business, Defend Our Rights!” and “ASD2DAY · For a Free Country.”

    Among the featured links were:

    • Join our stand
    • Learn about Defending ASD
    • Meet the team

    A subhead prompt instructed members to “Find out the Truth” and to “Read Articles, comment [on] them and learn the truth the US goverment doesn’t want you to hear..” The site also included a link to a Meebo chatroom.

    The chatroom link still is accessible:

    http://widget-cdn.meebo.com/mcr.swf?id=ySKbgEjiEw&eurl=

    Two links are visible in the chatroom. One is a link to a failed organization known as ASD Members International (ASDMI), which was formed in October 2008 by members of the Pro-ASD Surf’s Up forum.

    Another link is to a URL for a business owned by “Professor” Patrick Moriarty, now under indictment for tax fraud. Moriarty was a founder of ASDMI.

  • EDITORIAL: Andy Bowdoin’s ‘Caddyshack’ Problem

    Andy Bowdoin: Be the ball.
    Andy Bowdoin: Be the ball.

    The AdSurfDaily case began in the strangest of ways: Within hours of being notified in August 2008 that his bank accounts would be seized, ASD President Andy Bowdoin recorded a message advising callers to the purported advertising firm that God was on its side.

    Two months earlier, Bowdoin had exhorted an ASD crowd in Las Vegas to imagine becoming wealthy. He used God in his sales pitch. He also urged attendees to plunk down $50,000 to purchase ad-packs because the ceiling on purchases soon would be lowered.

    Thanks to the Chevy Chase movie “Caddyshack” in which the star’s character, Ty Webb, exhorted a charge to “be the ball,” the line had become a metaphor for hucksterism long before Bowdoin took the stage in Las Vegas. Bowdoin reminded the crowd — without telling members he had pleaded guilty a decade prior to felonies in Alabama for fleecing investors — that he had become a “money magnet.”

    Be a money magnet, Bowdoin told the Las Vegas crowd. Be like me.

    Eleven days later, prosecutors said, being a money magnet like Bowdoin resulted in a transaction in which more than $177,000 was removed from AdSurfDaily accounts at Bank of America and placed in a freshly opened account at Capital City Bank in the name of another company. Shortly after that, more than $157,000 of the opening deposit was moved by wire to Citi Mortgage Inc. to retire the mortgage on the home of Bowdoin’s stepson and his wife.

    Prosecutors have not detailed what happened to the remaining balance of nearly $20,000 in the Capital City Bank account. They did, however, outline a string of purchases with other ASD money that resulted in the acquisition of three automobiles, including a $50,000 Lincoln, a Cabana boat, jet skis and marine equipment.

    That’s what being a money magnet meant to Andy Bowdoin.

    It also meant, prosecutors said, that Bowdoin had cheated his own members by placing an ad for a failed, dissolved business in his own advertising rotator so he could collect “rebates” at their expense. It also meant that Bowdoin had paid an employee to surf for his son so the son could profit at the expense of the membership — and that other favored individuals were gifted into the program so they could profit at the expense of the membership.

    We doubt that Chevy Chase would have found Bowdoin’s acts funny. But he might have seized upon them as fodder for the brand of comedy that serves a higher purpose, a purpose of enlightenment.

    “I’m going to give you a little advice,” Ty Webb said in Caddyshack. “There’s a force in the universe that makes things happen. And all you have to do is get in touch with it, stop thinking, let things happen, and be the ball.”

    Bowdoin, whom prosecutors said was at the helm of a $100 million wire-fraud, money-laundering and Ponzi scheme operation, later compared the government’s actions to the 9/11 terrorist attacks that had killed nearly 3,000 people.

    Prosecutors described Bowdoin as the head of a flock who had “followers.” No one was quite sure of what that meant. All of that changed, however, when some ASD members painted the prosecution as “Nazis” and engaged in various petition drives and letter-writing campaigns aimed at providing cover for Bowdoin and destroying the careers of career civil servants — people whose job descriptions include bringing criminals to justice, protecting the U.S. financial infrastructure and safeguarding the life of the President of the United States, the life of the Vice President of the United States, the lives of their families and the lives of former Presidents and visiting heads of state and dignitaries.

    The public at large applauds law enforcement for stopping Ponzi schemes in their tracks before they can mushroom and consume any more wealth. They’ve seen how various men on the stage over the years had exhorted the audience to be a money magnet — and they know how a comedian such as Chevy Chase can reduce hucksterism to its essence:

    “You’re not being the ball, Danny.”

  • BREAKING NEWS: Bowdoin Attorney Says Client ‘Not Happy’; Claims Government’s Position ‘Indefensible’

    UPDATED 4:58 P.M. EDT (U.S.A.) ASD President Andy Bowdoin is “not happy” and recent filings by the prosecution and the U.S. Secret Service are “indefensible,” Bowdoin’s lawyer said in court filings today.

    Charles A. Murray, Bowdoin’s attorney, argued again that Bowdoin had been ill-served by a previous attorney when he agreed to surrender claims to tens of millions of dollars seized in a wire-fraud and Ponzi scheme case last year, adding that the government was attempting “to obfuscate and derogate any and all statements made by Mr. Bowdoin.”

    “It is not difficult to believe that a person placed in Mr. Bowdoin’s position, facing possible jail time at 74 years of age and losing the company he built up, would have put Mr. Bowdoin in a state of mind wherein he agreed to do what his attorney was telling him to do and what the government was urging him to do,” Murray said.

    Bowdoin released his claims to the money in January, withdrawing the claims “with prejudice.” U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer granted Bowdoin’s request to release the claims Jan. 22.

    By late February — this time without an attorney — Bowdoin said he had changed his mind about submitting to the forfeiture, and began to file a series of pro se motions to get back in the case.

    Prosecutors said Sept. 25 that Bowdoin was trying to lie his way back into the case and that Murray was engaging in “fantasy.”

    On Sept. 28, the Secret Service filed a transcript of an audio recording Bowdoin or a person who aided him had posted online the previous week, and prosecutors described the recording as evidence “this con man cannot manage to keep his stories straight.”

    Bowdoin, prosecutors argued, was “delusional.”

    “To this Court, Bowdoin insinuates that he was misled by his former attorney before agreeing to cooperate and to release claims,” prosecutors said Sept. 28. ”To the former members, however, Bowdoin proclaims that ‘after a few months’ of cooperating he became ‘unhappy with [his prior attorneys’] results and decided to stop cooperating because ‘it would not have been beneficial to everyone’ for him to ‘accept a plea deal[.]‘”

    “Remarkably, Bowdoin even suggests to those members participating in the conference call that the money taken from his bank accounts and, supposedly, never constituting an investment, belongs, not to Bowdoin, but to the membership,” prosecutors said.

    Murray said the government argued no law and took “great pains to provide the Court with a transcribed telephone call.”

    “[I]t is not surprising that Mr. Bowdoin was unhappy with his former attorney,” Murray said. “It is not surprising that Mr. Bowdoin is angry with the government and his
    attorney. He signs a release of claims, and now the government is pursuing criminal charges.”

    Bowdoin, Murray said, “was doing what he truly must do at this point in time. He must protest his innocence and take the case to trial. The Plaintiff seems particularly intent in trying to persuade this Court that Mr. Bowdoin knew what he was doing and, strangely, should be happy with the position in which he currently finds himself.

    “Mr. Bowdoin is not happy,” Murray continued. “He did not receive proper counseling. Mr. Bowdoin should have been told from the very beginning that the government was not going to bargain with him. There was no mutual release wherein the government stated ‘no prosecution’ or ‘no jail time.’ There was no mutual release wherein the government stated that it would argue for a reduced sentence. It was all smoke and mirrors, and Mr. Bowdoin’s attorney did nothing to cut threw it.”

    Today’s filing by Murray did not address a veiled reference to the AdViewGlobal autosurf prosecutors made in their Sept 25 filing.

    Read Bowdoin’s response.

    See story on prosecution’s Sept. 25 filing.

    See story on Secret Service filing Sept. 28.

  • Guenther Softens Comment That ‘Sheriff Joe’ Arpaio Was Soft On Crime; Says Recent Email Lecturing Veteran Federal Prosecutor Was Sent At Behest Of Crime Victims

    AdSurfDaily mainstay Bob Guenther backed away overnight from a comment that suggested an Arizona county sheriff known for instituting chain gangs and outfitting prisoners in pink underwear was soft on crime.

    Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County would be Guenther’s jailer if he is convicted and sentenced to prison in the county. Guenther, 61, is accused of two felonies in Maricopa County by the Mesa Police Department, which said  he repeatedly violated a court order not to harass a gaming company with which he has a dispute.

    Guenther complained early Wednesday that an individual he described as a criminal “is still walking the streets, still taking in millions of investors money, still hiding assets, right there under Sheriff Joe’s nose..”

    Overnight, however, Guenther softened his remarks about Arpaio.

    “I made no disparaging comments regarding Sheriff Joe,” Guenther said. “Mesa, AZ is just in his jurisdiction.”

    Guenther, who pleaded guilty to felony bank fraud in 1994, did not back away from claims that he would use unspecified “political connections” to embarrass the U.S. Department of Justice, which he suggests has ignored leads he provided and conducted an incompetent investigation in the AdSurfDaily wire-fraud, money-laundering and Ponzi scheme case.

    He complained that Senior Trial Attorney William Cowden had not returned more that 50 emails he had sent. Federal prosecutors, however, are under no obligation to return emails, and the ASD case is an investigation in progress.

    On Monday, for example, the U.S. Secret Service filed a new document in the case — the transcript of an audio recording ASD President Andy Bowdoin made earlier this month. Bowdoin has suggested in court filings that he was indicted under seal in May. Prosecutors revealed in April that Bowdoin had signed a proffer letter in the case.

    Guenther’s most recent email to Cowden had a condescending tone, including a passage that began, “How about this one Bill, just as a freebie.”

    The email lectured the prosecutor, an expert in forfeiture law and part of the prosecution team that gained a conviction against the e-Gold payment processor last year for facilitating money-laundering.

    ASD once used e-Gold as its payment processor.

    “I will not sit on this anymore, you are going in circles . . . ” Guenther said in his email to Cowden. “You have my number and my email..”

    In April, on this Blog, Guenther reproduced an email he had received from Cowden in February. In his one-sentence response to Guenther, the prosecutor noted that he earlier had explained that the case was the Justice Department’s to handle and that it would proceed as it saw fit.

    “As I have said before, we intend to use forfeited assets (upon liquidation) to compensate Ponzi victims,” Cowden said.

    Guenther reproduced the same information on the ASDMBA website, but continues to suggest Cowden has a duty to reply to all of his emails and perhaps even reveal the government’s prosecution strategy.

    Guenther is the de facto head of the ASD Members Business Association (ASDMBA), which has come under fire for collecting money from ASD members to establish legal representation but not providing straightforward accounting on how the money was spent.

    At the same time, Guenther also has asserted that, through his efforts, money that had been directed at Golden Panda by active-duty police officers and retirees from Texas and California was intercepted and returned to the police groups before it could become part of a victims’ compensation pool prosecutors said they sought to establish.

    Cowden referenced the pool in his February response to Guenther’s email.

    Meanwhile, Guenther also says that money others directed at Golden Panda — including money from a “high profile Dallas Cowboy executive” — was intercepted and returned to contributors before it could become part of a victims’ pool.

    Overnight, Guenther explained that his most recent email to Cowden was sent at the behest of “concerned” crime victims.

    “My letter to William Cowden was requested by several concerned groups of victims,” Guenther said. “Over 300 ASD and Panda victims, most of whom have given Andy [Bowdoin]/ASD or [Golden] Panda over $5000. Another particular group of over 400 people, represented by four Atlanta area men gave [Golden Panda Ad Builder President Clarence] Busby over $1.8Million, none of which was earned through ASD, so there is no link between the two.”

    Prosecutors, however, filed an “all funds” forfeiture complaint last August that targeted assets of both ASD and Golden Panda in the same proceeding. The government has established ties between the firms, and one of the pro se filers in the case — Joyce Haws — has been identified as a rally coordinator for ASD and a founder of Golden Panda.

    Busby identified Haws as one of 34 Golden Panda founders in court filings.

    Meanwhile, Guenther implied in his email that ASDMBA soon would become active again, in part because the government was botching the case. He predicted that the Rev. Al Sharpton and the Rev. Jesse Jackson would become advocates for victims who attended “a very high-profile African-American church in Atlanta.”

    “When this comes out, and it will, this very, very high profile church will call on the likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton to assist in getting their money back,” Guenther said. “They have asked me to help.”

    Rather than be passive, ASDMBA would be aggressive, Guenther said.

    “So now it is time to round up all the troops again and get ready to try and “GO GET THE MONEY”..

  • ASD Mainstay Bob Guenther Lectures Federal Prosecutor, Says He’ll Call On ‘Political Connections’ To Embarrass Justice Department; Claims Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio Not Tough Enough On Crime

    Already facing two felony charges in Arizona stemming from what police described in court filings as a repeated pattern of harassment against a gaming company, Bob Guenther now has taken aim at a federal prosecutor involved in the AdSurfDaily case.

    Guenther, 61, who describes himself as a former Marine and Vietnam veteran, forwarded a copy of an email to this Blog early this morning, suggesting the email has or will be sent to Justice Department Senior Trial Attorney William Cowden.

    “Soon, very soon, I am going to call on some political connections, and I am going to share everything I knew then, know now and everything I tried to provide you with,” Guenther said in the email.

    He complained that Cowden had not returned more than 50 emails he had sent. Guenther has a history of citing political connections. At one time, he claimed to have the private phone number of Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott.

    Earlier this year, Guenther sent the PatrickPretty.com Blog 11 emails on a single day, requesting a receipt for each. He complained when the Blog did not instantly publish a story based on information he had sent, and also threatened the Blog with “war.”

    At the same time, he threatened to use the database of the ASD Members Business Association (ASDMBA) to send an email that identified PatrickPretty.com as “Possibly a ASD winner!!!”

    PatrickPretty.com and its author are a journalism enterprise. Neither the Blog nor its author were members of ASD or ASDMBA, which has come under fire for accepting money from ASD members in a bid to establish legal representation that would seek the return of money they sent to ASD.

    Neither the PatrickPretty.com Blog nor its author has any stake in the outcome of the ASD litigation or matters that concern ASDMBA. ASDMBA members have complained that Guenther has not provided appropriate accounting for how ASDMBA spent its money. They also have complained that Guenther has engaged in menacing behavior and suggested members who sought answers would have to sue him to get them.

    Guenther also criticized police officers and Maricopa County, Arizona, Sheriff Joe Arpaio in his email to Cowden.

    “People go to jail everyday for things as simple as not paying a traffic ticket,” Guenther said. “I am fighting two bogus Class 6 felony charges in Maricopa County, filed by another ‘Andy’ I have exposed.  If I were to lose the case, there is mandatory jail time.

    “MY crime? I purportedly sent two emails to CME’s corporate counsel, thus violating a Workplace Harassment Injuction (sic) filed against me to keep me away from other shareholders,” Guenther continued.

    He complained that authorities were not taking effective action to stop crimes, saying an individual he described as a criminal “is still walking the streets, still taking in millions of investors money, still hiding assets, right there under Sheriff Joe’s nose..”

    Cowden, Guenther implied, could learn a thing or two about law enforcement from Guenther, who has a felony conviction for bank fraud. ASDMBA members complained that Guenther did not disclose the conviction when he was holding conference calls to gather money for the Trust.

    “When are you going to wise up and ask the help of people who can load you up with so much verifiable facts of fraud, you couldn’t possibly follow-up on it all[?]” Guenther lectured Cowden.

    “By the time a Trustee finally gets around to attempting to get restitution from ASD winners, they will have the money spent or hidden so deep, MILLIONS upon Millions will be gone,” Guenther continued. “That of course assumes you win this case.. These ASD people talk and plan strategy daily, they communicate through emails, blogs, forums and conference calls. Do you have people in on every one of these groups, I do..

    “You ever get around to really wanting to put these guys away, you call me,” Guenther lectured.

    In an April 13 letter to readers, PatrickPretty.com shared details about behavior Guenther had directed at this Blog.

    “In recent weeks we have received a number of communications from Guenther we deem threatening — and this while Guenther is facing felony charges in Arizona amid allegations he violated a court order repeatedly and continued to threaten an Arizona company even after being warned not to do so,” the Blog reported at the time.

    “You want a war, there Patrick, you got one..,” Guenther commented here [April 11]. “Print the truth, get off the ASDMBA or start a war.. Your Choice…”

  • OBSTRUCTION? ASD Spokeswoman Whose Name Appeared In Secret Service Filing Says She Instructed Members NOT To Fill Out Government Form; Now Appears To Be Advising Members To Clam Up If Contacted By Agents

    Andy Bowdoin’s recent court filings are “delusional,” federal prosecutors said yesterday.

    And now a woman who apparently is AdSurfDaily’s new spokesperson purportedly has sent an email in which she said she advised members after the seizure of tens of millions of dollars from Bowdoin’s bank accounts last year not to fill out the government form for victims.

    Sara Mattoon, whose name is listed in a court document filed by the Secret Service yesterday, also appears to be trying to influence members who filled out the form not to cooperate if contacted by the agency.

    “Soon after the ASD shutdown, the DOJ (Dept of Justice) set up a website for people to file a claim for the money they had in ASD,” Mattoon said in the email. “As soon as I heard about it, I told everyone not to do it because I could see what the Government was trying to do, but some people didn’t realize what it was and afterwards they regretted doing so.”

    Mattoon referenced an email sent out by ASD mainstay Robert Fava over the weekend. The email was distributed after the ASD case took a dramatic turn Friday, with filings by prosecutors that suggested ASD President Andy Bowdoin was trying to lie his way back into the civil forfeiture case with the aid of an attorney who was engaging in “fantasy.”

    Here is content from the email distributed by Fava, who was relating the experience of a fellow ASD member who apparently was contacted by the Secret Service recently.

    “I got this email today (see below) and called the guy,” the email said. “He is special task force with secret service. Calling because I submitted a claim for the funds I had put into ASD — I think it was a lady in Michigan who suggested at one time that I do the claim form. Later I wished I had not submitted it.

    “I asked what type of questions he wanted to ask and if he would email them to me so that I could review them with my attorney before answering them,” the email continued. “I told him the government was the only one who created victims by seizing the money illegally and shutting down ASD.”

    Quoting the agent, the email continued.

    “He said it sounds like I had an adversarial role with the government, and he could not send them. He said they were trying to talk to folks who had lost money in ASD, before arranging a personal visit with them. It sounds like they are wanting testimony to build a case for the government’s side.

    “I do not want to contribute to that effort, so thanked him and we ended the call,” the email concluded.

    In introducing the email, Fava said:

    “I wanted to share the following item which happened today to a gentleman in the ASD group.

    “Are any of you aware of this happening to others yet?

    “I assume the government is now trying to find people to speak out against ASD, especially since Andy’s recorded call.

    “This is the reason why I never encouraged filling out a government form . . . it’s just ammunition for them to use against ASD,” Fava continued.

    “Feel free to share this with your groups and mainly those that you know of that might have submitted a claim form on the government site thinking it was an innocent submission,” Fava’s email concluded.

    Fava was a constant presence on ASD training calls, members said. He once claimed he was making $1,000 a day through ASD.

    Mattoon’s email, combined with Fava’s and the remarks of the other ASD member, may raise serious questions about obstruction of justice.

    In her email, Mattoon did not mention recent filings by the prosecution. Nor did she mention the fact her name was included in a filing by the Secret Service yesterday — the transcript of a Bowdoin recording last week.

    Although Mattoon claimed in the email that “[t]he government does not seem to have the intention of giving the [seized] money back,” the record of the case plainly states otherwise in multiple places.

    Although it is clear that the government believes serious felonies have occurred and that Bowdoin is not entitled to benefit from his participation in crimes, prosecutors have pointed out that the government seeks to establish a restitution program for crime victims. Meanwhile, Judge Rosemary Collyer also has referenced the prosecution’s claims about the establishment of a program.

    Apart from court filings, the government even had advertised the existence of the prospective restitution program and has updated the information as the situation warranted.

    Regardless, Mattoon suggested the government planned to keep all the money, despite court filings and website updates that reinforce its desire to compensate crime victims.

    “[P]erhaps they were just looking for people they could try to identify as being victimized by ASD,” Mattoon said in the email, referencing the email from Fava.

    “If you get contacted, this is how this one ASD member handled it. It may be useful for you,” she said.