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Tag: Antigua

  • Judge Signs Forfeiture Order In AdSurfDaily Case; Gives Government Title To $65.8 Million In Bowdoin Bank Accounts; Case Resolved In ‘Entirety’

    Andy Bowdoin

    After more than 17 months, more than 165 court filings and more than $1 million in legal fees, ASD President Andy Bowdoin has lost the August 2008 civil forfeiture case and the government has been granted title to $65,838,999.70 seized from Bowdoin’s 10 Bank of America accounts.

    U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer, whom Bowdoin attempted to have disqualified from the case last month, has entered a default judgment and final order of forfeiture in the case.

    In a footnote, Collyer said the order decreeing forfeiture “resolves all remaining issues and this forfeiture action in its entirety.”

    As PatrickPretty.com first reported last year, three of Bowdoin’s accounts contained the exact same sum: $1,000,388.91. Why the accounts contained the exact same sum remains a mystery.

    Another mystery is why Bowdoin, 75, initially submitted to the forfeiture on Jan. 13, 2009 — a year ago next week — but then changed his mind more than a month later and attempted to reassert his claims as a pro se litigant. Bowdoin’s former attorneys, Akerman Senterfitt, said in court filings that Bowdoin began to file pro se “without consulting with counsel and without bothering to advise counsel that he would be submitting motions on his own.”

    Akerman Senterfitt filed a motion to withdraw as Bowdoin’s counsel, saying its representation of him had become unreasonably difficult.

    Bowdoin’s pro se re-entry in the case coincided with the shift by the AdViewGlobal (AVG) autosurf to a “private association” structure. This shift was announced to AVG members on Feb. 26, 2009, after AVG said it had consulted with a company known as Pro Advocate Group.

    Bowdoin signed the first of his pro se pleadings just one day before, on Feb. 25, 2009. Pro Advocate Group, which says it can help people practice law and medicine without a license through a private-association structure, is associated with Karl Dahlstrom.

    In 1997, Dahlstrom was sentenced to 78 months in federal prison for his participation in a securities scheme. In court documents in a tax case, Karl Dahlstrom is described as having  “been in the abusive trust business for many years.”

    Bowdoin has not publicly revealed the identities of his pro se advisers, describing them as members of a “group.” Nor has Bowdoin revealed how much he paid for the pro se advice.

    Bowdoin, however, told members in a letter published on the now-defunct Pro-ASD Surf’s Up forum in March 2009 that he had paid his professional lawyers $800,000 before firing them. In September 2009, Bowdoin said his legal fees had exceeded $1 million.

    “Now I’ve spent over a million dollars in legal fees to get your money back, and to stay out of prison,” Bowdoin said on Sept. 21, according to a transcript by the U.S. Secret Service. Bowdoin made the remark in a conference call with members. The Secret Service transcribed the call, and then filed the document  in court.

    Collyer refused to disqualify herself last month, saying Bowdoin no longer had standing in the case.

    Read the final order of forfeiture in the August 2008 case against assets connected to ASD.

    Collyer earlier ordered the forfeiture of more than $14 million from the bank accounts of Golden Panda Ad Builder, whose assets also were seized in the ASD case.

    Bowdoin did score a win of sorts in the forfeiture litigation. He asked for — and was granted — an evidentiary hearing in 2008 to refute the government’s Ponzi allegations and to ask for the emergency release of $2 million because the company could not pay its rent and hosting bills and needed money to implement a new business plan.

    Prosecutors did not object to the hearing, but pointed out that Bowdoin had $1 million in a bank on the Caribbean island nation of Antigua in an account under a different name.

    Bowdoin asserted his 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination, advising the court through counsel that he would not testify at the evidentiary hearing he had requested. Surf’s Up described the performance of ASD’s witnesses at the hearing as uniformly “excellent,” while at once describing the government’s case as “not so much.”

    At the same time, the forum helped spread the rumor that the government had admitted that ASD was not a Ponzi scheme.

    In November 2008, Collyer ruled that ASD had not demonstrated at the hearing that it was a lawful business and not a Ponzi scheme. A month later, prosecutors filed a second forfeiture complaint against ASD-connected assets, restating the Ponzi allegations despite the Surf’s Up claim that prosecutors had admitted ASD was not a Ponzi scheme.

    The AVG autosurf was laying the groundwork for launch within days of Collyer’s November 2008 ruling against ASD. Promoters highlighted its purported location in Uruguay as a reason to join.

    AVG suspended cashouts in June 2009, exercising its version of a “rebates aren’t guaranteed” clause.

    Dozens of pro se litigants attempted to intervene in the ASD case, largely causing the court docket to swell from about 40 entries in January 2009 to its current total of 166.

  • Senators Ask For Sanctions Against Antigua For Stonewalling Receiver In Alleged Allen Stanford Ponzi Case

    breakingnewsEight U.S. Senators have introduced a resolution calling for banking sanctions against the Caribbean island nation of Antigua for stonewalling in the Ponzi scheme investigation of Allen Stanford.

    The senators said Stanford might have lent the Antigua government “at least” $85 million before the alleged scheme collapsed earlier this year and that the money “presumably came from Stanford investor funds.”

    Stanford is accused by U.S. regulators and criminal prosecutors of presiding over a multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme through the sale of CDs. He is jailed in Texas awaiting trial.

    The resolution calls on the United States to use its voices in the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank “to oppose making any loans to the Government of Antigua and Barbuda until that Government cooperates with the United States and compensates the victims of the Stanford Financial Group fraud.”

    “Instead of stonewalling efforts to recover assets linked to the scam perpetrated by Allen Stanford and his firm, the government of Antigua and Barbuda should join U.S. and international organizations in trying to find some measure of justice for victims,” said Sen. Thad Cochran, R.-Miss. “Government officials in Antigua and Barbuda must understand that their lack of cooperation is unacceptable.”

    A Democrat — Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire — joined seven Republicans in introducing the resolution.

    One Republican said Antigua and Barbuda were acting in “absurd” fashion.

    “The Ponzi scheme perpetrated by Allen Stanford cheated thousands of people, many of them in the United States, out of their investments,” said Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama.

    Shelby is ranking Republican on the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs.

    “It is essential that to the extent possible these victims get their money back,” Shelby said. “It is absurd that the Government of Antigua and Barbuda is standing in the way of helping victims, while also holding out its hand for funding. This resolution makes clear that the United States will not accept such behavior.”

    A Mississippi Republican agreed.

    “Thousands of people have been victimized by the Stanford Ponzi scheme, including many who lost their life savings,” said Sen. Roger Wicker. “The cooperation of the Antigua government is essential to helping the victims of this fraud, but this assistance has been consistently denied. It is completely unacceptable for Antigua to receive any loan from the IMF and the World Bank, both of which receive significant funding from U.S. taxpayers. The American government needs to let it be known that this lack of cooperation is not acceptable. This resolution will send that message.”

    The alleged Stanford Ponzi sparked a banking crisis that rippled across the Caribbean and into Central and South America.  At least one autosurf made a veiled reference to the crisis in February.

    BizAdSplash was one of three surfs that came to life in the months following the seizure of funds tied to AdSurfDaily Inc., a surf registered in the United States and accused of running a $100 million Ponzi scheme.

    One of the key sales points of BizAdSplash was its purported offshore location. Two other surfs — AdViewGlobal and AdGateWorld — also bragged about being offshore. Promoters for the surfs said the offshore locations provided protection from the SEC, the IRS and state attorneys general. Promotions for the new surfs repeatedly referenced ASD.

    “We want to let you know that even though our banks in Panama are closed for the next day and half, the payment processors are NOT CLOSED,” BizAdSplash said on Feb. 24. “You can still buy Ad Packages through your chosen payment processor. You will get your 100% match today and will continue into next week.

    “So,” BizAdSplash continued, “if you purchased new Ad Packages yesterday from outside your Balance, you received a 100% matching bonus.

    “This 100% matching bonus will continue on today, through the weekend and on through Friday, March 6th!!!” the surf exclaimed.

    On Feb. 27 — just three days later — BizAdSplash told customers it was ending its affiliation with StrictPay, a payment processor with Panamanian ties.

  • Bowdoin Had Tax, Vendor Troubles In Previous Firm Dissolved By State Of Florida; Lien Stayed On Books For 12 Years As 6 Other Bowdoin-Connected Businesses Failed

    UPDATED 12:47 P.M. EDT (U.S.A.) His promoters said he was a hugely successful businessman, a visionary who entered technology markets and made money before others even had recognized the opportunities. Andy Bowdoin, they said, had cleaned up in the communications business and, for good measure, old-fashioned markets such as dry cleaning. He’d trained thousands of successful salespeople over the years, they said, and now was setting his sights on the online advertising business.

    Google, they said, had entered into an agreement with his company, AdSurfDaily, and even the President of the United States had singled out Bowdoin as a man of genuine distinction.

    Federal prosecutors and a task force consisting of agents from the U.S. Secret Service and the Internal Revenue Service, however, said in court filings that the adjectives associated with Andy Bowdoin in promotional materials for ASD often contradicted the nouns.

    Bowdoin, they said, had left behind a string of failed businesses. And despite reports about his remarkable record of commercial achievement, Bowdoin was a felon who’d fleeced people in a previous securities scheme — and hadn’t told his members about it. And Bowdoin had not reported any significant income for two decades.

    “Bowdoin earned no significant income from legal employment in the twenty years prior to his commencement of ASD’s operation,” prosecutors said. “But, no information about Bowdoin’s record of business failures and fraud accusations is contained on ASD’s website.

    “Nor was Bowdoin’s true past mentioned to prospective members during the ASD rally at which he spoke  . . .  or during the conference calls that he, or others promoting ASD on his behalf, participated in during ASD’s operations,” prosecutors said.

    Bowdoin In The 1980s

    It is possible that investigators knew a lot about Andy Bowdoin before they began early last July to subject ASD to scrutiny.

    Andy Bowdoin had a lien placed against him in Perry, Fla., in 1982, for failure to pay $2,559.65 in taxes due the IRS, records show. The lien reflected a time period in which Bowdoin was associated with a failed energy-saving business.

    In 1984, a local credit union sued Bowdoin for $2,759.78 — an amount about $200 above the amount owed on Bowdoin’s unpaid tax bill from 1982 — although it is not clear if Bowdoin borrowed from the credit union to pay his taxes.

    What is clear is that the tax lien was not removed until 1994, 12 years after it was filed. In the intervening years, six other Bowdoin ventures were dissolved, including five involuntary dissolutions by the state of Florida because Bowdoin had not filed required paperwork.

    In the 1980s, Bowdoin was sued by a Florida television station for an unpaid bill of $3,494.66. He also was sued by a local building-supply company for an unpaid bill of $510.05, and the Florida Department of State involuntarily dissolved Bowdoin’s energy-saving business. (The August forfeiture complaint listed 12 failed Bowdoin business ventures, including six between 1983 and 1987, but not the energy-saving business.)

    The name of the corporation not listed in the federal complaint was Energy Saving International Inc. (ESI), which was dissolved immediately prior to Bowdoin’s launch of six other businesses between 1983 and 1987, including the five that Florida dissolved involuntarily for Bowdoin’s administrative oversights.

    ESI began operating in Florida in 1978; the involuntarily dissolution occurred in 1981, after about four years of operation. Bowdoin filed annual reports in 1978, 1979 and 1980, but did not file one in 1981, the year before the IRS filed the tax lien.

    Bowdoin’s tax trouble dated back to 1978, when he failed to pay $2,349.48 due the IRS. In 1981, he failed to pay $210.77, and in 1982 the IRS placed the lien, records show. The records are public documents and are on file in Taylor County, Fla.

    The records also show a mortgage foreclosure, which appears to have been connected to a Trust set up to manage the affairs of Bowdoin’s mother, who was nearing the end of her life. It appears as though the home was spared in the end.

    Although he was hailed a visionary by his supporters, Andy Bowdoin seems to have forgotten that he’d told investigators one story and a federal judge another. ASD asked the judge last year for emergency release of funds seized by the government because the firm could not pay its rent or hosting bills.

    Bowdoin, however, appears to have asked for the relief while not initially disclosing that ASD had more than $1 million sitting in a bank in Antigua.

    “Bowdoin tells this Court that ASD is out of money,” prosecutors said last year. “But he told the Secret Service that an Antigua account (in another name), holds over one million ASD dollars.”

    Yes, prosecutors said, the account was “in another name.”

    What name could it be, when records show that Bowdoin used at least 15 corporate names between 1978 and 2006? It’s one of the enduring mysteries of the ASD case.

  • BREAKING NEWS: AVG Loses Banking Privileges

    UPDATED 5:09 P.M. EDT (U.S.A.) AdViewGlobal (AVG), a surf site with close ties to AdSurfDaily, reportedly has lost its banking privileges.

    The event occurred as AVG was running a 200-percent, matching-bonus program. The news is not posted on AVG’s main webpage. It is posted on a forum some of the Mods and members of the Pro-ASD Surf’s Up forum set up to promote AVG.

    AVG’s early explanation was that its bank account had been “suspended.” The development may signal that the bank, whose name was not disclosed, suspects it is being used to launder money or for another criminal purpose.

    It also may signal that AVG, which purported to be operating offshore, actually is operating from inside the United States. Promoters had been flogging the AVG 200 percent bonus program for days when news about the account suspension was announced.

    Matching-bonus programs can result in huge cash infusions for autosurfs — but also create enormous downstream liabilities.

    In a news release on Aug. 18, 2008, the U.S. Secret Service cited bank cooperation with law enforcement as one of the elements that made the seizure of tens of millions of dollars from ASD possible.

    “Cooperation among investigators, including the private sector partners who brought this case to our attention, allows us to combine not only our resources, but also our expertise in order to more effectively address evolving criminal methods, such as these online schemes,” said Michael Merritt, assistant director of investigations.

    Federal prosecutors said the ASD seizure prevented a Ponzi scheme from mushrooming.

    Banks outside of the United States also have ramped up efforts to detect money-laundering in the wake of the Allen Stanford Ponzi scheme in Antigua. The scheme had a ripple effect on banking from Antigua in the Caribbean to Central America and South America.

    Here is the AVG announcement (italics added). Notably, the message was not signed by an individual executive of AVG. Rather, it was signed “The AVG Management Team.”

    Due to people bank wiring too many transactions over $9500.00 each, the bank we were using for Bank Wires and ACHs suspended our account. We will get this resolved as soon as possible but in the meantime we will have to postpone bank wires and ACHs until we secure a bank that will accept them without a problem. Until we find the right bank, sales and cash outs must be done through Strict Pay and Solid Trust Pay. We will soon be able to pay cash outs on our debit card.

    If you have requested a cash out through a bank wire or an ACH, the transaction will be voided and your funds will be returned to eWallet. You can then request your cash out through Solid Trust or Strict Pay.

    Sorry for the inconvenience, but we were eliminating all wire transfers and ACHs with the new site because of the U.S. banking system and their resistance to a lot of large bank wires. We want to abide by all banking laws and keep AVG a safe place for people to advertise.

    The AVG Management Team

    George Harris, the stepson of ASD President Andy Bowdoin, is listed as an AVG trustee. Gary Talbert, a former ASD executive who filed sworn documents in the ASD civil-forfeiture case, at one time served as AVG’s chief executive officer. Only days ago, Talbert relinquished his AVG title and was said to be working as a U.S.-based accountant for the firm, an AVG promoter told downline members last week.

    The precise date AVG lost its banking privileges was not immediately clear. Ismeal Santiago is AVG’s new chief executive officer and will move to Uruguay because “all officers should live offshore,” according to the promoter.

    Nate Boyd, a former compliance officer at ASD, was listed as “Protector” of the AVG association. Chuck Osmin, a former ASD employee who testified on ASD’s behalf at a Sept. 30-Oct. evidentiary hearing, later identified himself as an AVG employee.

    In November, after a federal judge ruled that ASD had not demonstrated at the hearing that it was a legal business and not a Ponzi scheme, ASD gave its official endorsement to the Surf’s Up site. In December, early promotions for AVG began to appear online, and some of the Surf’s Up Mods and members ultimately created a forum to support AVG.

  • Stanford Ponzi Scheme Is Affecting Autosurf Trade

    When the Securities and Exchange Commission charged R. Allen Stanford Feb. 17 with operating a multibillion-dollar fraud scheme through his bank in Antigua, the news created banking pandemonium on the tiny Caribbean island and also in Panama.

    In the days that followed, a surf known as BizAdSplash referenced the banking situation in Panama without referencing Stanford by name.

    BizAdSplash: Trouble in Panama.
    BizAdSplash: Trouble in Panama.

    BizAdSplash was one of three surfs that came to life in the months following the seizure of funds tied to AdSurfDaily Inc., a surf registered in the United States and accused of running a $100 million Ponzi scheme.

    One of the key sales points of BizAdSplash was its purported offshore location. Two other surfs — AdViewGlobal and AdGateWorld — also bragged about being offshore. Promoters for the surfs said the offshore locations provided protection from the SEC, the IRS and state attorneys general. Promotions for the new surfs repeatedly referenced ASD.

    “We want to let you know that even though our banks in Panama are closed for the next day and half, the payment processors are NOT CLOSED,” BizAdSplash said on Feb. 24. “You can still buy Ad Packages through your chosen payment processor. You will get your 100% match today and will continue into next week.

    “So,” BizAdSplash continued, “if you purchased new Ad Packages yesterday from outside your Cash Balance, you received a 100% matching bonus.

    “This 100% matching bonus will continue on today, through the weekend and on through Friday, March 6th!!!” the surf exclaimed.

    On Feb. 27 — just three days later — BizAdSplash told customers it was ending its affiliation with StrictPay, a payment processor with Panamanian ties, but again did not mention Stanford or refer to the regional banking crisis.

    “We are suspending the use of the Strict Pay Payment processor,” BizAdSplash said. “This is due to Strict Pay having some technical difficulties at this time. If you have requested a cash out using Strict Pay this past week, please change this and any future cash out request to one of the following: Alert Pay, Solid Trust Pay or Bank Wire. Please note that using the bank wire, the minimum to cash out is $1,000. Until Strict Pay has corrected the problems we will not allow this processor to be available.”

    Alert Pay and Solid Trust Pay are payment processors headquartered in Canada, and friendly to the autosurf trade.

    AdSurfDaily is another surf with Caribbean ties. Federal prosecutors said ASD had more than $1 million on deposit in Antigua. After prosecutors made the claim, ASD President Andy Bowdoin told members that $500,000 of the sum was a deposit that enabled ASD to process credit-card orders.

    Bowdoin never referenced Antigua until prosecutors referenced it first.

    ASD said it relied on the expert guidance of attorney Robert F. Garner. The Feds now say Garner was a shill for ASD, and Garner has advertised his legal services to help companies establish a presence offshore.

    The extent of the problem the alleged Stanford Ponzi has caused surfs is unclear. But several surfs that purport to be operating offshore have collapsed in recent days

  • Stanford/Bowdoin: ‘A Tapestry Of Believable Lies’

    andybowdoinbw.gifHats off to Houston Chronicle writer Loren Steffy, who explained economically why cons work.

    A con, Steffy explained, works because the con weaves “a tapestry of believable lies.” It’s a pointed, short, highly memorable line that deserves special mention because it puts readers “right there.”

    Steffy detailed some of disgraced financier Allen Stanford’s lies in this column. Lots of things in the column reminded us of the Andy Bowdoin case. Bowdoin is the head of AdSurfDaily Inc., a Quincy, Fla.-based company accused of operating a $100 million Ponzi scheme.

    Here are some Stanford/Bowdoin parallels:

    Friends in high places. Stanford went around saying he’d been knighted by Prince Phillip. Bowdoin went on a tour to showcase a special award he’d received for business acumen from President Bush. It turned out that Buckingham Palace called Stanford on his lie; in fact, he’d been given the title of “Sir” by the prime minister of Antigua, a Caribbean Island nation of 85,000 known for lax banking standards and money-laundering.

    In Bowdoin’s case, the U.S. Secret Service called Bowdoin on his friends-in-high-places lie. It turned out that the award he received was an award for writing checks to the National Republican Congressional Committee. Basically, Bowdoin wrote a check for banquet tickets and called it a special honor from the President of the United States. Bowdoin, by the way, had more than $1 million on deposit in Antigua. The Sunday Times reports today that $8 billion is missing from Stanford’s bank and that regulators suspect a Ponzi scheme.

    Charities and sports. Stanford “sold” clients on his benevolence. So did Bowdoin, who once gifted 100,000 ASD “ad packs” to a charity. Stanford was big on sports sponsorships. Bowdoin told his faithful that ASD soon would become a sponsor for professional auto racing. Members claimed ASD would have a car in the Indy 500.

    Holes in the resume: Stanford claimed to be related to the founders of Stanford University. The school exposed the lie and sued him for trademark infringement. Bowdoin claimed to have operated a string of highly successful businesses. Turned out that one of his highly successful enterprises was at the center of a securities-fraud investigation in Alabama and that Bowdoin and co-scammers had fleeced investors out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. He pleaded guilty to a felony, was sentenced to a year in prison, but the sentence was suspended when he agreed to make restitution.

    In August 2008, he still owed the Alabama victims $45,000. Just a month before, he paid $50,000 for a new Lincoln. In June, ASD cash was used to retire the $157,000 mortgage of his wife’s son and daughter-in-law, and about $28,000 was used to buy them a new car. At the time, Bowdoin owed his ex-wife more than $162,000.

    Nothing out of the ordinary. As Stanford’s empire was collapsing, he told investors that the SEC investigation they were reading about in the newspaper was a “routine” look into the business. He also said he was cooperating fully, which the SEC said was a lie when it later alleged a multibillion-dollar, international fraud scheme.

    Bowdoin told members that his business had been approved by regulators and was perfectly compliant. It turned out that ASD didn’t even have a compliance attorney and knew in 2007 — months before it started gathering tens of millions of dollars from members at company “rallies” — that the business was illegal. In the hours after the August seizure of ASD’s assets by the government, people with close ties to Bowdoin sought to assure members that the matter was a temporary blip that would be settled within days.

    For good measure, Bowdoin later told ASD members that Ponzi allegations against ASD hand been dropped in Florida. People flooded forums to share the good news — except it wasn’t true. As recently as last week, some ASD members continued to make the claim that Ponzi allegations had been dropped, despite the fact that the office of Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum specifically refuted the claim months ago.

  • ASD: A Thimble, A Pinhead And A Quark Before Nothingness

    Andy Bowdoin.
    Andy Bowdoin.

    UPDATED 10:21 A.M. EST (U.S.A.) Tomorrow will mark an important anniversary in the AdSurfDaily Ponzi case: the passage of two full months since prosecutors filed a second forfeiture complaint against assets tied to the firm.

    Neither ASD President Andy Bowdoin nor members of his family from whom property was seized has filed a claim. No attorney has entered an appearance notice. The lack of action is in stark contrast to what happened in August after the first seizure of ASD assets.

    Amid much fanfare — and amid a strangely jubilant atmosphere fueled by people who refused to disengage from their trances — Bowdoin moved quickly in August to stake a claim to tens of millions of dollars and other assets seized. Some Bowdoin zealots predicted a slam-dunk win for ASD, especially after it advised the court that it would be willing to operate under monitoring and supervision if some of the Great Man’s money was returned.

    What the ASD supporters didn’t see — what some of them refused to see — was that the money was seized as the assets of a criminal enterprise that had money on deposit in at least three countries and had been taking steps to get more and more money outside the United States. One of the countries — Antigua — is now front-and-center in a massive case of international financial fraud involving R. Allen Stanford and his companies.

    It will be well worth your time to click on the link above. Read the story, and read the entire SEC complaint from a link at the bottom of the story. Some of the allegations — the tortured explanations by Stanford and his companies — will remind you of elements of the ASD case.

    Also note that the money ASD had on deposit in Antigua was not in ASD’s name. Bowdoin, however, had control of the money and could have converted it to his own use at any moment in time. The amount was at least $1 million, according to court filings.

    Andy Bowdoin was at the helm of the ASD enterprise and, by implication in the forfeiture complaint, was a criminal. He took the 5th prior to the evidentiary hearing because he knew of the possible criminal repercussions of testifying. The ASD monitoring plan was a bid to short-circuit a possible criminal prosecution by getting the government to agree that only highly technical violations of the law had occurred. In other words, a possible $100 million Ponzi fraud using the financial systems of at least three countries was no big deal.

    Prosecutors never were going to accept a Bowdoin-provided remedy, especially one that attempted to sanitize criminality by treating wire fraud, money-laundering and a Ponzi scheme as minor offenses. An acceptance of such a deal would have sent a clear signal that the worst that could happen to a probable autosurf Ponzi scheme operator was court-supervised monitoring of the scheme — as it re-started with returned funds and attempted not to engage in wire fraud, money-laundering and the sale of unregistered securities.

    Such an outcome would have marked a chilly day for U.S. jurisprudence, the day America’s courts provided wink-nod cover for probable Ponzi-pushing felons — and even handed them back money and turned a blind eye to abuses that occurred before the good guys arrived.

    Investigators went on to discover that Bowdoin told insiders that $1 million had been stolen from ASD by “Russian hackers.” He didn’t even file a police report, but he did tell Judge Rosemary Collyer that ASD couldn’t operate and needed her to free up money to pay employees and bills. What Bowdoin didn’t tell the judge up front, as he asked her to release seized funds, was that ASD had more than $1 million on desposit in Antigua, under a name other than its own. And he also didn’t tell the judge about the earlier alleged theft of $1 million by “Russian hackers.”

    As a PR ploy, however, the offer to operate under supervision was a masterstroke. It kept members’ hope alive and enabled ASD supporters to paint the prosecutors and even the judge as unreasonable if they couldn’t see the beauty of the monitoring plan.

    At ASD’s request, an evidentiary hearing was held Sept. 30 and Oct. 1. ASD insisted it was not a Ponzi scheme, called an expert witness to knock down the government’s assertions, and summoned three other witnesses to help make its case. At the conclusion of the hearing, some members of the Pro-ASD Surf’s Up forum, drunk on fantasy, partied long into the night. They were certain that ASD had won and dismissed all reports that didn’t validate their delusions.

    In November, Judge Rosemary Collyer ruled that ASD had not demonstrated it was a legal business and not a Ponzi scheme at the evidentiary hearing. She found nothing of merit in the expert’s argument, pointing out holes through which one could drive a convoy of earth-moving machines. Some ASD members instantly claimed the fix was in. Such claims, of course, should be seen for what they are: self-validating drivel.

    With a fresh win, prosecutors filed a second forfeiture complaint on Dec. 19. It is the most important document so far, the one that dealt ASD a crushing blow and signaled a nuclear development to come.

    Prior to the December complaint, ASD could fit its remaining credibility in a thimble. Now it could fit it on the head of a pin. A quark, believed to be the smallest part of an atom, could accommodate ASD’s credibility at the conclusion of the case — with room to spare.

    This case will be marked by a complete absence of ASD credibility, one of the reasons some ASD supporters and Surf’s Up members are furiously trying to change the subject and get people to take their eyes off the ball.

    This case has a high probability of reducing the cheerleaders to emotional rubble and undermining the good works of their lives. Goodness exists in all people. A person can be stubborn and completely wrong-headed — and still be a good person. The line gets drawn, however, where wrong-headedness morphs into deliberate attempts to deceive and misinform.

    Some Surf’s up members now are promoting AdViewGlobal (AVG), a company that shares a common executive with ASD and a common customer-service employee operating from Florida — even though AVG claims to be registered in Uruguay and running things out of Panama. Yesterday, in the wake of the SEC’s allegations against Stanford, banking customers in Panama and other countries in Central America, South America and the Caribbean were lining up to get their money out of local banks.

    The ASD case is no more about the abuse of government power than it is the Easter Bunny. ASD is an international racketeering enterprise. If you’re carrying its water, you are a racketeer — and your quark awaits before nothingness finally settles in.