The Sarasota Herald-Tribune is reporting that Ponzi swinder Beau Diamond has been sentenced to 186 months in federal prison.
Sentencing court was conducted this morning.
The Diamond case is among a number of complex Ponzi or fraud-scheme investigations undertaken by federal prosecutors and investigators in the Middle District of Florida.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Content from an email referenced in the story below has not been edited by the PP Blog for spelling, punctuation, grammar or clarity.
Some AdSurfDaily members have received a disturbing email that accuses them of selling their souls and destroying lives by participating in the government-approved remissions program designed to mitigate their losses, the PP Blog has learned.
The author of the email is unclear.
It is possible, however, that the email rant originated with a member of the AdViewGlobal (AVG) autosurf, which had members and promoters in common with ASD and crashed and burned in June 2009. An email address under which the rant against ASD members appeared included the apparent abbreviations “fms” and “avg” as part of the address in this format: fms.avg@
Even so, it was unclear if the person who used the address was the author of the rant, which was unsigned and appears to have been forwarded to multiple ASD members. The rant makes the claim that ASD never sold an “investment” product and that the company was an “online advertising system.”
ASD President Andy Bowdoin was indicted earlier this month. Federal prosecutors described ASD as a wink-nod investment business through which Bowdoin sold unregistered securities as investment contracts by calling member payouts “rebates” to avoid regulatory scrutiny.
AVG, which launched in the aftermath of the seizure of tens of millions of dollars from Bowdoin in 2008, advertised 200 percent “bonuses” for months. The surf announced it was suspending payouts in June 2009. Just days later, AVG’s name was cited in a racketeering lawsuit filed against Bowdoin by ASD members.
The rant surfaced yesterday, in advance of a purported phone conference to be held by Sheldon Drobny of AnShell Financial Services at 9 p.m. (ET) today. Drobny, whose company is not the official ASD claims administrator, says he can assist in helping ASD members file claims forms with Rust Consulting Inc., the official administrator, and help them recover money.
Apparently unhappy that ASD members even would think about filing claims, the author of the email rant wrote that participants who filed a claim would be signing their “morals and soul away” and supporting “innocent peoples lives being destroyed.”
The email claimed that a “back lash” would occur against any ASD member who participated in the claims program. The author did not say who would carry out the purported backlash and what it would entail.
“Again, if you continue to pass on and support meaningless calls like this and help people build their belief the actions done to ASD were right and the claim form is asking you the appropriate questions and truly believe it was an invstment you made and your friends and family referred you to a securities investment then by all means fill out the scandalist claim form,” the author wrote. “Just be prepared for the back lash and consequences to come.”
Persons who agreed with the government’s contention that ASD scammed investors “should hide under a rock and stay their,” according to the rant.
Some ASD victims are believed to have lost tens of thousands of dollars in the alleged, $110 million Ponzi scheme. Regardless, the rant implied that there are no victims and that ASD members who filed claims did so at the cost of the “sacrafice of other decent human beings such as your family and friends.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: If you’ve been following the odd developments and conspiracy theories associated with the AdSurfDaily and Gold Quest International cases, we recommend you read this August 2010 report (see link below) by the Anti-Defamation League. The report notes various threats made against law enforcement, along with frauds and scams linked to the so called “Sovereign Citizen Movement.”
Both ASD and GQI are known to have so-called “sovereigns” among their membership ranks. Bizarre court pleadings have surfaced in both cases.
The ADL report specifically references Michael Howard Reed, shown in records to have been a harassing presence in the GQI Ponzi case brought by the SEC in May 2008. On Friday, federal prosecutors filed a forfeiture complaint that alleged ASD had a tie to E-Bullion, a shuttered digital-currency business. Other records show E-Bullion also had a tie to GQI.
Friday’s filing marked the first time that E-Bullion’s name had surfaced in the ASD case. The reference is important because E-Bullion now has been linked to multiple alleged fraud schemes. E-Bullion founder James Fayed was charged in California in 2008 with operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business. He also was charged with murdering his estranged wife, who sought to cooperate with prosecutors in the E-Bullion investigation.
Among the calling cards of the sovereign movement are bizarre court pleadings and vexatious litigation described as “paper terrorism.” The so-called sovereigns have sought to derail investigations and hamstring investigators and public officials by making them parties to lawsuits or subjecting them to threats of litigation or the filing of bogus liens against personal property, ADL reports.
Bogus liens filed against public servants in the performance of their duties is a “major problem,” ADL says.
One such lien even was filed against former President Bill Clinton, ADL reports.
“Many sovereign citizens have engaged in a variety of scams and frauds, some of them raking in millions of dollars, while countless more sovereign citizens have engaged in acts of harassment, retaliation, and intimidation against public officials, law enforcement officers, and private citizens,” ADL says.
“As it evolved, the sovereign citizen movement developed an ideology centered on a massive conspiracy theory,” ADL says. “Though different sovereign theorists all have their own varying versions of this conspiracy, including exactly when it started and how it manifested itself, the theories all share the belief that many years ago an insidious conspiracy infiltrated the U.S. government and subverted it, slowly replacing parts of the original, legitimate government (often referred to by sovereigns as the ‘de jure’ government) with an illegitimate, tyrannical government (the ‘de facto’ government).
“As a result, sovereign citizens believe that today there are really two governments: the ‘illegitimate’ government that everyone else thinks is genuine and the original government that existed before the conspiracy allegedly infiltrated it.”
An AdSurfDaily promoter whose cash was seized in February 2009 and now has been targeted for forfeiture funded one of her three ASD accounts in part with a transfer from E-Bullion, a shuttered payment processor whose founder was charged in 2008 with operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business and hiring a hit man to kill his estranged wife, according to records.
The E-Bullion allegation raises troubling new questions about the sinister worlds of autosurfs and HYIPs, how ASD and its members were exchanging money and whether ASD and top promoters were employing secret conduits. In 2008, prosecutors asserted ASD had a relationship with E-Gold, a payment processor accused in 2007 of money-laundering. Yesterday’s assertion that ASD also had a relationship with E-Bullion marked the first time that prosecutors have raised E-Bullion’s name in the ASD case.
Erma Seabaugh, known among ASD members as the “Web Room Lady,” used E-Bullion in November 2007 to transfer $10,510 to ASD, according to a forfeiture complaint filed yesterday.
SCREEN SHOT: Federal prosecutors asserted yesterday that ASD member Erma Seabaugh funded one of her ASD accounts by transferring $10,510 from E-Bullion.
E-Bullion founder James Fayed was jailed in California in August 2008, the same month as the seizure of tens of millions of dollars from ASD and nine months after the firm was used to transfer money to ASD, according to records. He initially was charged in an indictment unsealed in August 2008 by federal prosecutors with operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business that had processed more than $20 million in Ponzi scheme payments. The scope of E-Bullion’s alleged Ponzi business is unclear, but the company now has been linked to at least three alleged Ponzi schemes.
In September 2008, Fayed was charged by the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office with the July 2008 murder of his wife, Pamela Fayed.
In June 2008, a month before she was killed in a California parking garage by a man who allegedly had accepted $25,000 from James Fayed to carry out the plot, Pamela Fayed had informed federal prosecutors in California that she wished to cooperate in the investigation of E-Bullion, according to records. E-Bullion is referenced in court files as a payment processor used by Gold Quest International (GQI), an alleged Ponzi scheme operating in Las Vegas that was charged by the SEC in May 2008 and also was charged by Canadian regulators.
A total of four people, including James Fayed, now have been charged in the murder plot. As with many things in the miserable worlds of HYIPs and autosurfs, the prosecution of GQI by the SEC turned into Theatre of the Absurd.
GQI, accused in May 2008 by the SEC in a $29 million Ponzi case, sought to derail the case by filing a lawsuit for $1.7 trillion against the agency. Company officials absurdly asserted that GQI was immune to U.S. law because its Las Vegas operations enjoyed purported sovereignty that was portable from an “Indian” tribe in North Dakota and that GQI also was off-limits to prosecution in the United States because it was registered in Panama.
Chillingly, E-Bullion also is referenced in documents filed by the Ontario Securities Commission in a case against Ponzi swindler Brian David Anderson, a former Christian clergyman from Vancouver, British Columbia. Anderson was sentenced to prison in the United States earlier this year for his role in a Ponzi scheme known as Frontier Assets.
Anderson also was linked to a mysterious scheme known as the “Alpha Project.” U.S. and Canadian investigators also identified Anderson as a pitchman for an international HYIP known as Flat Electronic Data Interchange (FEDI). FEDI’s operator, Abdul Tawala Ibn Ali Alishtari, also known as Michael Mixon, was convicted in September 2009 of financing terror and fleecing investors in the FEDI scheme.
In addition to the ASD account funded by the E-Bullion transfer, Seabaugh had at least two other ASD accounts, prosecutors charged in the forfeiture complaint. She used one of her accounts to advertise a mysterious business known as StreamlineGold, which was described by investigators as a probable “pyramid scheme dealing with the sale of memberships that are sold to customers.”
The account through which Seabaugh promoted StreamlineGold was funded by a transfer from La Fuente Dinero, yet-another Ponzi scheme associated with ASD, prosecutors said.
StreamlineGold’s website now throws an error message, but web records show it was promoted on the MoneyMakerGroup and TalkGold forums, two websites that are associated with Ponzi schemes and referenced in federal court records as a place from which the alleged Pathway To Prosperity Ponzi scheme was promoted.
“StreamLine Gold is literally what it says,” a poster crowed on the MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi site in November 2007, the same month Seabaugh allegedly was promoting the same scheme through ASD. “[I]t can provide you with an unlimited income through the combination of Precious Metals and Cash with a business model whose time has come PLUS the most advanced and lucrative pay plan ever devised.”
Records suggest StreamlineGold had failed in an earlier iteration — and then failed again after rebirthing itself.
BULLETIN:UPDATED 6:27 A.M. ET (U.S.A., DEC. 18) The U.S. Secret Service and federal prosecutors have seized nearly $250,000 from two alleged ASD promoters and filed a new forfeiture complaint dated today.
More than $153,000 has been seized from a bank account controlled by ASD promoter Erma Seabaugh, known as the “Web Room Lady.” Seabaugh was a purported ASD “trainer,” prosecutors said.
She was accused in the complaint of accepting checks made out to ASD, depositing them into her bank account and transferring “ad packs” to her downline by using ASD’s internal system.
Meanwhile, more than $96,000 has been seized from bank accounts controlled by ASD member Robyn Lynn Stevenson, who operated a company known as Robyn Lynn LLC and worked briefly for ASD itself, prosecutors said.
At the same time, investigators seized nearly $500,000 from a bank account once controlled by ASD President Andy Bowdoin and nearly $50,000 from an account controlled by Golden Panda Ad Builder President Clarence Busby.
Busby, prosecutors said, already has ceded the money to the government. The money was ceded in September 2008, about two months after an undercover agent had been invited by an ASD member to listen to Busby talk in July 2008, as Golden Panda was ramping up for its formal launch.
The additional sum of nearly $500,000 ($496,505) seized from Bowdoin was a balance left in an account that once contained more than $31.6 million, prosecutors said. The lion’s share of the money in the account already has been declared forfeited, but agents worked out an agreement with Bank of America to permit about $500,000 to remain in the account on the date of the Aug. 1, 2008, seizure of Bowdoin’s assets.
The buffer was necessary to permit checks already drawn on the account prior to the effective date of the seizure warrant to clear, prosecutors said.
All in all, the forfeiture complaint filed today targeted $794,718 in illegal ASD proceeds, prosecutors said.
The seizure of cash tied to Seabaugh and Stevenson traced its roots to the opening days of 2009, months after the seizure of the lion’s share of money from Bowdoin’s bank accounts, according to the complaint.
On Feb. 26, 2009, U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer authorized the seizure of “up to” $213,693 in the name of “Carpe Diem or Erma Seabaugh,” prosecutors said. The seizure occurred one day after Bowdoin had signed a document in which he sought to reverse an earlier decision he made to submit to the forfeiture of tens of millions of dollars in his bank accounts, records show.
When the Secret Service executed the warrant to seize the money from Seabaugh, only $153,097 was found in the account, according to the complaint.
Between July 15 and July 30, 2008 — effectively the two week period leading up to the ASD seizure — Seabaugh received nine ASD checks totaling $203,993, prosecutors said.
On July 25, 2008, just days before the seizure of Bowdoin’s bank accounts, Seabaugh deposited into her bank account seven checks made out to ASD totaling $9,700 prosecutors said.
The checks came from “third parties,” and Seabaugh transferred a corresponding number of “ad packs” to the buyers by using ASD’s internal system, prosecutors said.
“Based on these facts, it appears Ms. Seabaugh was selling her own investment ‘ad packs’ to clients and representing herself as ASD,” prosecutors said.
Seabaugh had at least three ASD accounts and appeared to be using ASD’s “advertising” rotator to sell other pyramid schemes, prosecutors said. All three of the accounts used a form of the “Carpe Diem” name, according to the complaint.
One of Seabaugh’s ASD accounts was opened with a transfer of “ad packs” from La Fuente Dinero, yet-another autosurf scheme tied to ASD, prosecutors said.
Noting that Seabaugh deposited no “new money” into the account, prosecutors said she withdrew $83,994 from the account via checks from ASD.
Seabaugh recruited 48 ASD members, according to the complaint. She withdrew an additional $107,997 from another ASD account.
Stevenson, meanwhile, made only one deposit with ASD — for $500 — and yet received $96,525, prosecutors said. The withdrawals came in the form of 17 checks issued by ASD between July 10 and July 25, 2008, just days before the seizure of ASD’s assets, according to records.
The checks were deposited into two bank accounts that Stevenson opened July 31, 2008, one day before the seizure of Bowdoin’s bank accounts, according to records.
Separately, Bowdoin pleaded not guilty today to criminal charges filed against him in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Prosecutors said he was at the helm of a massive Ponzi scheme that gathered at least $110 million.
BULLETIN: A Maryland man has been indicted and arrested on charges of filing a false lien for more than $1.3 billion against a federal prosecutor who had successfully prosecuted him for filing a bogus income-tax return in 2007.
Andrew Isaac Chance also has been charged with filing false tax returns for an entity known as “Andrew I. Chance Trust” in 2007, 2008 and 2009. He faces up to 25 years in prison and a fine of up to $1 million if convicted on the new charges.
In 2007, Chance was sentenced to 27 months in federal prison for filing a false tax claim for an entity known as “ANDREW CHANCE TRUST.” Chance sought a refund of $306,753 in that case, and refunds of $300,000 for each of the three years cited in the new case, prosecutors said.
He is currently on federal probation — and now faces the new charges.
Prosecutors said he placed a false lien of “$1.313 billion against the property” of the federal prosecutor in the earlier case. The prosecutor was an assistant U.S. Attorney, according to the U.S. Department of Justice and the IRS.
A federal grand jury in Greenbelt, Md., returned the new indictments, the Justice Department and the IRS said.
Bizarre paperwork attacks against prosecutors and other federal employees have occurred elsewhere in the United States. In July, a California man was indicted in Nevada on charges of filing 22 false liens ranging from $25 million to $300 million against the officials, prosecutors said.
Thanh Viet Jeremy Cao also sought $20 billion in fraudulent tax refunds, prosecutors charged.
In June, Ronald James Davenport of Deer Park, Wash., was charged with filing false liens against federal officials in Washington state.
Davenport, who described himself as a “sovereign” being, sought the spectacular sum of nearly $5.2 billion from each of the officials, including U.S. Attorney James McDevitt of the Eastern District of Washington, an assistant U.S. attorney, a court clerk and an IRS agent, according to court records.
Prosecutors in the Chance case in Maryland described him as a “tax defier.”
Members of the AdSurfDaily autosurf — an alleged Ponzi scheme — have been associated with schemes to file liens or threats to file liens against judges, prosecutors and members of law enforcement.
Some ASD members have described themselves as “sovereign” beings. Elsewhere, the three principal figures in the “3 Hebrew Boys” Ponzi case in South Carolina also described themselves as sovereign.
The sentences handed out to the “3 Hebrew Boys” defendants were the longest in any federal Ponzi scheme case in South Carolina history, prosecutors said earlier this week. The sentences totaled 84 years — 27 years each for two defendants, and 30 years for a third.
First, don’t be confused. Rust Consulting Inc. is the official claims administrator under contract with the U.S. government to handle claims from victims of the alleged AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme. ASD also is known as ASD Cash Generator.
See this document at Justia.com. It is signed by Ronald C. Machen Jr., the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, and appears on the court docket of U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer. The document lists the URL for the official claims site: http://www.adsurfdailyremission.com
Today a highly confusing report appeared on RipoffReport.com suggesting that, not only was ASD a ripoff, but so is the claims program. The PP Blog became aware of the report after receiving a message from Google Alerts, which the Blog uses to track mentions of ASD Cash Generator across the web.
The PP Blog sought to contact Rust about the Ripoff Report, but it was past business hours. The Blog left a detailed message for the firm.
Here is the headline of the Ripoff Report: “Asd cash generator ad Surf daily remission administrator Beware…scam, Internet . . .”
Meanwhile, the report says this, “do not reply to remission forms that says from secret services asking for your bank account and social security number informations. secret services do not send out such forms asking specific account numbers. and secret services do not use post office box numbers address.”
At the same time, the report urges readers to “report your forms to your better business bureau.”
Other mistakes dot the Ripoff Report — for example, the Minnesota address of the claims administrator is listed as the address for ASD and the URL for the official claims site is incorrect.
The U.S. Secret Service conducted the ASD investigation. Rust, the government-approved claims administrator, is using a Post Office Box to receive completed claims forms. The company specifically informs ASD members on the remissions site that it is asking victims to provide bank-account information so they can receive restitution by electronic deposit.
“Payment will be disbursed by electronic funds transfer after all Remission Forms are decided,” the company notes on the website. “Therefore it is necessary to ensure that the section requiring your banking information is completed in full on the Remission Form in order to receive a remission payment.”
The official remissions form also asks for a Social Security number or Employer Identification Number (EIN).
Why a poster on RipoffReport.com appeared to imply that the “secret services” did not authorize the information to be gathered was unclear. The U.S. Secret Service has the duty of assisting the U.S. Department of Justice in reviewing the claims.
The ASD case has been marked by one bizarre event after another. In recent weeks, some ASD members have tried to confuse others about the remissions process.
ASD President Andy Bowdoin, who was indicted on felony charges earlier this month, is scheduled to make his first court appearance in the District of Columbia tomorrow.
In a case that features elements remarkably similar to the AdSurfDaily litigation, a federal judge in South Carolina has sentenced three defendants in the “3 Hebrew Boys” fraud case to a combined total of 84 years in prison.
Joseph Brunson, Tim McQueen and Tony Pough were jailed immediately after their convictions a year ago in an $82 million, foreign-currency fraud and Ponzi scheme case that traded on religion. The men, who called their business a debt-relief ministry, accused former U.S. Attorney Walt Wilkens of “treason” last year and of committing acts of war against them.
The sentencing occurred today, with U.S. District Judge Margaret Seymour giving Pough 30 years and Brunson and McQueen 27 years each. The office of U.S. Attorney William N. Nettles of the District of South Carolina did not immediately return a call from the PP Blog for comment. The Associated Press first reported on the lengths of the sentences tonight, noting that the terms were “so harsh in part because the judge found they tried to obstruct justice at every turn.”
Brunson, McQueen and Pough became known as “3 Hebrew Boys” after operating a website with the same name, which is based on a biblical story of believers who escaped a furnace by relying on their faith. The Ponzi scheme operated under the name Capital Consortium Group LLC.
In 2007, the men filed a court document that described their investment program as an effort to free people from government “bondage” and referred to the investigation as “Satan’s handiwork.”
A year later, in 2008, AdSurfDaily President Andy Bowdoin described the case against his purported Florida “advertising” firm as the work of “Satan,” comparing it to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Bowdoin, 76, was indicted earlier this month on Ponzi scheme charges.
The 3 Hebrew Boys’ operation sought to chill law enforcement, regulators and members of the media from scrutinizing operations, prosecutors said.
In an approach similar to one used by the AdViewGlobal (AVG) autosurf, members were forced to agree to a confidentially clause that purportedly prohibited them from discussing the company outside the confines of meeting places. Participants were threatened with a $1 million penalty for sharing information.
A court-appointed receiver published documents that listed an astonishing array of luxury purchases made by the 3 Hebrew Boys schemers with investors’ money. Among the items were a Gulf Stream jet, a Prevost Motorcoach and automobiles with famous names such as Mercedes, Lexus, BMW, Saab, Cadillac and Lincoln.
In the “3 Hebrew Boys” case, Brunson filed documents that appear to have asserted immunity from prosecution on the grounds of purported sovereignty. The documents appear to have been designed to force Wilkens, then the U.S. Attorney, to default on a contact to which he never had agreed. The approach sometimes is referred to as “paper terrorism” or “mailbox arbitration.”
A similar approach has been used by litigants in the ASD case.
Screen shot: Joseph Brunson declared last year that then-U.S. Attorney Walt Wilkens was guilty of treason, insurrection and conspiracy to overthow the U.S. government in his efforts to prosecute Brunson.
Brunson wrote in a court filing he described as a “Bill of Peace” that Wilkens had a duty to appear before a notary public and acknowledge Brunson’s assertion of sovereignty in “red ink.” The document demanded that Wilkens use his “Christian name” in his response to Brunson.
A refusal by Wilkens to carry out the demands within three days, Brunson said, would result in a contractual agreement that Wilkens was “an enemy of One and the [U]nited States of America and the people, Constitution, and Government thereof.”
Kenneth Wayne Leaming, also known as "Kenneth Wayne."
BULLETIN: A bizarre lawsuit filed against the U.S. government by AdSurfDaily figures Kenneth Wayne Leaming and Christian Oesch has been dismissed.
In dismissing the complaint, Judge Christine Odell Cook Miller of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims agreed with the government’s contention that the court had no jurisdiction to hear the claim.
The judge described the complaint by Leaming, Oesch and an affiliated company known as MYHUB GROUP LLC as a bid to argue about “an unlawful taking of the forfeited property” in the ASD case, which was heard in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Meanwhile, the judge ruled that MYHUB GROUP inappropriately sought to act as its own attorney.
Corporations are required to have professional counsel to appear in court, the judge ruled.
ASD President Andy Bowdoin suffered a similar setback last year when he tried to represent ASD pro se in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Leaming and Oesch appear to have tried to use the U.S. Court of Federal Claims as an appeals court for U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, while apparently seeking the staggering sum of $29 trillion from a federal judge, three federal prosecutors and a U.S. Secret Service agent involved in the ASD Ponzi scheme forfeiture case.
“Plaintiffs’ challenge took the form of presenting claims issued by Tina M. Hall, a notary public in the State of Washington to officials associated with the forfeitures,” Cook Miller noted in the order of dismissal. “Ms. Hall issued ‘Certificates of Default on February 16, 2010, against these government officials for failure to respond to plaintiffs’ claims ‘in admiralty.’ At this point the complaint deteriorates into rambling.”
The judge also barred Leaming and Oesch from seeking sanctions against the government.
“As an initial matter, this court notes that, during the course of briefing on defendant’s motion, defense counsel has suffered the opprobrium of plaintiffs’ aspersions and disparagement, including charges of unethical practices,” Cook Miller said in the ruling. “Defendant charitably characterizes this argument as hyperbole . . . and the court will lay the matter to rest by denying any request for sanctions that plaintiffs may be making.”
UPDATED 9:28 A.M. ET (U.S.A.) On Dec. 1, a federal magistrate judge set bail of $350,000 for AdSurfDaily President Andy Bowdoin and ordered him not to commit a federal, state or local crime after his arrest by the U.S. Secret Service on charges of wire fraud, securities fraud and selling unregistered securities.
Bowdoin, 76, was specifically warned that he could be held in contempt of court for violating conditions of his bail. The conditions included an order not to obstruct the investigation or tamper with witnesses.
Now an email attributed to former ASD and AdViewGlobal executive Gary Talbert has surfaced that is raising questions about whether Bowdoin is trying to suppress the victims’ count and manipulate ASD members who seek to file restitution claims with Rust Consulting Inc., the official claims administrator in the $110 million Ponzi case.
The email specifically references Bowdoin’s arrest, but makes no reference to the bail conditions set by U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas G. Wilson in advance of a scheduled appearance by Bowdoin in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Dec. 17.
Bowdoin made his initial court appearance before Wilson in Florida.
“Got a email from Andy and he told me to go ahead and send this email out to everyone,” noted the email attributed to Talbert, who filed a sworn affidavit on ASD’s behalf in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in 2008. “He does have a hearing on Dec. 17th in Washington D.C. He and his lawyers are still positive on the out come.”
“Here is just a idea and I think this will work for everyone,” the email continued. “This should keep everyone legal. Because I think everyone understood it was not a investment. I believe it is time to fill out the info. from Rust inc. with the following addendum.
“Where it asks for your signature write in there ‘See addendum’.
“Now put this in your own words on the addendum. Here is a out line.
“On the addendum write that you knew this was not a investment and you where purchasing advertising. Now since the gov. stopped my advertising company and I did not get my advertising I would like to get my advertising money back from whom ever is holding it now. Sign it and send it in with the forms from Rust.”
News about the email attributed to Talbert was spreading among ASD members last night. Separately, ASD figures Kenneth Wayne Leaming and Christian Oesch have filed an ASD-related lawsuit in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims that apparently seeks the spectacular sum of $29 TRILLION from a federal judge, three federal prosecutors and a Secret Service agent involved in the ASD Ponzi case.
On June 30, 2009, AdViewGlobal was cited as an extension of ASD in a racketeering lawsuit filed against Bowdoin by ASD members. The reference was dated June 29, 2009, the same day Bernard Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in federal prison for his Ponzi scheme.
Federal prosecutors now say Bowdoin faces up to 120 years in prison if convicted of all counts against him.
“AVG is the next iteration of the Ponzi scheme auto-surf programs, which [are] staffed with former ASD executives and Bowdoin disciples, including George Harris, the stepson of Bowdoin, who is listed as an AVG trustee, Gary Talbert, former ASD executive served as CEO of AVG and now serves as an accountant, Nate Boyd, a former compliance officer at ASD, serves as ‘Protector’ of the AVG association, and Chuck Osmin, a former ASD employee who testified on ASD’s behalf at the evidentiary hearing before this Court last fall is a customer service representative of AVG,” the RICO plaintiffs claimed.
The grand jury that indicted Bowdoin began to meet in May 2009. During that same month, AVG was scurrying to reconfigure itself after gathering money from members and offering 200 percent “bonuses” for months. AVG launched in the aftermath of the seizure of tens of millions of dollars from Bowdoin in August 2008, the filing by the government of a second forfeiture complaint against ASD-connected assets in December 2008 and the filing of the racketeering lawsuit against Bowdoin.
In January 2009, just days prior to its official launch in early February, AVG bizarrely both confirmed and denied it had ties to ASD.
The appearance of AVG graphics in an ASD-controlled webroom after the federal seizure was an “operational coincidence,” AVG memorably explained. The announcement was attributed to Chuck Osmin, himself a former ASD employee.
Even though AVG previously had denied ASD ties, the upstart surf then announced that Talbert was its CEO.
“Since Mr. Talbert was and is the C.E.O. for both companies and had worked with the same web room company while at ASD, it would be very natural for him to choose and use many of the same venders (sic) that he had used before. So, the fact that ASD and AdView Global are using the same web room hosting company is no accident, in fact it is an operational coincidence,” AdViewGlobal said.
Why the surf identified Talbert as ASD’s CEO was unclear. He was listed in his own sworn court documents in the ASD case as ASD’s “Human Resource Manager, Assistant CFO and Website Editor.”
By March 2009, AVG announced that Talbert had resigned as AVG’s chief. It also announced that its bank account had been suspended, blaming the development on members.
In May 2009, AVG announced that it had secured a new, offshore wire facilitator to help it gather money from members. The announcement was made on the same day the Obama administration announced a crackdown on offshore financial fraud. (See this story and included links for updates on AVG’s purported facilitator, KINGZ Capital Management. There is a tie between KINGZ and Minnesota Ponzi schemer Trevor Cook.)
By June 25, 2009, AVG announced it was suspending cashouts, again blaming the development on members while threatening members and journalists with copyright-infringement lawsuits for reporting the news.
Just four days later, on June 29, 2009, the RICO plaintiffs in the ASD lawsuit referenced AVG in a court filing docketed the following day, June 30. By September 2009, federal prosecutors made a veiled reference to AVG in filings in the ASD case.
By Sept. 29, 2009, an email attributed to ASD spokeswoman Sara Mattoon was circulating among ASD members. The email specifically instructed members not to fill out a government form that would be used as part of the restitution process.
“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 was quoted as saying 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.”
The Matton email referenced an earlier email attributed to ASD member and purported trainer Robert Fava. Like the Mattoon email, the Fava email discouraged members from filling out the government form, describing it as “ammunition” that could be used against ASD.
This is actually Post No. 1,007 since the PP Blog switched to the WordPress platform two years ago this month. We’d hoped to commemorate our 1,000th WordPress post in the actual 1,000th post, but missed the chance because of Breaking News concerning the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force’s Operation Broken Trust.
The PP Blog's Breaking News graphic was stolen and used in a promotion for Data Network Affiliates (DNA) earlier this year. DNA, which purports to be in the business of helping the AMBER Alert prohram rescue abducted children, now apparently has morphed into a company known as OWOW, which has instructed members to advertise a secret cure for cancer.
Several hours after we reported that the Task Force now was counting investment-fraud victims by the tens of thousands and noting that even deaf people had been targeted in massive scams, we reported that Walmart had joined the “If you see something, say something” terrorism-awareness campaign operated by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Walmart was instantly and savagely pilloried on YouTube, apparently for holding the view that DHS deserved private-sector help in its work to keep America safe. On. Dec. 6, when the PP Blog first observed the DHS video on YouTube announcing the Walmart partnership, the video had received only 310 views. That number now has shot up to 289,657. YouTube posters called DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano names that could peel paint. We’ll leave it at that, except to say that scores of Americans appear to have emerged as kneejerk critics and appear unwilling to view America’s economic well-being within the lens of national security.
Indeed, how safe is America — and the world at large — if fraud victims are being counted in numbers that would fill stadiums and vast sums of wealth are being consumed and disappearing down ratholes? In the Task Force announcement, Attorney General Eric Holder said that, since Aug. 16 alone, cases investigated by the Task Force have uncovered losses of more than $10.4 billion. The schemes affected at least 120,000 victims.
The victims’ count in just this relatively small cluster of cases is more than enough to fill the Rose Bowl in Pasadena or Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor, America’s largest college-football stadium.
Just prior to our Operation Broken Trust post — in Post No. 999 — we reported that the AdPayDaily autosurf, which has promoters and members in common with both AdSurfDaily and AdViewGlobal, was showing signs of collapse. Flash forward to Post No. 1,002: In this post, we reported that a New York Internet Marketer had been arrested by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service for cyberstalking.
Vitaly Borker apparently believed it prudent to use the Internet to threaten to rape women who had received what investigators described as bogus and inferior-quality goods from him. A fair reading of the complaint against Borker shows that he used the same type of gutter language directed at Napolitano on YouTube — you know, for her apparent High Crime of asking Walmart shoppers to be aware of their surroundings in the Age of Terrorism.
We next reported on a 54-year prison sentence handed down to a former Indiana pastor who duped Christian investors in a Ponzi scheme. After that, we reported that a company that once did business with Steve Renner’s Cash Cards International had been implicated in a massive Forex scheme that affected at least 800 investors.
Renner was the operator of the INetGlobal autosurf, which the U.S. Secret Service said in February was operating a Ponzi scheme affecting thousands of people, including victims of Chinese descent who may have limited ability to understand English. The Secret Service said an undercover agent had been introduced to INetGlobal by an AdSurfDaily member.
On Dec. 8, we reported that a Maryland man had been arrested after the FBI intercepted his plot to detonate a car bomb at a military-recruitment center. A similar plot had been unmasked by the FBI in Portand, Ore., on the day after Thanksgiving. It was aimed at a Christmas tree lighting ceremony, meaning it was aimed at children and families.
Here is one way to look at the alleged Thanksgiving plot: The arrest was announced on Nov. 26. By Dec. 6, crackpots were flooding YouTube with paint-peeling comments about Napolitano and the terrorism-awareness campaign. Two days after that, on Dec. 8, a man was arrested in the Maryland plot. He allegedly also talked about blowing up Andrews Air Force Base, which happens to be the home base of Air Force One, which happens to be the aircraft used by the President of the United States.
We haven’t even written about Wikileaks and the arrest in Britian of Julian Assange. Wikileaks’ sympathizers reacted by bringing DDoS attacks, apparently based on the belief that the best way to show support for Assange was to send out an army of bots to disrupt the websites of businesses that did not support Assange.
By week’s end, Prince Charles and Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, were surrounded by a mob unhappy about the skyrocketing costs of getting a college education in the United Kingdom. Civility, it seems, can be cast out the door in a country minute and replaced by the taunts of a mob.
Yesterday, as we again sought to commemorate our 1,000 post, word arrived about the apparent suicide of Bernard Madoff’s son on the second anniversary of his father’s arrest.
There is no doubt — none whatsoever — that Ponzi = Pain. There also is no doubt that the Internet has ushered in an era of unprecedented, mass-produced, viral crime. Criminals have been aided in their nefarious pursuits by crackpots who employ no editorial filters and simply create or repeat lies that institutionalize crime as an occupation and even celebrate it.
At the precise moment in time in which Americans and other citizens of the world could benefit most from serious words and serious research backing those words, some of the world’s great publishing companies are struggling to make ends meet. Print circulation is down. Journalists are losing jobs. Designers and salespeople are losing jobs.
The switch to electronic publishing platforms has been accompanied by piracy, wanton theft and trademark infringement that further erodes the value of words and intellectual property, undermines the economy and adds to concerns about national and international security. People, including well-intentioned people, simply copy-and-paste entire editorial wells from one site to another. The public becomes confused about the original source of material, which often is shoe-horned to fit a specific agenda.
Earlier this year, the PP Blog’s Breaking News graphic was stolen by a member of Data Network Affiliates (DNA), an MLM company that routinely targets promos at Christians and, among other things, has claimed it is helping the AMBER Alert program rescue abducted children. DNA now apparently has morphed into a company known as OWOW, which is asking members to suggest that a product known as TurboMune cures cancer.
This is not “freedom,” as the scammers would have you believe; it is theft and piracy on the high electronic seas, plain and simple. It also often is the case that this specific brand of theft also gets mixed with appeals to faith, meaning the scammers are seeking to pluck heartstrings and separate Believers from their money.
There simply is no way that any government or branch of government can be at all places at all times. Although it is fashionable to describe efforts to battle crime in the Age of the Internet and the Age of Terrorism as an effort by Big Brother to assign each individual citizen his or her own bureaucrat to bring commerce and freedom to a screeching halt, such opinions often are simple rants that lack any real-world context.
Within hours of the PP Blog’s publication of a story about the alleged Portland plot, the Blog was bizarrely assailed by an MLM aficionado for DNA/OWOW as a tool for Israel. Michael Chertoff, a former federal judge, federal prosecutor and DHS secretary, was described as a “suspect” in the 9/11 attacks, which the poster blamed on Israel while calling Chertoff an Israeli scum bag.
As noted above, when Janet Napolitano announced a simple partnership with Walmart to encourage citizens to be aware of their surroundings, she encountered vicious name-calling — and it all happened during the same week yet-another bombing plot was unmasked, the Task Force was noting that America’s largest stadiums were not large enough to accommodate recent victims of financial fraud, DDoS attacks were aimed at companies deemed by third parties to be unfriendly to Wikileaks and the future king of England and his wife were surrounded by an angry mob.
Even if one is willing to assume that Wikileaks seeks to serve a higher, noble purpose, directing DDoS attacks at businesses and government sites hardly helps Assange elicit sympathy or understanding. He lost an important round in the PR war last week, as did the unthinking crowd that assailed Napolitano and the mob that heckled Prince Charles and the Duchess.
The lionization of crackpots of all stripes is rapidly emerging as a dangerous, unintended consequence of the Internet — as are all the tortured claims that MLM products treat or cure cancer, create vast sums of wealth for ordinary participants and the tortured claim that appropriating the names of Walmart and Winfrey and Trump and Buffet and Clinton is just another word for freedom.
Far from promoting freedom, the crackpots and criminals are promoting anarchy. They do not seek to compete in either a free marketplace of commerce or a free marketplace of ideas. Rather, they seek to commit crimes on a global scale and to fill entire stadiums with victims — even as would-be terrorists speculate about throwing cocktail bombs into military-recruitment centers and shooting soldiers and staff as they flee the flames through the doors.
In Portland, meanwhile, the idea was to kill wide-eyed children contemplating the miracles of Christmas and Santa Claus with a fireball that also would consume their parents.
We conclude this 1,000 post commemoration with a simple thought: Death and taxes are not the only two certainties of life. It is equally certain that law enforcement needs the proactive participation of the public more than ever. It is one thing to direct reasonable criticism at agencies and public officials; it is quite another to cheer against the people who are responding to unprecedented security challenges while trying to make sure the stadiums fill up with football fans, not victims.
The Sarasota Herald-Tribune is reporting that Ponzi swinder Beau Diamond has been sentenced to 186 months in federal prison.
