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Tag: ASD

  • 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.

  • Street Address Of ASD Site That Made Odd Claims Before Vanishing Tied To Major Insurance-Fraud Investigation

    The street address listed for the domain ASD2Day.com appears in Florida records as the address of a woman charged with patient brokering and solicitation in a major insurance-fraud sting.

    Records show that a woman named Barbara Cruz was charged with four felony counts of insurance fraud in 2000. The name Barbara Cruz was listed as the name of the registered owner of the ASD2Day site, which now is offline.

    The Florida Insurance Commission described the case as a complex probe that involved staged automobile accidents, false Personal Injury Protection (PIP) claims against insurance companies and “runners” hired by unscrupulous medical clinics to recruit people involved in accidents — real or staged — into the insurance scam.

    Bill Nelson, Florida’s insurance commissioner when the sting was conducted, said the scheme was sucking wealth from Florida’s economy.

    “Our investigators estimate that more than half of the auto insurance PIP claims in the Miami area are fraudulent,” Nelson said, in 2000. “So far, we’ve identified at least $10 million that these suspects alone allegedly bilked from insurers at the expense of consumers throughout Florida.”

    Nelson, who served as a payload specialist on the space shuttle Columbia in 1986, previously was a member of the U.S. House and is now a U.S. Senator.

    Barbara Cruz was among a group of 51 people in the Greater Miami area in south Florida to be charged after a year-long investigation by the Insurance Commission. Docket entries show a person by the same name with the same birth date was charged in a case slugged “ANIMAL/FIGHT/OWN/SEL” in 1989.

    How the case involving animals was disposed is unclear. A docket entry is marked “NO ACTION” and the file location is marked “DESTROYED.” The insurance charges are marked “NOLLE PROS,” which suggests the case ultimately was dropped.

    ASD2Day.com appeared online in August, taking a Pro-AdSurfDaily point of view. ASD was implicated by the U.S. Secret Service in a $100 million Ponzi and fraud scheme in August 2008.

    Among the claims on the site was a puzzling assertion that U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer was on an Aug. 28, 2009 deadline “to determine if the US Attorney General’s case against ASD should move forward.”

    Collyer was on no such deadline.

    See earlier story.

  • 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.

  • Government Revokes Plea Offers In Case Against ‘Professor’ Patrick Moriarty; Prosecution Says It Has Seven Binders Of Evidence, Including Evidence From A ‘Casino’

    Federal prosecutors have revoked plea offers made during discussions with a federal public defender representing AdSurfDaily mainstay “Professor” Patrick Moriarty.

    Moriarty has hired a new attorney, and prosecutors have advised the attorney that they have “voluminous” evidence, including seven 4-inch binders of records.

    Part of the evidence came from records at an unspecified casino, according to court records.

    “Please be advised that any plea offers previously made with the defendant’s former counsel are revoked,” said Rosemary Casey Meyers, the prosecutor handing the case, in a letter to Moriarty’s new attorney.

    Meyers is an assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, where a tax indictment against Moriarty was returned in March by a federal grand jury. The letter means that any offer the government might have made earlier in the case is off the table.

    Other evidence, according to court filings, includes IRS records, bank records, Social Security records, business records and verbal statements by Moriarty. Some 4-inch binders hold 780 sheets of paper.

    Citing his client’s poor health, Moriarty’s new attorney, Lenny Kagan, now has asked for a continuance. The government did not object. Moriarty is scheduled to have cancer surgery this month. The trial had been slotted for next month.

    The prosecution agreed to let Moriarty know if it intended to introduce evidence of other crimes prior to trial, without disclosing if Moriarty was being investigated for other matters unrelated to the tax indictment handed down in March.

    Screen shot: Discovery receipt that shows government has casino records in the case against 'Professor' Patrick Moriarty.
    Screen shot: Discovery receipt that shows government has casino records in the case against 'Professor' Patrick Moriarty.

    Moriarty was charged with filing false income-tax returns for the tax years 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005. Prosecutors said he underreported his income by an unspecified amount for the tax year 2002; claimed a false deduction of $30,000 for “legal fees” for the tax year 2003; and claimed a false amount of $23,533 withheld for the tax year 2004 and a false amount of $23,433 withheld for the tax year 2005.

    In May, the PatrickPretty.com Blog reported that Moriarty, in 2006, started a nonprofit organization for a Missouri man accused of murdering a woman in cold blood after he had shot a police officer four times.

    The officer and his partner had stopped the man, Bryan Tullock, for running a stop sign in Montgomery City, Mo., on June 2, 2006. As officer Brandon LyBarger, 25, approached Tullock’s car shortly after midnight, Tullock shot him four times with a 9-mm handgun and also opened fire on LyBarger’s partner.

    The second officer, Jarrod Brooks, returned fire, striking Tullock’s Cadillac but not Tullock.

    When officer Brooks called for backup and went to the aid of his downed colleague, Tullock fled, police said. Tullock broke into the home of Heidi Casagrand about a block from the scene of the police shooting.

    He shot and killed Casagrand, 32, and also shot at her husband. Tullock fled the second shooting scene and confronted Ricky Fry, 33. Tullock shot Fry eight times outside of his home, leaving him for dead.

    LyBarger and Fry, who had been hit by a combined total of 12 bullets, survived.

    Tullock was sentenced to life in prison without the opportunity for parole earlier this year. He could have been sentenced to death.

    Moriarty registered the nonprofit for Tullock, the shooter, on Oct. 2, 2006, four months to the day after the rampage. Records suggest that the IRS already was interacting with Moriarty at the time be started the nonprofit.

    Two years later, in October 2008, Moriarty was instrumental in registering another nonprofit in Missouri. Along with members of the Pro-AdSurfDaily Surf’s Up forum, Moriarty started an organization known as ASD Members International (ASDMI), which solicited money to do battle with the government in the civil-forfeiture case against ASD, a Florida company implicated in an alleged $100 million wire-fraud, money-laundering and Ponzi scheme.

    ASDMI promised to litigate against the government even if it was behaving legally. Payments were accepted from at least 176 ASD members, but no litigation was filed.

  • BREAKING NEWS: Receiver In FTC Case Against Parent Company Of Noobing Autosurf Seeks Wholesale Demolition Of Firm; Asks Judge To Approve Plan To Sell Assets — Right Down To Restroom Wastebasket

    Assets of the parent company of an autosurf firm that targeted customers with hearing impairments would be sold at auction — up to and including a stainless-steel wastebasket in the women’s restroom, according to a plan proposed by the receiver in the case against Affiliate Strategies Inc. (ASI) and other companies.

    ASI is the parent company of the Noobing autosurf. U.S. District Judge Julie A. Robinson of the District of Kansas would have to approve the plan submitted by Larry Cook, the court-appointed receiver.

    Screen shot from court filings: Part of the inventory of Affiliate Strategies Inc.
    Screen shot from court filings: Part of the inventory of Affiliate Strategies Inc.

    Robinson previously ordered ASI to repatriate to the United States all assets and documents held on foreign soil, and cleared the way for any safe-deposit boxes to be opened and inspected. The judge also ordered assets not to be concealed or dissipated and records not to be destroyed.

    In a coincidence that conjures images of another autosurfing company embroiled in litigation, Cook revealed in the plan that ASI owns a jet-ski. Federal prosecutors said in December that money from Florida-based AdSurfDaily Inc. (ASD) was used to purchase two jet-skis.

    Prosecutors seized ASD’s jet-skis in a forfeiture complaint and may choose to liquidate them later, if court approval is gained.

    Cook’s plan would sell ASI’s jet-ski, a 2005 Yamaha, along with a 2003 Saturn automobile owned by the firm.

    “[Cook] previously determined the Receivership Defendants’ business operations could not be operated legally and profitably,” the receiver’s attorney, Brian M. Holland, said in a court filing.

    The Grant Writer’s Institute — another company affiliated with ASI — was accused in August of charging a 70-year-old Philadelphia man $995 for the names and addresses of three benevolent entities that could help him repair the home he shares with his wife.

    One of the addresses proved to be the address of the Philadelphia Regional Office of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which had been misidentified by the Grant Writer’s Institute as a benevolent organization known as “World Changers,” according to court filings.

    In July, ASI, the Grant Writer’s Institute and several affiliated firms and individuals were accused by the FTC and the attorneys general of Kansas, Minnesota and North Carolina of participating in a scheme that promised “guaranteed” grants of $25,000 from economic-stimulus funds provided by the government.

    Brett Blackman, president of Noobing, is the head of ASI.

    In August, Cook advised Robinson that the companies were insolvent and that attorneys had received “thirty two US Mail crates” filled with consumer complaints on a single day.

    Blackman, according to Cook, recently registered several corporations offshore, including Noobing, which was registered on the Caribbean island of Nevis on March 25, 2009; ASI Management Inc., formed in Belize on March 24, 2009; Landmark Publishing Group LLC, formed in Nevis on March 25, 2009; Landmark Publishing LLC, formed in Nevis on March 25, 2009; International Research and Writing Group LLC, formed in Nevis on July 1, 2009; and International Publishing Group LLC, formed in Nevis on July 1, 2009.

    All in all, Cook said, “the ASI defendants have formed and operated eighteen additional Kansas LLCs as subsidiaries of Defendant Apex Holdings International LLC.”

  • TEA LEAVES: AdSurfDaily Case About To Come To A Head?

    EDITOR’S NOTE: Reading the tea leaves in court cases often is an iffy proposition, and there often is no way to know what will happen when. Readers are advised to keep those thoughts in mind when considering the information in this story.

    UPDATED 7:03 P.M. EDT (U.S.A.) Recent court filings suggest — although it is far from clear — that dramatic events could occur soon on at least three fronts in the AdSurfDaily case.

    Consider:

    • The government today added two prosecutors to its roster in the main civil-forfeiture case against tens of millions of dollars and real estate seized in August 2008 from ASD President Andy Bowdoin. Both new members of the team are experienced in criminal prosecutions, including appeals. One of the prosecutors has served in complex cases involving international banking and money-laundering, as well as cases involving the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Administration.
    • A federal judge, noting that no claimants have stepped forward in a second forfeiture case filed in December 2008 and targeted at assets tied to ASD, now has ordered prosecutors to state their intentions by Nov. 6 on how they intend to proceed in the December case. Potential claimants included Bowdoin and his wife, Edna Faye Bowdoin, and her son, George Harris. Judy Harris, the wife of George Harris, also was a potential claimant, as was Hays Amos, a former ASD employee.

    The Harris home in Tallahassee was seized in the December complaint, as was a car registered to George and Judy Harris. Prosecutors said a mortgage of more than $157,000 on the Harris home was retired with illegal proceeds from ASD, adding that Edna Faye Bowdoin and George Harris worked together to establish a bank account into which ASD funds were deposited and quickly wired to a third bank to pay off the mortgage.

    Prosecutors said the account was opened June 10, 2008, at Capital City Bank, less than two weeks after ASD concluded a rally in Las Vegas at which Andy Bowdoin exhorted the crowd to internalize the thought of acquiring large sums of money.

    The account was opened in the name of Bowdoin/Harris Enterprises Inc. and was funded with an opening deposit of $177,900.12 from two ASD accounts at Bank of America.

    Less than two weeks later, the lion’s share of the money was used to retire the mortgage on the Harris home — a home for which the couple has not filed a claim.

    (Emphasis added in the paragraph below.)

    “On or about June 23, 2008, George Harris requested via a telephone call that an electronic wire for $157,216.79 be sent from his Capital City Bank account to Citi Mortgage Inc.,” prosecutors said. “The reference that Mr. Harris provided was ‘REF: PAYOFF JUDY HARRIS #XXXXXX2292.’”

    The clear implication from the language of the complaint was that money from ASD — money prosecutors said Andy Bowdoin had acquired through a wire-fraud and money-laundering scheme — had been used a second time to commit wire fraud, this time by George Harris with help from his mother, Bowdoin’s wife.

    Four members of the Bowdoin/Harris family were involved in one way or another in the transaction, with George Harris becoming a supplemental beneficiary and Judy Harris becoming the final beneficiary. The mortgage on the property was recorded in Leon County, Fla, as paid on July 11, 2008, with the filing of a “satisfaction of mortgage.”

    Another way to look at the transaction is that it put each of the principal members of the Bowdoin/Harris family at great risk of getting arrested and, upon conviction, going to prison.

    George and Judy Harris later emerged as “Trustees”  — and then the purported owners of the AdViewGlobal (AVG) autosurf. Bowdoin was the silent head of AVG, members said.

    AVG purported to he headquartered in Uruguay. It launched in the wake of the filing of both forfeiture complaints, and also the filing of a racketeering lawsuit against Bowdoin and ASD by individual members. The racketeering lawsuit first was filed in November 2008 in Florida — in the immediate aftermath of a major court ruling against ASD in which a federal judge said ASD had not demonstrated it was a legal business and not a Ponzi scheme at an evidentiary hearing last fall.

    Attorneys for the plaintiffs dismissed the case in Florida, and refiled it in the District of Columbia in January 2009. AVG formally launched in February 2009, despite all the litigation that had piled up around Bowdoin and the Bowdoin/Harris family.

    On Sept. 25, prosecutors made a veiled reference to AVG in a court filing in which they accused Bowdoin of trying to lie his way back into the August 2008 civil-forfeiture case after he had already submitted to the forfeiture in January 2009.

    Here, in its entirety, is the Sept 25 reference: (Italics added.)

    “Maybe Bowdoin mistakenly thought that he could con the government into believing that he was just a harmless, foolish old man. Ironically, after telling thousands of investors that he intended to build the world’s preeminent advertising company for them, in order to make them 100,000 millionaires, Bowdoin tries to con this Court, telling it that because he’s 74 and has a heart condition, any incarceration amounts to a death sentence. See Document #132 ¶8. Was he lying then, or now?

    “Or, it 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. 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.

    “Or, maybe other attorneys Bowdoin employed, or ASD’s other promoters convinced Bowdoin that if he paid some of the fraud proceeds the government had missed to them (the money laundering as Mr. Murray reports), they could help to circle the wagons or otherwise do a better job than Akerman Senterfitt did when it tried to prove that free advertising was a true profitable sale and not a poorly disguised, and unsustainable, investment opportunity.

    “But what is clear from Bowdoin, himself, is that neither the government, nor Bowdoin’s experienced criminal defense counsel, ever told Bowdoin that it was reasonable for a defendant convicted of operating a $100 million wire fraud scheme to expect probation.”

    Three days later, on Sept. 28, prosecutors returned to court, filing a supplemental brief and a U.S. Secret Service transcript of an audio recording Bowdoin or a person who aided him posted online.

    (Italics added.)

    “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. It is clear that this con man cannot manage to keep his stories straight,” prosecutors said.

    Bowdoin’s claim in the transcript of the audio recording is at odds with his own court filings — filings in which he claims to be the owner of the seized funds. It is clear from the language prosecutors used in their supplemental filing that they now have the option of arguing that Bowdoin’s statement to the membership was tantamount to a confession that he was selling unregistered securities as investment contracts, not advertisements as he had claimed.

    In the hours that followed, some ASD members appeared to suggest in various emails that ASD members should not cooperate if contacted by the Secret Service.

    Given the nature and the content of recent filings from parties on both sides of the case, the ASD prosecution could be building to a crescendo. Prosecutors have many options, and appear to be preparing to use them — up to and including acting on the December forfeiture complaint at the moment that best suits their strategy.

    There could be dramatic developments — and surprises — ahead.

  • U.S. Employment Numbers Worst Since 1983; Social Security Takes A Hit From Discouraged Early Retirees; FDIC Seeks To Recapitalize In Wake Of Nearly 100 Bank Failures In 2009

    When the AdViewGlobal (AVG) autosurf — now failed — was in prelaunch phase in December 2008, it positioned itself as an offshore cure for what ails the U.S. and world economies.

    Less than two years earlier, promoters of the AdSurfDaily autosurf — which has close ties to AVG — implied that the individual surf accounts of ASD members were insured by the FDIC and that ASD provided “shelter” from the FTC and the SEC.

    ASD’s assets were seized by the U.S. Secret Service in August 2008, amid allegations of wire-fraud, money-laundering and selling unregistered securities via a Ponzi scheme. Only months later AVG began its ignoble task of encouraging members to move cash offshore and permit it to be managed by unknowns, thus separating participants from even more wealth.

    The result was a colossal failure AVG announced in June, before it disabled its forum to prevent members from asking uncomfortable questions. AVG even threatened members who shared the news with copyright-infringement lawsuits. Indeed, AVG went from a much ballyhooed cure to a thuggish disease that attacked its own participants in only weeks.

    Neither ASD nor AVG created any new wealth or cured anything. About the only thing the surfs managed to do was siphon wealth from one group and transfer it to another, all during a time a global recession was rearing its ugly head and putting jobs and lifetimes of hard work in harm’s way.

    The U.S. economy shed 263,000 jobs in September, and the unemployment rate edged up to 9.8 percent, the Labor Department said yesterday.

    Unemployment virtually has doubled since December 2007. The number of persons looking for work now totals 15.1 million, and the unemployment rate is the highest since June 1983.

    When discouraged workers and workers who’ve accepted part-time jobs in the absence of full-time employment are factored into the numbers, the so-called “real” unemployment rate is 17 percent. The number could be distorted — meaning the true employment numbers could be masked to a degree — because older workers separated from their jobs have been applying for Social Security, rather than continuing their struggle to find work when the odds are against them.

    The Social Security Administration told Bloomberg News that it had expected an increase of 315,000 applications for the one-year period ending Sept 30, but instead received 465,000, an increase of 150,000 applications.

    Meanwhile, regulators seized three more U.S. banks yesterday, bringing the year-to-date total to 98. Because the FDIC  is close to operating in the red, the agency is in the process of recapitalizing and has proposed a plan that would force banks to pay insurance premiums early to protect customer deposits, rather than pass along the cost of the recapitalization to taxpayers.

    “First and foremost, bank customers should know that their insured deposits have and always will be 100 percent safe, no matter what,” said FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair. “This commitment to depositors is absolute. The decision today (Sept. 29) is really about how and when the industry fulfills its obligation to the insurance fund. It’s clear that the American people would prefer to see an end to policies that look to the federal balance sheet as a remedy for every problem. In choosing this path, it should be clear to the public that the industry will not simply tap the shoulder of the increasingly weary taxpayer.”

    At risk, however, are banking profits when the industry already is struggling, but the FDIC insists that “banks overall have enough liquid assets to make the proposed prepayment.”

    U.S. regulators have not confronted a challenge of this magnitude since the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the savings and loan industry recorded 745 failures, in no small part due to fraud, mismanagement and regulatory laxity.

    Here is the bank-failure list so far in 2009:

  • 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…”

  • BREAKING NEWS: Prosecutors Go Back To Court, Provide Judge Copy Of Transcript From Bowdoin’s Call Last Week

    UPDATED 8:12 P.M. EDT (U.S.A.) Federal prosecutors have filed a supplemental brief in the civil forfeiture case against ASD President Andy Bowdoin that calls Bowdoin’s recent court filings “delusional.”

    Meanwhile, prosecutors have provided U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer a copy of a transcript from a recording posted online last week by Bowdoin, calling the recording evidence that “this con man cannot manage to keep his stories straight.”

    Prosecutors said Bowdoin was addressing “former” ASD members, a possible reference to the firm’s decision not to display ads, even though ASD was permitted to show ads after the seizure of Bowdoin’s assets last year.

    In effect, prosecutors argued today that Bowdoin had told Collyer one story in his recent court filings and members another to explain events.

    “To this Court, Bowdoin insinuates that he was misled by his former attorney before agreeing to cooperate and to release claims,” prosecutors said.  “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. It is clear that this con man cannot manage to keep his stories straight. It is also clear that the allegation Bowdoin makes in this Renewed Motion, that he released his claims to the defendant property only after he was misled by [former counsel] Mr. [Stephen] Dobson, is delusional,” prosecutors said.

    Included in the transcript were Bowdoin’s puzzling remarks about Cheryl Prewitt, the 1980 Miss America.

    Read the prosecution’s supplemental brief.

    Read a U.S. Secret Service transcript of Bowdoin’s recorded call.

    Read previous story on Bowdoin’s curious reference to Cheryl Prewitt and the Miss America pageant.

    Read previous story about prosecution filings last week.

    Read story about prosecution filing that made a veiled reference to the AdViewGlobal autosurf.

    Sep 28, 2009

  • Ministry Operated By 1980 Miss America Has ‘No Comment’ On Andy Bowdoin’s Audio Recording

    A Christian organization operated by former Miss America Cheryl Prewitt and her husband declined to comment this morning on an audio recording posted online last week by AdSurfDaily President Andy Bowdoin.

    In the recording, Bowdoin used Prewitt’s name, referring to her as “Cheryl Blackwood” and suggesting Prewitt’s perseverance in her five-year quest to become Miss America had inspired him to continue fighting wire-fraud, money-laundering and Ponzi scheme allegations brought by the U.S. Secret Service. 

    Salem Family Ministries of Tulsa, Okla., was established by Prewitt, now known as Cheryl Prewitt Salem, and Harry Salem, her husband.

    “We have no comment,” said a woman who answered the phone this morning at the ministry. She added that she did not recognize Bowdoin’s name and did not rule out the possibility that the ministry would have something to say at a later time.

    Bowdoin is engaged in a battle with federal prosecutors to reassert his claim to tens of millions of dollars seized by the U.S. Secret Service last year in the Ponzi scheme probe. Prosecutors said religion was used in ASD pitches, and Bowdoin cited God in sales presentations, once exhorting a crowd in Las Vegas to internalize the thought of becoming wealthy.

    “We need to have an attitude of gratitude with God,” Bowdoin told an ASD gathering in Las Vegas last year. “And I always say, ‘Thank you, God, for developing me into a money magnet.’ And I see myself as a money magnet in attracting money and, I say, attracting large sums of money.”

    After initially contesting the forfeiture case, Bowdoin surrendered his claims in mid-January. He has been attempting to reassert them since late February, initially as a pro se litigant and now through the aid of an attorney.

    Prosecutors said last week that Bowdoin, who was convicted of felonies in the 1990s in an Alabama securities case, was attempting to lie his way back into the civil-forfeiture case brought against ASD assets in August 2008.