UPDATED 12:06 P.M. EDT (MAY 5, USA): Andy Bowdoin’s bond-review hearing has been rescheduled from May 8 to May 18. Here, below, our earlier story . . .
Only days ago, federal prosecutors described the OneX “program” pitched online by accused Ponzi schemer Andy Bowdoin of AdSurfDaily as a “fraudulent scheme” and “pyramid” that “simply re-distributes funds among participants” in ASD-like fashion.
The PP Blog learned yesterday through a source that Bowdoin was a no-show on last night’s scheduled “team” conference call for OneX. A call Monday apparently was canceled.
According to information provided by the source, Bowdoin was unable to participate in last night’s call — after the cancellation of Monday’s call — because of “personal problems.” The specifics of the personal problems were not disclosed.
Unless U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer postpones a May 8 bond-review hearing for Bowdoin, prosecutors are expected to argue on Tuesday that Bowdoin was pushing the OneX pyramid scheme while awaiting his September trial in the ASD Ponzi scheme case.
Although a postponement of the bond-review hearing is possible because one of Bowdoin’s two lawyers is ill and the government has not objected to a delay, the judge has not entered an order delaying the proceeding, according to docket entries as of this morning. (May 5 update: The May 8 hearing has been rescheduled for May 18.)
Last night’s OneX call, according to information provided by the source, was conducted by “Allen” (or Alan).
“First and foremost, Andy has some personal problems that he has to deal with, so he will not be with us for a few days,” Allen said, according to information from the source.
Whether Bowdoin’s OneX “team” is aware that federal prosecutors have described the “program” as a scam is unclear. What is clear, according to filings by the government, is that Bowdoin has a long history of recruiting people into financial debacles and withholding information that would enable them to make informed investment decisions.
Prosecutors also say they’ve tied Bowdoin to the failed AdViewGlobal (AVG) autosurf, which came to life in the weeks and months after the U.S. Secret Service seized tens of millions of dollars from ASD-related bank accounts in August 2008 as part of a Ponzi probe. AVG vanished during the summer of 2009 — about a year after the ASD seizure — amid claims that someone had stolen money from the enterprise.
Even as AVG was tanking, members and critics were threatened with lawsuits for sharing news about the purported Uruguay-based entity.
While at ASD’s helm in 2007, Bowdoin explained that members were not getting paid because of script problems and because “Russian” hackers had stolen $1 million, according to records. Prosecutors said Bowdoin never filed a police report about the purported $1 million theft.
Prosecutors have argued that ASD collapsed before Bowdoin resurrected it and started operating it under a new name (ASDCashGenerator). Incoming members were not told they were funding payouts to members affected by the collapse. Over time, Bowdoin dialed up the criminality to keep ASD afloat in what was at least its second iteration, according to court filings.
In the 1990s — in at least three Alabama counties — Bowdoin was charged with securities-related crimes similar to his later illegal behavior at ASD, prosecutors now say. ASD members, however, were led to believe that the ASD patriarch’s only encounter with law enforcement had been a speeding ticket.
Bowdoin has been participating in OneX conference calls since at least October 2011, explaining in the earliest calls that we was seeking to fund his criminal defense to the ASD-related Ponzi charges through OneX and that OneX was brought to members and prospects by “God.”
The indictment against Bowdoin was made public in December 2010. It charges him with wire fraud, securities fraud and selling unregistered securities.
Details about OneX, including the identities of its operators, are exceptionally murky.
Although accused Ponzi schemer and AdSurfDaily President Andy Bowdoin appears not to be among the promoters of JSS Tripler (T2), T2 appears to be relying on a Bowdoin-like playbook in announcing a restart after having earlier suspended payouts.
The bizarre international spectacle created by JSS Tripler 2 (T2) is continuing — and gets stranger and more insidious by the day. The purported “opportunity,” which is trading on the name of a murky entity known as JSS Tripler and apparently cloning its Ponzi business model, has announced a restart after weeks of existing in a state of suspended animation purportedly caused by the freezing of a one-time T2 business partner’s AlertPay account.
T2 now claims it has regained access to the frozen AlertPay funds.
A week or so prior to T2’s purported restart, promoters of JSS Tripler, the purported “opportunity” upon which T2 based its name, became the subject of a securities investigation in Europe. Ponzi-forum hucksters — some of whom are promoting both T2 and JSS Tripler — scoffed at the CONSOB probe and flooded the MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi forum with “I got paid” posts.
It is axiomatic that all successful Ponzi schemes pay. That an “opportunity” pays is not evidence that no underlying criminality exists. The timing of T2’s restart — indeed, the restart occurred after the Italian regulator CONSOB announced that JSS Tripler promoters were being scrutinized — demonstrates that the serial hucksters driving T2 are turning a blind eye to the serious issues being raised in Europe.
The development is hardly unprecedented, given that core groups of scammers who populate the Ponzi boards and simultaneously maintain their own fraud sites thumbed their noses after law-enforcement moved against “opportunities” such as Pathway To Prosperity, Legisi, Gold Quest International, Imperia Invest IBC and others, including AdSurfDaily.
Like its namesake JSS Tripler, T2 advertises a return rate of 2 percent a day, twice that of ASD. In 2008, the U.S. Secret Service called ASD an international Ponzi scheme. Tens of millions of dollars were seized from bank accounts, and ASD operator Andy Bowdoin later was arrested on charges of wire fraud, securities fraud and selling unregistered securities.
At least $110 million found its way into ASD or related coffers, prosecutors said. Several million dollars were moved into Canada just prior to the seizure of ASD-related assets in August 2008, according to court filings.
In early 2007, according to prosecutors, ASD suffered a Ponzi collapse that in part was blamed on “Russian” hackers. Bowdoin claimed the hackers stole $1 million, but he never filed a police report.
Like T2 did between at least December 2011 and February of this year, ASD existed in a state of suspended animation for months in 2007. Bowdoin eventually restarted the “opportunity” under a different name and different website — ASDCashGenerator, as opposed to AdSurfDaily — and began the process of picking pockets anew, federal prosecutors said.
Unlike ASD, T2 did not claim its payout problems were caused by Russian hackers. Instead, the “opportunity” claimed a onetime business partner known as “Chris,” purportedly living in England, was to blame.
Like ASD, however, T2 claimed it was changing names, morphing from JSS Tripler 2 to T2MoneyKlub. The name change was explained to be part of an overall restart plan in which T2 would create revenue streams by building prefabricated websites and offering them for sale at a tremendous profit. The plan, which appeared to be exceptionally forward-looking while making preposterous assumptions, presented fallacies of logic such as these:
That T2, operating with an in-house skeleton crew and volunteer members, no declared base of operations and no compliance arm despite reaching into dozens of countries each with a unique set of laws, could at once be a web-service provider while managing a “program” that promised a return rate of 2 percent a day or 730 percent a year on top of recruitment-commission payments.
That web-service customers would pay a premium for sites built by a murky entity whose operators simultaneously were offering investors returns that would make Bernard Madoff blush.
That the fees generated by the sale of websites at a future point uncertain somehow could sustain a scheme that promised to pay out twice as much as ASD, whose operator already was under indictment on Ponzi-related charges and had advertised the same sort of payment schemes.
That there would be any reason at all for T2 to continue to offer an investment program that advertised a ludicrous return if its purported sale of websites could result in handsome, self-sustaining profits for the web-service venture. (Longtime PP Blog readers will recall that the AdViewGlobal (AVG) autosurf claimed at one time that it, too, was morphing into a company that would offer web services as a means of propping up an initial investment scheme. AVG, like ASD, promised to pay out half of what T2 claims. AVG disappeared in June 2009, only weeks after its morphing announcement.)
Also like ASD, T2 preemptively denied it was a Ponzi scheme, despite an absurd confluence of payment schemes in which T2 claimed an ability to pay an annualized return of 730 percent on top of recruitment commissions.
As previously noted, T2’s advertised return rate was double that of ASD, which prosecutors said had no meaningful revenue streams beyond payments by members. Those payments simply were recycled and returned to other ASD members in the form of classic Ponzi payouts.
Even though T2 — like ASD — purported to be changing its name, the name change appears to have hit a snag. T2 initially announced it would emerge as T2MoneyKlub on Feb. 1. That didn’t happen, according to Ponzi-forum chatter, because T2 did not have an AlertPay account in its new name.
T2, according to chatter, then defaulted back to its original name, a circumstance that apparently means the purported “opportunity” can both receive and send money, shelve its new name for the time being and reposition itself under its “old” name to reach into the pockets of new investors.
“Dave,” the purported operator of T2, according to Ponzi-forum chatter, once was a member of JSS Tripler, one of the entities referenced in the CONSOB action. It appears as though “Dave” was unmoved by the CONSOB action, so much so that he restarted JSS Tripler 2 even though claims about namesake JSS Tripler are under scrutiny and the already-radioactive name easily could become even more radioactive in the weeks ahead.
T2 payouts will come from “AlertPay, SolidTrustPay and LibertyReserve,” Dave announced on the MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi forum, posting as “Peakr8.” All three of the named processors have reputation for being friendly to fraud schemes. Both AlertPay and SolidTrustPay are referenced in court files in the ASD Ponzi case.
MoneyMakerGroup member “jieroz” quickly fired up an “I got paid” post for T2 today, saying the $25 payment had come from AlertPay.
“Congrats, that was fast … As usual . . .” strosdegoz blathered.
A poster purportedly from India and using the handle “hemsagar” also joined in the cheers.
“WTG! WTG!” he exclaimed in approval.
A link under the approving post of “hemsagar” led to a “benefactor” promotion in which he claims he’ll pay people to join T2 by sending them money through AlertPay.
Amid the cheerleading in the MoneyMakerGroup T2 thread, “Dave,” posting as “Peakr8,” announced he was taking a trip to “Cambodia.” This trip apparently follows on the heels of a trip “Dave” purportedly had taken earlier from England to Thailand during a period in which T2 was not paying members.
“Dave” conceded that T2’s restart had resulted in problems at T2’s in-house cheerleading forum.
“I know there are bugs, but we will stamp on em one by one when I get back from Cambodia,” Dave posted on MoneyMakerGroup as “Peakr8.”
Below that post, another post from “hemsagar” appears. Although his brief MoneyMakerGroup bio at the left of the post claims he is from India, his post about the bugs in the T2 forum makes this claim:
“Its back up here in the Ukraine.”
Whether “hemsagar” is a citizen of India now living in Ukraine is unclear.
Serial huckster “strosdegoz” later proclaimed “we need to pump up” the T2 forum and “also . . . every place else.
“I have to do my dozens of forums too,” strosdegoz acknowledged.
Regulators have warned the public repeatedly that scams involving hundreds of millions of dollars are spreading virally on the Internet through forums and social-media sites. Pathway to Prosperity, which was pushed on the Ponzi forums, eventually made its way to 120 countries, according to court filings.
The scheme had a take of more than $70 million and created at least 40,000 victims, according to court filings.
ASD may have created a similar number of victims, according to court filings. Legisi and Imperia Invest IBC also created victims by the thousands, investigators said.
Included in the Imperia victims’ count were thousands of people with hearing impairments, investigators said.
This 2008 ad for AdSurfDaily features an image of Hank Needham and continues to appear online. Last month, an old ASD Cash Generator affiliate link within the ad began to resolve to a page for an opportunity known as Ad Sales Daily International. Today, however, the link is resolving to a page that returns a server error. The reason why was not immediately clear. In a video released last month, Needham identified himself as a principal of Club Asteria. The video was released after Club Asteria, which trades on the name of the World Bank, acknowledged that its PayPal account had been frozen and claimed that it had suspended payouts to members. Club Asteria blamed the developments on members. But some Club Asteria members, including "Ken Russo," have claimed that they continue to be paid by Club Asteria through AlertPay, a Canadian payment processor. "Ken Russo" posts as "DRdave" on the TalkGold Ponzi forum. Talk Gold, which is known for helping HYIPs and other "programs" that promise or suggest preposterous weekly or even daily payouts to members achieve virality on the Internet, moved ClubAsteria to its scam folder last week. The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) said in July 2010 that "HYIPs are old-fashioned Ponzi schemes dressed up for a Web 2.0 world." Some "programs" have tried to distance themselves from the term "HYIP" by declaring themselves "revenue-sharing" programs or using other language tweaks in their offers. Some Club Asteria members have claimed that the firm's program paid out up to 520 percent a year — while preemptively denying Club Asteria was an HYIP or Ponzi scheme and describing it as a revenue-sharing program. Other members described Club Asteria as a "passive" program that provided a weekly return on investment and an income of more than $20,000 a year if members paid only $19.95 a month.
BULLETIN:(UPDATED 10:16 A.M. EDT (AUG. 22, U.S.A.) As the PP Blog first reported on July 12, the ASDCashGenerator.com domain once controlled by accused Ponzi schemer Andy Bowdoin had returned online and was promoting a mysterious opportunity known as “Ad Sales Daily International.”
But the ASDCashGenerator website now is throwing a server error and returning this message: “The server encountered an unexpected condition which prevented it from fulfilling the request. The script had an error or it did not produce any output . . .”
In July, the PP Blog observed that the ASDCashGenerator domain had become operational again after clicking on a link from a 2008 ASD affiliate promotion that featured a photograph of Hank Needham. After his days in 2008 as an ASD pitchman and lead generator, Needham emerged as a principal in Club Asteria.
Club Asteria, which trades on the name of the World Bank and targets its offer to the world’s poor, announced weeks ago that its PayPal account had been frozen and that it had suspended payouts to members amid a serious cash crunch. The firm blamed the developments on members.
Claims about Club Asteria are under investigation by Italian regulators.
Some Club Asteria promoters claimed Club Asteria was a “passive” investment program that paid a return of up to 10 percent a week. The news section of the firm’s website has not been updated since July 21. The last Club Asteria news update occurred nine days after the PP Blog reported that the old ASD Cash Generator URL associated with Needham was sending visitors to the purported Ad Sales Daily International opportunity, which appears to have been an upstart that did not fully launch.
Precisely when the old ASD Cash Generator domain became operational again is unclear. The domain, however, appears to have directed all old ASD affiliate links to the purported Ad Sales Daily International opportunity, which had its own logo.
The PP Blog observed the server error on the ASDCashGenerator site today after it again clicked on the old ASDCashGenerator affiliate link in the 2008 ASD promotion that featured Needham’s photograph. On July 12, the same affiliate link returned a pitch page for the mysterious Ad Sales Daily International program.
Federal prosecutors declined to comment in July on the curious return of the ASDCashGenerator website and the reactivation of the ASDCashGenerator domain name, which previously had been associated with Bowdoin and the alleged ASD Ponzi scheme. The site had been reregistered in the name of Barbara Cruz.
Cruz was associated in 2009 with an ASD cheerleading site known as ASD2Day that made confusing claims about the then-Bowdoin controlled ASDCashGenerator site, including a claim that ASD could not be a Ponzi scheme because the script employed by ASD could not be programmed to permit a Ponzi scheme to occur. The ASD2Day site also asserted 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, who presided over the civil-forfeiture cases involving Bowdoin and ASD Cash Generator and now is presiding over the criminal case against Bowdoin after he was arrested for wire fraud and other crimes in December 2010, was under no such deadline. Although a deadline did exist at the time, it was not one that applied to Collyer.
Rather, it was a deadline imposed by Collyer on Bowdoin to file pleadings in one of the ASD civil-cases or face the forfeiture of more than $65.8 million seized by the U.S. Secret Service in August 2008. After not having heard from Bowdoin for more than two months, Collyer issued the order to Bowdoin in July 2009. Bowdoin then asked for a series of delays to comply with the order, saying he was in negotiations with federal prosecutors.
Collyer ultimately gave Bowdoin until Sept. 14, 2009, to comply with the order. Bowdoin ultimately complied, apparently after his negotiations with prosecutors had broken down.
Little is known about the purported Ad Sales Daily International “opportunity” that, at least for weeks, was accessible through Bowdoin’s old ASDCashGenerator website that had been reregistered in the name of Cruz. The ASD2Day website, which also had a Cruz tie and promoted Ad Sales Daily International, now is displaying a page that beams advertisements.
The domain registration for ASD2Day appears to have expired Aug. 19. AdSalesDailyInternational appears not to have a domain registered in its own name.
Today’s strange developments follow on the heels of a bizarre bid by Bowdoin to raise $500,000 to pay for his criminal defense through a series of “blast” emails to the very individuals he is accused of defrauding: ASD members.
Bowdoin disses Collyer in a fundraising video released July 26 — without mentioning Collyer by name.
ASD is known to have ties to so-called “sovereign citizens.”
This old ad for AdSurfDaily features an image of Hank Needham, the purported owner of Club Asteria. An ASD affiliate link in the ad summons ASD’s old ASDCashGenerator.com URL, which went dormant after the federal raid on ASD’s Florida headquarters in August 2008. In recent hours, however, the old ASDCashGenerator URL began to resolve to an apparent new business opportunity known as Ad Sales Daily International. Needham’s one-time tie to ASD leads to questions about whether Virginia-based Club Asteria, through Needham or ASD downline members, could have benefited from ASD cash prior to the federal seizure of tens of millions of dollars from the personal bank accounts of ASD President Andy Bowdoin nearly three years ago. The Club-Asteria domain name was registered in June 2009, the same month an autosurf with ASD connections known as AdViewGlobal collapsed. Club Asteria’s domain now is registered behind a proxy, but once was registered to Needham, according to web records.
BULLETIN: (UPDATED 9:36 P.M. EDT (U.S.A.) A website identified in a 2008 forfeiture complaint as the site of a major financial crime allegedly engineered by AdSurfDaily President Andy Bowdoin and unidentified co-conspirators is active again and appears to be redirecting traffic to an entity named “Ad Sales Daily International” (ASDI) and a second entity known as ASD2Day.
“Make $10 per direct referral & $5 for every 2nd level indirect!” the site exclaims. “Recieve (sic) $2000 Account Initiation Credits! Hurry, while we are in pre-launch.”
A spokesman for U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr. in the District of Columbia declined to comment on the development, saying that ASD is part of an active investigation.
The ASDI site is accessible through an affiliate link to Bowdoin’s old ASDCashGenerator.com site, which appears to have been re-registered in the name of Barbara Cruz, whose name previously has appeared in the context of ASD. The PP Blog accessed the ASDI site by clicking on an old ASDCashGenerator affiliate link . The link was within an ASD ad from 2008 that featured an image of Club Asteria’s purported owner Hank Needham.
The ASD ad with Needham’s image positioned ASD as a “Perfectly Credible Business” and included a contact email address that used the characters “ptigold.” The ASD ad, however, does not load Needham’s name as an ASDI affiliate when the link is clicked. Instead, it loads the name of another individual. The reason was not immediately clear.
This page for ASDI, an apparent upstart, is accessible when a link is clicked in an old ad for Andy Bowdoin's ASD Cash Generator program. The old ASD ad features a photo of Hank Needham, the purported owner of Club Asteria, but the ad does not load Needham's name as an ASDI affiliate when the link is clicked. Instead, the ad loads the name of another person. The reason was not immediately clear. Bowdoin is under federal indictment for wire fraud, securities fraud and selling unregistered securities. Questions have been raised about whether Club Asteria also was selling unregistered securities as part of a purported "passive" investment program.
A separate link within the ad with Needham’s image forwards to a page that displays pornography ads.
All or part of the old ASDCashGenerator site appears to be redirecting to the domain name of ASD2Day.com. In 2009, the ASD2Day site was registered with Cruz listed as the contact person at an address in Florida that state investigators had tied to a major insurance scam. Although Cruz now is listed as the registrant of the ASDCashGenerator site, the ASD2Day site is registered in the name of another individual.
In October 2009, the PP Blog published a story about the ASD2Day site, which was making odd claims about the state of the ASD litigation a year after the federal seizure of Bowdoin’s assets and assets linked to Golden Panda Ad Builder, an autosurf implicated by the U.S. Secret Service in the ASD probe.
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. It also made a puzzling claim 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.” (Also see this story and comments thread.)
Collyer was on no such deadline. In January 2010, Collyer issued a forfeiture order that awarded $65.8 million seized from Bowdoin’s bank accounts to the U.S. government, which is using the seized money to compensate victims of ASD. In July 2009, Collyer issued a forfeiture order for more than $14 million linked to Golden Panda, ASD’s one-time purported “Chinese” option.
The ASD ad that featured Needham’s image also made a veiled reference to Golden Panda.
A section of the ad read, “OPENING IN CHINA[:] July 2008.”
Undercover agents from a Secret Service/IRS task force began to investigate ASD and Golden Panda on July 3, 2008, according to court filings. The court process of seizing cash linked to both entities began on Aug. 1, 2008, with the issuance of seizure warrants.
It appears to be the case that all old ASD Cash Generator affiliate links, including the links in the ad that featured Needham’s photograph, now load the new ASDI webpage at the old ASD Cash Generator URL.
Claims made about Club Asteria are under investigation by Italian authorities. Club Asteria first slashed payouts to members then reportedly suspended them for 60 days. The firm also reportedly has had its PayPal account frozen.
Like ASD, Club Asteria was promoted on Ponzi scheme forums such as TalkGold and MoneyMakerGroup.
In a video dated July 8, a Club Asteria executive claimed the firm had “a philanthropic foundation both domestically and internationally where we help causes all over the world.”
Among the claims in the video, which appeared online after Club Asteria reportedly suspended payouts, was this one:
“We donate cows and pigs and water buffaloes and camels to help families all over the world.”
Virginia-based Club Asteria trades on the name of the World Bank. Members said payments came from an entity known as Asteria Holdings Limited (Hong Kong) — before the payments stopped.
One of Club Asteria’s principal concerns, according to a new video, is children.
Investigators long have fretted that some promoters of online business “opportunities” simply race from fraud scheme to fraud scheme, collecting commissions for introducing others to “programs” that prove to be scams.
Like the now-collapsed AdViewGlobal (AVG) autosurf, Club Asteria has blamed its reported problems on members. AVG had promoters and members in common with Bowdoin’s ASD, which the Secret Service described as a massive international Ponzi scheme.
Among other things, AVG plucked the heartstrings of members by telling them that the company was interested in saving the rain forest.
The Justice Department has opened a probe into the political donations of R. Allen Stanford, according to the Miami Herald.
Stanford is jailed in Texas amid allegations he presided over a $7 billion Ponzi scheme on the Caribbean island nation of Antigua.
Among the first names to surface were the names of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) and its chairman, Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas. The names of Democratic politicians also have surfaced, according to the newspaper.
NRCC is the organization to which AdSurfDaily President Andy Bowdoin — himself implicated in a Ponzi scheme by the Justice Department — donated money in 2007 and 2008 as the purported head of two companies and received the Congressional “Medal of Distinction.”
Despite its important-sounding name, the medal is part of an NRCC marketing plan and signifies only an individual’s ability to write a check for what amounts to the purchase of banquet tickets.
In a story apt to embarrass Sessions and others, the Miami newspaper reported yesterday that, on Feb. 17, the date Stanford was indicted, Sessions sent an email to Stanford.
“I love you and believe in you,” the newspaper quoted Sessions as writing. “If you want my ear/voice — e-mail.”
Today the newspaper reported that Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., traveled to Venezuela in 2006 after Stanford asked him to carry a message to President Hugo Chávez.
Stanford was concerned that a former employee in Venezuela who had been accused of fraud was questioning whether Stanford’s operation itself was a fraud, the newspaper reported. A year after Meeks carried the message to Chavez, the Stanford employee was indicted by Venezuelan prosecutors and charged with swindling money.
The story raises questions about whether Meeks’ purported intercession with Chavez might have helped Stanford delay the inevitable exposure of the alleged Ponzi scheme and whether he was relying on politicians to run interference for him prior to the exposure of the scheme.
Stanford’s empire, which prosecutors and regulators said was a Ponzi scheme propped up by Certificates of Deposit that paid above-market rates and lured investors into unsafe, uninsured offshore banking instruments, collapsed less than two months after the Bernard Madoff Ponzi collapsed in December 2008.
Meeks traveled to Venezuela in April 2006, according to the newspaper.
The extent of prosecutors’ interest in linking Ponzi money to politics and determining if corrupt money influenced votes and policy is unclear. At a minimum, however, prosecutors are known to have peeled back layers of the onion in Florida.
In an announcement dripping with the word “co-conspirators” last month, Acting U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Sloman of the Southern District of Florida, the FBI and the IRS said that money from disbarred Florida attorney Scott Rothstein’s alleged Ponzi scheme was “used to make contributions to federal, state, and local political candidates.”
In the Rothstein case, investigators are seeking to determine if the scheme existed in part as a means to evade campaign-finance laws. Rothstein Ponzi money also was used “to provide gratuities to high ranking members of police agencies,” officials said.
In August 2008, prosecutors said that ASD’s Bowdoin had donated money to NRCC and that ASD members claimed the “Medal of Distinction” Bowdoin received for the donations was an important award from the White House.
Federal Election Commission (FEC) records show that Bowdoin gave money to NRCC and claimed to be the owner of two companies: AdSurfDaily and AdSalesDaily.
On Feb. 27, 2007, the Federal Election Commission recorded a $250 donation from “Mr. T. Bowdoin†in the name of “AdSalesDaily Inc.†The FEC recorded another $250 donation from “Mr. T. Bowdoin†in the name of “AdSalesDaily Inc.†on March 27, 2007.
Both 2007 donations were targeted to NRCC and used an address — 13 S. Calhoun Street, Quincy, FL 32351 — federal prosecutors later said was bogus.
Although the donations listed Bowdoin as the “owner†of Florida-based AdSalesDaily Inc., the corporation appears not to have been registered in Florida. Records in Georgia list “Ad Sales Daily, Inc.†as a corporation that initially was registered in Georgia May 8, 2007, more than two months after Bowdoin identified himself as the owner in federal campaign records.
The Georgia entity does not list Bowdoin as an owner, officer or filer for the corporation — or as a person involved in any capacity. Rather, “Ad Sales Daily, Inc.†is listed as a Delaware foreign corporation, with J. Heardy Myers listed as the corporate filer and Myers (of Marietta, Ga.) and Otis Whitcomb (also of Marietta) listed as officers.
AdSalesDaily Inc. was incorporated in Delaware on March 22, 2007, about 24 days after Bowdoin made his initial NRCC donation, according to filings.
FEC records show that Bowdoin — under the name of “Mr. T. Andy Bowdoin, Jr†and “AdSurfDaily Inc. and AdSurfsDaily Inc.” (the second “s†is an apparent typo) — gave $5,000 to NRCC in 2008. Two donations of $2,500 were recorded — one on June 6, 2008, and another on July 7, 2008.
Even as the FEC was recording the donation on July 7, undercover agents from an IRS/Secret Service task force based in Florida were beginning to scrutinize ASD.
Bowdoin has a tie to a bank in Antigua, although it is unclear whether the tie is to a bank controlled by Stanford because Bowdoin has not identified the bank. Prosecutors, however, said ASD had $1 million on deposit in Antigua in an account under a different name.
Records suggest that the alleged Bowdoin Ponzi scheme might have operated under as many as four names dating back to early 2006: DailyProSurf, AdSurfDaily, AdSalesDaily and ASDCashGenerator.
Litigation surrounding tens of millions of dollars seized from ASD in August 2008 has turned into Theater of the Absurd, with dozens of pro-se litigants attempting to enter the legal skirmish between the Justice Department and Bowdoin.
One of the great mysteries of the case is why Bowdoin suddenly started donating money to NRCC in 2007 — during a time in which the company was not making payments to members and said it needed to issue a stock offering in which shares would be sold for $10,000 to raise funds.
