UPDATED 5:44 P.M. EDT (U.S.A.) A Mod at an AdViewGlobal forum set up by Mods and members of AdSurfDaily has warned AVG members not to refer to their purchases as “investments.”
Rather, the Mod said, AVG members purchase “advertising” and are not “investing” or “investors.”
Posts that used the terminology of investments would be deleted, the Mod warned.
AVG members currently are stressing a so-called “80-20” strategy as a means of keeping the program viable for the long-term.
Analysts, however, point out that the “80-20” plans — taking out 20 percent in cash and letting 80 percent ride with the companies — are just another way to keep cash within ready reach of autosurf Ponzi schemes to sustain the deception.
There is not a single, documented case in the history of autosurf prosecutions in which the use of the word “advertising” to describe what the government views as an “investment” program involving the sale of unregistered securities has succeeded as a means of fending off a prosecution.
In other words, the government has made it plain that you can’t avoid prosecution by using other terminology to describe an investment program.
Regardless, many surf companies continue to insist that the use of the word “advertising” as a replacment for “investing” somehow insulates surfs from prosecution.
Prosecutors cited the wink-nod nature of autosurfs — including bids to avoid the word “investment” — in the August forfeiture complaint against ASD.
The complaint details an instance in which an ASD member insisted to an undercover agent from an IRS/Secret Service task force that bad things could happen if people joined ASD and started calling it an investment.
“The [undercover agent] asked her about investing with ASD,” prosecutors said of the ASD member. “She immediately said, ‘Don’t call it investing, you know what I mean, we can get in trouble if we say that, we have to be careful.’”
Prosecutors also made a veiled reference to “80-20” pitches in the August ASD complaint, again citing an undercover agent’s contact with an ASD member.
“He said the best way to make money in the system is to keep putting your money back into the system as it accumulates,” prosecutors said of the ASD member’s pitch to the undercover agent.
Some of the Mods and members of the Pro-ASD Surf’s Up forum set up the AVG forum after ASD gave the Surf’s Up forum its official endorsement after a federal judge ruled in November that ASD had not demonstrated it was a legal business and not a Ponzi scheme.
Prelaunch buzz for AVG started shortly thereafter. On December 19, prosecutors filed a second forfeiture complaint against assets tied to ASD. The complaint did not mention AVG by name, but it outlined allegations against George Harris, the stepson of ASD President Andy Bowdoin.
Harris is a trustee for the AVG association. AVG’s former chief executive officer — Gary Talbert — is a former ASD executive. On March 20, AVG announced Talbert’s resignation in an unsigned note to members. On March 23, AVG announced its bank account had been suspended.
On April 24, prosecutors announced that Bowdoin — on an unrevealed date — had signed a proffer letter and acknowledged to law enforcement officials that the material allegations against ASD all were true.
Proffer letters sometimes are used when prosecutors believe the one who proffers can aid law enforcement in an investigation.
AdViewGlobal (AVG), an autosurf with close ties to AdSurfDaily, is getting more insidious by the hour.
An AVG forum set up by some of the Mods and members of ASD became a den of infighting among AVG members yesterday. One poster started a thread begging the Mods to intervene, which is to say the poster wanted the Mods to delete reasonable questions and criticism from other members about AVG’s operations.
The Mods complied. The thread had been titled “Moderators…please moderate this private forum!!”
At issue were slashed AVG payout rates after it had run a mind-boggling, 200-percent, matching bonus program for weeks — for both new members and their sponsors. AVG’s published payout rate yesterday was “only 0.056%,” according to posters.
Some AVG members said they expected much higher payout rates. The mere fact that autosurfs promise or suggest a return, however, is problematic. Regulators view the surfs as sellers of unregistered securities disguised as advertising programs.
The return is one of the central issues in the case against ASD — and has been the central issue in all previous autosurf prosecutions, including the CEP Ponzi scheme. The government long has been wise to the wink-nod nature of the business model and attempts by operators and promoters to sanitize it by drafting participants into a verbal conspiracy and scolding people for not using precise language to sustain the deception.
ASD President Andy Bowdoin said he went through $800,000 in his bid to claim tens of millions of dollars seized by the government last August. Now, months later, Bowdoin still is facing litigation by the government on three fronts, and a racketeering lawsuit filed by ASD members seeking class-action status.
Attempts to force autosurf participants to use specific phrasing — such as insisting the word “advertsing” be used instead of “investing” — are commonplace. The attempts alone show consciousness of guilt. The wink-nod nature further is exposed through deletions of posts that don’t adhere to the company line.
Deletions often are defended as an attempt to keep the company discussions “positive.” Regardless, it’s easy to view them as bids to force everybody to lie in the name of the company, so the deception can continue. Virtually all autosurfs operate as Ponzi schemes.
Also at issue at the AVG forum yesterday was a pattern of confusing information from the company.
AVG announced the sudden resignation of Chief Executive Officer Gary Talbert March 20; Talbert is a former ASD executive. On March 23, the surf announced its bank account had been suspended. Problems with eWalletPlus.com, a money-exchanger, followed. One AVG member now says the company was using a U.S. bank, despite promoting itself as an “offshore” opportunity.
Banking problems led to the demise of ASD.
In late March, Shad Foss, an autosurf promoter against whom the receiver in the CEP Ponzi scheme case sought to claw back ill-gotten gains, sent an email to promote AVG. The email advised prospects that $5,000 in AVG would turn into $15,000 “instantly!”
ASD once advertised that it accepted CEP Trust, the failed payment processor run by the operators of the CEP Ponzi scheme.
On Tuesday, two payment processors used by AVG — SolidTrustPay of Canada and StrictPay of Panama — were offline for hours. Both surfs simultaneously were experiencing the same problem: the inability to load secure pages. Why the problem was occurring is unclear.
What is clear is that such disruptions demonstrate just how vulnerable surfs are to unexpected events. AVG is behaving like an operation starved for cash. It is having management, banking and payment-processing problems simultaneously — while still running bonus promotions.
UPDATED 12:30 P.M. EDT (U.S.A.) eWalletPlus, a money-exchanger associated with a surfing company that has close ties to AdSurfDaily, no longer is taking new registrations, according to its website. The site does not explain why.
At the same time, AdViewGlobal (AVG) — the firm with close ASD ties — sent members a newsletter encouraging them to use the so-called “80/20 Rule,” a sign the company may be desperate to keep money in the system.
AVG’s newsletter led with the 80/20 pitch, despite all of the news it could have led with. AVG again did not fully explain its banking problems or an apparent inability to process some or all ACH transactions. The newsletter was said to have originated in Phoenix, the purported home of eWalletPlus.
“One of the strategies to have your advertising with AVGA pay for itself besides watching the 24 required sites is to use the 80/20 rule,” AVG said in its newsletter. “Simply stated you use 80% of your daily earnings to purchase[] additional page impressions and cash out 20%.
“This will create additional income by creating more probabilities of sales because of increase[d] advertising of your site. And second by purchasing more page impressions every day this increases sales that directly affect your VIP.”
“VIP” is AVG’s term for what ASD called “rebates.”
“If you have any questions about the 80/20 rule your up line should be able to give you additional details,” AVG continued. “The AVGA business model is sound and will work to promote your business and help pay for the advertising bill.”
Just below the 80/20 pitch was an announcement that AVG’s 200-percent, matching-bonus program had been extended until April 10. The company has been promoting the 200-percent program, which applies to members and their sponsors, for weeks.
One promoter claimed a $5,000 purchase turned into $15,000 “instantly!” The promoter making the claim was Shad Foss, who has been linked to the CEP Ponzi scheme. ASD once advertised that it accepted payments from CEP Trust, the failed payment processor run by the operators of the CEP Ponzi scheme.
Although AVG used the newsletter to announce its “Future Is Very Bright,” it has never fully explained the March 20 departure of Gary Talbert, its chief executive officer and a former ASD executive.
On March 23, the company announced it had a banking problem, but did not fully explain what the problem was and how it was affecting operations. The March 23 annoucement blamed the problem on AVG members who’d sent too many bank wires in excess of $9,500.
AVG has a history of not identifying the corporate authors of specific communications to members. Some correspondence has been signed by the “AVG Management Team,” which has led to questions about who is running things and why no one has emerged as the public face of the company.
Topic: In their response to an Andy Bowdoin pleading, federal prosecutors yesterday pointedly referred to ASDÂ insiders as Bowdoin “associates” and “confederates.”
Is it a signal?
Topic: Shad Foss, whom the receiver in the CEP Ponzi scheme case views as a Ponzi promoter worthy of pursuing for clawbacks, sent an email in late March encouraging people to sign up for AdViewGlobal (AVG).
AVG has been running a 200-percent, matching-bonus program, and has close ties to ASD. ASD once advertised that it used the services of CEP Trust, the failed payment processor run by the operators of the CEP Ponzi scheme.
Foss got some of the math wrong in his AVG pitch. Regardless, he managed to use exclamation points to end four consecutive sentences in his 200-percent promotion (emphasis added):
That means $500 turns into $1500 instantly!
$1000 turns into $3,000 instantly!
$2500 turns into $7,5000 instantly!
$5000 turns into $15,000 instantly!
AVG members now are expressing nervousness about trouble the company has been having with payout issues and getting banking and payment-processor issues fixed.
Some members have questioned whether a process involving a button that permits one AVG member to transfer money to another from within the AVG system might constitute money laundering or tax evasion. Members say it’s a means for upline sponsors to make sure members of their downlines don’t have to wait to have AVG purchases credited, but law enforcement could take a dim view of the system.
AVG members also are complaining about low rebate rates, as the surf firm continues to offer huge matching bonuses electronically — a way to collect large sums of cash without requiring people to be physically present to qualify for bonuses. ASD filled its coffers by offering matching bonuses to people who attended “rallies” in U.S. cities; AVG is not conducting rallies, but instead is offering rally-like bonuses electronically.
Topic: Noobing, a surf site that targeted people with hearing impairments, now has been given an official scam label by asamonitor. Noobing used a rebate model similar to ASD, then slashed the payout rate. When members then received only tiny rebates, they complained, claiming bait-and-switch. A Noobing employee said the company slashed rebates because of an unclear ruling in the ASD case.
Topic: Mods at the Pro-ASD Surf’s Up forum continue to champion Andy Bowdoin. Some of the Mods and members also are promoting AVG, but AVG members have been complaining that they aren’t getting satisfactory answers from the Mods or the company. Meanwhile, some Surf’s Up members are openly questioning the Mods’ undying devotion to Bowdoin.
One of the theories about ASD President Andy Bowdoin’s recent series of pro se legal filings in the August civil-forfeiture case is that he is trying to stave the filing of criminal charges by slowing the civil case to a crawl.
Could it be true? Sure. Bowdoin’s pro se pleadings, however, also could be a response to pressure applied by others.
Bowdoin, while still working with paid counsel in January, threw in the towel and submitted to the August forfeiture. He told the court that he did not intend to raise the forfeiture at a later time. Basically he ceded tens of millions of dollars to the government. Bowdoin did not tell the membership at large about his decision. He then vanished from the stage for weeks.
What happened during Bowdoin’s weeks of absence is not a matter of public record, but could be telling.
In late February, Bowdoin suddenly reemerged. He blamed his paid attorneys for poor lawyering, and then proceeded to act as his own attorney. Bowdoin says he now has rescinded his decision to submit to the forfeiture. His paid lawyers, who never withdrew from the case even as Bowdoin was filing pro se pleadings, now have asked the court to withdraw, saying their representation of Bowdoin had become unreasonably difficult. The court has not yet issued an order that permits the paid lawyers to leave the case.
The conventional wisdom that Bowdoin’s pro se reemergence was a bid to delay a criminal indictment could be true — but it could be that and more.
It’s not a stretch to think that some ASD members — perhaps particularly insiders and people who view Bowdoin as a person who owes them a pile of money — were unhappy about his decision to submit to the forfeiture and then keep the news of his decision to himself. Some of these people may view themselves as being at risk of indictment and see Bowdoin’s move as the move of a turncoat.
By pressuring Bowdoin to climb back on the horse, they could be trying to stave off indictments against themselves. There is no doubt that criminals were involved in ASD. What’s not known is just how much leverage criminals could apply to Bowdoin.
For the sake of discussion, let’s say ASD had 50,000 paying members. With an organization of that size, Bowdoin would know very little about the motivations of individual members — and the people who sponsored them into the program. One of the core risks of running an autosurf is not knowing who your neighbors are and how they are capable of behaving.
One piece of wishful thinking often shared by ASD members was that ASD was just one, big, happy family. This notion always struck us as fanciful. If ASD’s paid members were assembled in a 50,000-seat stadium, there is no reason to believe they wouldn’t reflect the best and worst of society — as is typical of large crowds, whether the sport is baseball, football or autosurfing.
Bowdoin is 74. There is a chance that he believes he has more things to fear than just what the government can do to him personally. It is possible that Bowdoin family members could be indicted, for instance. At the same time, it is possible that Bowdoin perceives a threat from some ASD members and has safety concerns.
Would you fear for your safety if you were the public face of a $100 million Ponzi scheme that collected money from all over the world — and you knew only a very small fraction of the people who were sending you all that money? Bowdoin has no real way of knowing if he’s doing business with thugs unknown, criminal gangs or even terrorists.
No one seems to know why Bowdoin hasn’t been served a lawsuit filed in January that alleges racketeering. If it’s a clerical snafu of some sort, it would have to be one that also is affecting the plaintiffs’ ability to serve Bowdoin’s two RICO co-defendants, attorney Robert Garner and Golden Panda Ad Builder President Clarence Busby.
With large sums of money involved, it’s not a stretch to believe that some people owed large sums would not be inclined to accept “rebates aren’t guaranteed” or “the evil government took the money” as excuses.
“Pay up” could be the policy in certain circles.
The conventional wisdom also has held that only traditional autosurf players and people new to Web commerce were players in ASD. That could be largely true, but not universally true. ASD was gaining a head of steam as the U.S. economy was going into steep decline. Legitimate securities brokers could have been using the company to generate cash to hide losses.
We’re not saying that occurred, mind you. At the same time, if legitimate brokers had been stealing from clients and knew those clients were due redemptions, they could have turned to ASD to generate cash flow. If such a group exists, it means clients of legitimate brokers also lost money in ASD — without their knowledge, as was the case with Bernard Madoff.
Some of the amounts reportedly directed at ASD were huge amounts for an ordinary autosurf player. It is possible that investment combines and criminal brokers were using ASD to stave off a Madoff-like day of reckoning.
You’ve likely noticed that AdViewGlobal, a surf with Bowdoin family ties and management in common with ASD, was promoting a 200-percent, matching-bonus program. It very much looks like a cynical bid to raise cash in volume to pay off ASD insiders and strategic shills. ASD did the same thing when it morphed into ASD Cash Generator.
Bowdoin has engaged in behavior that suggests he’ll do almost anything for cash. In the fall, after a judge ruled ASD hadn’t demonstrated it was a legal enterprise, Bowdoin pitched VOIP service to members.
Recently he appeared in a video for Paperless Access, which appears to be an upstart surf firm. Bowdoin told viewers they could use Paperless Access to recapture money seized by the government last year in the ASD probe.
There obviously is no arm’s-length distance between ASD and AVG, despite AVG’s tortured claims to the contrary. What’s less clear is the precise reason AVG exists.
One reason might be as a means to pay off debt racked up by ASD. Another reason might be because the people who are running it are monumentally stupid. It launched while an active criminal investigation and a RICO probe were under way, with Bowdoin and other ASD insiders, including Bowdoin family members and ASD executives, as likely targets.
AVG’s launch happened in full public view. Known ASD participants were pushing it. Suggestions were made that ASD accounts might get ported over to AVG. Bowdoin might as well have taken out an ad in the New York Times to announce he had decided to commit himself to a life of crime.
So much about ASD boggles the mind — and yet so much is not known.
What is known is that tens of millions of dollars are involved. And it’s also known that large sums of money can make people do crazy things.
UPDATED 1:45 P.M. EDT (U.S.A.) Language federal prosecutors used in a December forfeiture complaint against assets tied to AdSurfDaily might help explain the emergence of AdViewGlobal (AVG), a surf firm with common management and close ties to ASD.
Meanwhile, court filings by ASD President Andy Bowdoin continue to electrify some ASD members, but Bowdoin’s once-considerable support base is diminishing in size rapidly. Evidence continues to mount that fewer and fewer people are buying what Bowdoin is selling in his various pro se legal pleadings.
We’ve written about this before. Today we’ll do so again because Bowdoin’s filings never add clarity. They add only clutter. Even so, Bowdoin’s few remaining champions at the Pro-ASD Surf’s up forum always can be relied upon to cloud the issues further.
But clutter by Bowdoin and other pro se litigants in the ASD civil-forfeiture case is delaying justice for rank-and-file ASD members. The case involving money and property seized by the government in August nearly was litigated to conclusion in January, when Bowdoin formally submitted to the forfeiture. The government was on the cusp of implementing an orderly process through which ASD’s assets would be liquidated to create a restitution pool.
All of that is on hold now because of Bowdoin’s emergence in February as a pro se litigant.
Points To Ponder
A second forfeiture case filed in December against assets tied to ASD is proceeding on a separate track — one that appears to have been designed by prosecutors as leverage to make ASD members as “whole” as possible. Prosecutors asserted that some of Bowdoin’s family members, including his wife and stepson, had used ASD money to fuel extravagant spending, including the wholesale retirement of a $157,216 mortgage on the home of George Harris, Bowdoin’s stepson.
George Harris is listed as a trustee for AVG. Gary Talbert, a former ASD executive, was chief executive officer of AVG before resigning suddenly last month. The resignation was announced after Bowdoin acknowledged in a pro se pleading that ASD was operating illegally when agents seized tens of millions of dollars in August.
Nearly $30,000 also was used to buy a car for George Harris and his wife, Judy Harris. About $33,000 was used to buy a car for an ASD employee, and Bowdoin himself parked a Lincoln valued at nearly $50,000 in his driveway, prosecutors said.
The purchase of the Lincoln was telling. Bowdoin had an appetite for expensive cars when he was charged in Alabama in the 1990s with 89 separate counts of securities fraud, according to his victims.
Bowdoin never told ASD members about the Alabama fraud charges when he was busy collecting money from them. Nor did he tell his Alabama victims of his newfound ASD wealth. The money used to purchase the Lincoln would have been more than enough for Bowdoin to retire the remaining restitution due Alabama victims from more than a decade ago.
He chose the Lincoln instead.
In the end, though, it’s probably a good thing that Bowdoin chose the Lincoln over his Alabama victims. The government views ASD’s assets as the proceeds of an illegal enterprise. In theory, the government could claw back any ASD money sent to the victims, who’d then hold the unenviable distinction of having been ripped off by Bowdoin twice.
Contemplating that outcome is just plain sad — but there’s more. What’s left could explain the formation of AdViewGlobal and how close Bowdoin associates could be using it to line their pockets while Bowdoin files one pro se pleading after another in the ASD case.
The ASD/AVG Tie
Prosecutors say Bowdoin did not file a police report when more than $1 million went missing from ASD at the purported hands of “Russian” hackers. Nor did Bowdoin file a police report when other money went missing from ASD.
What Bowdoin did, according to prosecutors, was engage attorney Robert Garner to figure new and better ways to steal from ASD members. This led to the production of a video that sanitized the ASD business model. Before long, ASD couldn’t even get all of the cash it was collecting to the bank.
Those Pesky Details
Certain details from the December forfeiture complaint haven’t gotten much play on Blogs and forums. They may prove to be critical, however, because they may explain how AdViewGlobal (AVG) came into being.
Prelaunch promotions for AVG began to appear online during the second week of December. Early promotions suggested ASD members would be able to port their ASD earnings/expenditures to AVG. The government filed the second forfeiture complaint Dec. 19, just as AVG buzz was building.
Included in the December complaint were assertions that ASD had played the rebuilding card before, telling members that a renamed and reconstituted version of ASD would emerge because cash-flow problems had crippled the original enterprise. The renamed version would be called the ASD “Cash Generator.”
Screen shot of Page 21 from December forfeiture complaint against assets tied to ASD. Andy Bowdoin, while ASD was in failure mode, explains a process by which ASD accounts would be transferred to ASD "Cash Generator. Early promotions for AdViewGlobal (AVG), a surf with close ASD ties, suggested account balances from ASD Cash Generator might be ported to AVG.
Prosecutors very well may have a recording and/or a transcript of an ASD Cash Generator pitch given by Bowdoin because some quotations from the December complaint are attributed directly to Bowdoin andnotes from a transcriptionist appear to be contained within a document prosecutors are using. The information sounds very much like the early pitches for AVG, with references to transferring account balances from one entity to the other.
AVG may be nothing more than ASD history repeating itself in a different form, with insiders receiving benefits hidden from rank-and-file members.
Here is what prosecutors said in the December complaint (italics added to emphasize quotations from Bowdoin and bold added to emphasize what appears to be notes from a transcriptionist):
“To avoid regulatory scrutiny when ASD’s first iteration collapsed, Mr. Bowdoin explained that account balances of the prior operation would be transferred to the new operation, allowing the old program’s participants to share in the new revenue stream as new funds came into the new operation.
“In discussing the transferring of such account balances, Mr. Bowdoin explained:
‘You have heard us talk about not overwhelming the system by not transferring all of the ad packages from the old site at one time. If we did that it would never get off the ground. To avoid that from happening, we must transfer the balances in increments.
‘Here is the plan our Accountant suggested. Based on the sales that we now have, transfer over 150,000 ad packages which will be about 5%. Based on $3,000 per day in sales we can pay 1%. 50% of $3,000 is $1,500 which is 1% of the 150,000.
‘We have enough sales now to start at $3,000 per day for the first 5 days and the $1,500 on Sat. And [sic] Sun.
‘As our sales increase in increments of $3,000 per day we will transfer another 150,000 ad purchases.
‘In other words, when sales reach $6,000 per day we will transfer another 150,00 [sic] ad purchases [strike out “ad purchases”], when they reach $9,000 per day we will transfer over [strike out “over”] another 150,000. Then when they start expiring we will transfer more and we will continue this until we get all of the balances transferred.
‘All credits for surfing will be transferred. All pending cash outs will be paid from profits from the new cash generator site and then all cash balances on the old site will also be paid from profits. The time for paying pending cash outs and cash balances will be determined by Sales.’
“Mr. Bowdoin never told later participants with ASD that the funds they paid to ASD were being used to pay returns to participants with AdSurfDaily who failed to receive promised returns because one or more Russians had defrauded AdSurfDaily,” prosecutors said.
In essence, prosecutors are saying that ASD emerged as ASD “Cash Generator” because Andy Bowdoin owed participants a pile of money he couldn’t pay. He solved the problem by porting old obligations to the new company, but never told new members they were paying the freight for the original group of insiders and members who were not in the loop.
Bowdoin avoided getting sued by using this approach. He also avoided trouble from insiders to whom large sums were owed, in effect creating a new generation of victims so his original insiders could get paid.
Some of those insiders now appear to have become players in AVG — ASD history repeating itself in a different form.
The government is right about the ASD case. Its duty is to stop the “rebates aren’t guaranteed” madness before huge criminal combines begin to use it as a license to take money and keep it by hiding behind a disclaimer that gives them a license to steal.
UPDATED 11:48 A.M. EDT (U.S.A.) At least two websites associated with AdViewGlobal are down. A default Linux Test page is loading at adviewglobal.com and avglobalassociation.net. A page at adviewglobal.net is forwarding to the avglobalassociation.net domain and loading the same Linux Test page.
Why this is happening is unclear . . .
UPDATE 11:36 A.M. The default Linux Test pages did not load briefly, and the servers threw a general error. Linux pages then returned, only to be replaced by a “Failed To Connect” error.
UPDATE 11:50 A.M. The sites now are loading this message: “We are currently working on the AVGA server. Be back in a bit.”
We’re about to engage in some speculation on the AdSurfDaily case — and we’ll readily concede it’s exactly that: speculation. None of this should be taken as high truth or an assertion we are “right.” It should be taken as an exercise in critical reasoning.
This is a long post. Care to come along for a ride whose purpose is to explore possibilities?
The first thing you’ll need to do is suspend your disbelief and accept the premise that AdSurfDaily Inc. actually is capable of telling the truth — perhaps not the whole truth, but something that may amount to a convenient truth. This will be a leap for many of our readers, but if you want to accompany us on this ride you’ll have to willing to make this leap.
One of the reasons this requires a leap is because ASD President Andy Bowdoin’s words and actions strain credulity virtually across the board. After insisting for months ASD was perfectly legal, he now says it was illegal — but that ASD was denied “fair notice” of its illegal business practices.
At the moment, Bowdoin is leading yet another charge to have ASD members pummel the government with letters of support for a business he concedes is illegal. Bowdoin also encouraged members to contact talk-show host Glenn Beck.
Earlier he filed a petition for emergency relief that asked the government to return seized funds, saying the company couldn’t pay its rent or hosting bills, but didn’t mention ASD had more than $1 million parked offshore in Antigua. Only after prosecutors revealed the existence of the Antigua money did Bowdoin acknowledge it to members.
A few months after Bowdoin’s Antigua tie was exposed, the banking system on the Caribbean island nation was endangered with the exposure of the alleged Allen Stanford Ponzi scheme. The crisis rippled across the Caribbean and into Central and South America.
Back when Bowdoin still was saying ASD was legal, he demanded an evidentiary hearing to make the company’s case — and then took the 5th. Meanwhile, ASD’s fingerprints also are all over the AdViewGlobal autosurf, which recently announced its bank account had been suspended and yet extended a 200 percent, matching-bonus program — all while it was having trouble processing cash-out requests.
Bowdoin’s stepson is an AVG trustee. The company, which purported to be offshore, came to life after the ASD seizure. AVG employed former ASD employees and used the ASD webroom. A graphic showing AVG’s street address as the same street address ASD used appeared in the webroom. It was removed after Web reporters pointed it out. Incredibly, AVG insisted there were no ASD ties. Equally incredibly, the person making the announcement was a former ASD employee.
AVG claimed to be headquartered in Uruguay. Its servers resolved to Panama, one of the countries affected by the alleged Stanford Ponzi scheme.
Bowdoin recently appeared in a video — now taken offline — for Paperless Access, a new surf company. He said the company could help ASD members recapture money seized by the government. He did not identify the owners of Paperless Access. Nor did he explain how the company was legal and able to comply with securities laws — while not operating as a Ponzi scheme.
The Issue
Assertions have been made that the U.S. Secret Service mistakenly left behind “several piles” of undeposited cashier’s checks at ASD headquarters during the August raid last year. Upon recognizing this after the agents left, ASD dutifully notified the Secret Service about the checks. Over a period of days, the Secret Service was said to have accepted some of the checks after being notified by ASD, but not all of them.
Bowdoin’s Take
Our source for this claim is none other than Andy Bowdoin himself. Here is what he said during a conference call last summer (italics and bold emphasis added):
“Now, to show how inefficient they were in doing their search at the office, they overlooked several piles of cashier’s checks,” Bowdoin said of the Secret Service, according to a transcript of his remarks during an Aug. 12 conference call. ASD members circulated the transcript.
“There was one that was made out for several hundred thousand dollars. Federal agents were present at the bank, and one of our people turned them in and said, ‘Here, you overlooked these.’ They went ahead and made a deposit so that they could seize that money,” Bowdoin continued.
“The next day [employees] found a little over a million dollars in checks that [the Secret Service] had missed. And they took them to the Secret Service office in Tallahassee and gave that to them. Monday, back in the office, they found a few more checks at the office totaling about $40 thousand to $50 thousand. They took those to the Secret Service office in Tallahassee, and they said they didn’t want any more money. They said to send it back to the members.
“Now, why didn’t they send all the cashier’s checks back that they took, back to the members? Why didn’t they do that, if they were looking out for the people? If they had been concerned about the people, they would have. The government has done a great injustice to these people by taking those cashier’s checks and cashing those checks into the U.S. Treasury.”
Bowdoin’s assertion that checks the Secret Service missed during the raid kept popping up over a period of days after the raid may be important.
Golden Panda
There also have been assertions that not all checks sent to Golden Panda Ad Builder made their way into government accounts for later use in a restitution fund for victims. Bob Guenther, for example, claims that about $1.5 million was returned to Golden Panda members, in part through his efforts.
Among the people to whom money was returned were Joe Shoop, an ASD promoter; an unnamed “high-profile Dallas Cowboy executive”; and retired and active-duty police officers in Texas and California, Guenther said.
Who recruited the members into Golden Panda is unclear. Guenther said the government should have returned all seized checks to ASD and Golden Panda members.
The Exercise In Critical Reasoning
What could the claim that the Secret Service mistakenly left behind “several piles” of checks mean?
Well, it could mean the Secret Service actually did mistakenly leave behind the checks and decided to accept some of them but not all of them them after being notified by ASD. There could be sensible, logical reasons completely consistent with the aims of law enforcement for not accepting all of the checks.
Not accepting all of the checks also could be a bureaucratic blunder.
We highly doubt the Secret Service mistakenly left behind “several piles” of checks — as Bowdoin claimed — at ASD headquarters, but concede it’s possible. It’s also possible that ASD was telling the truth when it said it notified the agency about the checks and that the Secret Service eventually told ASD it didn’t want any more checks — what Bowdoin and others have painted as investigative/administrative incompetence.
But what if it wasn’t an investigative/administrative error at all? What if the Secret Service made a tactical decision to leave a limited number of checks in the former flower shop that once housed ASD to see what would happen after agents left?
Such an approach could lead to clues that would enable the government to better fund a restitution account for victims.
In our view, no private citizen had any business working as an intermediary or third-party collector to gather money sent to ASD or Golden Panda. We’re not aware of any assertions that a third party collected money from ASD, but we are aware of a report that at least one ASD downline sponsor was pressured by a third party to return money the sponsor accepted directly from a recruit to pay for ASD “advertising.”
At the same time, we are aware of assertions that money was collected by a third party or parties and was returned to Golden Panda members.
The return of the money could have affected the government investigation and hindered its efforts to create the biggest resitution pool possible.
This is a money case. One of the ways to solve a money case is to follow the money. Even if the Secret Service mistakenly left the checks behind at ASD, not accepting some of the checks later might have created an opportunity for it to follow the money and produce new leads.
Now, understand: We have no insider’s knowledge from investigators — and, as noted above, this column is engaging in speculation. But what if the Secret Service, say, wasn’t satisfied at the time of the raid that it had identified all of ASD’s financial conduits?
It might make sense to leave some checks behind and then follow those checks if and when ASD acted on them. If higher crimes were suspected, leaving some money behind might help expose the tentacles of a criminal enterprise and lead to resources that could be used for victim compensation.
The same thing could be said about checks delivered to Golden Panda in Georgia. It is possible that the Secret Service wasn’t certain that it had located all of Golden Panda’s financial conduits and permitted Golden Panda to exercise some control so agents later could follow the money.
Want to add another layer?
What if ASD had what amounts to a banking slush fund set up offshore (or domestically) and kept uncashed checks in a secret domestic location, which is to say not at the headquarters building that was searched?
Are you ready to say for certain that ASD kept all undeposited checks at its headquarters? Are you ready to say for certain that the Secret Service missed “several piles” of checks when the man making the claim is a known fraudster who wouldn’t take the witness stand at his own evidentiary hearing?
What if ASD didn’t have an offshore or domestic slush fund but was in the process of setting one up, perhaps contemplating that it could fund the account with some of the undeposited checks? It would make sense for ASD to stash some checks outside the headquarters building until they could be used to fund the secret account.
Are you ready to rule that out?
And what if, after the raid, ASD considered the dramatic criminal consequences of such deception, and then created a cover story that the agents had left behind “several piles” of checks during their search?
One way to explain the sudden appearance of checks that had been stashed is to say the Secret Service missed them during the headquarters raid.
What if an ASD insider came to the building late at night — hours after the raid, while people were sleeping — and planted stashed checks inside for employees to find in a bid to create the appearance agents had done sloppy work in missing “piles” of checks?
What if ASD feared the Secret Service might suspect ASD had a slush fund offshore or elsewhere and knew any stashed checks effectively had become worthless? In other words, the mere act of depositing them in the slush fund would demonstrate the criminality. Holding onto checks that had been stashed could lead to uncomfortable questions from customers. So could depositing them in a secret bank.
ASD indeed could have notified the Secret Service about checks the company still had in its possession. It could have created a cover story that agents had “missed” the checks, when agents hadn’t missed them at all because they were not at the locations searched at the time of the search.
Mind you, we are not saying ASD created a cover story. What we’re saying is that it is common for criminals to create cover stories and for co-conspirators to agree to the stories. If ASD kept checks at a secret location, those checks would pose a problem that ASD could “solve” with a cover story that agents had missed “several piles” of checks.
An Ongoing Probe
The ASD case was (and is) an investigation by the Secret Service, the IRS and perhaps other law-enforcement agencies. It was (and is) an ongoing conspiracy investigation, and no agency involved is about to share the prongs of their investigative techniques and prosecution strategy.
This is why any efforts from individuals and groups post-seizure to force, say, Golden Panda to return funds to specific individuals very well could be problematic. It’s the prosecution’s case.The prosecution is empowered to investigate and prosecute the case without interference. Its theory of the case is that the assets of ASD and Golden Panda are the proceeds of a criminal enterprise and that a conspiracy existed.
For the purposes of this prosecution, the Feds effectively view ASD and Golden Panda as one in the same because of their native ties. The assets were seized in an “all funds” forfeiture complaint. It is highly possible that prosecutors view the individual entities as components of a larger racketeering and money-laundering enterprise.
Racketeering. Money-laundering. Wire fraud. Mail fraud. Perhaps other types of criminal fraud.
If you’ve been paying attention, you know that private litigants have sued ASD President Andy Bowdoin, ASD attorney Robert Garner and Golden Panda President Clarence Busby in a civil RICO complaint. The theory is that businesses and individuals known and unknown were engaged in a racketeering enterprise.
The pool of money to compensate victims is now smaller because of private interventions by individuals and a group during an active investigation by authorities.
Money has been returned to private individuals by private individuals during a public investigation. We have seen no evidence that any person who intervened to return funds on behalf of another individual did so with the authority, support and encouragement of law enforcement.
We believe it best to let the prosecution handle its case as it sees fit. Freelancing by private individuals to return money never should have been part of this mix. The act alone created potential injustice for ASD and Golden Panda victims. Even before the forfeiture case has been litigated to conclusion, some victims have been made “whole” and have not been subjected to the haircut everyone else stands to get.
The money in the ASD and Golden Panda case was under arrest. Prosecutors have the authority to claw back all refunds that occurred as the result of the actions of an intermediary. At the same time, prosecutors can claw back money the Feds might have been monitoring or strategically permitting to enter the banking system to see where it eventually would land.
UPDATED 10:42 P.M. EDT (March 30, U.S.A.) AdSurfDaily President Andy Bowdoin held matching-bonus “rallies” in U.S. cities, walking away with millions of dollars and setting the stage for the government seizure of the funds last August.
AdViewGlobal (AVG), a surf with close ties to Bowdoin and ASD, hasn’t conducted rallies to date. But the company has been pitching preposterous bonuses virtually nonstop and now is featuring a 200-percent, matching-bonus program — for purchasers and their upline sponsors.
Here’s how one AVG promoter pitched the AVG offer (italics and emphasis added).
Anyone who purchases from $500 (or more) in advertising
will receive a 200% match as will their sponsor.
That means $500 turns into $1500 instantly!
$1000 turns into $3,000 instantly!
$2500 turns into $7,5000 instantly!
$5000 turns into $15,000 instantly!
Let me give you a realistic example of what could be your
reality almost immediately…
Let’s assume you purchase $5000 in Ad Impressions and get
credit for $15,000 with the 200% match.
Let’s also assume the average earnings per day on that
$15,000 balance is only 2/3 of 1%, or .0075%.
That’s an instant cash flow of $112 per day…
That’s over $3,000 per month without having to sponsor a
single person[]!
Never mind that two-thirds of 1 percent is 0.666666667 percent, not .0075 percent as the promoter asserted. And never mind that the promoter used a higher figure (0.75 percent) to arrive at the $112 daily earnings claim, instead of the lower figure (0.666666667, which would have kept earnings slightly under $100 per day, thus dulling the psychology of the pitch).
No, the important thing here — as evidenced in the email — was to sell the money angle, not the advertising angle — and that’s exactly what got ASD in trouble. (That and plenty more, too.)
Even though AVG’s problems were known before the email was sent, the promoter choose to ignore them.
Accompanying AVG’s bonus program was the sudden resignation of Gary Talbert, AVG’s chief executive officer and a former ASD executive, last week. The resignation was announced Friday, March 20.
On Monday, March 23, AVG announced its bank account had been suspended. Instead of ending the matching-bonus program, the company extended it. Instead of communicating with members clearly, AVG has been issuing vague and ambiguous announcements.
AVG now says it is having trouble meeting cash-out requests, blaming the problem on growing pains.
ASD also blamed its problems on growing pains and, like AVG, lost one of its bank accounts in the weeks prior to the seizure.
Here is what AVG members are being told by the company (italics added):
All pending Cash Outs previously requested through eWalletplus will be processed and completed by Wednesday, April 2nd, 2009.
AVGA has made arrangements for Cash Out requests be settled by Solid Trust Pay. Monies are being deposited to cover all Cash Outs; any delay in the process is due to the large number of Cash Out requests and perhaps an overload of the system. We can assure the membership that all Cash Outs requested through Solid Trust Pay will be honored and processed with all expediency.
All start-up companies encounter challenges on the road to becoming successful. This is especially true when that company has an innovative and creative concept. Ad View Global Association is not your ordinary Association. Companies and Association with new ideas to the market usually encounter resistance from the status quo. Do you imagine how many blacksmiths where put out of business when a small innovative and creative company called Ford rolled out its first car?
AVGA Management faces challenges everyday especially in this phase of our growth but we are determined to make this Association the largest Internet advertising entity in the world. This will take some time but it will happen. We will encounter bumps along the way but with the level of commitment that we have personally witnessed by talking to some of you, there is nothing we can not accomplish as a team.
UPDATE 11:16 A.M. EDT (March 26, U.S.A. See bottom of post and see Comments.) A video starring Andy Bowdoin that enraged some members of AdSurfDaily has been removed from its sponsor’s site.
The video formerly was at this URL. No explanation for the removal appears at the site. Bowdoin pitched a new surf site called Paperless Access in the video.
PaperlessAccess, Bowdoin said, was a way members could recapture funds federal agents seized in August as part of the ASD Ponzi scheme investigation. Bowdoin insisted he was not involved with the Paperless Access business.
But Bowdoin did not name the company owners in his video pitch. Nor did he say where the company was located.
Jaws dropped with Bowdoin’s video appearance. He did not describe how Paperless Access was legal, making only the vague claim that the company employed a business model “based solely on outside revenue.â€
Just days prior to the release of the video, Bowdoin acknowledged in court filings that ASD was operating illegally when federal agents seized tens of millions of dollars last summer. Archived Web files showed that Paperless Access was using a template identical in places to a template ASD had used in 2007.
The Pro-ASD Surf’s Up forum has deleted at least two threads critical of Bowdoin’s appearance in the Paperless Access video. Prior to the deletions, some members expressed shock and horror that Bowdoin would appear in a video to promote a surf site. Some were equally horrified that a surf site would use Bowdoin as a spokesman, given ASD’s troubles and the possibility of a criminal indictment against Bowdoin.
Bowdoin appears to be losing credibility rapidly among people who formerly were supporters.
ADViewGlobal (AVG), another surf site with close ties to ASD, announced Monday that its bank account had been “suspended.”
UPDATE: A discussion thread critical of Bowdoin started by a Surf’s Up member late yesterday has been deleted. The member said Bowdoin’s video appearance was telling and that he had come to believe ASD was a scam and that he’d been taken in by a scammer. In a bitterly sarcastic response to the poster, a Bowdoin apologist said she was certain the poster and the government now would get along nicely. But the poster also had supporters in the thread. This is at least the third time Surf’s Up has deleted a thread critical of Bowdoin’s Paperless Access video appearance.
In yet another vague claim, AdViewGlobal (AVG) said a problem that resulted in the suspension of its bank account is being “rectified.”
AVG did not describe how the problem was being solved. Nor did it provide a date by which it expected the problem to be solved. Instead, under a three-exclamation point headline of, “AVGA Breaking News: Thanks and Good News!!!,” the company said sales were brisk.
“Tuesday member purchases continued to be good thanks to those purchases made with cash balances,” AVG said. “We appreciate your continued cooperation and purchases through cash balances through the end of the week.
“If you have had difficulty making purchases through the bank, you will be happy to know that the difficulty is being rectified.”
The company then cited unspecified banking regulations, claiming changes in the regulations limited online purchases to $2,500.
AVG previously blamed its bank-account suspension on members who wired too many transactions in excess of $9,500.
“Changes in banking regulations require that you limit online purchases to $2500 plus the processing fee of $9.00,” AVG said. “Strict banking regulations require that we eliminate bank wires and ACH transactions. We will continue to take all money orders and cashier/bank checks. To speed up the cash out process, we are eliminating all manual cash out transactions which includes checks and bank wires. We will use the debit card, Strict Pay and Solid Trust Pay. All three methods are automated.”
Unlike previous announcements about its banking problem, AVG this time included the name of the employee making the announcement: Gerald Castor.
Castor was said to be employed in AVG “Compliance.”
AVG has been running a 200-percent, matching-bonus program. The company has close ties to AdSurfDaily Inc., a Florida firm federal prosecutors said was operating a $100 million Ponzi scheme.
Gary Talbert, AVG’s chief exeutive officer, suddenly resigned last week. Talbert is a former ASD executive.
The resignation was announced Friday. On Monday, the banking problem was announced. Members have not been told whether the two events are connected. AVG has not said when the banking suspension occurred.
