We are beginning to receive reports that AdViewGlobal (AVG) has not posted daily paper profits since July 3 for members who surfed.
Some AVG members seem not to know whether they even are supposed to surf. The external shell of the site loaded quickly today, which may indicate a lighter server load because fewer people are surfing.
“Support tickets are not being answered,” one member said.
The member said that AVG awarded her a paper profit of a penny for surfing a few days ago and a total of 35 cents over a two-week period. For its part, AVG said last week that it expected to become a Fortune 500 company.
“[W]e have received nothing in monetary, or any other, terms since July 3, 2009,” the member said, adding that there was “a growing anxiety and frustration with the new leadership: George and Judi Harris.”
George Harris is the stepson of AdSurfDaily President Andy Bowdoin. Judy Harris is the wife of George Harris. The Harrises are named in a federal forfeiture complaint filed in December as the beneficiaries of illegal conduct by ASD.
Only recently has AVG disclosed that George and Judy Harris owned the firm, which purports to be a professional advertising and communications company based in Uruguay.
AVG issued a news release last month with a dateline of Tallahassee, Fla. A home owned by the Harrises in Tallahassee was seized in the December forfeiture complaint. Prosecutors said George Harris, whom ASD President Andy Bowdoin identified last year as the head of ASD’s real-estate division, used $157,000 in illegal ASD proceeds to pay off the mortgage on the home.
In other news, eWalletPlus, a money-services firm associated with AVG, is back online — though apparently not fully functional. The site had disappeared last week, but then came back online. It did not fully load at a point over the weekend, but appears to be loading now. New registrations, however, are marked disabled.
eWalletPlus is listed as being owned by TMS Association. TMS Association is listed in Arizona records as a business that conducts merchant services. Like AVG, the servers for eWalletPlus resolve to Panama.
UPDATED 9:47 P.M. EDT (U.S.A.)AdViewGlobal has disabled its forum. The move followed on the heels of complaints from members that the surf company was confusing them when trying to explain its new pay-out program. The payout program was introduced with great fanfare today, and included a prediction that AVG would become a Fortune 500 company.
The surf blamed the decision to disable the forum on members, saying confused members were posting information that confused other members. AVG has a history of blaming problems on members, saying in March that its bank account had been suspended because too many members wired transactions in excess of $9,500.
The forum suspension announcement was signed “George and Judi Harris,” and identified them as the “Owners.” A separate AVG forum operated by Mods and members of the Pro-AdSurfDaily Surf’s Up forum went dark a few days ago. AVG said it would inform members through “breaking news,” apparently in their back offices.
Here, our earlier post . . .
AdViewGlobal (AVG), which purports to be a professional advertising and communications company based in Uruguay, has withdrawn an announcement of its new pay-out plan, members said.
AVG members reported confusion over the initial plan, which suggested members could earn back their entire advertising spend and a profit of 25 percent during an unspecified time period.
Some members questioned whether they would have to view advertisements for eternity to record a profit. Others said they expected profitability to return quickly after AVG emerged from a dark period in which it announced the suspensions of cash-outs for at least 30 days and the implementation of a mandatory 80/20 program.
Many members joined AVG expecting to earn back their initial spend, plus full profit, in 150 days. AVG later moved the redemption date to 180 days, and then 210 days, according to its website. The date for full redemptions now appears to be up in the air, members said.
Some members raised concerns that they would not receive credit for matching bonuses AVG advertised.
For weeks, AVG advertised bonuses of 200 percent, for both prospects and sponsors. To celebrate the launch of a new website last month, AVG advertised a 250 percent match for prospects.
The initial payment plan AVG announced appeared to reflect only cash purchases and did not seem to address matching bonuses, members said. In March, one AVG promoter told prospects that $5,000 turned into $15,000 “instantly.”
Some AVG members complained about smug responses from AVG after they made simple inquiries about the payment plan and matching bonuses.
Members said AVG appeared to have an unfathomable number of page impressions on its books, owing to the 200-percent promotions and the presence of a member-to-member cash button than enabled participants to “stack” earnings within individual downline groups.
Some AVG members held more than 1 million page impressions, members said.
In other news, AVG members said the company announced that its program was “100% Legal.” The announcement came on the heels of a court filing yesterday in a RICO case that mentioned AVG’s name as a new iteration of AdSurfDaily and other autosurf programs.
ASD and AVG have close ties. Tens of millions of dollars were seized from ASD last year as part of a wire-fraud, money-laundering, securities and Ponzi scheme investigation.
UPDATED 1:26 P.M. EDT (U.S.A.) AdViewGlobal has been cited in a racketeering lawsuit against AdSurfDaily President Andy Bowdoin as an extension of ASD.
In a motion filed this morning, the plaintiffs pointed out that a bank had closed a Bowdoin account while he was running ASD, after suspicious banking activity triggered Ponzi concerns. The plaintiffs then said suspicious banking acvivity also occurred with AdViewGlobal.
“Likewise, a bank recently suspended or closed the accounts of Adview Global due to excessive wire transactions exceeding $9500,” the plaintiffs said.
“AVG is the next iteration of the Ponzi scheme auto-surf programs, which [are] staffed with former ASD executives and Bowdoin disciples, including George Harris, the stepson of Bowdoin, who is listed as an AVG trustee, Gary Talbert, former ASD executive served as CEO of AVG and now serves as an accountant, Nate Boyd, a former compliance officer at ASD, serves as “Protector†of the AVG association, and Chuck Osmin, a former ASD employee who testified on ASD’s behalf at the evidentiary hearing before this Court last fall is a customer service representative of AVG.”
It was not immediately clear if the plaintiffs in the RICO case — all of whom are members of ASD — intended to file an amended complaint that would specifically name AVG a RICO defendant.
The original RICO lawsuit was filed in January against Bowdoin, ASD attorney Robert Garner and Golden Panda Ad Builder President Clarence Busby. The lawsuit was amended in April. Bowdoin has not responded to the complaint. The plaintiffs dismissed Busby as a defendant earlier this month.
Among other things, the motion filed by the plaintiffs this morning also claims millions of dollars under Bowdoin’s control held offshore have never been repatriated. The motion includes a link to the PatrickPretty.com Blog, noting its reporting on ties between ASD and AVG.
At the same time, today’s motion by the plaintiffs asks U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer to deny a motion to stay the lawsuit until the government’s lawsuits against assets tied to ASD are litigated.
Bank of America was accused in the lawsuit of aiding and abetting Bowdoin and ASD. The bank is not named a RICO defendant and says it has done nothing wrong.
The plaintiffs disagree.
“For well over two years Bank of America embraced and never said no to the RICO Defendants who operated this nationwide scheme from a former floral shop in tiny Quincy, Florida,” the plaintiffs said. “ASD’s legitimacy and business model were never questioned despite being borne out of the demise of “12Daily Pro and Phoenix Surf†which were nothing more than naked Ponzi schemes investigated and eventually prosecuted by the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2006.”
Among other things, Bank of America argued that the plaintiffs already have a compensation remedy because the government has seized approximately $80 million in the ASD case.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs, however, argued that the remedy is insufficient because ASD victims cannot be fully compensated if the government establishes a restitution program and that the plaintiffs are seeking treble damages under U.S. law.
“Without Bank of America, [ASD] could have only existed in the dark alleys of the financial world where they would need to rely on off-shore accounts and questionable deposit facilities. There this scheme would have been far less likely to [metastasize] and wreak the havoc it did on so many people. Thus the stay requested by Defendant should be rejected.”
AdViewGlobal (AVG) has announced the suspension of cash-outs and a decision to make an 80/20 program mandatory. AVG members should ask the “management team” if there is any possibility that any of the following three things happened.
1.) Money paid to AdSurfDaily members by ASD ended up in the AVG system. (For example, a member got paid by ASD, and then later moved the money to AVG. Or, alternatively, an ASD member sold ad-packs directly to ASD downline members, deposited the money in his personal bank account, and later moved the money to AVG.)
2.) “Founders” and insiders of AVG used fictitious paper profits that once existed in ASD as their capital contribution to AVG.
3.) Founders/insiders of AVG took a disproportionate share of AVG’s early revenue and cashed out their fictitious ASD profits — in whole or in part — through AVG .
Here is why these questions are important:
1.) ASD’s visible cash and other assets were frozen by the U.S. government in a wire-fraud and money-laundering investigation, but other cash that once resided in ASD’s bank accounts had made its way into the bank accounts of ASD members. It also is known that some ASD members collected money directly from customers for the purchase of ad-packs, and then deposited the money in their personal bank accounts and used ASD’s internal system to move the ad-packs to the purchasers. Money from No. 1 (above) is money laundered twice, which means it is doubly dirty. If it was unclean when it resided in ASD, it is doubly unclean inside AVG.
2.) Money from No. 2 above doesn’t really exist, which means AVG created value where none existed and had non-founders/non-insiders fund the value — as ASD allegedly did with its ASD Cash Generator iteration.
Looking at it another way, AVG could have used the theoretical value of money now held by the government in the ASD case — and also the fictitious paper profits — to fund the launch of the company, passing the real cost off to non-insiders/non-founders.
3.) Money from No. 3 above would mean founders/insiders paid themselves disproportionate shares before anyone else got paid, thus plundering the company.
The autosurf landscape is littered with stories about plundering. To explain suspended cash-outs, ASD President Andy Bowdoin once claimed script problems were to blame. Meanwhile, Bowdoin claimed Russian “hackers” had stolen more than $1 million from the company.
Bowdoin never filed a police report — not even to report a purported theft in excess of $1 million, prosecutors said.
The reason one has to consider each of the possibilities above is that AVG suspended cash-outs after collecting money for 5+ months, then made 80/20 mandatory, while also changing the maturity dates for “page impressions” from 150 to 180 to 210 days.
As one of our readers pointed out, the situation AVG currently confronts is like the situation a bank would confront if it advertised CDs and couldn’t fund redemptions on their maturity dates.
Customers would buy the CDs, expecting a return in 150 days. On cash-out day, the bank would tell customers that it couldn’t fund the redemptions, hoped to be able to fund them by adding two months to the maturity date in anticipation of new revenue — but, in any case, when customers went to cash-out two months later, they could take only 20 percent of the money they were owed and were told they must keep 80 percent of their money in the system.
Financier Allen Stanford faced a similar problem with CDs earlier this year on the Caribbean island nation of Antigua, and has been indicted on Ponzi and fraud charges. Prosecutors said he created the mirage of value by employing a series of accounting tricks.
There is a fourth possibility to consider with AVG: Not all founders/insiders were created equally and that the people closest to the money cherry-picked some of it for themselves, and then told the other founders/insiders that AVG simply wasn’t generating enough revenue or that “bad members” had siphoned off cash.
Putting it in the context of the ASD case, did Russian “hackers” really steal more than $1 million — or was it simply more convenient to blame them to cover up theft and insider dealings?
Here is another possibility: No one at AVG stole anything, no one paid themselves early, the founders/insiders kept all their money in the company — and AVG simply flopped because it couldn’t generate enough cash.
A few things could be in play in this scenario. AVG, for example, could have relatively few customers willing to pay for its “advertising” services — and that the existing base of AVG’s “advertisers” willing to spend money is too small to support the weight of the liabilities or even a break-even line.
It also is possible that the banking system “caught” AVG early and choked off its access to wires and the money supply, thus starving the company.
UPDATED 4:40 P.M. EDT (U.S.A.) Before AdViewGlobal (AVG) even shared what it described as a members-only, “Breaking News” announcement that it was suspending cash-outs, the embattled surf firm threatened media outlets with copyright-infringement lawsuits if they published the announcement.
Members almost immediately shared the news outside the confines of the AVG “private association,” despite the firm’s bid to compartmentalize its announcement. Members said they had grown increasingly frustrated by AVG’s ham-handed efforts to operate in an environment of secrecy and the predisposition of some promoters to scold participants for asking questions about the company in public.
AVG informed members that cash-outs would be suspended for at least 30 days. An 80/20 program that further separates members from their money would be made mandatory. At the same time, AVG claimed it had solved payment-processing and banking problems that had dogged it for months.
The firm did not explain how it had solved the problems.
Recently, though, the firm entered into a partnership with a new company based in Canada. Members said AVG now was selling a debit card that could be used for “page impression” purchases through PayPal, whose Acceptable Use Policy expressly forbids the company’s services to be used for pyramid schemes and Ponzi schemes, two things associated with the business model AVG employs.
The debit card is offered through Texas-based Secure Cash Network Inc. (SCN), which says in its Terms of Service that the card cannot be used for the purchase of illegal products and services. Many jurisdictions consider the autosurf business model to be illegal, and the U.S. government has successfully prosecuted a number of surf firms in recent years.
AVG also said it was hiring “new management” within two weeks, but did not say whether it was firing old management — or even identify its current management team. Incongruously, the surf promised to identify its new management team, members of which may be stepping into a hornet’s nest. AVG engages in an industry frequently linked with wire fraud and money-laundering, and is closely associated with a firm under investigation for those crimes.
As is typical of AVG announcements, the company suggested members were responsible for the firm’s problems.
In this post, the PatrickPretty.com Blog listed the Top 5 reasons to avoid AVG, which purports to be a professional “advertising” and communications firm headquartered in Uruguay. There now is a sixth reason: The news AVG hoped to compartmentalize within its organizational walls — news that now is being talked about openly in forums — may be evidence of a crime in progress.
Could the AVG announcement become an important piece of evidence in an ongoing wire-fraud, money-laundering and Ponzi scheme investigation involving Florida-based AdSurfDaily Inc. (ASD) and unnamed others?
There is good reason to believe AVG is part of the ASD probe.
Two of AVG’s trustees — George Harris III and his wife, Judy Harris — are named in a federal forfeiture complaint as beneficiaries of illegal conduct by ASD. George Harris is the stepson of ASD President Andy Bowdoin. The Tallahassee home Harris shared with his wife — and an automobile registered to the couple — were named in the forfeiture complaint as the proceeds of a crime.
AVG trustees George Harris and Judy Harris are named in a federal forfeiture complaint as beneficiaries of illegal conduct by AdSurfDaily Inc., a surf firm with close ties to AVG.
Bowdoin is described in court filings as a target of a federal criminal investigation. AVG graphics once appeared on a website controlled by ASD, and AVG listed its street address as 13 S. Calhoun Street, Quincy, Fla., in the graphics. That is the same mailing address ASD listed, and federal prosecutors said it is bogus, which may signal ASD also is part of a mail-fraud investigation.
AdViewGlobal says Quincy is its home, but also says Uruguay is its home.
Moreover, prosecutors said in court filings that Bowdoin signed a proffer letter in the ASD case before firing his paid attorneys and proceeding as a pro se litigant. Bowdoin told ASD members that he decided to represent himself in court after consulting with a “group.”
His first pro se pleading was dated Feb. 25. The following day, AVG introduced members to Pro Advocate Group, which says it helps businesses form “private associations” and individuals practice specialties such as law and medicine without a license.
Karl Dahlstrom was accused of using investors' funds to purchase new vehicles and pitching the opportunity to church groups.
Pro Advocate Group is associated with Karl Dahlstrom, who was convicted in the 1990s of securities fraud and sentenced to 78 months in federal prison. Prosecutors said Dahlstrom bought automobiles with investors’ money, an assertion also made against Bowdoin and George and Judy Harris, the AVG trustees.
Dahlstrom also pitched his program to church members — yet another assertion made against Bowdoin.
Meanwhile, an AVG forum operated by some of the Mods and members of the Pro-AdSurfDaily Surf’s Up forum appears to have gone dark. It is unclear if content from the forum has been deleted.
** UPDATE 4:40 P.M., June 25: The website of a firm closely associated with AVG — eWalletPlus — also has gone dark. The site has been throwing a server error for at least 24 hours. eWalletPlus provided certain money services for AVG and once operated from the Phoenix area. As is the case with AVG’s servers, the servers for eWalletPlus now resolve to Panama.
EWalletPlus stopped accepting registrations from new members during the same spring time frame in which AVG announced its bank account had been suspended. ** END 4:40 P.M.UPDATE **
AVG launched after federal prosecutors seized tens of millions of dollars from Bowdoin, whom prosecutors said had a history of taking money from customers and moving it from one company to another when his enterprises encountered difficulties and could not pay members.
Like AVG, Bowdoin suspended member cash-outs and announced retrenchment plans, which fundamentally shifted the burden of paying participants from one group to another within the organization.
AVG appears to be doing the same thing, but appears also to still be collecting money from prospects who visit the firm’s main website. AVG’s retrenchment plan is not mentioned on its sales site, even though the site has a “Breaking News” banner. AVGÂ also does not inform prospects about the ties to ASD on its sales site.
New members may not learn about the retrenchment plan until after they join the organization.
Lack of disclosure is one of the allegations against ASD, which prosecutors said also engaged in the sale of unregistered securities.
AVG’s announcement of the retrenchment program raises new questions about whether the company is engaging in the sale of unregistered securities while operating an unregistered money-services business.
UPDATED 11:07 A.M. EDT (U.S.A.) AdViewGlobal (AVG) members have asked the company to produce a photograph of the company’s purported headquarters building in Uruguay. Meanwhile, members are complaining about slow payouts or no payouts from the autosurf and requesting photographs of the company’s management team.
At the same time, they are complaining about a lack of communication from the company, which purports to be headquartered in Uruguay but recently issued a news release with a dateline of Tallahassee, Fla.
As tensions build, AVG members say they are being left in the dark. And they question why queries do not get answered and why the surf’s payout rate is so “low.”
Although some promoters have suggested the company is conducting an internal “audit” to determine how much fraud occurred within the system because of misuse of a member-to-member cash button, the company itself provided the button.
How the company will determine what constitutes fraud is unclear. Some members acquired millions of page impressions by taking advantage of 200 percent — and even 250 percent — matching-bonus programs that ran virtually continuously for months.
In May, AVG announced a deal that permitted members to wire money to an offshore bank to acquire page impressions (ad-packs). Within days, however, one of the companies AVG identified as a facilitator of the wire transfers denied it had any business relationship with AVG and said it believed it had been targeted in a scam.
AVG withdrew the announcement after the company issued the denial, which raised the prospect that AVG had attempted to route money to itself by using the account of a separate company located in Florida.
A debit card that costs $30 — and permits people to pay AVG for “advertising” but not to withdraw “earnings” — also has led to questions. Members said the company was selling the debit card through PayPal, even though PayPal’s Acceptable Use Policy expressly forbids the company’s services to be used for pyramid schemes and Ponzi schemes.
The company that provides the debit card, Secure Cash Network Inc. (SCN), says in its Terms of Service that the card cannot be used for the purchase of illegal products and services. Many jurisdictions consider the autosurf business model to be illegal, and the U.S. government has successfully prosecuted a number of surf firms in recent years.
It is unclear if AVG has its own PayPal account or if a third-party account is being used to collect the money for the debit card, with the money somehow routed to AVG later. The utility of the debit card itself also is in question, since SCN says the card cannot be used to purchase illegal products or services.
More than 70 percent of AVG’s web traffic originates in the United States, according to one web service.
Many of you are familiar with “Pistol,” one of the posters here. In recent days, Pistol repeatedly sent us communications we deem harassing through our Comments form and our Contact form. When we didn’t submit to his hectoring, he published a video about us on YouTube.
The message, of course, is that if we don’t do as he says, he’ll dial up the harassment to extract the result he seeks.
Pistol has been banned at other sites for antisocial behavior. Some of it was mildly antisocial — steering threads off-topic in ways that squelched productive discussion and shifted attention to himself, for instance.
Some of it, however, was more than mildly antisocial — publishing videos that treated human beings like soulless, unfeeling objects incapable of redemption or even of having a teachable moment, for example.
Early on, we made a mistake by extending to Pistol the maximum benefit of the doubt that he would exercise some restraint and not disrupt things here. The early disruptions were somewhat minimal — Pistol occasionally promoted his videos by spamming in threads, for example.
Eventually, though, the disruptions grew in number, accompanied by an increase in toxicity. Despite his obvious intelligence, Pistol began to pose a daily maintenance problem for this Blog. If this were high school, he would be the brightest kid in the class, but also the most disruptive. Teachers would marvel out loud at his brain one moment, and want to march him to the principal’s office the next.
You knew that kid, right? He was the one who knew the difference between “innumeracy” and “illiteracy” and couldn’t wait for the teacher to confuse the terms so he could scold her for not being as smart as he — or to hold her out as a case study in hypocrisy for presuming even to be a teacher when she could not demonstrate perfect vocabulary at all times.
The problem with Pistol is that he licenses himself to walk into a house and, ultimately — sorry about this, readers — vomit all over the floor.
If you ask him politely to stop, he feigns obtuseness and then engages in sarcasm or passive-aggressive posturing, all the while insisting it’s all justifiable because he doesn’t suffer fools gladly. We recognized our own role in the insanity a few weeks ago, when we found ourselves asking this grown man not to vomit on our floor.
If you’re going around asking an adult not to vomit on your floor, well, you’re the problem. We were wrong to think we could finesse this. An adult who presumes the right to soil your floor needs to be dispatched to the curb, not to be coddled. We should have dispatched him weeks ago.
Pistol has a score to settle with us now — and now we have joined a long line of people he has pilloried on YouTube and elsewhere. Last week we deleted a few posts in which he was being deliberately obtuse, disruptive, disingenuous, baiting and just plain mean to other posters here.
As is his way, Pistol now wants the discussion to digress into a discussion over the meaning of the word “mean.” Other posters also are guilty of meanness, he suggests, and yet their meanness is tolerated so long as it is directed at, say, Pistol or autosurf promoters.
In other words, “Johnny did it! Why can’t I!” This from a man who purports to detest foolishness while using the playground arguments of a child. It’s Pistol’s way of letting us know we haven’t achieved perfection in moderating a Blog, rather like the teacher who confuses innumeracy and illiteracy.
A small number of our posters are less thoughtful in their responses to autosurf supporters than we’d prefer them to be. At the same time, some ASD and AVG posters are less thoughtful to autosurf critics than we’d prefer them to be. No matter what side of the issue these posters are on, however, they do not pose the maintenance challenge Pistol presents — and, of course, he knows this.
One of our posters — one Pistol has pilloried in video — used some choice language after being provoked by Pistol here — and Pistol responded by dialing up the provocation, essentially arguing that posters also must be etymologists.
Pistol, of course, understands the roots of language and the power of words, which is why he uses the handle “Pistol.”
We did not publish Pistol’s responses to the poster’s response to Pistol. Pistol started the problem, provided the fuel for it to escalate, and now asserts disingenuously that this Blog is engaging in censorship.
In other words, Pistol is a victim.
Two days ago it simply became too much work to deal with the maintenance problems Pistol creates. On one hand, Pistol purports not to suffer fools gladly. On the other, he subjects this Blog regularly to his own foolishness.
So, we adjusted our software settings to direct everything Pistol submits to a holding queue. Pistol responded by subjecting us to even more foolishness
We soon heard from “Pistol’sPal,” for example — more foolishness from a man who says he cannot suffer fools gladly.
Yesterday we were hit by this foolishness:
'Pistol' skewers PP on YouTube
Pistol wrote to us Saturday morning through our Contact form, presenting the URL for a YouTube video he had created to skewer us.
After Pistol used the Contact form, he submitted another post headlined “THE THIRD ATTEMPT.”
The strategy, if it can be called that, appeared to be to nuisance this Blog into publishing his comments. When that didn’t work, the strategy shifted to producing a YouTube video — basically, publish my comments or expect to see yourself pilloried on YouTube.
When that didn’t work, the strategy reverted back to haranguing: “THE THIRD ATTEMPT” means that two prior attempts to get a comment published failed: The message: Play my game or you might not like the consequences. It is, among other things, both extortive and foolish.
All this foolishness . . . from a poster who purports not to suffer fools gladly.
What Pistol seems unwilling to do is forgive any human foibles. Some of our posters, for example, are former ASD members who have “seen the light” and now post here and elsewhere to help people steer clear of scams. Pistol has pilloried some of them in videos.
Beyond that, though, Pistol regularly skewers them here, while at once insisting he opposes scams. He is attacking people who are trying to help, using flaws and imperfections he perceives to demean their worth as human beings.
The message: How can they now presume to be teachers — or to have any worth at all?
Other posters here never had anything to do with ASD or AVG, but work to educate and inform the public about scams. Pistol skewers them, too, dismissing or ignoring the value they add and focusing on what he perceives to be their imperfections as human beings.
Every appeal we’ve made to the greater angels of his nature has been met with hostility and obtuseness.
Ever wonder why there are relatively few Blogs and forums that cover autosurf scams? One of the reasons is that there is no money in it. Another is that you pay a price — from the scammers themselves, and from the Pistols of the world, who purport to detest scams while derailing the efforts of people who are trying to do something about them.
Here is the math:
In April, we paid a bill for $153.52 for our PACER subscription. In January our PACER bill was $62. There are other expenses associated with running this Blog, including the enormous investment in time. This story, for example, took two weeks to research and report, and we had to pay for certain documents. We reviewed hundreds of pages of records.
This Blog has generated $448.22 in total revenue year-to-date. May revenue was $70.70. Our “pay” is pennies per day — if that.
And now Pistol, who purports not to suffer fools gladly and to detest autosurf scams and scammers, has joined with them in spreading the lie that this Blog is lining its pockets with advertising fees.
With respect to Pistol and his participation on the PatrickPretty.com Blog, we gave him way too much latitude.
We apologize to readers for doing so.
This Blog is not written for people who agree with our point of view; it is written for the “CORRECTIONs” of the surf world, even though we know CORRECTION and other surf supporters never may agree with us.
But we also know we have made a difference in the lives of people once immersed in the convoluted world of the autosurf, and watching their thought processes evolve has provided joy.
UPDATED 11:22 A.M. EDT (U.S.A.): An affiliate spammer entered PonziNews.com yesterday, leaving what was described as “my friends” (sic) affiliate link for AdViewGlobal (AVG) and an advertisement for AVG.
Seven minutes later, the same affiliate spammer left another ad for AVG, claiming that “I just watched as 2, yes 2 Attorney’s (sic) from D.C. decided that they wanted to advertise on the site, and be a member of the VIP program.”
Affiliate spam is a back-door way of gaining signups for a program or service. One form of affiliate spam is to monitor websites that publish criticism of an “opportunity” favored by the spammer and then post affiliate links as part of the defense of the opportunity.
It is possible (and easy) to defend an opportunity without leaving an affiliate link, thus taking any issue of spamming totally out of play. The affiliate spammer who claimed it was a friend’s AVG link yesterday used the username of “Jeffrey,” and the link resolved to the sign-up page of an AVG promoter who used the same name.
It was not clear if the affiliate spammer also was the AVG promoter “Jeffrey.”
Software employed by Ponzi News captured the affiliate spam. It was not published. A screen shot of the spam was made and reduced in size to fit within the borders of this Blog.
AVG enthusiast sends back-to-back spams, claiming Best Buy, Staples and other prominent companies are AVG advertisers.
The spammer declared that Best Buy, Staples, GoDaddy.com and Delta Air Lines were AVG advertisers. The affiliate link used the identifier 7916, and an email address left by the spammer suggested he was associated with a company known as GuardIt Technologies.
Although the email address used the GuardIt name, it was not tied to the GuardIt server. Rather, it was tied to a server at a free email-hosting company, so the address could have been used without the authority of GuardIt.
AVG, also known as AVGA, publishes an antispam policy:
“If you are found to have spammed, without warning, AVGLOBAL ASSOCIATION reserves the right to disable or terminate your account immediately,” the company said on its website.
“All funds will be forfeited. AVGLOBAL ASSOCIATION may impose a penalty for each spam policy violation. AVGLOBAL ASSOCIATION also reserves the right to determine what violates this policy, in which case, any violation that occurs will result in account termination without refund of any monies,” AVG said.
A website associated with Mark Simmons, whom AdSurfDaily intended to call as a witness at a Sept. 30-Oct. 1 evidentiary hearing in Washington, D.C., promotes both AVG and GuardIt. Simmons was sequestered at the hearing, but never took the stand.
Federal prosecutors say ASD engaged in wire-fraud, money-laundering and the sale of unregistered securities while operating a Ponzi scheme.
On Nov. 19, a federal judge ruled that ASD had not demonstrated at the evidentiary hearing that it was operating legally and not a Ponzi scheme. Within days of the ruling, ASD stop using its own Breaking News website, instead giving the Pro-ASD Surf’s Up forum its official endorsement as an ASD news outlet.
In December, prelaunch buzz began to appear online for AVG, and the surf formally launched in February. At least two forums that use ning.com as a host sprouted up to promote AVG.
Some of the Mods and members of Surf’s Up manage one of the forums, and Simmons started the second forum. One Simmons’ thread pitches members on a technology provided by a website known as ErasableEmail.com, which purportedly permits users to send email and video that “self-destructs” and cannot be forwarded or saved.
Simmons said the product was endorsed by “the better hobo bureau” — a play-on-words of the name of his ning.com forum: The Unemployable Hobo Lifestyle Forum.
Erasable email and video technology can be abused. A promoter for an illicit program, for example, could make false claims about a product or service and then erase the claims so they could not be forwarded to law enforcement.
The legal community has been debating the utility of erasable email for years, wondering aloud if it can be used to thwart the discovery process in litigation and to erase evidence of crimes and misconduct.
EDITOR’S NOTE:This story about filings in a racketeering lawsuit against AdSurfDaily President Andy Bowdoin, ASD attorney Robert Garner and Golden Panda Ad Builder President Clarence Busby also includes an update on a lawsuit filed last year against ASD by Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum. The information is under a subhead below.
Although U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer yesterday granted a motion plaintiffs filed for more time to respond to Robert Garner’s motion to be dismissed as a defendant in a racketeering lawsuit, she advised the plaintiffs that they had missed a May 26 filing deadline to respond to Clarence Busby’s motions to be dismissed as a defendant.
Collyer ordered the plaintiffs to show cause why Busby’s motion should not be granted, giving them until June 19 to do so.
Busby was the president of Golden Panda Ad Builder. Garner was an attorney for AdSurfDaily.
The judge had denied a motion by the plaintiffs earlier this week for more time to respond to Garner’s dismissal motion for “failure to cite good cause.” The plaintiffs filed an amended motion, which Collyer granted yesterday.
A response to Garner’s dismissal motion now is due July 9. Attorney’s for the plaintiffs said they agreed to examine “whether or not to voluntarily dismiss [Garner] from the proceeding” prior to the new filing deadline.
Earlier in the week Collyer denied motions by the plaintiffs to formally add two attorneys to the case, for “failure to confer with all opposing counsel.”
ASD President Andy Bowdoin also is a RICO defendant. He has not responded to the lawsuit.
In a separate case filed by the government last year against assets tied to ASD and Golden Panda amid allegations of wire fraud, money-laundering, selling unregistered securities and operating a Ponzi scheme, prosecutors seized more than $65 million from Bowdoin-controlled bank accounts and more than $14 million from Busby-controlled accounts.
Busby, a minister who also is in the real-estate business and was implicated by the SEC in a prime-bank scheme in the 1990s, submitted to the forfeiture in September.
Bowdoin submitted to the forfeiture in January, but now says he changed his mind after meeting with a “group” and wants to re-contest it. Golden Panda amassed the $14 million sum in only days, and ASD amassed the $65 million sum in only weeks.
Busby’s attorney — Jonathan W. Emord of Clifton, Va. — said in court filings that claims against “Rev. Busby are precluded by the United States’ civil forfeiture action under the doctrine of res judicata.
“Plaintiffs are barred from relitigating issues resolved against Busby on behalf of the United States and all residents, citizens, and taxpayers concerning matters adjudicated which are of public interest,†Emord argued.
In essence, the argument holds that, since Busby already has submitted to the forfeiture of funds and the government is establishing a mechanism for refunds, the RICO litigants already have a remedy.
Garner, meanwhile, argued that the court lacks jurisdiction over him in the case. He is representing himself in the RICO action, although court filings suggest he also has paid professional counsel working behind the scenes.
Florida Case Against Bowdoin At Standstill
Why Bowdoin hasn’t responded to the RICO lawsuit is unclear. Also unclear is why there has been no public action since Jan. 6 in a lawsuit filed against Bowdoin and his wife, Edna Faye Bowdoin, by Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum.
Federal prosecutors said in April that Bowdoin had signed a proffer letter in the federal case and acknowledged that ASD was operating illegally. Proffer letters sometimes mean that the one who proffers has agreed to provide the government information that is helpful in the prosecution of others.
After signing the proffer letter, Bowdoin submitted to the forfeiture in January. Several weeks later, in late February, Bowdoin consulted with what he described as a “group” and began to file pro se court pleadings in the federal case.
One day after Bowdoin signed his first pro-se pleading on Feb. 25, the AdViewGlobal (AVG) autosurf introduced members to Pro Advocate Group, which says it can help people practice law without a license and help companies form “private membership associations.”
AVG now is operating as such an association.
Pro Advocate Group, which also pushes a “legal defense” for taxpayers and “private medical associations,” is associated with Karl Dahlstrom. Dahlstrom was convicted of securities fraud and sentenced to 78 months in federal prison in the 1990s.
Prosecutors said he bought automobiles with investors’ funds — something Bowdoin is accused of doing.
AVG has close family, management and promotional ties to ASD. Two of Bowdoin’s family members –Â George Harris and his wife, Judy Harris — are trustees of the AVG private “association.”
George Harris is the son of Bowdoin’s wife, Edna Faye Bowdoin.
AVG, which earlier had disclaimed any ties to ASD, now describes itself as a full-fledged advertising and communications company with a host of services.
But the company has not explained how having ties to Bowdoin family members, friends and promoters is helpful for business, given twin forfeiture cases by the government against assets tied to ASD, the RICO case filed by ASD members and McCollum’s Florida case.
In December — in an action separate from an August forfeiture filing by the federal government and McCollum’s August lawsuit — federal prosecutors filed a second forfeiture complaint against assets tied to ASD.
Among other things, the December complaint alleged that Edna Faye Bowdoin and George Harris opened a checking account with nearly $180,000 in illegal proceeds from ASD. George Harris used more than $157,000 of the deposit to pay off the mortgage on the Tallahassee home he shared with his wife, prosecutors said.
George and Judy Harris also acquired an automobile with illegal proceeds from ASD, prosecutors said.
Last year, Bowdoin announced to ASD members that “Ponzi” allegations in the Florida case had been dropped. The announcement caused ASD members to race to online forums to share the good news, but proved to be false.
McCollum’s office issued a statement denying Bowdoin’s assertions, saying Ponzi allegations hadn’t even been brought against ASD in Florida.
Rather, McCollum’s office said, the state had accused ASD of operating a Pyramid scheme.
EDITOR’S NOTE: We published a story Wednesday that some members of AdViewGlobal (AVG) assert is unfair. At issue — particularly from a poster who uses the handle “CORRECTION!” — is the headline that accompanied the story.
Another poster, “Pistol,” isn’t sympathic to the autosurf business and says he doesn’t suffer fools gladly on either side of the issue, but also raised a concern about the fairness of the headline. Meanwhile, other posters say the headline is fair. One of the issues is whether an AVG prospect can bypass AVG and purchase ad-packs directly from sponsors.
Here is some background, and our response to the concerns. We’ll start by republishing a comment Pistol made. Pistol’s reference to the “200% thingy” below is a reference to an AVG matching-bonus program.
The 200 percent program was advertised to have a June 29 expiration date, but AVG suddenly changed the expiration date to June 5. AVG members and prospects said they were concerned about not being able to get money to the company in time to qualify for the bonus, and an AVG promoter outlined a strategy by which members and prospects with “big bucks” could get the bonus by paying sponsors directly.
Pistol: It doesn’t seem to me that the sponsor in question is suggesting that sponsors should give/sell members adpacks/page impressions from them (the sponsors) but rather a quick and easy way that they can help new members get funds available so that they can buy adpacks directly from AVGA thereby qualifying for the 200% thingy.
OUR TAKE: During the first FOUR steps of what is described as the sponsor’s bid to provide a “quick and easy way” for prospects to buy ad-packs “directly” from AVG, the sponsor:
1.) Gathers money from the prospect and makes a private agreement with the prospect that the final recipient of the funds will be AVG and that the funds will be used to purchase ad-packs.
2.) Deposits the funds in the sponsor’s local bank.
3.) Causes a wire to be sent to an offshore payment processor or sends a check via overnight mail to the offshore payment processor.
4.) Waits for the payment processor to receive the funds and credit the sponsor’s account.
That’s FOUR steps — or FIVE, if you count the private agreement as a separate step — so an argument that positions this as a purchase made “directly” from AVG isn’t a very compelling one.
This deal cannot happen as the promoter describes, absent a private agreement between the sponsor and the prospect and subterfuge aimed at the local bank. Moreover, it can’t happen without use of the bank’s wire facility or use of a banking instrument, and it necessarily must involve the offshore processors because the prospect can’t wire funds to AVG directly.
There’s that word again — “directly.” With the exception of the prospect’s direct payment to the sponsor, there is virtually nothing direct about this transaction.
At this point, the prospect’s bank thinks he is doing business with the sponsor, the sponsor’s bank thinks he is doing business with the prospect, and the payment processor thinks it is doing business with the sponsor.
ONLY the prospect and the sponsor know that AVG is the intended final recipient — and they haven’t told anybody, FOUR or FIVE steps into the process.
Additional Steps
In the next step, the sponsor tells the offshore payment processor that AVG is the intended recipient, but the payment processor doesn’t know the prospect is hidden in the deal or is choosing not to know. The prospect’s role is to give money to the sponsor, so he can use the sponsor’s bank to get the money to the offshore processor in an environment that is conducive for AVG and most advantageous for the prospect.
The payment processor obliges the sponsor and wires the money to AVG, but the transaction still is at least TWO steps away from completion, because the money or the value thereof somehow has to get back in the hands of the real customer, the prospect.
So, the sponsor funds his AVG account, so he can use AVG’s internal system to get the money or the value thereof to the real customer, the prospect, for the purchase of ad-packs.
A sale made “directly” through AVG? Hardly. This process is at least SEVEN steps removed from a direct transaction with AVG and perhaps as many as EIGHT. This sale cannot occur — and the prospect cannot get the 200 percent bonus — unless the prospect pays the sponsor directly. The sponsor is getting paid directly for the purchase of ad packs.
Here, a person might want to ask why the prospect in search of a matching bonus before a deadline passes just can’t send the money to AVG directly and have it credited immediately. That’s the question some AVG members are asking right now. In fact, they asked it as soon as the sponsor laid out the strategy, and some AVG members are complaining out loud about money procedures that appear to be convoluted and complex.
A person also might want to ask why AVG isn’t using PayPal, and instead is using the offshore surfing favorites: SolidTrustPay and StrictPay. PayPal does not touch this kind of business because it is fraught with secret agendas.
Worth Noting
It’s worth pointing out that some of the government personnel involved in the AdSurfDaily (ASD) case also were involved in the successful prosecution of e-Gold, which basically was accused of looking the other way while it processed payments for people who were laundering money.
ASD, a Florida company federal prosecutors say once used e-Gold and engaged in wire fraud, money-laundering and the sale of unregistered securities, has close ties to AVG.
AVG, for example, lists ASD President Andy Bowdoin’s stepson — George Harris — as a “Trustee” of the AVG “private association.” Judy Harris, the wife of George Harris, also is listed as an AVG “Trustee.”
A home and a car prosecutors say George and Judy Harris acquired with money from ASD was seized as the proceeds of a criminal enterprise in a December forfeiture complaint filed by the Feds.
One of the issues in the e-Gold case was secret money transactions, and look what’s happening in the strategy outlined by the AVG promoter: The banks don’t know that the prospect and the sponsor just worked together to get funds to a final beneficiary unknown to the bank — AVG — and the processor doesn’t know the prospect is hidden in the deal or may be choosing not to know.
Incongruous Messages
AVG purports to be headquartered in Uruguay, has servers that resolve to Panama, receives money from offshore processors in Canada and Panama, but issued a news release this week with a dateline of Tallahassee.
Many of our readers probably noticed that AVG didn’t use the words “Uruguay” or “Panama” or “offshore” in its news release, but then immediately sent members an email purported to have originated in Uruguay — to celebrate a news release with a Tallahassee dateline.
It’s a message hopelessly at odds with itself. It is particularly incongruous because AVG also now claims it provides professional PR services — but just look at what is happening:
AVG can’t reconcile its own message. It is creating the appearance that it is in Tallahassee when it wants to look clean and proper — indeed, some people now say it is selling legitimate services priced from $30,000 to $200,000 — but it’s in Uruguay when it wants “advertising” rotator cash from folks who need to believe the Securities and Exchange Commission can’t touch them offshore.
How do those competing notions come into balance? And why would a company that says it can command legitimate fees of up to $200,000 from clients not be running like a man on fire to exit the autosurf business? Incredibly, one promoter said today that AVG’s plan is to remain in the surf business and use the fees it collects for legitimate services to fund the surf.
In the strategy outlined by the promoter, where is the money that started out at a local bank now? Uruguay? Panama? Florida? Elsewhere? And what routes will it take in the form of payouts to get back to members so it becomes spendable in their hometowns?
The Headline Flap
As many of our readers know, “CORRECTION!” is none too happy about this headline, which appears on this Blog.
AdViewGlobal Promoter Says Prospects Can Bypass Company And Purchase Ad-Packs Directly From Sponsors To Ensure They Get Credited With 200 Percent Match Before Deadline
CORRECTION repeatedly has demanded a retraction, although he has not identified himself as an AVG spokesperson or person in position of authority at AVG to bring a concern to our attention and ask for a clarification or a retraction. At the same time, CORRECTION will not answer basic questions about AVG’s business practices or provide evidence of verifiable income streams to refute concerns AVG is selling unregistered securities and operating as a Ponzi scheme.
Let’s take the headline sections one at a time:
/AdViewGlobal Promoter Says/
Yes, it was an AVG promoter who shared the strategy of prospects paying sponsors directly and engaging in a process that involves at least SEVEN steps and ultimately results in the purchase of ad-packs. (AVG calls ad-packs “page impressions” or “viewer impressions.”)
/Prospects Can Bypass Company/
Yes, the prospect bypasses the company and pays money directly to the sponsor, under the strategy outlined by the promoter. The only thing AVG does in this transaction is make sure the electrons settle in the proper places when told to do so.
/And Purchase Ad-Packs Directly From Sponsors/
Yes, the sponsor is selling ad-packs directly because he directly collects the money for the ad-packs, routes the money offshore, causes it to be delivered to AVG, funds his own AVG account with his prospects’ money, and then causes AVG to redistribute the funds or the value thereof to complete the sale. In this case, the sponsor is more directly involved in the sale of ad-packs than AVG itself.
/To Ensure They Get Credited With 200 Percent Match Before Deadline/
Yes, this whole strategy was published because someone wanted to know the quickest way a person with $10,000 could get the money to AVG before the deadline to qualify for the 200 percent match.
The promoter said it was a way to take care of the folks with “big bucks.”
An AdViewGlobal (AVG) promoter has shared a strategy that potentially could cause a legal calamity for individual AVG promoters and members. The member posted his strategy on an AdViewGlobal forum set up by some Mods and members of the Pro-ASD Surf’s Up forum.
AVG, which purports to be headquartered in Uruguay and also is known as AVGA, launched a new website Monday, redefining itself as a full-fledged advertising company with a host of services. Within hours, the surf firm announced that a 200 percent, matching-bonus program would end June 5, not June 29 as originally advertised.
AVG prospects and existing members expressed concern that they would not be able to get their accounts credited with purchases or the bonus before the June 5 deadline. The new deadline shaved 24 days off the original deadline.
One AVG promoter, however, said there was a workaround by which established program sponsors could serve as a conduit for AVG.
Under the workaround, established sponsors could gather money from individual prospects, deposit it in the sponsors’ local banks and then send a check by overnight mail to international payment processors in Canada and Panama.
Alternatively, the sponsors could use their local bank’s wire facility to wire money to the processors, the promoter explained.
Once the offshore payment processors credited the sponsors’ accounts, the sponsors could transfer the money to AVG and use AVG’s internal system to transfer ad packs to the prospects’ accounts in the amounts they desired to purchase, ensuring that the matching bonuses also would be credited by the June 5 deadline.
“Many new members may or may not be able to become verified AND have their account funded in time to qualify for the match,” the promoter said. “So as a sponsor what you can do is bank wire or overnight your payment processor ([SolidTrustPay] or [StrictPay]).
“You are guarantee[d] to have it into your account by Friday. Once it hit[s] your account, log into backoffice and ‘Fund your AVGA account’. This will bring the money into your cash balance. Once it’s in your cash balance, then you can INSTANTLY transfer it to your members. Once money hits their account, they can make a purchase and “BAM” get[] the 200% match.
“You can have your members wire you their funds or whatever the 2 of you decide upon,” the promoter continued.
“Unless [there] is a direct wire to AVGA for funding, this is probably the best way that I can see that you can help all your present AND new members get the 200% match,” the promoter said.
Such an approach potentially brings many issues into play at the individual level, including mail fraud, wire fraud, money-laundering, tax evasion, selling unregistered securities and acting as a securities broker-dealer without a license.
Some members of AdSurfDaily, a Florida company accused of wire fraud, selling unregistered securities and operating a Ponzi scheme, also gathered money directly from prospects and used ASD’s internal system to transfer credits.
ASD’s internal laxity and inability to post purchases in timely fashion led to assertions that individual promoters could use the company to make tax-free side deals with prospects. If a promoter already was in “profit” and had a stockpile of ad-packs on the books, he or she could sell the ad-packs at a discount to prospects, transfer the ad-packs to prospects using ASD’s internal system and pocket the cash.
The prospects would “earn” at ASD’s advertised rate, even though they paid less than others for ad-packs by purchasing through sponsors and bypassing the company. Other ASD members who had paid full price through ASD would inherit the burden of paying for the discounted ad-packs and their full “earning” potential.
Collecting money from prospects and transferring ad-packs using AVG’s internal system may be problematic even if the ad-packs aren’t offered at a discount. The government views the autosurf business model as foundationally corrupt, and makes no secret that participants are subject to prosecution under securities, wire-fraud, mail-fraud, money-laundering and racketeering statutes.
