“6. I affirm that I am not an employee or official of any government agency, nor am I acting on behalf of or collecting information for or on behalf of any government agency. I affirm that I am not an employee, by contract or otherwise, of any media or research company, and I am not reading any of the Ad Click Xpress pages in order to collect information for someone else.” — From the AdClickXpress Terms of Service, Nov. 29, 2014
The carcass of AdClickXpress (ACX) is stirring — just in time to cast a spell on suckers hoping to find some extra money for the holidays. Like predecessor scams JSSTripler/JustBeenPaid and ProfitClicking in the same criminal family, ACX fancies itself the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) of online schemes.
In short, ACX ropes “customers” into an international financial conspiracy theoretically designed to be offshore everywhere. But deliberately taunting government investigators in its Terms of Service (see breakout quote above from the Terms) appears only to have been a first act. The “program” now appears to be taunting its own members and prospects.
From a Sept. 10, 2014, post on the MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi forum, quoting from the taunt (italics/bolding added):
Note: if members are found to have posted negative information about ACX, even if it is absolutely true, their account could be penalized significantly. ACX Management will be the sole determinant as to how much damage the member has caused other ACX Members.
Like the bizarre and incongruous AdViewGlobal scam before it, ACX fancies itself a “private association.” But even if it were one of those — and even if in theory it could hamstring government investigators and reporters with a vomitous word salad — it is a “private association” that threatens its own members in ways the Mafia wouldn’t consider.
So, at least by Sept. 10, ACX began serving up BannersBroker-like word-sewage. It’s all designed to confuse and to obfuscate, of course.
By the Terms alone, ACX makes co-conspirators of its members. And after this artifice is carried out, it divines a construction by which it will penalize “significantly” and unilaterally calculate damages purportedly caused by those same members who’d dare post “negative information . . . even if it’s absolutely true.”
Separately, there are unconfirmed reports on MoneyMakerGroup that Frederick Mann, the purported operator of JSS/JPB and the de facto inspiration behind the follow-up scams, has died. Mann, a former pitchmen for the AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme, once directed traffic to videos featuring Francis Schaeffer Cox, the now-convicted Alaska “sovereign citizen” and militia man implicated in a plot to murder public officials.
Redacted screen shot of "regional representatives" claim today on the website of JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid.
BULLETIN: The PP Blog has learned that JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid is publishing a page in which it advertises the availability of “regional representatives” in various parts of the world, including Italy.
On Jan. 23, CONSOB, the Italian securities regulator, took action against certain JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid affiliaties. Despite the CONSOB action, JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid is openly advertising that it has at least two affiliates who speak Italian and that the affiliates are available to “assist you with ALL aspects of the program IN YOUR LANGUAGE.”
The page also touts the native-language talents of JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid affiliates to assist members in Hong Hong, Taiwan, Belgium, Canada, Ireland, the United Kingdom, the United States (to assist people who speak English or Japanese), Germany, Lithuania, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mongolia, Poland, Portugal, Latvia, France, Chile, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador and Spain.
JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid described its outreach via regional reps as “AMAZING!”
“The people on this page have been thoroughly trained in all the workings of JustBeenPaid’s programs, and are happy to assist you TODAY!” the murky entity crowed.
In a Feb. 23 conference call, Frederick Mann, the purported operator of JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid, declined to say precisely where the “opportunity” itself was located.
JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid, Mann asserted to an audience of Americans and at least one person who claimed to be a resident of Canada, was “not located in any specific part of the world.
“We’re all over the planet,” he said, speaking with an English accent that appeared to be native to South Africa.
The assertion led to questions about whether Mann was running the “program” in a fashion reminiscent of a sort of small-scale Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI). BCCI deliberately structured itself in murky fashion to ward off oversight by regulators. Its collapse created one of the great business scandals of the 1990s, prompting the Wall Street Journal (Europe) to observe that BCCI had been set up to be “offshore everywhere.”
BCCI’s collapse also triggered Congressional probes in the United States, along with both civil and criminal prosecutions.
The CONSOB probe in Italy, which the agency announced nearly six weeks ago, was not referenced on the “representatives” page on the JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid website.
Incongruously, the “representatives” page included a link to an “agreement” page in which JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid registrants and/or prospects were informed they must affirm “that I am not an employee or official of any government agency, nor am I acting on behalf of or collecting information for or on behalf of any government agency.”
Moreover, the registrants and/or prospects were informed they must affirm “that I am not an employee, by contract or otherwise, of any media or research company, and I am not reading any of the JBP pages in order to collect information for someone else.”
The collapsed Legis HYIP published similar terms. (More on the Legisi prosecution below.)
How long the JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid regional reps have been in place was not immediately clear. Also unclear was whether each of the reps had a physical presence in the respective countries or were using the Internet to reach over borders and perform customer service and recruit downlines in the respective nations.
The U.S. government and other governments of the world have become increasingly concerned about cross-border fraud. Yesterday, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Janet Napolitano, the secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, met with top officials in Canada to discuss the problem.
Perhaps aghast over JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid developments, a poster on the MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi forum declared today that having regional reps for JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid is an “insane idea.”
“Forget about the matrix spots and payouts,” the MoneyMakerGroup poster wrote today. “[W]hy is 200,000 + members not enough and why arent (sic) we off the radar and private and not opening ourselves up to potential problems ? Regional reps is an insane idea, Im (sic) sorry but the admin needs to protect us and wakeup (sic) to the reality that you cant (sic) get this huge and expect nothing bad to happen.”
The poster did not explain his apparent belief that JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid had a duty to go “private” and to get “off the radar” of regulators. Nor did he say precisely what constituted something “bad.”
HYIPs have been the subject of both civil and criminal litigation in various jurisdictions.
It is common for HYIP purveyors to tout purported “offshore” operating venues and to claim such venues insulate an “opportunity” from prosecution. It also is common for HYIPs to announce they are “private” programs and therefore not subject to government oversight. At the same time, it is common for HYIPs to try to structure a Terms of Service or Member Agreement that purports either that the “opportunity” is not selling securities or is not subject to regulatory oversight.
Some HYIPs, including JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid, have preemptively denied they are Ponzi schemes.
The purported returns of JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid are somewhat on par with the returns of Nicholas Smirnow of the alleged Pathway To Prosperity HYIP Ponzi scheme. Smirnow is listed as “Wanted” by INTERPOL.
On Feb. 27, the PP Blog reported that a website linked to Mann displayed videos of Francis Schaeffer Cox, an American and purported “sovereign citizen” under indictment in Alaska in an alleged murder plot against public officials.
Separately, a YouTube promo for JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid dated yesterday asserted that “[a]ll you have to do is wait for your money to increase!!!”
A Blog post dated today, meanwhile, makes this assertion (italics added):
“The JSS Tripler new site is one month old. It has been a month of phenomenal growth, but it’s nothing compared to what’s in the future. Some ‘Big Things’ are on the horizon that will enable many of the members to become millionaires, some could even become billionaires.”
Neither the March 3 Blog post nor the March 2 YouTube video referenced the CONSOB probe.
In 2008, AdSurfDaily President Andy Bowdoin asserted that ASD had a plan to create 100,000 millionaires in three years. On Dec. 1, 2010, the U.S. government announced that Bowdoin had been indicted on Ponzi-related charges of wire fraud, securities fraud and selling unregistered securities.
Seabaugh also was an affiliate of an enterprise known as Ad-Ventures4U (ADV4u), which crashed in 2009 amid allegations that its operator had been threatened by members.
In web promos, Mann has described himself as a promoter for both ASD and ADV4U. Some affiliates have described him as a “genius,” the same description accorded Bowdoin before the August 2008 raid on ASD headquarters by the U.S. Secret Service.
After the event — and facing both civil prosecution and a criminal investigation — Bowdoin told ASD members that the raid was the work of “Satan.”
It is a descriptor completely contrary to the typical view Americans have of the Secret Service, which has the twin duties of protecting the nation’s financial infrastructure and the life of the President of the United States.
Most Americans believe the Secret Service consists of heroes who place themselves in harm’s way every day to keep the United States safe, doing everything from making sure U.S. grandparents have safe places to deposit their Social Security checks to making sure that the President is well-protected and accessible to the American people.
Kenneth Wayne Leaming, an ASD member and purported “sovereign citizen,” allegedly filed a bogus lien against the Secret Service agent who led the ASD investigation in 2008, the FBI said in November 2011 court filings.
Leaming also allegedly filed bogus liens against a federal judge and three federal prosecutors involved in the ASD case, according to court filings by the FBI. He is jailed near Seattle awaiting trial on those charges, along with charges of filing false liens against other public officials, concealing two federal fugitives wanted in a home-business caper in Arkansas, being a felon in possession of firearms and uttering a bogus “Bonded Primissory Note” for $1 million.
Court filings suggest Leaming was conducting financial research on John Roberts, the chief justice of the United States and the head judge of the U.S. Supreme Court, while hatching a scheme to serve papers on Roberts through a school attended by the distinguished jurist’s children.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Jeremy Johnson and associated companies were accused civilly by the FTC in December 2010 of orchestrating a massive fraud scheme involving hundreds of millions of dollars. At the moment, Johnson, 35, faces a single criminal charge of mail fraud. He denies wrongdoing on both the criminal and civil fronts and has painted himself a victim of an evil government and a court-appointed receiver run amok.
About three weeks prior to the release of the court-appointed receiver’s report that is the subject of the story below, the government signaled that new criminal charges will be forthcoming and that those charges will apply to Johnson and unnamed “others” within his business web.
“The United States’ criminal investigation is expected to continue for some months,” prosecutors said in a Jan. 12 court filing.
A devastating 79-page report filed Friday by the court-appointed receiver in the Jeremy Johnson/IWorks case paints a picture of an incredibly elaborate domestic and international fraud scheme — one that only grew as the government moved in.
The issuance of the report by receiver Robb Evans occurred against the backdrop of an ongoing advertising campaign — apparently conducted by a person or persons within Johnson’s camp — that plants the seed that Evans is presiding over a fraudulent company. The ad campaign, which is taking place on Google’s network, initially started on a web domain whose root was formed in part with the receiver’s first and last names, followed by the word “fraud.” (See Dec. 22 editorial.)
That campaign appears to have been moved to a different domain that does not use Evans’ name to form its root, but instead marries the words “receiver” and “fraud” and asks, “Are you a victim of Robb Evans?”
“We want to hear from you!” the ad exclaims.
Evans is one of the financial analysts who helped unravel the infamous BCCI banking scandal in the 1990s. His bona fides are firmly established in the courts, and he has been a receiver or fiduciary in numerous cases.
Receiver’s Feb. 3 Update To The Court
Scores of business entities effectively were used as chess pieces to stymie investigators, keep the money wheels of key Johnson associates greased and disguise and conceal the ownership of assets, according to the report.
At least six people with business and/or personal ties to Johnson either have invoked their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination or informed the receiver that they would if asked questions about certain transactions, according to the report.
Included among this group were Johnson’s parents, a CPA, a notary public, a former banker and a man who’d served jail time for a previous felony conviction, according to the report.
Among the former convict’s duties was to open domestic bank or trading accounts at the prompting of other Johnson business associates, according to the report.
Through the efforts of yet another Johnson business associate, millions of dollars ended up in places such as Cyprus and Andorra, a small principality in southwest Europe bordered by France and Spain. The associate claimed to have conducted a “world tour” to open bank accounts, according to the report.
Here is how Evans, referring to both an earlier report to U.S. District Judge Roger L. Hunt and the new report issued last week, described his actions to date in reverse-engineering the alleged fraud. (Italics/emphasis added):
“This process thus far has included an analysis and review of more than 265 bank accounts and other records from 35 financial institutions and 25 other businesses. In addition to 115 affiliated entities and shell companies of the Receivership Defendants as reported in the Receiver’s first report, the Receiver also discovered at least another 65 entities that were involved in moving funds and concealing the assets of Receivership Defendants.”
And here is one of the receiver’s conclusions:
“There can be no commercially reasonable explanation for the number of entities and individuals through which funds were routed and re-routed. The only plausible explanation is that these funds are assets of Jeremy Johnson and some of the individuals were paid to shield those assets.”
There can be no doubt that the report will raise alarm bells in the U.S. Congress and official Washington because of the security implications of an alleged fraud scheme in which proceeds also made their way into a troubled Utah bank already reeling from the recession and stress on real-estate prices. The bank later failed, but not until Johnson allegedly had acquired a 19 percent stake in part through alleged nominee purchases of stock by relatives and “structured” transactions designed to ward off the FDIC.
Among other things, the report by Evans ties both Johnson and SunFirst Bank of St. George to the poker scandal playing out in New York amid Ponzi allegations. Johnson allegedly paid a bribe to John Campos, a former SunFirst banker indicted in the poker case, according to the report.
What allegedly happened at Sun First Bank, however, was only one of the events addressed in the report.
In a separate court filing in Nevada last month, federal prosecutors advised Hunt that the government is “conducting an extensive criminal investigation for the purpose of superseding the original indictment with a more comprehensive indictment charging Johnson, iWorks, Inc., and others with a widespread pattern of federal criminal violations.”
The others were not named in the prosecution filing.
Johnson currently is facing a single count of mail fraud, in addition to the FTC’s civil charges.
Separately, the FTC said in court filings last month that Johnson had engaged in an improper subpoena blitz in the civil case while discovery was stayed by the Nevada federal court.
Johnson, according to the FTC, sent a subpoena to the private, D.C. metro-area residence of FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz. The subpoena, which was quashed, demanded that Leibowitz appear in St. George at 9 a.m. on Jan. 27 to be deposed.
Johnson also improperly sought to subpoena FTC commissioner Julie Brill, demanding that she appear in St. George to attend a deposition a few days after Leibowitz, according to the FTC’s filing. That subpoena also was quashed.
Like all FTC commissioners, Leibowitz and Brill are Presidential appointees. Neither is required to jump on cue from Johnson. Discovery will continue when the stay is lifted on a schedule the court — rather than Johnson — sets.
See earlier editorial that lists some of the domain names that use the names of the FTC or FTC officials in forming all or parts of their roots. The domains allegedly were acquired by Johnson or persons in his camp. At least one domain that used the name of the FDIC was formed, according to court filings: EvilFDIC.
Among the many domains that use the FTC’s name is CorruptFTC, along with at least three domains formed with the proper names of FTC staff attorneys.
Each of the domains allegedly was acquired before the receiver filed his Feb. 3 report.
On Jan. 23, CONSOB, the Italian securities regulator, made public an action against promoters of JSS Tripler, a “program” that advertises an annualized return of 730 percent. The claim alone would be enough to make Bernard Madoff or Charles Ponzi himself blush.
Or projectile-vomit.
But if the CONSOB action were not trouble enough, one of the JSS Tripler-related domains listed in the agency’s action is hosted in Utah, according to domain records. The domain, which forms its root with a hyphen splitting the proper name of JSS Tripler — i.e., JSS-Tripler.com — continued to serve pages from Utah for several days after CONSOB’s Jan. 23 announcement. The domain, for instance, published daily updates on the number of days JSS Tripler itself purportedly had been in action.
Among the graphics on the Utah-hosted landing page was an image of a JSS Tripler pitchwoman who appeared to be Asian in descent. Assuming the woman actually exists, her nationality remains a mystery. At a time uncertain between Feb. 2 and Feb. 3, however, the site stopped serving content and instead began to redirect to a JustBeenPaid subdomain styled “marketing” that is hosted in the Netherlands.
Whether a U.S. resident or citizen of another country who reached across international borders applied the redirection is unclear. What is clear is that the United States could join Italy in exercising jurisdiction over JSS Tripler and its promoters if it chose to do so. The site also is accessible through individual U.S. states, meaning regulators at the state level also could exercise jurisdiction.
JustBeenPaid and Frederick Mann, a murky figure who once claimed to be an ASD promoter, are the purported operators of JSS Tripler. The Netherlands subdomain shows an image of a man at the top of the page. That man is described on the site as “Louis Paquette, JBP Affiliate Sales & Marketing Director.”
The redirection, which occurs in Utah, according to server data, is virtually immediate — meaning that the previous content and photo of the woman of Asian descent no longer load and that the traffic is switched to the Netherlands page that shows the purported image of Paquette.
Among other things, this development raises questions about who caused the Utah server to redirect to the Netherlands domain and precisely why the change was made on the heels of the CONSOB action. Whether JustBeenPaid or JSS Tripler themselves had control over the Utah domain is unknown.
At a minimum, though, the presence of the Utah domain may be evidence that JustBeenPaid/JSS Tripler not only sold unregistered securities to U.S. citizens, but did so from inside the United States with a U.S. promoter or a promoter from another country with access to the Utah server at the helm. And because the redirect to the JustBeenPaid subdomain in the Netherlands occurs from inside the United States, it exposes a JustBeenPaid/JSS Tripler lie that the “opportunity” protects itself and promoters from investigation and/or prosecution.
Even if the redirection were not occurring in the United States, the CONSOB action destroys the myth that the “opportunity” is outside the reach of law enforcement. So does the simple fact that any regulator in the world could take action against the “opportunity” and its promoters. Indeed, the cross-border nature of the scheme puts investors in virtually all jurisdictions at risk. Individual promoters could be targeted for investigation/prosecution in multiple jurisdictions — and if actions such as those begin to occur, the access of Just BeenPaid/JSS Tripler to cash sources could dry up.
A claim by a MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi-forum promoter that Just BeenPaid/JSS Tripler has paid out more than $10 million to investors may demonstrate the vast reach of the “opportunity” and its ability to tap funding sources while siphoning undisclosed sums for itself. Just BeenPaid/JSS Tripler may be no Madoff, but $10 million still is a massive sum, one that should raise eyebrows in the worldwide law-enforcement community.
Content accessible from the Netherlands-based JustBeenPaid subdomain — marketing.justbeenpaid.com — raises other troubling concerns. This statement (next paragraph) appears at the bottom of a “login” page in the JustBeenPaid root domain. The statement is accessible through the “marketing” subdomain. (Indent/italics added):
Secure Offshore Servers — Our servers are in a strategic location. We pay special attention to security. Our servers are organized so upgrading and expansion are very easy.
Offshore Business — Our business operations are geographically decentralized. We don’t have any central office. We’re not located in any “unfriendly political jurisdictions.”
As a practical matter, the mere fact the page is accessible through a redirect that occurs in the United States may destroy any claims that JustBeenPaid/JSS Tripler protects members against “unfriendly political jurisdictions.” Any transaction that occurred or occurs through the Utah domain necessarily involves wires in the United States.
Regardless of the domain or email address through which business is conducted, any U.S.-based promoter of JustBeenPaid/JSS Tripler is using wires inside the United States, a situation that brings wire fraud into play — in addition to the securities issues.
A more troubling question, perhaps, is why JustBeenPaid/JSS Tripler even would have the need to make such a claim if its international business is above-board. The same enterprise also claims to have a U.S. patent, a specious claim in the context of securities because the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office does not regulate the securities markets of the United States or any other country.
Is JustBeenPaid/JSS Tripler The BCCI Of The HYIP World?
In the early 1990s, a corrupt international banking enterprise known as Bank of Credit and Commerce International created a worldwide financial scandal. The bank perhaps was best known by its acronym — BCCI — and purportedly was designed to be “offshore everywhere.”
JustBeenPaid/JSS Tripler is making the same sorts of claims associated with BCCI, a spectacularly bright red flag if ever there was one.
But if that bright red flag were not enough, other content accessible through the “marketing” subdomain of JustBeenPaid sends signals that positively glow of danger. Indeed, a “Member Agreement” link accessible through the site includes this language. (Indent/italics added):
6. I affirm that I am not an employee or official of any government agency, nor am I acting on behalf of or collecting information for or on behalf of any government agency.
7. I affirm that I am not an employee, by contract or otherwise, of any media or research company, and I am not reading any of the JBP pages in order to collect information for someone else.
Any political jurisdiction in any part of the world easily could construe those words as an invitation extended by JustBeenPaid/JSS Tripler to investors to join an international conspiracy engaging in organized crime and mass-marketing fraud.
Even more land mines emerge when one considers that JustBeenPaid/JSS Tripler is being promoted on Ponzi boards such as MoneyMakerGroup and TalkGold, both of which are referenced in U.S. federal court files as places from which Ponzi schemes are promoted.
Veteran forum and social-network hucksters are promoting JustBeenPaid/JSS Tripler, including promoters linked to the AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme case in the United States and CONSOB’s earlier action involving Club Asteria, another Ponzi forum darling.
Depending upon how the universe lines up, JustBeenPaid/JSS Tripler could find itself starving for cash in very short order. It is a program that is thumbing its nose at law enforcement across the globe — and its willfully blind promoters could find themselves named in individual actions just about anywhere.
It is the very definition of an international financial conspiracy of the most dangerous sort, a sort of emerging BCCI of the HYIP world.
BEFORE
This is the top of the page at the JSS-Tripler.com domain as it existed on Jan. 30, 2012.
AFTER
This is the top of the "marketing" subdomain of JustBeenPaid.com as it exists today. Prospects who visit the Utah-based JSS-Tripler domain referenced in the "BEFORE" screen shot above now are redirected to the Netherlands-based "marketing" subdomain of JustBeenPaid. The switch occurs in Utah, according to server data.
Screen shot from Dec. 14 evidence exhibit filed as part of an emergency motion in the Jeremy Johnson/IWorks fraud cause brought by the FTC. The site shown in the exhibit and described in the emergency motion by an attorney for the court-appointed receiver in the case is not the actual site of the receiver. Rather, it is an imposter site that uses the receiver’s name and is designed to intercept traffic and undermine the receivership estate, according to the emergency motion. The bogus site later was altered further and the words “Thieves,” “Lairs” (sic) and “Crooks” were placed near the top of the page, according to a separate evidence exhibit.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This story originally was published Dec. 22, 2011, 10:41 a.m. It was updated at 8:11 a.m. on Dec. 23, 2011. The PP Blog temporarily “unpublished” the story on March 23, 2012. Explanation of why it was taken offline temporarily is here. On March 23, 2012, the PP Blog’s security software recorded a “mass injection attack” as the Blog visited a domain styled CollotGuerard.com while researching matters pertaining to Jeremy Johnson. Collot Guerard is an attorney for the FTC and an alleged subject of harassment by Johnson or people close to Johnson because of the FTC actions against Johnson. The PPBlog is not revisiting the CollotGuerard.com domain and believes it is imprudent for readers to visit the domain.
Our Dec, 22, 2011, story is republished below. The republication date is Jan. 15, 2013 . . .
UPDATED 8:11 A.M. ET (DEC. 23, U.S.A.) Robb Evans, the court-appointed receiver in the Jeremy Johnson/IWorks Internet Marketing fraud case filed by the FTC a year ago, first came to national prominence as a liquidator in the Bank of Credit and Commerce International case in the 1990s. If the bank’s name alone doesn’t spark your memory, think of the acronym by which it was known: BCCI.
If you’re, say, over 40, images of BCCI and the spectacle it created perhaps are seared in your memory. The bank’s criminality and 1991 collapse created a scandal royale on both sides of the Atlantic and all over the world, including the Middle East. BCCI, the Wall Street Journal (Europe) wrote on Aug. 3, 2001 — a little more than a month before the 9/11 terrorist attacks — was a “renegade bank” that had relied on secrecy and had been designed to be “offshore everywhere” to evade regulatory scrutiny. The stunning collapse amid allegations of international money-laundering and a disguised takeover of U.S. banks initially put customers on the hook for $9 billion in losses.
BCCI, which allegedly conducted business with the terrorist Abu Nidal (died 2002) and the now-dead or imprisoned dictators of Iraq and Panama (Saddam Hussein [died 2006] and Manuel Noriega) — and also could not say no to the Medellin Cartel and Colombian narcotics traffickers — went on to become perhaps the most infamous acronym in the history of banking. Evans has testified before Congress on the subject of offshore banking, corruption and the war on terrorism. His bona fides and expertise in unraveling the affairs of companies implicated in complex fraud schemes are firmly established in the courts.
U.S. District Judge Joyce Hens Green of the District of Columbia once described Evans’ efforts as “remarkable.” In 1998, noting that she had presided over elements of the multibillion-dollar BCCI case for eight years and calling it the “longest-running forfeiture proceeding in the history of federal racketeering law,” the judge thanked Evans and others publicly for helping preserve $1.2 billion in U.S. assets for distribution to defrauded BCCI customers.
Evans is the namesake of Robb Evans & Associates LLC. What does the company do?
“What we do in my organization is we trace money, and we try and recover it for the victims of fraud, and we do it mostly on behalf of the United States Government,” Evans told the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations in 2006.
Despite his bona fides — despite his record as a court-appointed receiver in numerous cases and his testimony before the U.S. Congress on critical matters of U.S. and international financial security — someone with a Google AdWords account and perhaps some knowledge about SEO planted the seed earlier this month that Evans was presiding over a fraudulent company, according to new federal court filings in the Johnson/IWorks case.
For a yet-to-be-determined period of time, the names of Evans and his company were pushed down in Google search results and replaced at the top of the rankings by a domain styled RobbEvansFraud.com — with a paid AdWords ad to the right of the No. 1 search result driving traffic to the faux Evans site, according to an evidence exhibit filed in federal court on Dec. 14.
The faux site planted the seed that Robb Evans & Associates consisted of “Thieves,” “Lairs” (sic) and “Crooks,” according to to an emergency motion filed by an attorney for Evans.
“Warning,” the first sentence on the faux site blared, “this website is dedicated to collecting information from victims of Robb Evans and Associates.”
In June, Johnson, 35, was arrested at the Phoenix airport at which federal agents allegedly found him in possession of $26,400 in cash and a one-way ticket to Costa Rica. He asserts his innocence to both the criminal and civil charges brought in the case. Johnson now is free on bond.
Stop The Madness
The FTC moved against Johnson, IWorks and other companies in December 2010, alleging an Internet-fueled fraud involving hundreds of millions of dollars. Evans was appointed receiver by a federal judge in Nevada, the venue from which the action was brought. The agency alleged that at least 51 shell companies were set up to dupe banks and to carry out the fraud, which resulted in “hundreds of thousands” of chargebacks and threats to consumers who filed chargebacks.
FBI Director Robert Mueller III warned Congress in March 2010 and again a month later about the dangers of shadowy banking practices, noting that that shell companies often play a role in disguising fraudulent proceeds.
“Money laundering allows criminals to infuse illegal money into the stream of commerce, thus manipulating financial institutions to facilitate the concealing of criminal proceeds; this provides the criminals with unwarranted economic power,” Mueller said.
IWorks operated out of an office at 249 E. Tabernacle St. in St. George, Utah. The street intersects with nearby South Main, home of the historic St. George Tabernacle. The Tabernacle opened in 1876. The city of St. George is famous for its geology, its climate and for its historic ties to Brigham Young and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The city, unfortunately, also is becoming increasingly known as the town from which Johnson allegedly carried out a fraud involving hundreds of millions of dollars, in part by manipulating the banking system through dozens of shell companies in Nevada and other states.
In the emergency motion, an attorney for Evans now says that Johnson and perhaps others are seeking to interfere with the courts and the receivership estate by using the Internet to slime Evans, the FTC and Collot Guerard, an attorney for the FTC. The FTC has filed its own emergency motion.
Despite Hunt’s order, Johnson sued Evans in Utah state court. On Dec. 7, Hunt ordered the Utah state action brought by Johnson dismissed.
Johnson also asked Hunt to order the FTC to pay the legal fees of corporate defendants. The judge refused.
Of all the troubling developments, perhaps the most troubling is the allegation that Johnson and perhaps others have weaponized the Internet to interfere with the administration of justice. The site that attacks Guerard — a career civil servant — clams she has been “accused of fraud and corruption.” The site was created on Oct. 7, 2011, months after Hunt issued the preliminary injunction and order not to interfere. The site appears to operate from servers in Utah, with the registration hidden behind a proxy.
“[W]e are collecting information related to any wrongdoing on her part,” the site informs visitors.
The attack on Guerard is just the latest in a string of attacks or veiled threats against law enforcement. AdSurfDaily figure Kenneth Wayne Leaming, for example, is jailed near Seattle on federal charges he filed bogus liens against public officials in the ASD Ponzi case, including a federal judge, three federal prosecutors and a special agent of the U.S. Secret Service.
Vincent McCrudden, meanwhile, was arrested and jailed in January 2011 amid allegations he threatened to kill 47 regulators and government officials while using a website and emails to terrorize public servants. Just last week, federal prosecutors in Virginia said that Roger Charles Day Jr., who endangered the U.S. military and others in an offshore scam and was sentenced to 105 years in federal prison, had “filed hundreds of billions of dollars of fraudulent default judgments against more than 100 people who Day claimed had prosecuted him unfairly.”
The Day procurement scheme involved at least 18 companies, prosecutors said. When the scheme was exposed, Day simply “directed his conspirators to discontinue bidding through those companies and instead form and use new companies,” the Justice Department said.
In the new filings by the attorney for Evans in the FTC’s case against Johnson and IWorks, is is alleged that Johnson had a role in the posting of “false and scurrilous” material on the Internet in a bid to hamstring the administration of the receivership estate.
Among other things, one of the websites tied to Johnson “makes false allegations concerning ‘mass fraud and corruption by Robb Evans and Associates,’” according to the attorney’s emergency motion to disable the site.
Gmail addresses using the names of Evans and Guerard were created and were designed to “impersonate and/or interfere” with the receiver and others associated with the case, according to the emergency motion.
Johnson and others created other websites — including EvilFTC, FTCTactics and a site in Guerard’s name — to further undermine the legal process, according to the receiver’s emergency filing. Two other sites in the names of other FTC attorneys also were created, according to the receiver’s emergency motion.
Those sites, according to records, both were created on Dec. 1. Like the site in Guerard’s name, the servers appear to be based in Utah.
When the receiver’s attorney contacted Johnson to demand the site targeted at Evans be taken offline, Johnson claimed he did not own, host or control the site while insisting that “the domain has not been used for anything deceptive.”
“It is a constitutional right to be able to speak freely even if your client does not like it,” Johnson informed the receiver’s attorney in an email, according to an exhibit attached to the receiver’s emergency motion.
The carcass of AdClickXpress (ACX) is stirring — just in time to cast a spell on suckers hoping to find some extra money for the holidays. Like predecessor scams JSSTripler/JustBeenPaid and ProfitClicking in the same criminal family, ACX fancies itself the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) of online schemes.
