A website known as ASD2Day.com that was registered Aug 19 in the name of a Florida woman now is throwing a server error and appears to be offline.
ASD President Andy Bowdoin was in negotiations with federal prosecutors when the ASD2Day domain name was registered, and some ASD members were participating in a PR campaign that positioned themselves and Bowdoin as victims of a government prosecution run amok.
Among the claims on the site was a puzzling assertion that U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer was on an Aug. 28 deadline “to determine if the US Attorney General’s case against ASD should move forward.”
Collyer was on no such deadline, and the prosecution’s case was not teetering on the edge of disaster. At the time, Bowdoin was the subject of an order from Collyer to follow-up on pleadings he had made earlier in the case. On July 24, Collyer, noting that neither Bowdoin nor his attorney had followed up on pleadings made in May, ordered them to respond by Aug. 7. That deadline, which applied to Bowdoin, later was extended to Aug. 28 — and then until Sept. 14 — when Bowdoin’s attorney notified the court that Bowdoin was negotiating with prosecutors.
The ASD2Day site featured Pro-ASD content by an unnamed writer and a headline titled “Inside Information.” It described ASD’s “business concept” as a “proven reality” and used meta descriptions such as “Picture of a Flight Simulator Plane, to give an emotional feel.”
ASD2Day.com claimed, among other things, that ASD could not be a Ponzi scheme because the script employed by the autosurfing firm could not be programmed to permit a Ponzi scheme to occur.
Using overblown, confusing reasoning and language, the site claimed:
“As we all know, ASD has been ruled for an irrelevant acquisition of `PONZI SCHEME OR PYRAMID` ruling. ASD Utilized a well known Traffic Exchange Script in the Online Marketing industry. The Script was named Pats Pro. I myself am a Programmer as well. I have worked with this script before to develop websites and add-ons. By the pure mechanics or functions in the Pats Pro system, there is no function of, that such can be ruled ponzi or pyramid. The PATS PRO system does not work as Ponzi, the written code in the software has no leads to such acquisition either.”
Although the language appeared to be an attempt to suggest that ASD President Andy Bowdoin could not be guilty of operating a Ponzi because the script did not support a Ponzi model, federal prosecutors always have argued that the internal actions of ASD and Bowdoin — not the actions of a script — resulted in criminal instances of wire fraud and money-laundering.
The writer did not say how the script would protect Bowdoin and ASD from another core allegation in the case: that ASD was engaging in the sale of unregistered securities, meaning the company was selling investment contracts and operating as an unregistered issuer and dealer of securities.
Meanwhile, the site claimed that “The well known Internet Giant `Google` Ad sense service is not all that different from the ASD Advertising System (Pats Pro).”
Many ASD supporters have argued that Google and ASD employed a similar business model, but have never explained why Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page — both of whom have personal fortunes estimated at $15.3 billion by Forbes magazine and are tied for 11th spot on the list of the richest Americans — never plunked down $100 for a script that would permit Google to do things like ASD.
Why the ASD2Day site now is offline is unclear. The site included at least two calls to action: “Defend Our Business, Defend Our Rights!” and “ASD2DAY · For a Free Country.”
Among the featured links were:
- Join our stand
- Learn about Defending ASD
- Meet the team
A subhead prompt instructed members to “Find out the Truth” and to “Read Articles, comment [on] them and learn the truth the US goverment doesn’t want you to hear..” The site also included a link to a Meebo chatroom.
The chatroom link still is accessible:
http://widget-cdn.meebo.com/mcr.swf?id=ySKbgEjiEw&eurl=
Two links are visible in the chatroom. One is a link to a failed organization known as ASD Members International (ASDMI), which was formed in October 2008 by members of the Pro-ASD Surf’s Up forum.
Another link is to a URL for a business owned by “Professor” Patrick Moriarty, now under indictment for tax fraud. Moriarty was a founder of ASDMI.