Tag: Chuck Osmin

  • EDITORIAL: Welcome To The Age Of The Portable Ponzi

    UPDATED 3:09 P.M. EST (U.S.A.) Talk about a message at odds with itself.

    Yesterday AdViewGlobal, which does not identify its owners and claims it has no affiliation with AdSurfDaily Inc., revealed its chief executive officer also is or was an executive at ASD (emphasis added):

    “Since Mr. [Gary] Talbert was and is the C.E.O. for both companies and had worked with the same web room company while at ASD, it would be very natural for him to choose and use many of the same venders (sic) that he had used before. So, the fact that ASD and AdView Global are using the same web room hosting company is no accident, in fact it is an operational coincidence,” AdViewGlobal said.

    So, operational coincidence goes down in history as AdViewGlobal’s first contribution to the Alice-In-Wonderland world of autosurf PR. And, yes, the company actually announced that Talbert was chief executive officer of an alleged $100 million Ponzi scheme (ASD) and now has a role as chief executive officer of an offshore company that almost certainly is engaged in the sale of unregistered securities to U.S. residents and is a Ponzi scheme itself.

    Normally companies don’t crow about this type of thing. What’s even stranger is that Juan Fernandez, not Talbert, is listed in court documents as chief executive officer of ASD. In a sworn court declaration recorded Aug. 18, Talbert identified himself as ASD’s “Human Resource Manager, Assistant CFO and Website Editor.”

    talbertaffidavit

    Perhaps ASD decided not to share the news of Talbert’s promotion to chief executive officer. Or perhaps the AdViewGlobal PR apparatus doesn’t have Clue One about what it is doing, guessed at or fabricated the title Talbert held at ASD and doesn’t read court documents that refute its own claim.

    Even if Talbert no longer is an ASD executive and is singularly employed by AdViewGlobal as chief executive officer, it doesn’t undo the ASD stain no matter what title he held at the firm. AdViewGlobal’s purported offshore registration and refusal to identify its owners make it look even worse. There is no way to sanitize this business, which stinks to the high heavens.

    Piling On The Absurdities

    AdViewGlobal’s announcement painted the autosurf business as a wholesome enterprise that attracts highly skilled, highly discriminating companies and highly talented executives.

    “When the management team in Uruguay was organizing AdView Global, they were looking for someone who was familiar with the U.S. market and the processes in which to make a surfing company successful,” AdViewGlobal said. “It was for this reason that AdView Global  hired Mr. Gary Talbert as their C.E.O.”

    One is led to believe AdViewGlobal scored a coup in recruiting Talbert, in the same way Microsoft would score a coup if it lured Steve Jobs from Apple.

    Odder yet is that AdViewGlobal engaged in bizarre speculation to explain acts by Talbert, saying the appearance of AdViewGlobal graphics on an ASD-controlled website “probably meant that he was called away in the middle of making the changes by another pressing matter.”

    Are AdViewGlobal members supposed to believe that a company that guesses about the actions of its own chief executive officer is one to be taken seriously?

    Yesterday’s announcement removed any doubts that ASD and AdViewGlobal have very close ties, despite AdViewGlobal’s preemptive disclaimer on its website. It came specifically in response to reports that its graphics were appearing on an ASD-controlled website.

    Remember, now,  AdViewGlobal claims to have no affiliation with ASD — and yet its graphics appeared on an ASD-controlled website and then suddenly disappeared after they became the subject of videos, forum discussions and Blog posts. One of the graphics listed the street address of ASD’s headquarters in Quincy, Fla., as AdViewGlobal’s street address.

    adviewglobalstreetaddressmagnified

    The Descent Into Infamy

    One of the things that accompanied ASD on its descent into infamy was a series of impossibly butchered PR announcements. The tradition continues at AdViewGlobal, which appears to have the same PR personnel in place as ASD.

    ASD, awaiting a ruling on the Sept. 30-Oct. 1 evidentiary hearing, announced a pending $200 million deal with Praebius Communications, a penny-stock company. The statement on the ASD Breaking News website was the work of an amateur and was removed after members began to question it loudly in forums.

    Praebius, a Pinksheet stock, does not publish financial information. Its executives weren’t quoted in the ASD release, and there was no way to verify the $200 million claim. The financial claim struck members as a number that had been pulled out of thin air to serve a dual purpose: keeping hope alive, and informing a federal judge who was deciding if the ASD business model was legal that the company was about to get a huge cash infusion.

    ASD deleted the Praebius announcement after it became clear that members intended to do their own research, ask tough questions and not accept the company’s word at face value. Nothing in the announcement was consistent with professionalism. It only led to more questions, more criticism.

    Slow on the uptake, ASD then followed up the Praebius announcement with an announcement members could buy VOIP service from a firm with which it had become affiliated. (Why any firm would permit itself to be associated with an alleged $100 million Ponzi scheme is a discussion for another day.)

    Andy Bowdoin told a conference-call audience it could get special pricing, positioning the VOIP service as a gift to the membership. This led to even more bad press for ASD. ASD couldn’t deliver ads, couldn’t address members’ questions during conference calls, couldn’t persuade a federal judge it was not a Ponzi scheme — but still could flog a VOIP service for commissions.

    Not a peep has been heard from Bowdoin since he surrendered claims last month to tens of millions of dollars seized as the proceeds of a criminal enterprise and Ponzi scheme. He could sell VOIP to the members, herald a purported $200 million deal, but when it came time to announce the surrender to forfeiture, members had to read about it in the newspaper or on Blogs and forums.

    Bowdoin also didn’t tell members about a second forfeiture complaint that had been filed in December against assets tied to the firm. Prosecutors said hundreds of thousands of dollars were used to fuel personal spending by Bowdoin family members.

    Flash forward to yesterday. AdViewGlobal appears to be trying to make a fine distinction that it has no corporate legal ties to ASD. But the announcement it made was at odds with itself in so many places that, at best, it’s just another absurdity. In no case can it be taken seriously.

    None of ASD’s actions is compatible with credibility, and yet AdViewGlobal — by some tortured construction — is trying to leech credibility from ASD by telling the world that its chief executive officer was an important officer in ASD.

    It wouldn’t matter if Talbert, the chief executive officer, and Chuck Osmin, an ASD employee who doubles as AdViewGlobal’s PR flak and issued yesterday’s announcement, both no longer were employed by ASD and repudiated their previous employment. The fact remains that ASD was an alleged $100 million Ponzi scheme that surrendered its claims to tens of millions of seized dollars and very well might become the subject of a criminal prosecution.

    Both Talbert and Osmin were involved in the forfeiture litigation (not as defendants, but through Pro-ASD court filings or testimony),  and now both are working for AdViewGlobal. The fact the company won’t reveal the names of its owners and purportedly came to life offshore in the aftermath of the ASD debacle tells you everything you need to know.

    AdViewGlobal is not credible because ASD was not credible. If anything, AdViewGlobal is even less credible than ASD. If it were credible, it would submit its business model to U.S. authorities for testing and pay the costs of compliance. One of the reasons it won’t do that is the ASD litigation. Another reason is that it can’t offer payment processing in the United States and needs to find ways to circumvent U.S. money-laundering, wire-fraud and mail-fraud laws.

    On parts of its website, AdViewGlobal is using U.S.-based gmail addresses to conduct customer service. One is hardpressed to imagine how U.S. customers will fund accounts and engage in correspondence without engaging in wire fraud themselves.

    The Age of the Portable Ponzi has begun. Promoters have ignored the ASD August forfeiture complaint, the December forfeiture complaint, Bowdoin’s surrender of the assets, a RICO lawsuit that asserts Bowdoin was the head of a racketeering enterprise involved in multiple schemes boosted by unnamed co-conspirators, Bowdoin’s previous entanglements with securities regulators that resulted in felony charges, Bowdoin’s history of spinning lies to separate people from their money.

    Incredibly, AdViewGlobal now is employing ASD personnel, sharing a common executive, not disclosing information customers would deem important when making purchasing decisions (such as disclosing all previous  litigation that resulted in the dismantling of autosurfs, the implications of selling or purchasing unregistered securities if you’re a U.S. resident, the implications of wire fraud and money-laundering, and Judge Collyer’s ruling in the ASD case, for starters).

    Welcome to the Age of the Portable Ponzi.

  • AdViewGlobal Claims Web Reporter Got It All Wrong, Denies Link To AdSurfDaily Inc., Chides TheJoyLuckClub For Report

    UPDATED 5:27 PM. EST (U.S.A.) A new autosurf company that refuses to disclose its ownership, claims to be registered in Uruguay, operates servers that resolve to Panama — and has a horde of U.S.-based affiliates who were former members of AdSurfDaily Inc. — has denied any ties to ASD.

    Sort of.

    A link placed this afternoon at TheJoyLuckClub website takes viewers to U.S.-based Google Docs, from which they can download the official explanation of AdViewGlobal. TheJoyLuckClub and other sites reported last week that AdViewGlobal graphics were appearing on a webroom operated by ASD, despite an assertion by AdViewGlobal that it has nothing to do with ASD. The graphics suddenly were removed after word spread around the Web.

    In its explanation, AdViewGlobal chided TheJoyLuckClub for issuing an “unfortunate” report that misled readers.

    Normally associated with the Pro-ASD side of things, the JoyLuckClub increasingly has been challenging ASD for its explanations or lack thereof. Its report and an accompanying video clearly showed an AdViewGlobal banner on the ASD-controlled website, and was accurate by all accounts — except the accounts of AdViewGlobal and a small group of people at the “Surf’s Up” forum who also are promoting AdViewGlobal.

    “When the management team in Uruguay was organizing AdView Global, they were looking for someone who was familiar with the U.S. market and the processes in which to make a surfing company successful,” AdViewGlobal said today in its statement. “It was for this reason that AdView Global  hired Mr. Gary Talbert as their C.E.O.”

    AdViewGlobal did not identify members of the “management team” in Uruguay, but for the first time confirmed that former ASD executive Gary Talbert was chief executive officer of the new company.

    The appearance of its graphics on the ASD-controlled website was an “operational coincidence,” AdViewGlobal explained.

    “Since Mr. Talbert was and is the C.E.O. for both companies and had worked with the same web room company while at ASD, it would be very natural for him to choose and use many of the same venders (sic) that he had used before. So, the fact that ASD and AdView Global are using the same web room hosting company is no accident, in fact it is an operational coincidence,” AdViewGlobal said.

    The issue to some ASD members, however, was not that ASD and AdViewGlobal were using common vendors; the issue was why ADViewGlobal’s graphics were appearing inside and outside the exact same webroom ASD used — at a URL that included ASD’s name.

    One image reproduced on scam.com and at least one other site that covers ASD news shows the address of AdViewGlobal as “13 S. Calhoun Street, Quincy, FL 32351” — the building in which ASD is headquartered.

    Why AdViewGlobal listed Talbert as “C.E.O. for both companies” in today’s statement is unclear. He is listed in sworn court documents as “Human Resource Manager, Assistant CFO and Website Editor” of AdSurfDaily Inc.

    Also unclear is how the company can claim no direct ties to ASD — as it does on its main website in a special disclaimer — when the two companies share a common executive.

    “But in spite of this operational coincidence there is no connection between ASD and AdView Global,” AdViewGlobal insisted.

    It provided an example to illustrate its claim:

    “The idea of two companies using the same web room company to hold training is like buying gasoline for your wife’s car at a gas station and later using the same gas station
    to buy gasoline for your car. This type of shopping is usually done for convenience and familiarity.

    “The fact that Mr. Talbert did not completely finish making all of the design and name changes on the web room probably meant that he was called away in the middle of making the changes by another pressing matter. But for someone to think that ASD and AdView Global are related just because the old proverbial business name was still on this dormant proverbial building front would be a leap of faith and this conclusion is far from the truth.”

    AdViewGlobal did not explain why it used the word “probably” when explaining what occurred. Also unclear is why Talbert wasn’t quoted in the release, so he could explain precisely what happened and take the theoretical totally out of play.

    “Talbert has now completed all his changes and the web room now reflects the current and only user of this web room,” AdViewGlobal explained.

    It then chided TheJoyLuckClub:

    “It is unfortunate that an unconfirmed report such as yours occurred and that so many viewers were misled by your story. Mr. Talbert is extremely sorry for the confusion he created by not completing all the changes to the web room at the same time.”

    AdViewGlobal did not provide the web address of the new webroom from which it was operating. Nor did it explain why — if it was able to determine that Talbert was “sorry for the confusion” — it didn’t explain exactly what happened instead of using a speculative word such as “probably” and suggesting he might have been called away on other “pressing” business.

    “So once again the only link between ASD and AdView Global is the fact that there are a couple of upper managers who have remained behind to help ASD through its litigation process and are now working for AdView Global,” the company concluded. “But be assured that there are no corporate or legal links between the two companies.”

    AdViewGlobal did not explain how a business model that is illegal in the United States, for, among other things, the sale of unregistered securities, is any more legal when it is pitching the same product to U.S. citizens from Uruguay or Panama.

    The release carried the name of Chuck Osmin, identifying him as customer service manager for AdViewGlobal. Osmin testified for ASD at a Sept. 30-Oct. 1 evidentiary hearing.

    In November, Judge Rosemary Collyer ruled that ASD had not demonstrated it was a legal business and not a Ponzi scheme at the evidentiary hearing. Last month, ASD President Andy Bowdoin withdrew his claims to tens of millions of dollars seized by the government in August amid allegations that ASD was a criminal enterprise.

    Two other new surfs — AdGateWorld and BizAdSplash — also have servers that resolve to Panama, along with promoters common to ASD.