Federal prosecutors went to court in the Southern District of Florida today, saying AdSurfDaily figures Todd Disner and Dwight Owen Schweitzer were confusing their November 2011 lawsuit against the government with two forfeiture actions filed in the District of Columbia by federal prosecutors and the U.S. Secret Service in the ASD Ponzi case.
An assistant U.S. Attorney serving under U.S. Attorney Wifredo A. Ferrer of the Southern District of Florida is serving as the attorney for the United States in the case because Disner and Schweitzer sued the government. Although the ASD Ponzi case was brought in the District of Columbia, Disner and Schweitzer sued the government in Florida. They later claimed that prosecutors had gone forum shopping in Washington to bring the Ponzi forfeiture case.
Among other things, Disner and Schweitzer claim that undercover agents who joined ASD had a duty to identify themselves to ASD management and that the ASD Ponzi case is a “house of cards” despite ASD President Andy Bowdoin’s guilty plea and public acknowledgment he presided over a Ponzi scheme.
In a puzzling motion stamped June 20 and entered on the docket of U.S. District Judge Cecilia M. Altonaga on June 21, Schweitzer and Disner claimed they had personally determined that a certificate of interested parties filed by the government in response to an order was “inadequate as a matter of law.”
Disner and Schweitzer, according to Disner and Schweitzer, had a right to know the identities of any ASD participant who filed a claim for remissions in the ASD Ponzi case, how much money they put into ASD and how much was returned to them by the government through the remission claims process.
Nonsense, the government said today.
“The plaintiffs misapprehend the purpose and spirit of the court’s order requiring a certificate of interested parties,” the government said in its response to the Disner/Schweitzer motion. “The instant case is not a forfeiture case as the two forfeiture cases involving AdSurfDaily have already been resolved in the District of Columbia.
“The certificate of interested parties is not some kind of alternative discovery vehicle collateral to the discovery provisions in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure,” the government continued. “Rather, the certificate of interested parties in both the federal district and appellate courts is designed ‘to assist judges in making a determination of whether they have any interests in any of a party’s related corporate entities that would disqualify the judges from hearing the [appeal].’”
Moreover, the government argued, Disner and Schweitzer “did not confer with the defense” as required by the local rules in the Southern District of Florida prior to filing the motion.
As many as 11,000 parties filed remissions claims in the ASD case, according to federal court records.
Disner and Schweitzer apparently want to know who all of them are and to ascertain “the financial interest of each[,] including those individuals, separately identified, who applied for remission and, as to each, stating whether the request was approved, approved in part, or denied.”
The government, however, advised Altonaga that neither Disner nor Schweitzer have filed their own certificates of interested parties in the case.
Separately, Altonaga today granted the government’s June 4 motion by default to stay discovery in the case, explaining that Disner and Schweitzer have “not filed an opposing memorandum of law to the Motion, nor have they sought an extension of time to do so.”
Disner is a co-founder of the Quiznos sandwich franchise. Schweitzer is a former attorney now living in Miami whose license was suspended in Connecticut.
Both men later became pitchmen for Zeek Rewards, an MLM firm whose business model closely resembles the ASD business model that ASD’s Bowdoin admitted was a Ponzi scheme. Bowdoin is jailed in the District of Columbia. A federal judge revoked his bond June 12 after prosecutors proffered evidence that he continued to promote fraud schemes after the U.S. Secret Service seized tens of millions of dollars in the ASD Ponzi case and after Bowdoin was arrested on Ponzi-scheme charges in December 2010.
Bowdoin pleaded guilty in May to wire fraud in the ASD Ponzi case. His formal sentencing is set for August. He has been banned from multilevel marketing, Internet programs and mass marketing.
Other ASD-Related News From The OneX Fraud Wing
In other ASD-related news, a conference call cheerleading session for the purported “OneX” program was canceled tonight after a rah-rah session that had been scheduled for last Thursday also was canceled.
Tonight’s cheerleading session was to be sponsored by a downline with ASD ties and was contemplated to be one that would build on the purportedly exciting announcement OneX said would be made last week to identify its new payment processor, a source told the PP Blog.
But OneX apparently canceled the Thursday conference call and never identified a new payment processor, so there was nothing for the OneX downline with ASD ties to cheer about tonight.
“It is not possible to move forward without the processor being in place,” the ASD downline group said, according to the source.
But the group held out hope that OneX would announce its new payment processor tomorrow, according to the source.
In April, federal prosecutors said OneX was a “fraudulent scheme” and “pyramid” that was operating in ASD-like fashion.
If you’re keeping a list of the strange sidebars associated with the AdSurfDaily Ponzi case, here is another entry for your notebook: U.S. District Judge Cecilia M. Altonaga of the Southern District of Florida has ordered onetime practicing attorney Dwight Schweitzer not to contact her by email.
The order was issued Monday, more than five months after Altonaga formally laid down the rules of decorum on how a lawsuit filed by Schweitzer and fellow pro se plaintiff Todd Disner in November against the United States and Rust Consulting Inc. would proceed.
On Nov. 9, 2011, Altonaga specifically advised Schweitzer and Disner that they were required to follow the rules, one of which was that “[n]o letters, pleadings, motions or other documents may be sent directly to the District Judge or Magistrate Judge’s chambers.”
The judge cautioned that “[e]very pleading, motion, memorandum or other paper required and/or permitted to be filed with the Court must be filed directly with the Clerk of the Court.”
Regardless, Schweitzer sent an email pertaining to a scheduling matter directly to Altonaga on Monday. The judge responded by reminding Schweitzer of the Nov. 9 order and ordering him not to send her any more emails.
“[T]he Plaintiff shall file his e-mail and all future filings directly with the Clerk of the Court,” Altonaga told Schweitzer.
Her order was issued six days after she granted Rust’s motion to be dismissed as a defendant in the case, leaving the government as the sole defendant.
It was not the first time Schweitzer allegedly had cut corners and sent an inappropriate communication directly to a judge. On April 17, 2009, the Statewide Grievance Committee of the Connecticut Bar found that he had sent an improper, ex parte communication via fax in July 2008 to a state judge in Florida on the same day she made a ruling against Schweitzer in a case in which he was suing a defendant pro se.
The 2008 fax, according to the committee findings, inappropriately identified Schweitzer as a practicing attorney and was not copied to opposing counsel.
“On or about July 1, 2008, the Respondent (Schweitzer) sent correspondence via facsimile to the chambers of the Honorable Sarah Zabel of the 11th Judicial Circuit of the State of Florida requesting that the dismissal of his case be reopened sua sponte or a hearing be noticed on a motion to set aside the dismissal,” the committee found.
“The judge had made a ruling on the case that morning,” the committee continued. “The Respondent did not send, contemporaneously, a copy of the correspondence to opposing counsel. On the correspondence, the Respondent indicated that he was an ‘Attorney and Counselor at Law[,] licensed solely in the state of Connecticut.’ The Respondent was suspended from the practice of law on August 21, 2003, and his license has been inactive since that time. The Respondent did not indicate to the judge that his license in Connecticut has been suspended.”
In response to the committee’s allegations, Schweitzer wrote, “The purpose of identifying my licensure in correspondence to a judge in a case where I am suing the very same attorney . . . for malpractice and willful misconduct was to let the court know that I was not the typical pro se litigant and felt it completely appropriate to indicate my being licensed with all that it implies.”
But the committee begged to differ, finding that Schweitzer had violated the Connecticut Rules of Professional Conduct even as his license to practice law in the state was under suspension. Schweitzer has not filed papers to regain his license, saying he is retired from the practice of law and interested in other pursuits.
In his April 16 email to Altonaga, Schweitzer did copy opposing counsel, according to the address listed in the “To” line. Whether counsel received the email was unclear.
What is clear is that Altonaga received it — and ordered Schweitzer not to do it again.
On April 10, Altonaga dismissed Rust — the government-approved claims administrator in the civil portion of the ASD Ponzi case — as a defendant.
The claims by Schweitzer and Disner were hypothetical in nature and “far from the ‘definite and concrete’ dispute required for the maintenance of a declaratory judgment action,” Altonaga ruled.
The government has not responded to the complaint.
Among other things, Schweitzer and Disner have contended that the government seized their private information illegally in seizing ASD’s database in August 2008 and that undercover agents who had joined ASD had violated the firm’s Terms of Service.
ASD was running an international Ponzi scheme in which a securities business was disguised as an advertising company, according to the U.S. Secret Service.
UPDATED 3:59 P.M. EDT (U.S.A.) An email attributed to an AdSurfDaily member claims “We are now playing offense” and “We plan to go after Akerman Senifit (sic) next.”
Why the pronoun “we” was used was not immediately clear. Also unclear is why Akerman Senterfitt has been identified as a prospective target of litigation and what, precisely, constituted “offense” on the part of the unidentified “we.”
Akerman Senterfitt is the Florida-based law firm that represented ASD President Andy Bowdoin in the immediate aftermath of the August 2008 federal seizure of tens of millions of dollars from Bowdoin’s personal bank accounts by the U.S. Secret Service. The initial forfeiture case — and a subsequent forfeiture case brought by federal prosecutors in December 2008 — were filed as civil actions. ASD lost the cases in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and in the U.S. Court of Appeals — long after Akerman Senterfitt withdrew as counsel to Bowdoin and ASD.
Charles A. Murray was Bowdoin’s counsel of record when final orders of forfeiture were issued against proceeds seized from Bowdoin and when both appeals were decided against Bowdoin, who once claimed as a pro se litigant that he’d been denied “fair notice” of illegal conduct.
The email, which was attributed to ASD member Todd Disner, did not explain who comprised “we.” Nor did it explain how and why an apparent group of ASD members intended to “go after” the firm, Florida’s largest and one of America’s largest.
Akerman Senterfitt appears only to have represented Bowdoin and former ASD Chief Executive Officer Juan Fernandez in the August 2008 civil case. There is no record of the firm filing an appearance notice for individual ASD members on the docket of the case, giving rise to questions about how individual ASD members ever could succeed in a bid to sue a law firm that never represented them. In the earliest days of the litigation, some ASD members compared the legal skills of the firm in its representation of Bowdoin and ASD to those of “Perry Mason” — while at once describing a government attorney as a bumbling, hapless “Gomer Pyle.”
After a key court ruling went against Bowdoin and ASD in November 2008, some ASD members backed away from their earlier “Perry Mason” boast and blamed Akerman Senterfitt for Bowdoin’s legal troubles. The record of the case, however, shows that the government used ASD’s own words against it at an evidentiary hearing conducted in the fall of 2008 at Bowdoin’s request.
A voicemail message left by the PP Blog for comment at Akerman Senterfitt in Miami was not immediately returned. Bowdoin fired the firm without notice in 2009, according to court records.
On Jan. 13, 2009, with Akerman Senterfitt as counsel, Bowdoin submitted to the August 2008 forfeiture “with prejudice” and “consent[ed] to the forfeiture of the properties.” More than a month later — on Feb. 27, 2009 — Bowdoin filed a pro se pleading styled “NOTICE of Rescission and Withdrawal of Release of Claims to Seized Property and Consent to Forfeiture.”
In April 2009, Akerman Senterfitt advised U.S. District Justice Rosemary Collyer that Bowdoin and ASD “have decided to represent themselves without consulting their counsel.
“By way of example only,” the firm advised Collyer, “Mr. Bowdoin has recently filed, on a pro se basis, a series of motions. Mr. Bowdoin filed these motions without consulting with counsel and without bothering to advise counsel that he would be submitting motions on his own. Under these circumstances, the Akerman Senterfitt Law Firm cannot render effective assistance of counsel.”
The firm, which was still Bowdoin’s counsel of record when he began to file freelance motions, asked for leave to withdraw from the case, explaining that its representation had become “unreasonably difficult.”
Collyer released Akerman Senterfitt from the case on April 15, 2009.
By the close of April 2009 — in response to one of several pro se pleadings by Bowdoin — prosecutors advised Collyer that he had signed a proffer letter in the case and acknowledged that the government’s material allegations were all true.
Bowdoin himself later acknowledged that he had met with prosecutors over a period of at least four days in December 2008 and January 2009 and had provided information against his interests.
Neither Bowdoin nor the government has said whether Bowdoin had provided information against the interests of others. Bowdoin claimed in September 2009 that he had been “hoodwinked” into releasing his claims and cooperating with prosecutors by Steven Dobson, a criminal attorney recommended by Akerman Senterfitt.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit unanimously rejected Bowdoin’s hoodwinking claim in March 2011.
There was no basis “to conclude that appellants were somehow tricked into releasing their claims,” the panel ruled. “Despite Bowdoin’s protests to the contrary, his own affidavit shows that he understood well that he was receiving no promise in return for relinquishing his claims.”
In his own court filings, Bowdoin acknowledged that his decision to withdraw his claims to $65.8 million seized by the Secret Service was made because of a “possibility” that he could avoid a jail term.
These are among the phrases to which Bowdoin swore on Sept. 15, 2009:
Dobson represented to me that I could possibly avoid prison or get a reduced sentence if I agreed to disclose details concerning ASD and releasing the assets.
I also signed a document stating that I would release my claims in the abovecaptioned civil in rem forfeiture proceeding, again thinking that necessary for a possible avoidance of a prison term.
I did all of this on the understanding that by cooperating I could possibly avoid a prison sentence.
I agreed not to exercise my rights in the civil forfeiture proceeding, anticipating from representations made by Dobson that this could possibly keep me out of prison.
Dobson lead [sic] me to believe that if I cooperated there was a possibility that I would not be incarcerated or imprisoned.
I believed that my cooperation would still result in a criminal sentence that could possibly not include imprisonment or incarceration.
I slowly came to understand what I understood from Dobson not to be the case: that my agreement to cooperate provided me no benefit in the criminal matter except the possibility of a reduced sentence if the judge desired which would still be a life sentence.
New Email Circulating Among ASD Members
Here, verbatim, is a new email circulating among ASD members. The email was attributed to Todd Disner. Disner, like Bowdoin, is among dozens of litigants who filed pro se pleadings in the civil portion of the case. (Italics added.)
Hi folks,
I talked to Andy the other day. He was in Atlanta airport coming home from his hearing in Washington . He said the government gave his attorney 10 discs full of files . The judge gave his attorney only 90 days to review all the documents . This was not fair but this is what the judge determined .
But what was really interesting was when he told me that the prosecution was very proud of 11,000 affidavits they received from us through Rust Incorporated. .
They “think” that they have evidence that now ASD was an investment.
Of course we knew that that was a trap to get unsuspecting and desperate people to sign just about anything in an effort to get their money back . (My question is where of the other 107,000 people who did NOT sign the affidavit?)
I’m sure that Andy’s attorney will speak to the coercive nature used to created that questionable evidence. To me it appears more and more that our government is operating with malice in this case. I think that will be apparent to any jury.
Andy’s attorney is filing a motion to REDO the affidavit, This is a powerful attempt to get our money back by asking the court to make the government issue a “reasonable” form; one that does not make us perjure ourselves in an effort to recover what is rightfully OURS.
Remember when we enrolled in ASD, we signed the “Term and Conditions” explicitly stating the ASD was NOT AN INVESTMENT. The existing form make liars out of us, one way or the other.
Andy was in good spirits and very confident about his case . Dwight helped him get money back from his second attorney . This is a story in itself. Its shows the way Andy has been treated by his previous attorneys.
We plan to go after Akerman Senifit next. (Andy’s first attorneys)
It is a tragedy how the government must stoop to such tactics in order to prove their case against Andy and ASD.
We are now playing “offense” and will see what happens.
Keep your spirits up and try to help the cause.
Best Regards,
Todd Disner [Phone number deleted by PP Blog]
Rust Consulting Inc. is the government-approved claims processor for victims of the alleged ASD fraud. ASD members who certify themselves crime victims through a process known as remission may be eligible to receive compensation through seized proceeds. The government announced nearly three years ago that it was establishing a restitution program.
Some ASD members have described the remissions program as a government plot. Meanwhile, two ASD figures — Kenneth Wayne Leaming and Christian Oesch — sought to sue the government last year for the spectacular sum of more than $29 TRILLION.
Disner started a drive earlier this year to raise money to help him and onetime attorney Dwight Schweitzer file a pro se lawsuit against the government.
In recent weeks, other ASD members have started a fundraising drive for Bowdoin, who was arrested on ASD-related criminal charges in December 2010.
There have been at least four efforts by subgroups of ASD members to raise money to litigate against the government since August 2008. Some ASD members who provided funding have contributed multiple times, becoming members of subgroups within subgroups that issued appeals for cash.
A defunct organization known as ASD Members International (ASDMI) purported in October 2008 to be a Missouri nonprofit whose aim was to litigate against the government even if it was proceeding lawfully and perhaps have prosecutors and investigators charged with crimes.
Separately, a group known as the ASD Members Business Association (ASDMBA) claimed it had gathered more than $100,000 to challenge the forfeiture and speed the return of seized funds. ASDMBA’s de facto head was Bob Guenther, a convicted felon.
ASDMBA members complained that Guenther provided no transparent accounting after soliciting funds.
Disner’s apparent group of ASD members is known informally as “ASD Justice,” the title of a Blog. No accounting has been released of the sums it collected. A plan by Disner and Schweitzer to sue the government in Florida’s federal courts appears to have stalled.
Bowdoin’s apparent group is calling itself “Andy’s Fundraising Army.” It has missed two launch dates this month, but now says it will launch tomorrow. The group has positioned Bowdoin as “David,” with the government cast as a lawless “Goliath.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: Lower in this story, the names of AdSurfDaily President Andy Bowdoin and other individuals appear. They are NOT the individuals referenced in the government communiqué described below.
UPDATED 12:50 P.M. ET (U.S.A.) The name of a person known to have used at least two names and to have AdSurfDaily ties appears in a law-enforcement communiqué issued in 2009 by the counter-terrorism arm of a U.S. government agency that employs a method of monitoring both domestic extremists and individuals with known links to international terror groups, the PP Blog has learned.
At least one communication from the person was intercepted by the government and used as part of a raw intelligence report that includes summaries on the actions of dozens of individuals with alleged ties to al-Qaida, Hezbollah or homegrown extremist groups in the United States. The communication does not reference ASD, but includes a reference to a second person known to have an ASD tie.
The sender of the communication was described as a provider of fraudulent documents typically associated with tax schemes operated by antigovernment extremists. Meanwhile, the intended recipient was an individual known to have promoted various forms of financial fraud, including a scheme in which prospects were told they could qualify for Medicaid by hiding assets and making themselves artificially poor.
Medicaid is a federal health-services program for low-income Americans. It is administered by the states.
The PP Blog established the identities of both individuals with ASD ties by examining a variety of public records and other documents.
ASD's Andy Bowdoin
Neither person is in state or federal custody, but it is clear that both the federal and state governments are aware of their activities and have worked to disrupt them. The intended recipient of the communication is in federal custody for a crime unrelated to ASD.
Both individuals with ASD ties have a tie to a third person with ASD links, according to the Blog’s analysis of records.
Owing to the sensitive nature of the communiqué, the Blog is declining to identify the individuals with ASD links and the agency. It also is declining to publish specific details such as quoted material, dates, times, telephone numbers and addresses. The communiqué demonstrates that the United States has identified particular areas in which it believes terrorism could fester and is monitoring oral, electronic and printed communications in a specific context.
The communiqué devotes more than a full page to the topic of the communication intercepted from the individual with ASD ties.
Based on its research, the Blog is reporting today that the person with ASD ties whose communication was intercepted is an American believed to have ties to a network of domestic extremists immersed in a sea of organized corruption. The person has an arrest record for a nonviolent crime, but also has been associated with bids to intimidate people and cause them financial harm. Records show that the person has used at least two names.
News of the disturbing developments comes even as some ASD members are blindly asserting that ASD was a wholesome enterprise and making broad claims that any ties to terrorism have been ruled out. ASD has been implicated in an alleged international Ponzi scheme that gathered at least $110 million.
Despite an alleged concession by ASD President Andy Bowdoin that the company was operating illegally and a new assertion by the government that Bowdoin and unnamed “others” ventured to Costa Rica in the spring to 2008 to get the lay of the land for an upstart “autosurf” enterprise, some members are soliciting funds to challenge a U.S. Secret Service affidavit that led to the seizure of tens of millions of dollars from Bowdoin’s personal bank accounts in August 2008.
Bowdoin’s own bid to challenge the affidavit failed in November 2008, more than two years ago.
In December 2010, federal prosecutors asserted that ASD had the ability to accept money from e-Bullion, a shuttered California payment processor whose operator — James Fayed — has been charged with arranging the contract murder of his wife.
Pamela Fayed, who was stabbed to death in a parking garage, was a potential witness against her husband. James Fayed is believed to have used e-Bullion to facilitate multiple Ponzi schemes, including a scheme hatched by a New York man — Abdul Tawala Ibn Ali Alishtari — who later pleaded guilty to financing terrorism.
Like ASD’s Bowdoin, Ali Alishtari claimed to have received an important award for his business acumen. And Ali Alishtari’s scheme, known as FEDI, was pushed by an individual convicted in a separate Ponzi scheme and sentenced to federal prison. Payments from the scheme were called “rebates,” the same terminology adopted by ASD to describe payments to members.
“In enriching himself, Alishtari displayed a deliberate disregard for the financial and personal security of others,” U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara of the Southern District of New York said in September 2009.
e-Bullion’s name also is referenced in court filings in the Gold Quest International (GQI) Ponzi scheme, which gathered up to $29 million, according to U.S. and Canadian regulators. GQI, which operated from Las Vegas, falsely claimed to be immune to U.S. law and to enjoy purported “sovereignty” extended by a North Dakota “Indian” tribe.
One of the unusual elements of the GQI case was a claim that the purported sovereignty was portable, shielding the purveyors from prosecution anywhere.
A New Plan To Do Battle With The Government
ASD member Todd Disner, one of dozens of unsuccessful pro se litigants in the civil portion of the ASD case in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, now wants ASD members to come up with money to fund a lawsuit in Florida that would challenge the U.S. Secret Service affidavit in the District of Columbia that led to the seizure of $80 million in the ASD case, according to a recording of a Feb. 22 conference call.
“We were dragged down the river by our government agents, and the rest is history,” Disner told listeners.
“There might be an opportunity for us to throw a few punches of our own,” Disner said. “We’ve been on the ropes for three years now, and we’d like to start swinging back if we could.”
The opportunity to battle back after a fatiguing and demoralizing three years on the ropes would cost ASD members a combined total of about $10,000, according to people who listened to the call.
After the call, some ASD members received an email that purported that an ASD “terrorism connection has been ruled out.” The email, sent by an ASD member who did not use a full name, did not describe who within the government had ruled out a terrorism link.
Disner, who claimed he was “excited” about the prospect of suing the government to overturn the ASD forfeiture, also claimed he’d been advised on the complex legal issues by Dwight Schwetizer, whom he described as a fellow ASD member, friend and “very accomplished attorney” who is “not practicing law now.”
“They’re just going to try and try to keep that money,” Disner asserted. “They seized the money improperly, and if they release it then everybody’s included.”
The government, however, already has put in place a restitution program that would compensate crime victims from seized funds. An apparent linchpin of the new strategy outlined by Disner is a theory that the government restitution program somehow opens the door for ASD members not only to reverse the judicially declared forfeiture, but also to receive damages for an unwarranted government intrusion. Schweitzer also provided commentary on the call.
For its part, the government says ASD was engaging in felonious wire fraud and securities fraud by disguising itself as an “advertising” business while operating a $110 million Ponzi scheme from Florida that had affected tens of thousands of people globally. Just last week prosecutors advised a federal judge that Bowdoin, who was arrested in December, had ventured to Costa Rica in the spring of 2008 to look for a way to start an offshore Ponzi scheme.
Disner’s conference call was held just a few days after the latest damaging claims against ASD became public. The government filed the new claims against ASD on Feb. 18, the same day it announced a major prosecution against an alleged Costa Rican money-laundering operation that was accused of engaging in international securities fraud and siphoning millions of dollars in penny-stock schemes.
The U.S. government, using its individual agencies and the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force created by President Obama in 2009, has been targeting various forms of fraud, including HYIPs, penny-stock capers, Forex schemes, tax schemes and domestic and offshore crime targeted at U.S. citizens.
In some cases, victims have been counted by the tens of thousands — enough to fill the nation’s largest sports stadiums. ASD was purported to have 120,000 members.
Some ASD members have called for a “militia” to storm Washington, D.C. Others have called for a federal prosecutor to be placed in a medieval torture rack. Still others have called for prosecutors and investigators to be charged criminally and sued civilly for their efforts to disrupt what the government has described as a classic Ponzi scheme operated by Bowdoin, a recidivist felon.