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Tag: Gary Talbert

  • Analysis: AdViewGlobal, BizAdSplash In Failure Mode

    UPDATE: 4:59 P.M. EST (U.S.A.) The Surf’s Up Forum now says the government has seized or frozen two bank accounts of ASD members. It did not provide the source, and it encouraged members not to identify the owners of the accounts. Here, below, our earlier post . . .

    EDITOR’S NOTE: It’s getting harder and harder to write about the levels of absurdity surrounding the AdSurfDaily case. Along those lines, it’s getting harder and harder to track all the conspiracy theories. The madness of all things ASD is on full display for all the world to see, and there’s no sense trying to sugarcoat it. It is what it is. Make sure you read the caption under the second screen shot below.

    Here, below, our main post . . .

    Let’s start with some autosurf news — or, more precisely, the lack of autosurf news.

    Yesterday a poster at the Pro-AdSurfDaily “Surf’s Up” forum said the government was in the process of seizing bank accounts from individual ASD participants. Surf’s Up, at first, appeared to confirm the reports — and then a Mod quickly deleted the post. The issue was re-posted, and was deleted again. It got posted a third time as an entry in a separate thread, and Surf’s Up then said it was checking on the reports because it didn’t want to spread a panic by publishing unverifiable information. It then got posted again as a separate thread, and again was deleted.

    Our longtime readers might want to laugh out loud or perhaps even hurl right now at the thought that Surf’s Up didn’t want to publish unverifiable information. It’s enough to make you want to call Letterman or Leno, considering that Surf’s Up routinely publishes unverifiable information, accepts paid advertising from unverifiable surf programs, and openly promotes AdViewGlobal (AVG), which is desperately trying to keep its ownership structure a secret.

    AdViewGlobal says Quincy is its home.
    AdViewGlobal says Quincy is its home.

    It’s already too late for AVG should the government wish to make an example of it. The surf exposed itself out of the gate because greedy racketeers are in charge and because people who admire greedy racketeers are doing their bidding. AVG couldn’t get this genie back in the bottle if it tried — and it has tried — thus opening itself up to even more civil and criminal charges.

    Gary Talbert was an ASD executive and submitted a sworn affidavit in the ASD case. AVG, a surf that came to life in the aftermath of the government's seizure of Andy Bowdoin's assets, identified Talbert as its CEO in a news release earlier this month in which it also made the self-defeating claim to have no ties to ASD. The news release was issued by a former ASD customer-service representative now working in the same capacity for AVG, while also serving as an AVG spokesman. The rep, Chuck Osmin, was a witness for ASD at an evidentiary hearing last fall. He lost money as a result of the government's seizure of ASD's assets. Osmin sent this Blog an email on Jan. 28, prior to the formal launch of AVG, suggesting ASD was OK because it was a "manual" surf, as opposed to an "autosurf." AVG launched a few days later. Osmin then issued a news release on behalf of AVG, identifying Talbert and himself as employees of AVG. The "no ties" claim is demonstrably false. So is any suggestion that ASD or AVG are legal business models because participants have to click on a prompt to get the next ad to load -- a "manual" surf. The issue is the sale of unregistered securities via wire in a Ponzi environment. "Manual" surf doesn't get ASD or AVG off the hook for that and is a ridiculous attempt to cloud the issues. On the date of the the AVG launch, we received another email from an ASD supporter who also wanted to educate us on the difference between "manual" surfs and "autosurfs." The sender told us he was asked to contact us.
    Gary Talbert was an ASD executive and submitted a sworn affidavit in the ASD case. AVG, a surf that came to life in the aftermath of the government's seizure of Andy Bowdoin's assets, identified Talbert as its CEO in a news release earlier this month in which it also made the self-defeating claim to have no ties to ASD. The news release was issued by a former ASD customer-service representative now working in the same capacity for AVG, while also serving as an AVG spokesman. The rep, Chuck Osmin, was a witness for ASD at an evidentiary hearing last fall. He lost money as a result of the government's seizure of ASD's assets. Osmin sent this Blog an email on Jan. 28, prior to the formal launch of AVG, suggesting ASD was OK because it was a "manual" surf, as opposed to an "autosurf." AVG launched a few days later. Osmin then issued a news release on behalf of AVG, identifying Talbert and himself as employees of AVG. The "no ties" claim is demonstrably false. So is any suggestion that ASD or AVG are legal business models because participants have to click on a prompt to get the next ad to load — a "manual" surf. The issue is the sale of unregistered securities via wire in a Ponzi environment. "Manual" surf doesn't get ASD or AVG off the hook for that and is a ridiculous attempt to cloud the issues. On the date of the the AVG launch, we received another email from an ASD supporter who also wanted to educate us on the difference between "manual" surfs and "autosurfs." The sender told us he was asked to contact us.

    One thing the owners could do — if they get boxed in by investigators — is to rat out fellow insiders. It is obvious that AVG and ASD have common ties and common management. It’s so right-in-plain-sight obvious that it wouldn’t surprise us at all if the government itself is simply waiting to find the rat of highest value or already is dangling the cheese.

    Perhaps by coincidence, Surf’s Up also deleted information a reader had posted from this Blog  — a story we had done about the failure of the Premium Ads Club autosurf. Surf’s Up management doesn’t like this Blog and accuses it of bias against ASD.

    Our bias is in favor of all the people ASD President Andy Bowdoin ripped off by using a Ponzi scheme model to sell unregistered securities and drafting participants into a conspiracy to commit money-laundering, wire fraud and racketeering — while invoking God to sanitize the “opportunity.”

    Surf’s Up is doing the same thing. It’s basically just Bowdoin’s alter ego, perhaps with a degree of separation, but not one that will save the Mods from prosecution should the government decide to reduce the surf “industry”  — man, how it pains us to use the word “industry” to describe this criminal business — to its constituent electrons.

    In any event, we were unable to confirm the reports that the government was seizing additional bank accounts from ASD members. Given that Surf’s Up at first appeared to confirm the reports and then shifted gears, it is possible that something like this is going on behind the scenes.

    It would make sense for the government to do that — and, in January, the government filed reams of additional paperwork in the e-Gold case. Prosecutors appear to be in the process of liquidating ill-gotten gains linked to e-Gold though HYIPs and autosurfs. Nine  separate e-Gold actions were filed on Jan. 8 and Jan. 9. They were the prosecutorial equivalent of a clawback.

    ASD once used used e-Gold, which was indicted and convicted of facilitating money-laundering — by the very same prosecution team involved in the ASD case, along with other prosecutors. A Secret Service agent in the ASD case is playing a prominent role in the clawback cases and has demonstrated exceptional investigative skills. He clearly knows how to follow the money and has help from people equally skilled in reverse-engineering financial schemes.

    “Shortly after publicity surrounding the government’s investigation into e-Gold appeared, ASD discontinued using the e-Gold system as a means for receiving member funds,” prosecutors said in the August forfeiture complaint against assets tied to ASD.

    AVG is toast. It will fail even if the government doesn’t take it down. At a minimum, it is conducting customer service for an illegal enterprise from the United States. Wires that run through the United States are being employed to conduct business, and the business model itself is illegal. The only question is when the failure will occur. AVG is running a promotion right now in a bid to collect cash to sustain itself, but it is at the precipice.

    So is BizAdSplash, which is no more legal and makes up new rules whenever it sees fit. Like AVG, it fundamentally is drafting customers into a conspiracy to commit wire fraud, money-laundering and racketeering.

    The operators underestimated the level of anger non-crackpot members of ASD have at Bowdoin. And they made their market even more narrow by peddling their non-product to the antigovernment crowd, which is a small crowd despite the noise it makes.

    Indeed, the ASD case never was about the abuse of government power or politics. Claims to the contrary are smokescreens by people who need to find a scapegoat other than Andy Bowdoin or themselves.

    Very few members of the public have any tolerance for Ponzi schemes in these post-Madoff days, and potential participants are seeing themselves on the evening newscast, perhaps wearing handcuffs or being chased by reporters and camera crews. It’s harder to sell Ponzis in this environment. Besides, people are angry at Bowdoin for using God to sanitize theft on a grand scale.

    The new surfs can’t collect the type of money Bowdoin collected in this environment, and they can’t prevent panic among members. Panic leads to a run on the bank. The new surfs are trolling for cash in particular odious ways, and you can bet your bottom dollar that the operators are going to take their cut before they worry about sustainability issues.

    They’ll do just what Andy Bowdoin did — and what Surf’s Up wants you to do. At this very moment Surf’s Up is trying to rally the troops by telling them to “Expect The Unexpected!”

    When Surf’s Up says things such as that, you can bet that something criminally stupid is certain to follow or that ASD will declare an impossibly tortured victory of some sort.

  • Is The ‘Noobing’ Autosurf Beginning To Tank?

    UPDATED 12:37 P.M. EST (U.S.A.) Members of an autosurf named “Noobing” are beginning to complain about “low” rates of return. Is the surf trying to horde cash?

    Noobing members are complaining publicly about “bait and switch.” They were attracted to the program by suggestions of returns of up to 3 percent a day, but the returns now are generating a fraction of 1 percent.

    Members also are miffed that Noobing introduced a “prize” program funded by members. The prizes are paid out of the same fund used to pay what Noobing calls “incentives” for “reviewing” other websites, which means even less money is available for paying “incentives.”

    Noobing has the same problem as all autosurfs: It can’t control how members promote the company, which means it faces liability issues for excessive claims made by members. At the same time, it doesn’t really know if its “advertisers” are promoting legitimate businesses. One forum poster acknowledged in public that he didn’t have a business to advertise, so just threw up a page.

    This triggered a sarcastic reprimand from a Noobing staffer.

    “You joined an advertising network and didn’t have a site to advertise? Why?” the staffer blared. “Wanting to break even without sales from a website? Really? REALLY? Wow!”

    The same Noobing staffer now is blaming the government for the surf’s need to reduce incentive payments. He also is asserting that Noobing learned from the ASD case that “it became clear that any system that is not SEC registered as an investment that returns more than 100% risks getting shut down and everyone loses everything.”

    What he did not explain is why Noobing chose even to operate in the post-ASD environment. And he also didn’t explain why only surfs that advertised more than a 100 percent return would fall under the purview of the SEC or other regulatory bodies/investigative agencies.

    Any advertised rate of return — even amounts below 100 percent — can trigger an investigation by federal and state regulators and law-enforcement agencies.

    The issue in virtually all autosurf prosecutions to date has been the sale of unregistered securities and the Ponzi nature of such operations. Any firm that engages in the sale of securities is subject to policing by state and federal authorities. The argument that an investment program can be dressed up as an “advertising” program to skirt securities laws is well known by the government — and it’s a dog that won’t hunt.

    Assertions by many autosurf purveyors that the government doesn’t understand the new technology of the Web and should be attacked for destroying small business and the entrepreneurial spirit are just plain absurd.

    More ‘Surf’s Up’ Theater

    As Noobing reports were circulating around the Web, for a brief time yesterday at least one member of AdGateWorld raised a similar concern about the surf’s ability to pay. The AdGateWorld concern was raised on the Surf’s Up Pro-ASD forum, and was quickly deleted.

    The deletion at Surf’s Up was just one of many deletions. Threads — and even members — are routinely deleted for asking tough questions. The forum is accepting paid advertising for AdGateWorld. “Surf’s Up” is only shorthand for the site; its official name is the ASD Member Advocates forum, and it was given the stamp of approval by ASD itself on Nov. 27.

    Surf’s Up also is associated with a surf named AdViewGlobal (AVG), which has management, members and promoters in common with ASD. Despite this, AVG has made the Clintonian assertion that it is not affiliated with ASD.

    It all comes down to the meaning of the word “affiliated.”

    We think a jury won’t be swayed by an argument that AVG and ASD aren’t affiliated. The chief executive officer of AVG, Gary Talbert, is a former ASD executive. Meantime, Chuck Osmin, who has served as a spokesman for AVG, was employed by ASD and testified on its behalf at a Sept. 30-Oct. 1 evidentiary hearing.

    As it awaited a court ruling on Oct. 20, ASD disclaimed AdGateWorld — again by using a form of the word “affiliate” — but did not mention the surf by name.

    “It has come to our attention that there is a new internet company out of Panama City, Panama that is similar to ASD,” the ASD Breaking News site said. “In their web page announcements they are using verbiage that is similar to ASD’s and even going so far as to mention names of people that you may know.

    “Please be assured that this is not an ASD Company or Affiliate Company,” the Breaking News site said. The announcement was signed, “Thank You ASD Management Team.”

    The issue at the time was that AdGateWorld had posted its Terms of Service. The acronym “ASD,” which stands for “AdSurfDaily,” was used in the AdGateWord terms.

    On Nov. 6, still awaiting a court ruling, the ASD Breaking News site sought to bat down reports that ASD’s database had been sold.

    “There have been rumors that suggest that our database has been sold. These rumors are unequivocally not true,” the Breaking News site said. “In fact the ASD corporate office has not had access to the database since the government seizure occurred on August 5, when the government shut down our offices.  The government itself is in possession of our database.”

    The problem with the assertion, however, was that it conflicted with what ASD President Andy Bowdoin had said in a previous conference call. During the call, Bowdoin raised the issue of the database, suggesting that government tricksters had erased it.

    But Bowdoin went on to tell listeners that ASD kept a copy of the database in a secret location. Why Bowdoin even raised the question of the database is unclear. But his words — and ASD’s subsequent actions on the Breaking News site — have the quality of preemption: planting a cover story in case tough questions get asked later.

    In any event, we believe there is a high probability of trouble at AVG and AdGateWorld, and that this trouble will be due to what purveyors awkwardly are trying to sell as a sort of nonaffiliation affiliation with ASD.

    See this previous post.

    And this one.

    We also believe it highly likely that the government and private lawyers know precisely what is going on with respect to the ties among the autosurf firms.

  • 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.