EDITOR’S NOTE: Autosurf or HYIP promoter? White-collar fraudster of another stripe? Fan of “stored value” debit devices used in the context of well-publicized, fraudulent business models? Owner of a “shell” company used to disguise the ownership of funds? Figure you’re smarter than the cops and that you’ve perfected your form of deceit as you pocket commissions and other payments based on that deceit?
The director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation was talking about you in his testimony Wednesday before the House Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies. He said you were making it harder for the FBI to do its job and making it easier on people who might want to do harm to the country’s financial system and the country itself.
He didn’t mention your name, of course. But Robert Mueller III did ask for an additional budget outlay of $306.6 million next year as a means of neutralizing you before you could cause any more damage to the financial system and the national security of the United States.
And here, all along, you thought he didn’t know, that the agents who serve under him didn’t know.
They know. Call it anything you like — an “advertising” business, a financial “game,” a nontraditional investment that yields a high return, a new form of “gambling” or “arbitrage,” a multifaceted, multilevel-marketing program that pays a return based on visiting websites and recruiting other participants, a program for “good Christians” — and they still know.
Tell your prospects that the government doesn’t understand either the program or the technology in use — and they still know.
The reason they know is because they’ve seen it all before, watched it evolve, watched the changing explanations and terminology, watched the testimonials, watched the attempts to purify the “opportunities.” What they didn’t know, perhaps, was how devoted you were to your own criminality, how willing you were to put lipstick on a pig, how willing you were to be willfully blind to the obvious financial and security dangers to your neighbors because the money was just too good.
They know now, though — and they also know about your criminal cousins who conduct equally vile businesses and perhaps have ties to the Mob and other groups of organized criminals, perhaps even terrorist organizations.
Quick! Name your autosurfing or HYIP neighbor! What does he do at 3 a.m., when you’re sleeping? Are your commissions worth the risk he potentially poses to the security of the banking system and to the United States itself? What if he’s a [fill in the blank]? What if he’s amassing money to buy [fill in the blank?] What if he’s using the ATM machine to [fill in the blank?]
Is the Cadillac you bought with commissions from a [fill in the bank] worth it? Will it be worth it when it gets seized as the proceeds of a criminal enterprise — and your neighbors wonder aloud how you ever became involved in a criminal enterprise? Will it ring hollow when you try to explain that you didn’t know you were involved in a criminal enterprise — or will it look like an attempt to mask your criminality?
Mueller proposed an additional $232.8 million for salaries and expenses and $73.9 million for construction. If approved, the outlay would create 812 new positions, including 276 special agents, 187 intelligence analysts and 349 professional staff.
Why is the agency seeking a larger outlay? Because the “additional resources will allow the FBI to improve its capacities to address threats in the priority areas of terrorism, computer intrusions, weapons of mass destruction, foreign counterintelligence, white collar crime, violent crime and gangs, child exploitation, and organized crime. Also included in this request is funding for necessary organizational operational support and infrastructure requirements; without such funding, a threat or crime problem cannot be comprehensively addressed.”
The FBI, Mueller said, “saw an unprecedented rise in the identification of Ponzi and other high yield investment fraud schemes, many of which each involve thousands of victims and staggering losses — some in the billions of dollars.”
New threats such as “stock market manipulation via cyber intrusion” also are emerging, Mueller said.
Here, below, is the verbatim statement of Mueller when he was talking about you and other fraudsters. Note that he described you as a criminal, not a vastly misunderstood business person in an exciting, new arena that only few people understand. We have added the emphasis . . .
“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.
“The FBI investigates money laundering cases by identifying the process by which criminals conceal or disguise the proceeds of their crimes or convert those proceeds into goods and services. The major threats in this area stem from emerging technologies, such as stored value devices, as well as from shell corporations, which are used to conceal the ownership of funds being moved through financial institutions and international commerce.
“Recent money laundering investigations have revealed a trend on the part of criminals to use stored value devices, such as pre-paid gift cards and reloadable debit cards, in order to move criminal proceeds. This has created a “shadow†banking system, allowing criminals to exploit existing vulnerabilities in the reporting requirements that are imposed on financial institutions and international travelers.
“This has impacted our ability to gather real time financial intelligence, which is ordinarily available through Bank Secrecy Act filings. Law enforcement relies on this intelligence to identify potential money launderers and terrorist financiers by spotting patterns in the transactions conducted by them.
“The void caused by the largely unregulated stored value card industry deprives us of the means to collect this vital intelligence. Moreover, stored value cards are often used to facilitate identity theft. For example, a criminal who successfully infiltrates a bank account can easily purchase stored value cards and then spend or sell them. This readily available outlet makes it much more unlikely that the stolen funds will ever be recovered, thus costing financial institutions and their insurers billions of dollars each year.”
Here is another snippet from Mueller talking about you . . .
“The FBI focuses its efforts in the securities fraud arena on schemes involving high yield investment fraud (to include Ponzi schemes), market manipulation, and commodities fraud. Due to the recent financial crisis, the FBI saw an unprecedented rise in the identification of Ponzi and other high yield investment fraud schemes, many of which each involve thousands of victims and staggering losses — some in the billions of dollars.
“With this trend and the development of new schemes, such as stock market manipulation via cyber intrusion, securities fraud is on the rise. Over the last five years, securities fraud investigations have increased by 33 percent.”
We’ll close this column with a question or two for you: Did you really think that agencies such as the FBI and the U.S. Secret Service were going to sit back and watch you do this forever?
Did you really think that you had no exposure as a promoter because you always could blame it on your upline and engage in willful blindness as you proceeded from program to program to program, dragging your downline with you from pig to pig to pig as you demonstrated your relentless willingness to paint with lipstick?
Final note: They also know that some of you are penny-stock manipulators, tax-deniers, “sovereigns” and underground “credit-repair” specialists. Just a guess on our part, but we figure Andy Bowdoin’s lasting legacy to the “industry” will be as the man responsible for its long-overdue destruction.
Records show that Bowdoin formed company after company, established corporate shells potentially with co-conspirators, and that ASD and other knockoff autosurfs used “stored value” debit cards, unregulated or lightly regulated payment processors and money-services businesses, and other means to immerse themselves in the shadow banking system.
The destruction of these miserable and dangerous “industries” is not going to happen overnight — but it is happening. The FBI, the U.S. Secret Service, the Justice Department, the SEC, the CFTC, the FTC, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the IRS and other agencies at the federal, state and local levels are going to make it happen.
It’s going to happen because it has to happen. There never has been a worse time to be a white-collar criminal. The public at large wants to put you in jail and will not turn you into a folk hero as it did for Bonnie and Clyde and John Dillinger.
You remind the public of Bernard Madoff, and it — the “it” being comprised of the vast majority of Americans and citizens of other countries who celebrate common decency and support the rule of law — simply is not willing to cut you any slack when you’re picking the pockets of your neighbors or the fellow congregants at your place of worship.
Indeed, the public has seen all it is willing to take, and could not care less that you got your money without the benefit of a gun. To the public, you’re worse than Bonnie and Clyde, worse than Dillinger himself, who robbed in the plain light of day.
Robert Mueller wants to hire 276 more G-men and G-women and 187 intelligence analysts — just to come after you and your criminal cousins.
The long arm of U.S. law — and the long memory of U.S. law enforcement — has resulted in the guilty plea in Southern Florida of a Colombian fugitive linked to the defunct Medellin cocaine cartel and the late Pablo Escobar.
