EDITOR’S NOTE: News developed yesterday that ASD President Andy Bowdoin would make some sort of recorded statement to ASD members, with the recording perhaps becoming available on Tuesday. The news was announced in an email from Sara Mattoon. The email impressed us as typically vague and ambiguous — but also as cautious, preemptively suggesting there could be technical problems with the recording or delays that resulted from an “unforeseen circumstance.”
The email also fretted about deliverability issues, which suggests that Bowdoin wants the maximum audience possible. Will he announce a continuation of his fight for tens of millions of dollars seized from his bank accounts?
Or will Andy Bowdoin accept responsibility for conduct federal prosecutors said was criminal?
The post below ponders a single question — “Could things really be this simple? — and outlines an argument that events surrounding ASD/AdViewGlobal perhaps are not as complex as they sound.
Could Things Really Be This Simple?
1.) ASD failed in at least one prior iteration.
2.) Money vanished as a result of theft and a lack of management controls.
3.) ASD was reborn under the name ASD Cash Generator because ASD/Bowdoin owed money to members, including members who were unfriendly.
4.) ASD ramped up the criminality and eventually created a cash cow.
5.) Owing to a lack of controls and seat-of-the-pants management by Bowdoin that created the precise conditions under which thefts could occur/reoccur and even be condoned, money that was destined for ASD was cherry-picked by corrupt members before it got there.
6.) ASD actually never knew its real bottom line, because of side deals, secret deals and a culture that institutionalized theft.
7.) The surf became attractive to professional money-launderers.
8.) The surf became attractive to tax-deniers and people who associate themselves with fringe groups.
9.) ASD knew the end was near in July 2008, when a bank closed an account, citing Ponzi fears.
10.) Only then did Bowdoin concern himself in a very real way with the very real issue of securities fraud.
11.) Attempts to muzzle critics by threatening them with lawsuits failed.
12.) The U.S. Secret Service, alarmed by what agents saw early and aware of a general culture of corruption involving ASD, other surfs and other entities, seized the assets to prevent the scheme from mushrooming further.
13.) Bowdoin sold himself on a belief that the enterprise was legal because certain lawyers — not lawyers on his defense team — told him the enterprise was legal.
14.) Bowdoin and other ASD members rationalized the establishment of AdViewGlobal — even as the ASD case still was being litigated — by wrapping themselves in antigovernment fervor and selling themselves on the belief that, if certain lawyers said ASD was legal, then ASD was legal. If ASD proved not to be legal, they could blame the lawyers, while clinging to the antigovernment fervor.
15.) As a fail-safe, Bowdoin and others took the new surf “offshore.”
16.) Bowdoin and others, having demonstrated a remarkable lack of capacity to run a business on domestic soil, did not recognize the supremely difficult challenges of running a business offshore and actually were running much of the business from domestic soil.
17.) AdViewGlobal became a sort of ASD3, with the very same lack of controls, theft and cherry-picking problems that surfaced in the first two ASD iterations.
18.) Bowdoin subjected family members, key insiders and others to being charged with serious crimes — for a second time.
19.) A scheme to obstruct justice was hatched, a key prong of which was to ramp up efforts to paint the government as a monster.
20.) Bowdoin and co-conspirators put the whole of the enterprise in a box.