UPDATED 4:57 P.M. EDT (U.S.A.) Ten more pro se motions to intervene in the federal forfeiture case against AdSurfDaily Inc. have just appeared on the docket of U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer.
With the motions docketed yesterday, the grand total filed in the past two days now stands at 12. Previously 10 motions were filed, bringing the overall grand total to 22. All of the motions appear to use the same litigation blueprint.
Collyer denied the first 10 motions in a two-paragraph ruling. She has not ruled on the most recent 12 motions, which appear to have been in transit when she ruled against the initial 10.
Today’s docketed filers include Barbara J. Bowles; Robert Bowles; Dawn Starling; Eva Cater; Sara Lehman; Christopher Blake Scott; Harold L. Shaffer; Daniel N. Reams; James Richards; and John Deminico.
4:57 P.M. EDT UPDATE: An 11th motion was docketed late this afternoon. The filer was Thomas M. Shearer. As of this update, the grand total of motions docketed today stands at 11. The overall grand total now is 23. (This figure includes pro se filings since Aug. 24 and does not take into account earlier pro se filings by ASD President Andy Bowdoin, Curtis Richmond and others. The unofficial total of earlier pro se filings is 16.)
The unofficial grand total of all pro se filings is 39.
Five more motions to intervene have been filed by pro se litigants in the AdSurfDaily federal forfeiture case.
This morning’s filings came on the heels of five other pro se pleadings that appeared Tuesday on the docket of U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer. Like the previous motions, today’s filings appear to have used a litigation blueprint that has circulated among ASD members.
Today’s filers — and the amounts they say they are owed by the U.S. government, not ASD President Andy Bowdoin, include:
Todd C. Disner ($53,000)
Pablo G. Camus ($1,000)
Georgette Stille ($10,000)
Alfredo Perez-Cappelli ($12,200)
Gallagher and Sons Inc. ($7,000)
Todd Disner was one of the founders of the Quizno’s sandwich franchise. Disner also is listed as the owner of RebatesForAmerica.com.
On Feb. 27, ASD President Andy Bowdoin — acting as his own attorney — filed a motion to rescind a decision he made in January to submit to the forfeiture of tens of millions of dollars and real estate seized by the government in a wire fraud, money-laundering and Ponzi scheme investigation.
Federal prosecutors, on April 24, filed a memorandum asking U.S. District Judge Judge Rosemary Collyer to deny Bowdoin’s motion to rescind the forfeiture. Prosecutors argued that the law wasn’t on Bowdoin’s side, and advised the court that Bowdoin had acknowledged the government’s material allegations all were true and that Bowdoin had signed a proffer letter.
Bowdoin, according to prosecutors, had:
“confirmed to law enforcement officials that he modeled his enterprise on another’s failed fraud schemeâ€
“acknowledged that there was almost no revenue independent from what he secured from the ‘members’â€
“confirmed that the revenue figures of the enterprise were managed to make it appear to prospective members that the enterprise called Ad Surf Daily was a consistently profitable, and brilliant, passive income opportunityâ€
Charles A. Murray, whom Bowdoin retained as paid counsel in April after Bowdoin earlier had filed one pro se motion after another, now has asked Collyer to let Bowdoin withdraw his self-filed motion to rescind his decision to submit to the forfeiture “without prejudice.”
Murray advised the court that, as Bowdoin and ASD’s new paid corporate counsel, he intended to “resubmit this Motion to Rescind on or before May 15, 2009″Â — only with a lawyer’s touch, not the amateur legal prose of a pro se litigant.
“Good cause exists for permitting Mr. Bowdoin et al, Claimants’ to withdraw the pro se
pleading and refile it upon consultation with counsel,” Murray argued.
“Unrepresented at the time Mr. Bowdoin, et al, Claimants’ filed the original motion, Mr.
Bowdoin et al, Claimants’ were not aware of the legal standards applicable to the motion and, so, did not present all facts germane to decision.”
In a March 13 letter to ASD members published at the Pro-ASD Surf’s Up forum, Bowdoin chided prosecutors by saying his pro se filings “should really get their attention.
“Watch for the filings,” Bowdoin instructed. “I will be speaking out on a conference call as soon as the filings are completed. We will notify you of the call. I look forward to talking to you then.”
Bowdoin, however, never filed another pro se motion (the last one was filed March 9, four days before Bowdoin had turned to Surf’s Up to reinvigorate support and taunt prosecutors).
And Bowdoin never conducted the promised conference call.
Even before news of Bowdoin’s pro se filings broke on March 4, Surf’s Up had been hinting something special might be coming. Bowdoin’s pro se move coincided with an announcement by the AdViewGlobal (AVG) autosurf, which has close ties to ASD, that it was moving underground and forming a private association.
AVG introduced members to a company known as Pro Advocate Group, which says it can help people practice law without a license. Bowdoin’s three initial pro se filings were signed and dated by him Feb. 25, one day before AVG introduced Pro Advocate Group. Bowdoin’s filings did not become a matter of public record until March 4.
Best-laid plans?
It is possible that an order from Collyer that Bowdoin didn’t anticipate short-circuited his pro se litigation plan. On March 26, the judge ordered Bowdoin’s previous paid counsel to inform Bowdoin that corporate entities that had filed claims in the ASD case — AdSurfDaily Inc. and Bowdoin/Harris Enterprise Inc. — could not proceed pro se. Collyer also ordered the lawyers to request permission to withdraw from the case if that was their intent.
Akerman Senterfitt, Bowdoin’s previous paid counsel, complied with the judge’s order and was granted leave to withdraw from the case.
Probe Still Under Way
The ASD case continues to be an active investigation. It is possible that investigators viewed Bowdoin’s March 13 Surf’s Up letter and that prosecutors made a veiled reference to it in their April 24 memorandum to Collyer asking her not to permit Bowdoin to change his mind about submitting to the forfeiture.
“Mr. Bowdoin says that after discussing this case with his supporters, and concluding that
they were smarter than his attorneys, he has changed his mind,” prosecutors said.
Are they referring to these words in Bowdoin’s Surf’s Up letter?
“About a month ago, several members introduced me to a group that studied what my attorneys did,” Bowdoin said in the letter. “The group said that my attorneys had taken the wrong approach. The group was very confident that they could help because the government had broken so many laws and had violated our rights as citizens of the United States.”
Nowhere in any of Bowdoin’s four self-filed pleadings does he discuss his rationale for becoming a pro se litigant after conferring with supporters. His only public statements on the matter have been made on Surf’s Up.
A New Clash?
Murray’s filing on Bowdoin’s behalf potentially sets up a new clash with prosecutors, who now have yet another document to address. At the same time, pro se motions filed by other litigants in the case have appeared on the record in recent days, and may require additional responses from prosecutors.
If Murray persuades Collyer to grant Murray’s motion to withdraw Bowdoin’s rescission motion and Murray files a new motion to rescind, it would mean that:
Bowdoin had submitted to the forfeiture on the advice of previous paid counsel.
Changed his mind more than a month later as a pro se litigant and tried to undo his forfeiture decision with a self-filed rescission motion.
Changed his mind again about his rescission motion under the advice of new paid counsel.
Withdrew his motion to rescind his forfeiture decision, only to have it reinstated on his behalf by a professional attorney.
On Jan. 13, Bowdoin asked the court to permit him to submit to the forfeiture. Collyer granted Bowdoin’s request Jan. 22, a hurdle that began to open a door for prosecutors to begin the slow process of liquidating ASD assets to provide refunds to customers.
Now, approaching four months later — and with pro se pleadings dominating the docket — prosecutors have not been able even to begin the liquidation process or implement a refund program.
Never mind that AdSurfDaily President Andy Bowdoin himself says ASD was operating illegally when the U.S. Secret Service seized tens of millions of dollars last summer amid allegations of wire fraud, money-laundering, engaging in the sale of unregistered securities and operating a Ponzi scheme.
And never mind that Bowdoin — who initially insisted ASD was legal, then changed his mind, then fired his attorneys and started filing pro se pleadings before finally hiring a new attorney — has failed in every attempt to demonstrate the legitimacy of his business.
In a motion just filed, ASD member Curtis Richmond has accused federal prosecutors of Fraud upon the Court, Perjury of Oath, Obstruction of Justice and Interference with Commerce.
Richmond is associated with a sham Utah “Indian” tribe known for filing vexatious litigation. He was convicted of criminal contempt of court in 2007 in California for threatening federal judges, and last year was ordered to pay damages to prosecutors and others he had nuisanced in litigation.
Richmond and other pro se litigants in the ASD case have asserted an “Innocent Owner” claim, which asserts that Judge Rosemary Collyer and the prosecutors have “defaulted” on demands made by certified mail and are violating the Constitutional rights of ASD members.
At the same time, the pro se litigants appear to be suggesting that they’re entitled to do business with whomever they please, even if the business is illegal — all while suggesting the government has a duty not to interfere with commerce even if it is illegal commerce.
One of the linchpins of this litigation approach is to send a list of demands via certified mail — and later make the claim that the recipient defaulted on the demands by not responding to them. Default judgments then are sought, sometimes for tens of millions of dollars.
This is the second pro se filing this week in the ASD case, and the fifth involving ASD members using Richmond’s litigation blueprint. This number does not take into account Bowdoin’s pro se pleadings, which total four, bringing the unofficial grand total of pro se pleadings in the case to nine.
Federal prosecutors have said such filings could lead to interminable delays in rank-and-file members of ASD getting refunds through a process the government intends to implement for crime victims.
UPDATED 1:45 P.M. EDT (U.S.A.) Language federal prosecutors used in a December forfeiture complaint against assets tied to AdSurfDaily might help explain the emergence of AdViewGlobal (AVG), a surf firm with common management and close ties to ASD.
Meanwhile, court filings by ASD President Andy Bowdoin continue to electrify some ASD members, but Bowdoin’s once-considerable support base is diminishing in size rapidly. Evidence continues to mount that fewer and fewer people are buying what Bowdoin is selling in his various pro se legal pleadings.
We’ve written about this before. Today we’ll do so again because Bowdoin’s filings never add clarity. They add only clutter. Even so, Bowdoin’s few remaining champions at the Pro-ASD Surf’s up forum always can be relied upon to cloud the issues further.
But clutter by Bowdoin and other pro se litigants in the ASD civil-forfeiture case is delaying justice for rank-and-file ASD members. The case involving money and property seized by the government in August nearly was litigated to conclusion in January, when Bowdoin formally submitted to the forfeiture. The government was on the cusp of implementing an orderly process through which ASD’s assets would be liquidated to create a restitution pool.
All of that is on hold now because of Bowdoin’s emergence in February as a pro se litigant.
Points To Ponder
A second forfeiture case filed in December against assets tied to ASD is proceeding on a separate track — one that appears to have been designed by prosecutors as leverage to make ASD members as “whole” as possible. Prosecutors asserted that some of Bowdoin’s family members, including his wife and stepson, had used ASD money to fuel extravagant spending, including the wholesale retirement of a $157,216 mortgage on the home of George Harris, Bowdoin’s stepson.
George Harris is listed as a trustee for AVG. Gary Talbert, a former ASD executive, was chief executive officer of AVG before resigning suddenly last month. The resignation was announced after Bowdoin acknowledged in a pro se pleading that ASD was operating illegally when agents seized tens of millions of dollars in August.
Nearly $30,000 also was used to buy a car for George Harris and his wife, Judy Harris. About $33,000 was used to buy a car for an ASD employee, and Bowdoin himself parked a Lincoln valued at nearly $50,000 in his driveway, prosecutors said.
The purchase of the Lincoln was telling. Bowdoin had an appetite for expensive cars when he was charged in Alabama in the 1990s with 89 separate counts of securities fraud, according to his victims.
Bowdoin never told ASD members about the Alabama fraud charges when he was busy collecting money from them. Nor did he tell his Alabama victims of his newfound ASD wealth. The money used to purchase the Lincoln would have been more than enough for Bowdoin to retire the remaining restitution due Alabama victims from more than a decade ago.
He chose the Lincoln instead.
In the end, though, it’s probably a good thing that Bowdoin chose the Lincoln over his Alabama victims. The government views ASD’s assets as the proceeds of an illegal enterprise. In theory, the government could claw back any ASD money sent to the victims, who’d then hold the unenviable distinction of having been ripped off by Bowdoin twice.
Contemplating that outcome is just plain sad — but there’s more. What’s left could explain the formation of AdViewGlobal and how close Bowdoin associates could be using it to line their pockets while Bowdoin files one pro se pleading after another in the ASD case.
The ASD/AVG Tie
Prosecutors say Bowdoin did not file a police report when more than $1 million went missing from ASD at the purported hands of “Russian” hackers. Nor did Bowdoin file a police report when other money went missing from ASD.
What Bowdoin did, according to prosecutors, was engage attorney Robert Garner to figure new and better ways to steal from ASD members. This led to the production of a video that sanitized the ASD business model. Before long, ASD couldn’t even get all of the cash it was collecting to the bank.
Those Pesky Details
Certain details from the December forfeiture complaint haven’t gotten much play on Blogs and forums. They may prove to be critical, however, because they may explain how AdViewGlobal (AVG) came into being.
Prelaunch promotions for AVG began to appear online during the second week of December. Early promotions suggested ASD members would be able to port their ASD earnings/expenditures to AVG. The government filed the second forfeiture complaint Dec. 19, just as AVG buzz was building.
Included in the December complaint were assertions that ASD had played the rebuilding card before, telling members that a renamed and reconstituted version of ASD would emerge because cash-flow problems had crippled the original enterprise. The renamed version would be called the ASD “Cash Generator.”
Screen shot of Page 21 from December forfeiture complaint against assets tied to ASD. Andy Bowdoin, while ASD was in failure mode, explains a process by which ASD accounts would be transferred to ASD "Cash Generator. Early promotions for AdViewGlobal (AVG), a surf with close ASD ties, suggested account balances from ASD Cash Generator might be ported to AVG.
Prosecutors very well may have a recording and/or a transcript of an ASD Cash Generator pitch given by Bowdoin because some quotations from the December complaint are attributed directly to Bowdoin andnotes from a transcriptionist appear to be contained within a document prosecutors are using. The information sounds very much like the early pitches for AVG, with references to transferring account balances from one entity to the other.
AVG may be nothing more than ASD history repeating itself in a different form, with insiders receiving benefits hidden from rank-and-file members.
Here is what prosecutors said in the December complaint (italics added to emphasize quotations from Bowdoin and bold added to emphasize what appears to be notes from a transcriptionist):
“To avoid regulatory scrutiny when ASD’s first iteration collapsed, Mr. Bowdoin explained that account balances of the prior operation would be transferred to the new operation, allowing the old program’s participants to share in the new revenue stream as new funds came into the new operation.
“In discussing the transferring of such account balances, Mr. Bowdoin explained:
‘You have heard us talk about not overwhelming the system by not transferring all of the ad packages from the old site at one time. If we did that it would never get off the ground. To avoid that from happening, we must transfer the balances in increments.
‘Here is the plan our Accountant suggested. Based on the sales that we now have, transfer over 150,000 ad packages which will be about 5%. Based on $3,000 per day in sales we can pay 1%. 50% of $3,000 is $1,500 which is 1% of the 150,000.
‘We have enough sales now to start at $3,000 per day for the first 5 days and the $1,500 on Sat. And [sic] Sun.
‘As our sales increase in increments of $3,000 per day we will transfer another 150,000 ad purchases.
‘In other words, when sales reach $6,000 per day we will transfer another 150,00 [sic] ad purchases [strike out “ad purchases”], when they reach $9,000 per day we will transfer over [strike out “over”] another 150,000. Then when they start expiring we will transfer more and we will continue this until we get all of the balances transferred.
‘All credits for surfing will be transferred. All pending cash outs will be paid from profits from the new cash generator site and then all cash balances on the old site will also be paid from profits. The time for paying pending cash outs and cash balances will be determined by Sales.’
“Mr. Bowdoin never told later participants with ASD that the funds they paid to ASD were being used to pay returns to participants with AdSurfDaily who failed to receive promised returns because one or more Russians had defrauded AdSurfDaily,” prosecutors said.
In essence, prosecutors are saying that ASD emerged as ASD “Cash Generator” because Andy Bowdoin owed participants a pile of money he couldn’t pay. He solved the problem by porting old obligations to the new company, but never told new members they were paying the freight for the original group of insiders and members who were not in the loop.
Bowdoin avoided getting sued by using this approach. He also avoided trouble from insiders to whom large sums were owed, in effect creating a new generation of victims so his original insiders could get paid.
Some of those insiders now appear to have become players in AVG — ASD history repeating itself in a different form.
The government is right about the ASD case. Its duty is to stop the “rebates aren’t guaranteed” madness before huge criminal combines begin to use it as a license to take money and keep it by hiding behind a disclaimer that gives them a license to steal.
UPDATED 8:33 P.M. EDT (U.S.A.) A federal judge said one of ASD President Andy Bowdoin’s pro se pleadings to reverse his earlier decision to submit to the forfeiture of proceeds seized by the government in a Ponzi scheme case cited no law.
Bowdoin’s pleading appeared to presume that the filing alone achieved the goal of reversing his decision to submit to the forfeiture, the judge implied.
“Mr. Bowdoin cites no law for the proposition that his ‘Notice of Rescission and Withdrawal of Release of Claims to Seized Property & Consent to Forfeiture’ ‘legally accomplishe[s]’ his goal of re-instituting Claimants’ claims to the defendant property which the Court ordered withdrawn on January 22, 2009 pursuant to Claimants’ own motion,” Judge Rosemary Collyer said.
In an order to show cause issued late this afternoon, Collyer said she construed Bowdoin’s filing as a “motion to vacate” a previous order she issued to permit Bowdoin to withdraw his claim to the seized proceeds.
It is not unusual for a judge to exercise discretion and construe the meaning of a motion filed by a pro se litigant. Pro se motions typically are prepared by nonexperts and sometimes make tremendous leaps of logic or do not include supporting law. Bowdoin, who is not an attorney, has been acting as his own attorney since late February.
Collyer ordered the prosecution to show cause why she should not reverse her previous order by April 24. She also ordered prosecutors to respond to Bowdoin motions to dismiss the case for lack of jurisdiction and lack of fair notice by April 24.
UPDATED 11:05 A.M. EDT (U.S.A.) Acting as his own attorney, AdSurfDaily Inc. President Andy Bowdoin has filed a motion to rescind a decision he made in January to submit to the forfeiture of real estate and tens of millions of dollars seized by the government in August.
As first reported in this Blog last month, an earlier motion Bowdoin filed to rescind his decision to the forfeiture appeared not to apply to the proceeds seized last summer. Rather, Bowdoin’s initial motion to rescind appeared to apply to property seized in a second forfeiture complaint prosecutors filed in December.
Neither Bowdoin nor any corporate entity associated with the property listed in the December complaint appears to have filed a verified claim to the property or a motion asking to submit to the forfeiture. Among the proceeds listed in the December complaint were a Florida home owned by Bowdoin’s stepson, George Harris, and his wife, Judy Harris. An automobile owned by George and Judy Harris also was seized, along with two other cars prosecutors said were purchased with illegal ASD proceeds. A boat and marine equipment also were seized.
Bowdoin’s initial motion to rescind appears to be a rescission of a decision he never made — either to claim the property listed in the December complaint or to forfeit it.
Confused? You’re not alone. Sometimes pro se pleadings are extremely difficult to reconcile because the arguments don’t follow a recognized structure or logical form.
Judge Rosemary Collyer included a handwritten note on Bowdoin’s most recent motion to rescind.
“Let this be filed,” she wrote.
It is unclear if Bowdoin filed the second motion to rescind before or after Collyer’s issuance of an order last week that advised Bowdoin and his paid attorneys that corporations could not proceed as pro se litigants. The document makes two corporate claims to the August proceeds.
Corporate claimants include AdSurfDaily Inc. and Bowdoin/Harris Enterprises Inc.
Bowdoin’s paid attorneys yesterday asked the court for permission to withdraw from the case, saying Bowdoin had not consulted them on his pro se filings and that serving as his attorneys had become “unreasonably difficult.”
“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,†attorneys Michael Fayad and Jonathan Goodman said.
Bowdoin claimed in his motion that his lawyers were “ineffective at best and only looking out for the best interest of the government.” Fayad and Goodman said yesterday that the client-attorney relationship was affected by a ruling that went against ASD in November.
“After this Court denied Claimant’s Emergency Motion for Return of Seized Funds [on Nov. 19, 2008], the client-lawyer relationship between the Firm and all three Claimants substantially deteriorated and has not improved thus rendering the representation unreasonably difficult,†the lawyers said.
In Bowdoin’s most recent motion, he said his earlier decision to submit to the forfeiture was a “grave mistake and error” and that he was acting under “severe duress.”
Bowdoin’s motion, however, also makes the strange claim that “procedures” government agents used to search for and seize proceeds “were non-existent.”
He also contends what the government did was “improper, illegal and tainted with violations of due process of law.”
Bowdoin’s now makes the claim that his decision to rescind “is now legally accomplished as a matter of law” — a claim that makes a considerable leap because his earlier decision to submit to the forfeiture was made with “prejudice” — meaning Bowdoin agreed to the forfeiture and would not later contest it — and Collyer signed an order granting Bowdoin’s motion to submit.
When Curtis Richmond began filing pleadings in the ASD case, the Surf’s Up forum hailed him a hero. Prosecutors see things a different way.
A federal judge should not permit Richmond and three others to intervene in the AdSurfDaily forfeiture case because the pleadings “will cause either manifest injustice, unconscionable delay, or both,” federal prosecutors said late yesterday.
“Movants are but an unhappy few of the many thousands of victims of the fraud schemes
described in the complaint,” prosecutors said of Richmond and three other men who used Richmond’s pro se litigation blueprint. “They seek to muscle aside their fellow sufferers, and cannot even pretend to be acting in the best interests of the other [ASD] victims.”
Prosecutors said the government is establishing a mechanism to provide refunds to ASD victims and that Richmond’s filings essentially create a small, special class of victims and could result in interminable delays for rank-and-file ASD members.
Absent in the prosecutors’ response to Richmond were direct references to assertions by Richmond and the others that the government had committed crimes. Some ASD members treated Richmond’s assertions as red meat for the masses, using them to feed dissent against the government and build support for ASD President Andy Bowdoin.
Prosecutors virtually ignored the assertions. Richmond was convicted of contempt of court in 2007 for threatening federal judges. He also was ordered by a federal judge to pay damages and costs to Utah public employees targeted by vexatious legal filings. The employees sued Richmond, a member of a sham Utah “Indian tribe,” under federal racketeering statutes.
The Four-Corner Offense?
It is NCAA “March Madness” basketball tournament time in the United States. Sometimes basketball teams try to slow down the game by employing the “four-corner offense,” situating players in a square and simply passing the ball around the square, rather than advancing it toward the basket.
Prosecutors may be anticipating a four-corner offense from Bowdoin and others to slow down the ASD case. They referenced Bowdoin’s own pro se pleadings in the case, but did not respond to them directly in their response to motions by Richmond and the others.
It would not be surprising if the government later takes the stand that Bowdoin’s filings are designed to delay justice. Pointedly, prosecutors described Bowdoin as “apparently proceeding pro se,†a possible sign of developments to come.
For scale, consider that the first filing in one of the Utah cases involving Richmond was entered on Aug. 11, 2004 — four and a half years ago. By Jan. 14, 2009, the case file had grown to include 321 separate entries, not taking entries that don’t qualify as formal filings into account.
In January, Bowdoin, acting under advice of paid counsel, submitted to the August forfeiture of tens of millions of dollars seized from him. But Bowdoin now says he has changed his mind about submitting to the forfeiture, even though he also concedes ASD was operating illegally at the time of the seizure — exactly what the government contended all along.
The ASD case was nearly litigated to conclusion when pro se pleadings began to pour in. In their response to Richmond, prosecutors streamlined their pleadings — addressing Richmond’s filing and three similar ones by other pro se litigants in the same document, rather than producing an individual response to each of the four motions.
Individual motions might have required to court to act on four more documents, thus slowing down the case even more.
If history is a guide, though, ASD members should not be surprised if the case slows to a crawl, thus delaying refunds. In the past, Richmond has filed pro se document after pro se document — and then turned to appeals courts for remedies when denied by district courts.
He even has named judges defendants in his pleadings.
UPDATED 11:41 A.M. EDT (March 12, U.S.A.) AdSurfDaily President Andy Bowdoin, acting as his own attorney, acknowledged in court filings yesterday that the company had been operating illegally when the government seized tens of millions of dollars last summer.
The concession was nuclear. It undermines the work of his previous paid attorneys and puts Bowdoin in the position of having to explain previous representations given the court that are completely at odds with what he is saying now.
At the same time, it undermines self-filed pleadings Bowdoin entered into the record last week. Meanwhile, it undermines pleadings by others, including four people who told the court that they were permitted to enter into commercial contracts with whomever they pleased and for whatever commercial interest they pleased.
Bowdoin now has told the court that he was operating an illegal commercial enterprise, thus nuking the argument of Curtis Richmond and three others. Richmond, himself a pro se litigant, is linked to a sham Utah “Indian tribe” known for filing vexatious pleadings that make tortured legal constructions.
“Professor” Patrick Moriarty, an ASD mainstay, has advanced commercial theories similar to Richmond’s. Moriarty got nuked yesterday, too, only a few days after congratulating Bowdoin in a column for his excellent, pro-se pleadings.
Andy Bowdoin’s pleadings, though, are jeopardizing the freedom of members of his family, ASD insiders and top promoters, and strategic shills.
Yesterday, the Pro-ASD Surf’s Up forum celebrated the filings. The forum Mods appear not to have connected the dots that Bowdoin just nuked them. Some of the Mods and members set up a site to promote AdViewGlobal (AVG), which has close ties to ASD. Bowdoin nuked AVG yesterday, too.
Today Surf’s Up has banned at least one member for not carrying Bowdoin’s water bucket. The forum even has banned members who post unflattering opinions about Bowdoin or ASD on other forums.
The Mods can tell you until they’re blue in the face that Bowdoin’s filings were something to celebrate; the announcement, as always, came with exclamation points, both in the thread and in an email Surf’s Up members received.
But this was nothing to celebrate if you’re a top promoter, an insider or a strategic shill. And it certainly was nothing to celebrate if you’re a rank-and-file member of ASD: Bowdoin just told you he ripped you off. His excuse was that the government didn’t give him fair notice that he was ripping you off.
Surf’s Up, which previously postioned Bowdoin as a genius, now is telling you his genius didn’t extend to the recognition of a Ponzi scheme and money-laundering operation. A Mod explained that Andy didn’t know he was ripping people off because the government never told him until after it seized the cash.
ASD advertised CEP Trust.
It is a steaming pile. ASD once advertised that it used CEP Trust, the failed payment processor run by the operators of the CEP Ponzi scheme. This Blog published a screen shot of ASD’s CEP pitch months ago, along with a screen shot of an ad that told the audience that ASD deposits were insured by the FDIC.
Bowdoin’s claims do not pass the giggle test — not that anybody is laughing at this point. There simply is no delight in unmasking these lies.
Claim that ASD deposits were FDIC-insured.
This Blog has refrained from calling Surf’s Up the “Loony Bin” as it is known elsewhere, and it has refrained from using the phrase “Kool-Aid drinkers,” except in cases such as quotations. We have used the word “crackpot” to describe “Surf’s Up.” It was the least-objectionable word we could think of to instill a sense of the madness taking place at Surf’s Up.
Despite everything that happened to ASD last summer, the insiders at AVG implemented a new surf and started collecting money. The operation has ASD’s fingerprints all over it, and the inescapable conclusion is that Bowdoin’s pleadings in the ASD case are setting the stage for the planned defense of AVG.
The operative word in the previous sentence is “planned.” Bowdoin and insiders got caught again. Now they are desperately trying to wiggle out of a prosecution against AVG by making the no “fair-notice” claim. It is utterly preposterous, and yet the Surf’s Up Mods serve it up daily.
AVG, by the way, is still online — despite Bowdoin’s concession to a federal judge and the prosecution that ASD was operating illegally.
They have taken no hints — including the RICO lawsuit filed by other ASD members in which Bowdoin, ASD Attorney Robert Garner and Golden Panda Ad Builder President Clarence Busby were accused of racketeering. None of the principal defendants has filed a single piece of paperwork in the case — not after two months.
We believe it likely there are sealed criminal indictments in the ASD case. At the same time, we believe it probable that some ASD/AVG insiders know they are targets of a criminal probe.
And we believe it equally likely that Bowdoin and the insiders have shielded members from this knowledge, while using Surf’s Up to whip up support. If the Mods have insider’s knowledge they are at risk of indictment. Even a whiff of it is enough.
No AVG participant also in ASD, for example, will be able to claim they did not know the possible consequences of their actions as they pertained to AVG. And with George Harris, Bowdoin’s stepson; Gary Talbert, a former ASD executive; and Chuck Osmin, a former ASD employee who testified for ASD at the evidentiary hearing in the AVG lineup, there will be no credible way to claim ignorance. Nate Boyd, listed as the “Protector” of the AVG association, formerly was the head of compliance for ASD, members said.
Do not be surprised if you see the no “fair notice” argument ported over to AVG.
