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Tag: religious frauds

  • ‘In God We Trust’ Securities Huckster Found Guilty In $17 Million Swindle; Byron Keith Brown Had ‘Fleet’ Of Luxury Cars; Feds Call Business ‘Tangled Financial Web Of Lies’

    A Virginia man who traded on religious sentiments and the motto printed on U.S. currency to fleece investors in a $17 million Ponzi and securities swindle potentially faces decades in prison after being found guilty in Maryland of wire-fraud and money-laundering charges.

    Byron Keith Brown bought at least 16 luxury or high-performance cars with investors’ money, including brands such as Lamborghini and Rolls-Royce, prosecutors said.

    Brown, 32, of Vienna, operated In God We Trust Financial Services (IGT) and used his websites to ask prospects to turn over $1 million at a time, prosecutors said. He formerly lived in Ellicott City, Md.

    A veteran IRS investigator said the case demonstrated that a huckster could create the appearance of success to mask “a tangled financial web of lies.”

    “Ponzi schemes can thrive for a time on false claims about how the money is being invested and where the returns are coming from,” said Rebecca Sparkman, special agent in charge of the IRS Criminal Investigations Unit in the District of Columbia field office

    “[B]ut that time is gone and as this verdict shows it is time for those responsible to face judgment,” Sparkman said.

    Brown, prosecutors said, filed bankruptcy in 1999 — but soon emerged with a tale of fabulous success that painted him as the head of an international firm that specialized in catering to wealthy investors from offices in Washington, D.C., Wilmington, Del., New York, and London, England.

    It was all an illusion, prosecutors said.

    “[H]e had rented a mailbox or services at a virtual office that provided telephone answering services and mail forwarding services to clients,” prosecutors said.

    And Brown “used computer software to create an illusion that the investor was logging into a banking website and viewing account information when in fact, the account numbers were made up,” prosecutors said.

    U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein said the government, to date, has seized 16 high-end cars linked to Brown.

    “Byron Brown used the Internet to make it appear as if he were running an investment management business for wealthy investors, when in fact he was stealing millions of dollars from investors and using it to buy a fleet of luxury cars,” Rosenstein said.

    Included in Brown’s investor-funded haul were a 2004 Bentley, a 2005 Rolls-Royce Phantom, a 1936 Auburn Speedster, a 2007 BMW, a 1997 Jaguar, a 2006 Aston Martin, a 2007 Lamborghini, a 2008 Maserati, two Mercedes and a 2002 Ferrari, prosecutors said.

    “In addition to sentencing criminals to prison, our goal is to seize any assets purchased with criminal proceeds,” Rosenstein said.

    Brown was not licensed as a broker, dealer or investment adviser in Maryland, Virginia or the District of Columbia. The scheme operated between 2003 and 2009.

    America was dependent on the horse and buggy when the motto “IN GOD WE TRUST” became part of the national consciousness.

    The motto first appeared on the 1864 two-cent coin, the U.S. Department of the Treasury notes on its website. Abraham Lincoln was President at the time, and the United States was engaged in the Civil War against the breakaway South.

    On Nov 13, 1861, the Rev. M. R. Watkinson, Minister of the Gospel from Ridleyville, Pa., wrote to Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase, observing that “the Almighty God” should be recognized in some form on U.S. coins.

    Chase acted almost instantly to make it happen, according to the Treasury Department, which had received many similar “appeals from devout persons throughout the country,” the Treasury Department notes.

    Watkinson reasoned a nation that did not acknowledge God one day might be regarded a nation of heathens, according to his letter to Chase.

    “From my hearth I have felt our national shame in disowning God as not the least of our present national disasters,” Watkinson wrote to Chase nearly 150 years ago.

    In a letter dated Nov. 20, 1861 — a week after the date on Watkinson’s letter — Chase instructed James Pollock, director of the Mint at Philadelphia, to prepare a motto for U.S. coinage.

    Here is how the letter read, according to the Treasury Department.

    Dear Sir: No nation can be strong except in the strength of God, or safe except in His defense. The trust of our people in God should be declared on our national coins.

    You will cause a device to be prepared without unnecessary delay with a motto expressing in the fewest and tersest words possible this national recognition.

    The words “IN GOD WE TRUST” became the official U.S. motto by an Act of Congress in 1956, when Dwight Eisenhower was President. The words officially were added to paper currency, beginning in 1957.

    Brown operated at least three companies that used the “In God We Trust” theme, prosecutors said. Experts say scammers frequently use appeals to faith and patriotism to steal from investors or line them up to be fleeced in fraud schemes.

    Visit the Treasury Department website to read about the history of “IN GOD WE TRUST” on U.S. coins and currency.

  • Son Says AdSurfDaily’s Andy Bowdoin Used Religion To Fleece Masses And Disgraced Family Name; Huckster’s Scheming Dates Back To 1960s, Another Family Member Says; ‘He Has A Criminal Mind’

    Andy Bowdoin

    Growing up a child of Andy Bowdoin and advancing through adolescence and adulthood was hard because of Bowdoin’s habitual scheming, according to Scott Bowdoin, Andy Bowdoin’s son.

    “He uses religion — always,” Scott Bowdoin, 42, said flatly of his 75-year-old father, noting he had not spoken to Andy Bowdoin in about 15 years because the elder Bowdoin had ripped off his own mother, Scott’s late grandmother, in a credit-card scheme.

    The elder Bowdoin left his own mother “with nothing,” Scott Bowdoin asserted. “The electricity was about to get cut off, the water was about to get cut off. He is a man with no conscience.”

    Scott Bowdoin made the remarks about his father in an interview with the PP Blog this morning. The younger Bowdoin said his father had disgraced the family name — and that it was high time the public in general and AdSurfDaily members in particular knew that Andy Bowdoin did not enjoy the uniform support of his family as the ASD Ponzi case winds its way through the courts.

    There was a long-ago scheme involving telephone calling cards, Scott Bowdoin said.

    And there was an “air-conditioning scam” in Florida, he added, saying his father traded on faith.

    “He’d go around and evangelize,” Scott Bowdoin said. “That was a scam. He did something with cell-phone towers. That was a scam.”

    Andy Bowdoin has been married five times, Scott Bowdoin said, adding that Andy Bowdoin’s financial scheming devastated Scott’s grandmother late in her life.

    “He drained my grandmother,” Scott said.

    Separately, an Andy Bowdoin family member who spoke to the PP Blog on the condition of anonymity said Bowdoin “has been doing this since the 1960s.

    “I always knew he was a con man,” the family member said. “I just didn’t know he could do it at this level.”

    The “level,” according to federal prosecutors and the U.S. Secret Service, exceeds $80 million and may approach $100 million when a final accounting is done. Records show that agents seized more than $65.8 million from 10 Andy Bowdoin bank accounts, including one that contained more than $31 million and another that contained more than $23 million.

    In total, about $80 million was officially listed as forfeited in the case. Andy Bowdoin has appealed the forfeitures, which were ordered by U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer. An attempt last year by Bowdoin to force Collyer to withdraw as the presiding judge failed.

    Prosecutors claimed in court filings that ASD was a massive international Ponzi scheme masked as an “advertising” business.

    “I was a little surprised because I didn’t know he could pull off a scam that big,” Scott Bowdoin said. “But, by God, he did it.”

    After the elder Bowdoin scammed his own mother in the 1990s, Scott Bowdoin said, “I told him you are dead to me.” Andy Bowdoin later was implicated in a securities swindle in Alabama. Records show he was making restitution to the Alabama victims even as he was operating ASD in 2008.

    “I pity you when you have to face the Lord when you die,” Scott Bowdoin said he told his father after he had fleeced Scott’s grandmother.

    In July 2008, years after the Alabama swindle and while ASD was gathering tens of millions of dollars per month, ASD money was used to purchase a Lincoln automobile for nearly $50,000, according to court records. At the time, Bowdoin still owed the Alabama victims about $45,000.

    Even more ASD money — more than $1 million — went to acquire real estate, a Honda automobile, an Acura automobile, jet skis, a Cabana boat, marine equipment and haul trailers, according to records. A shell company linked to Andy Bowdoin’s company began to make the purchases in June 2008, less than two weeks after an ASD “rally” in Las Vegas.

    While in Las Vegas, Andy Bowdoin urged members to imagine themselves getting large checks from ASD and thanked God for making him a “money magnet,” according to records.

    Scott Bowdoin described his father as a “classic con artist.”

    “He is a very, very, very smart man,” Scott Bowdoin said. “He knows exactly what he is doing. He uses religion — always.”

    And Scott Bowdoin lamented his father’s appeals in the forfeiture case against his assets.

    “I don’t understand why this man is not sitting in prison,” Scott Bowdoin said. “He pulled off the ultimate [con] this time.”

    Scott said his father left when he was 14 and that father and son had been estranged for years.

    Asked what he would do if his father suddenly materialized in the same room with him, Scott said that Andy Bowdoin “won’t come around me.

    “I’d probably punch him in the face,” Scott said.

    Asked if he had any advice for ASD members, Scott said, “Don’t believe a word he says. He’s a great actor. He is a good bullshitter. He could sell a screen door to a submarine captain.”

    Calling his dad a “charmer,” Scott said he was aware that some ASD members continued to cling to hope that his father came as the “Christian” depicted in sales pitches and motivational talks.  After the company was raided in August 2008, Bowdoin asked his followers to trust in God, saying the government action against his autosurfing company was the work of “Satan.”

    “These people who feel sorry for him thinking he is a good Christian — they have blinders on,” Scott Bowdoin said. “He has hurt more people than just [members of] AdSurfDaily. I can guarantee it.”

    Andy Bowdoin wasted his talents chasing schemes, Scott Bowdoin maintained.

    “If he had gone the right way, he could have been a Donald Trump,” Scott contended. “[But] he wanted to start at the top, not at the bottom.”

    Meanwhile, the other Bowdoin family member interviewed by the PP Blog said that he believed Andy was “a sociopath.”

    “I know that whatever he puts his efforts in to is [designed to] con people out of as much money as he can,” the other family member said. “Andy is a sociopath. There aren’t many sociopaths, but he is one.”

    Both family members said they were not participants in ASD and learned about the alleged scheme on the Internet.

    The family member who spoke on the condition of anonymity explained he had done so in an effort to maintain as much privacy as he could as a sea of allegations swirled around Andy Bowdoin.

    “The man is a genius,” he said of Andy Bowdoin, “but he has a criminal mind. Anyone involved with his companies — they’d be sucked into a Ponzi. To me, he is a sociopath; he will drag other people down. People need to be [careful]. A good con has a little bit of truth to it.”

    Andy Bowdoin, said the family member, has lived a “sad” life.

    “It’s sad because he could have used his talent for good,” the family member said. “I don’t hate the man, but I pity him.”

    When he thinks about Andy Bowdoin, the family member said, he thinks about Bowdoin’s father.

    “Andy Bowdoin’s father was a good man,” the family member said.