It came online a few months ago with the strange promise it would litigate against government entities involved in the AdSurfDaily case — even if they were behaving legally. If lawsuits didn’t work, then perhaps it would see about having prosecutors charged with crimes.
But ASD Members International (ASDMI), a nonprofit registered in Missouri, is no more. The corporation has been formally dissolved. It existed for less than 90 days — Oct. 30, 2008 through Jan. 26, 2009. The process of dissolving the entity actually began on Dec. 10. Formal papers were signed Jan. 21, and the dissolution was recorded Jan. 26.
ASDMI’s website now redirects to tripod.com.
“As most of you know by now, Andy Bowdoin has withdrawn as a claimant in the Forfeiture of Assets against ASD,” ASDMI said on the tripod site. “ASDMI (ASD Members International) had retained an attorney to try and overturn the forfeiture. It was determined that it would be too difficult and costly to work on a contingency basis for a class action suit. ASDMI was attempting to obtain legal standing in case 1:08-cv-01345. We also found that to obtain standing would be extremely difficult if not impossible.
“Mr. Bowdoin’s recent actions were a surprise to us and our negotiations have ended abruptly,” ASDMI continued. “The moneys we have spent on this negotiation have been wasted to say the least.”
ASDMI had crowed on its website as late as last week that it had persuaded 167 people to part with their money and join in the important work of jailing prosecutors and suing the government back to the Stone Age, if necessary, to recover money paid to AdSurfDaily.
Prosecutors seized at least $93.5 million amid allegations that ASD President Andy Bowdoin was running a Ponzi scheme and engaging in wire fraud and money-laundering.
Image problems for ASDMI began out of the gate. A PR flap ensued when two board members of the group were linked to Curtis Richmond, a man associated with a Utah “Indian” tribe a federal judge ruled a sham. The tribe, purportedly formed in an Arby’s restaurant, is well-known in local, state and federal government circles for employing a strategy called “mailbox arbitration” and threatening prosecutors, judges and police officers.
ASDMI denied any links to Richmond, who was convicted of felony contempt of court in 2007 for threatening or trying to intimidate federal judges, but the links were obvious. In November, Richmond attempted to file a motion to dismiss the ASD case. Judge Rosemary Collyer denied him leave to file.
At the same time, at least one ASDMI board member — through a separate website — was organizing a campaign to send certified letters to prosecutors.
Mailbox arbitration works on the theory you can mail certified demand letters to litigation opponents. If they don’t sign for the letters or choose to ignore the demands, you declare they’ve defaulted on a contract and file a judgment for an enormous amount of money.
It didn’t help that Dale Stevens, “chief” of the sham tribe — the Wampanoag Nation, Tribe of Grayhead, Wolf Band — was arrested for child pornography and anounced his intention to marry two underage girls.
One of the girls was 12. Stevens, 69, said he’d hoped to enter into marital bliss with her in exchange for half a cooler of “energy bars.”
And it didn’t help when Judge Rosemary Collyer issued a ruling in November that ASD had not demonstrated that it was a legal business and not a Ponzi scheme at a Sept. 30-Oct. 1 evidentiary hearing.
In the end, ASDMI lasted about as long as a typical autosurf Ponzi scheme. Many surf sites begin to fail within two to three months of launch (if not sooner) — sometimes because the operator is impossibly upside down, and sometimes because he or she simply decides to run with the money.
