The Dispatch of Lexington, N.C., published a story June 7 to update readers on Zeek Rewards-related litigation — specifically the date of a hearing on a motion by certain Zeek members (alleged net winners) to dissolve the receivership. (See link to story/Comments below.) As of this morning, about 27 comments appear below the story. The comments appear to be from Zeek supporters. Zeek was based in Lexington.

Zeek, the SEC said in August 2012, was a $600 million Ponzi- and pyramid fraud that duped investors into believing they were receiving a legitimate return averaging about 1.5 percent a day. Zeek’s business model was similar to AdSurfDaily, a Florida-based Ponzi scheme that collapsed in 2008. Federal prosecutors said ASD had gathered about $119 million.

ASD became infamous not only for its purported payout of 1 percent a day, but also for the extremely strange behavior of some of its supporters. Curtis Richmond, one of the scheme’s cheerleaders, was a purported “sovereign” being once sued successfully under the federal racketeering statute for his role in various bizarre plots advanced by a purported “Indian” tribe in Utah known derisively as the “Arby’s Indians.” (The “tribe” once held a meeting in an Arby’s restaurant.) Among other things, the “tribe” issued arrest warrants for public officials and litigation opponents and used the address of a Utah doughnut shop as the address of its purported “Supreme Court.”

Richmond accused the judge presiding over the ASD case of dozens of felonies, saying she was guilty of “TREASON.” Moreover, Richmond claimed the judge’s supervising judge was conspiring with the judge to deny ASD members justice. For these claims (and more), Richmond was accorded the title of “hero” on the “Surf’s Up” forum, an ASD cheerleading site set up after the U.S. Secret Service raided ASD in August 2008. Among the Surf’s Up faithful was Terralynn Hoy, who later presided over at least one conference call for Zeek. (See this PP Blog Comments thread from June 2012. Props to GlimDropper of RealScam.com.)

Many highly peculiar narratives were advanced by ASD supporters. One of them held that the U.S. government took about $80 million seized in the ASD case and plowed it into a secret fund through which it almost immediately generated $1 billion in interest that the United States used to pay for black ops. Another held that all commerce is lawful as long as the parties agree that it is lawful, a position that would legalize slavery. Yet another held that the ASD judge was on the take and “brain dead” if she ruled against ASD. Still another held that undercover agents who joined ASD to get the lay of the land had a duty to inform ASD management.

On Surf’s Up, an ASD supporter claimed that a “militia” should storm Washington with guns. Another claimed a federal prosecutor should be placed in a medieval torture rack. Beyond that, a purported “prayer” was circulated that called for federal prosecutors to be struck dead.

Given that ASD operator Andy Bowdoin once described himself (from a stage in Las Vegas) as a Christian “money magnet” and later claimed that the Secret Service was “Satan” and compared the agency to the 9/11 terrorists who killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington, it’s no surprise that it became next-to-impossible to keep track of all of the ASD conspiracy theories.

What is surprising is that any number of Zeekers seem willing to buy into the same sort of mind-numbing mind-set.

At The Dispatch site, apparent Zeek supporters are claiming that:

• the “SEC messed us all up.”
• the court-appointed receiver “should be on trial.”
• “someone paid these guys off with MINIMAL evidence!”
• “Gestapo/KGB/SS tactics” are being used against Zeek by people in the “Executive Branch.”
• the government is “not allowing anyone to [grow] economically.”

Friends, a 1.5-percent-a-day “program” pushed on well-known fraud forums such as TalkGold and MoneyMakerGroup is a scam. Period. The SEC acted in the best interest of Zeek investors — and in the best interest of the people of the United States who are sick and tired of seeing their country used as a playground for HYIP scammers or worse. The security condition created by “programs” such as Zeek, Profitable Sunrise, JSSTripler/JustBeenPaid and others is untenable.

Kenneth D. Bell, the court-appointed receiver for Zeek, has been doing a commendable job amid extremely trying circumstances. (In terms of the number of victims, Zeek may be the largest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history.) Bell is a former federal prosecutor known for having once successfully prosecuted a Hezbollah terrorist cell operating in the United States. He was appointed by a federal judge who is a former Naval officer. Claiming Bell should be put on trial is pure idiocy. So is clinging to a belief that the government somehow has outlawed the growth of business in the United States.

No one got “paid off” to do anything against Zeek — and the evidence that Zeek had an insurmountable mountain of unfunded liabilities and was paying members with money from other members is overwhelming.

Claims about Gestapo, KGB and SS tactics also were made by ASD members. Dwight Owen Schweitzer, later of Zeek, sued the United States (with fellow ASD and Zeek member Todd Disner). Among other things, Schweitzer and Disner claimed they were “unaware of any remission payments having been made” through the government-sponsored restitution program — this despite the fact the government had returned tens of millions of dollars to ASD investors and had issued news releases repeatedly about the program.

For good measure, Schweitzer and Disner also claimed that undercover agents who joined ASD “should have reported their own violations of the ASD terms of service” to ASD management. The pair made this bizarre claim long after ASD lost in the District Court and in the U.S. Court of Appeals. Amazingly, the claim also was made after prosecutors pointed out that some ASD members were recruiting for ASD even though they knew it was a Ponzi scheme and that Andy Bowdoin’s silent partner in ASD was his sponsor in the 12DailyPro Ponzi scheme broken up by the SEC in February 2006 — months before ASD launched and years before Zeek launched.

So, if you’re inclined to call accused Ponzi schemer and Zeek operator Paul R. Burks a genius while ranting against the government, you are according that title to a man who appears to have learned nothing from the ASD and 12DailyPro (and Legisi and PhoenixSurf and CEP and Imperia Invest IBC) prosecutions. If you are unhappy that the government’s Zeek action froze money you were counting on — well, that’s understandable. At the same time, however, there is a good chance you don’t understand the context of your own unhappiness. Zeek and Burks are to blame, not the SEC and the receiver.

If you joined another Zeek-like “program” after the SEC action, the best that can be said is that you are slow to learn. The worst is that you are a budding “Ken Russo,” perhaps the most intransigent Ponzi-board scammer in the Western Hemisphere. Zeek member “Ken Russo” sells people into Ponzi misery for a fee.

Repeatedly.

What ASD and Zeek both appeared to be was a bid to dupe investors into believing that, if 12DailyPro’s return of 12 percent a day for 12 days for thousands of members was impossible, the “smaller” daily returns of ASD (1 percent) and Zeek (1.5 percent) for between 90 and 150 days for hundreds of thousands of members somehow were more plausible.

Read story and Comments thread in The Dispatch. While you’re doing so, remember that Zeek once auctioned sums of U.S. currency (while wrapping itself in the American flag) and told successful bidders they could pick up their cash via offshore payment processors that enable fraud schemes like JSSTripler/JustBeenPaid and its 2-percent-a-day “program” globally.