This note concerning Obopay and Payza is appearing on the website of U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr. of the District of Columbia this morning.
EDITOR’S NOTE ADDED AT 10:09 A.M. Federal prosecutors in the District of Columbia now have confirmed that an investigation is under way, but declined to provide details. “The U.S. Attorney’s Office is involved in a pending investigation and we are unable to state the subject of the investigation or provide details,” the office of U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr. said moments ago.
Original story below . . .
________________________________
The office of U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr. of the District of Columbia (Washington, D.C.) did not immediately respond to a request for comment this morning on a note concerning Payza and Obopay that is appearing on its website.
The two-sentence note, which appears under a headline of “Obopay/Payza,” reads as such: “If you have questions or concerns about your Obopay or Payza account, please call 202-252-1903 and leave your name and contact information. Someone will return your call within 3 business days.”
A PP Blog reader reported the existence of the note at 8:58 a.m. today. How long the note had been posted was not immediately clear. Nor was it immediately clear why Machen’s office was involved in an Obopay/Payza matter.
Machen’s office, working with the U.S. Secret Service, successfully prosecuted the $119 million AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme. ASD used AlertPay, Payza’s predecessor brand.
And Machen’s office, again working with the Secret Service, also successfully prosecuted the eGold payment processor.
Payza/AlertPay also were processors used by the alleged $600 million Zeek Rewards Ponzi- and pyramid scheme. The Secret Service also is investigating Zeek.
See Nov. 28, 2013, PP Blog post on conflicting reports concerning the unavailability of Payza funds in the United States.
Garfield M. Taylor, the Maryland man accused civilly by the SEC in November 2011 of duping charitable organizations and people of faith in a Ponzi scheme, now has been indicted on criminal charges, the FBI and federal prosecutors in the District of Columbia said.
Taylor, 54, of Rockville, faces counts of wire fraud, securities fraud and selling unregistered securities, the office of U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr. said.
The $25 million Taylor scam was about smoke and mirrors, prosecutors said.
From a statement by Machen’s office (italics added):
According to the indictment, Taylor devised and employed a scheme from in or about September 2006 through in or about September 2010 in which he convinced investors to invest with him by promising them substantial returns on their investment, telling them that he used a sophisticated securities trading strategy that protected against loss, and claiming that he had a proven track record of using this strategy effectively.
During the course of this scheme, however, Taylor never used the trading strategy that he told investors that he would use. With the investments he did make during this period, Taylor either lost money or made minimal profits far below what was needed to pay the amounts he owed. The only way that Taylor was able to pay the substantial interest rates he was paying during this period was to use portions of the principal invested by new investors to pay amounts that were owed to earlier investors.
In 2011, the SEC said Taylor used terms such as such as “proprietary strategy,” “covered call investment strategy” and “unparalleled downside protection” to dupe investors. It is somewhat common for fraudsters to use fancy-sounding investment lingo in bids to scam investors.
In one instance, federal prosecutors said today, Taylor took “approximately half” of an investor’s $425,000 investment to pay sums owed to “earlier investors.”
He also claimed investments with him were insured against loss and that a reserve fund to protect investors existed as an extra safeguard, prosecutors said.
Those claims were false, prosecutors said.
“At the time of the scheme’s collapse, Taylor owed investors nearly $25 million just to cover the principal he was contractually required to return to them,” prosecutors said.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in the District of Columbia also prosecuted the AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme.
URGENT >> BULLETIN >> MOVING: (UPDATED 5:20 P.M ON SEPT 4.) AdSurfDaily President Andy Bowdoin has been sentenced to the maximum term in federal prison under his plea agreement: 78 months.
The sentence was handed down minutes ago by U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer of the District of Columbia. ASD was a $119 million Ponzi scheme operating over the Internet between 2006 and 2008 and creating thousands of victims.
Separately, Collyer issued an order that authorized the U.S. Department of Justice to reopen remissions, meaning that ASD victims who missed the January 2011 filing deadline will have an opportunity to gain a pro rata share of the remainder of ASD proceeds seized by the U.S. Secret Service in 2008.
“Thomas Bowdoin was a master of fraud and deception, cheating victims out of their hard-earned money and savings with his get-rich scheme,” said U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr. of the District of Columbia. “His actions cost his victims millions of dollars and now they will cost him his freedom. This sentence will protect the public from Mr. Bowdoin’s scams and hold him accountable for his crimes.”
A top U.S. Secret Service official said the agency is using a variety of tools to bring scammers to justice.
“Capitalizing on the strength of our financial task force partnerships, we aggressively pursue criminals using computer experts, forensic specialists, investigative experts and intelligence analysts,” said Dennis Ramos Martinez, special agent in charge of the Orlando Secret Service office.
Machen’s office declined to comment today on whether the ASD probe was ongoing.
Bowdoin is 77.
In November 2011, ASD figure Kenneth Wayne Leaming was arrested by the FBI on charges of filing false liens against at least five public officials involved in the ASD case. Two of the officials were federal prosecutors. One was the lead Secret Service investigator.
Machen’s office — without referencing the FBI allegations against Leaming — today praised the work of former Assistant U.S. Attorneys William Cowden and Vasu B. Muthyala. And Machen’s office also praised U.S. Secret Service agent Roy Dotson. All three men allegedly were targeted with false liens from Leaming, a purported “sovereign citizen.”
Leaming, 56, is jailed near Seattle.
Bowdoin’s sentencing today occurred against the backdrop of the collapse of Zeek Rewards, which was accused by the SEC Aug. 17 of operating a $600 million Ponzi- and pyramid scheme that potentially affects more than 1 million people. Zeek’s business model was similar to ASD’s business model. The U.S. Secret Service also is investigating Zeek.
Here’s what prosecutors in the District of Columbia said today about ASD’s business model (italics added):
ASD’s business model promised members the opportunity to earn 125 percent (initially 150 percent) on each dollar paid into ASD, as long as the members viewed other members’ websites for a few minutes each day on ASD’s Internet page, commonly referred to as the ASD “rotator.” Bowdoin also promised members commissions for recruiting other members into the program.
While a small percentage of ASD members who invested early in the program could earn the extraordinary rates of return, the promised opportunity was illusory for the vast majority of ASD members. Indeed, due to the fact that ASD’s pyramid-style business model relied entirely on an ever increasing influx of new money to fund the debt owed to earlier members, the vast majority of members could never earn the promised rates of return, making the promised opportunity fraudulent.
Federal prosecutors sent this letter to an attorney for accused Ponzi schemer Andy Bowdoin of AdSurfDaily on April 17, 2012. It was entered in the public record on April 24. The letter describes the "OneX" program pushed by Bowdoin as a "fraudulent scheme." Bowdoin pleaded guilty to wire fraud in the ASD Ponzi case less than a month later. He is currently jailed in the District of Columbia awaiting formal sentencing Aug. 29. (Red highlight by PP Blog.)
“Like [AdSurfDaily], OneX does not generate income by selling a product to consumers outside the system. Instead, it simply re-distributes funds among participants. Thus, a participant will not earn money unless he or she recruits new members. When the addition of new members stops, the program ceases to exist.” — From court filing by Office of U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr. in Ponzi scheme case against AdSurfDaily President Andy Bowdoin, April 24, 2012
OneX, which went missing weeks ago, now is back — sort of.
The “program” held a bizarre conference call last night, claiming it was trying to resurrect itself after server problems that lasted weeks even as it suggested it was trying to come up with a word combination that would put questions about the program to rest.
“We just have to call certain things that we were doing a different name,” asserted lead huckster “J.C.” during the call.
Precisely what J.C. meant by his “different name” comment was unclear. Much is murky about the purported “program,” which ASD’s Bowdoin claimed last year was great for college students and could result in riches for former ASD members.
During the call, OneX created a potential PR disaster for Bank of America, which once was the banker for the AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme and was sued by ASD members who claimed the bank aided ASD President Andy Bowdoin in foisting a massive fraud scheme on the public.
Bank of America has denied the claims against it. Those claims were part of a 2009 racketeering lawsuit filed against Bowdoin and Robert Garner, a onetime attorney for ASD.
Among other highlights from yesterday’s OneX call:
“J.C.” — whom at least some members believed was the owner of OneX — denied he was the owner. Rather, J.C. described himself as a “consultant.”
Regardless, J.C. claimed he’d written a letter to SolidTrustPay to “reverse” deposits made into the OneX account and to return the money to the senders. OneX had received the money from about 22 OneX members as a result of a programming error, J.C. explained. He did not explain how a consultant — as opposed to an owner — had any authority to ask SolidTrustPay to do anything.
In any event, OneX no longer is doing business with Canada-based SolidTrustPay, according to J.C.
J.C. said the “program” has another payment-processing solution waiting in the wings and may make an announcement Thursday. He did not identify the processor, claimed OneX again would open itself to member withdrawals — but further claimed the new processor “is wanting us to stagger” payouts and to begin with “a small amount.”
“We don’t know the numbers yet. Next Thursday we can talk about it,” J.C. said.
Later in the call, with the name of the payment processor still not disclosed, J.C. said this:
“And I will tell you also that it’s not one that is outside the United States. They work with Bank of America.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: The PP Blog first reported on the arrest in France of alleged international fraudster Vladislav Anatolievich Horohorin on Aug. 11, 2010. The arrest came as the result of an undercover operation the U.S. Secret Service conducted on online forums.
As the Blog reported at the time, “The arrest of Vladislav Horohorin is notable on a number of levels. First, the arrest in Europe was a result of an online fraud scheme that allegedly crossed international borders and made its way to the United States, where criminal charges were filed. At the same time, the crime allegedly involved the transfer of money though international payment processors. Perhaps more than anything, however, the case against Horohorin demonstrates that the U.S. Secret Service is “plugged into” forums that promote international lawlessness. His arrest is very bad news for credit-card crooks and HYIP and autosurf Ponzi schemers — and their corrupt colleagues.”
Today the PP Blog is reporting that the United States successfully arranged the extradition of Horohorin. His first court appearance was made in the District of Columbia, the venue from which the AdSurfDaily Ponzi case brought by the Secret Service is playing out. The office of U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr., which was instrumental in guiding the ASD case, is in charge of certain elements of the Horohorin case.
The office of U.S. Attorney Sally Quillian Yates of the Northern District of Georgia also is handing elements of the Horohorin prosecution.
The allegations in the case are alarming: “According to the indictment filed in the Northern District of Georgia, Horohorin was one of the lead cashers in an elaborate scheme in which 44 counterfeit payroll debit cards were used to withdraw more than $9 million from over 2,100 ATMs in at least 280 cities worldwide in a span of less than 12 hours,” the Justice Department said in a statement. “Computer hackers broke into a credit card processor located in the Atlanta area, stole debit card account numbers, and raised the balances and withdrawal limits on those accounts while distributing the account numbers and PIN codes to lead cashers, like Hororhorin, around the world.”
** ______________________________________ **
UPDATE: Alleged international credit-card fraudster Vladislav Anatolievich Horohorin, also known as “BadB,” is in an American jail after an undercover probe on online forums by the U.S. Secret Service and a parallel investigation by the FBI.
Ronald C. Machen Jr., U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia
“We are pleased that he has been extradited to the United States to face these criminal charges in a District of Columbia courtroom,” said U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr. of the District of Columbia. “This prosecution demonstrates that those who try to rip off Americans from behind a computer screen across an ocean will not escape American justice.”
Horohorin, whose age was listed as 27 after his August 2010 arrest in France on U.S. charges, also will be prosecuted in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.
“International cyber criminals who target American citizens and businesses often believe they are untouchable because they are overseas,” said U.S. Attorney Sally Quillian Yates of the Northern District of Georgia. “But as this case demonstrates, we will work relentlessly with our law enforcement partners around the world to charge, find and bring those criminals to justice.”
News of Horohorin’s extradition by France to U.S. soil occurred against the backdrop of claims by an HYIP “program” known as JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid that members must affirm they are not with the “government” and that the “program” is not located in any “unfriendly political jurisdictions.”
A JSS/JBP “defender” known as “MoneyMakingBrain” asserted in March that “law enforcement agencies don’t pay attention to what’s being said on forums and blogs.” The claim was at odds with various public records that show U.S. law enforcement pays close attention to forums and Blogs and even conducts undercover operations by infiltrating forums.
Among other things, “MoneyMakingBrain” asserted he’d defend JSS/JBP’s purported operator Frederick Mann “so help me God.” The PP Blog became the subject of threats from “MoneyMakingBrain.” JSS/JBP, which uses offshore payment processors, purports to provide a return of 60 percent a month, has no known securities registrations and may have ties to the “sovereign citizens” movement.
Underscoring the importance of the Horohorin arrest and extradition, Machen and Yates were joined in the announcement by the head of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Criminal Division and top officials from both the U.S. Secret Service and the FBI.
Horohorin, said Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, was “one of the most notorious credit card traffickers in the world.”
“Due to our strong relationships with our international law enforcement partners, we secured his extradition to the United States, where he now faces multiple criminal counts in two separate indictments,” Breuer said. “We will continue to do everything we can to bring cybercriminals to justice, including those who operate beyond our borders.”
A top U.S. Secret Service official, meanwhile, said the agency viewed the alleged Horohorin caper as an “attack” on America’s financial system.
“The Secret Service is committed to identifying and apprehending those individuals that continue to attack American financial institutions and we will continue to work through our international and domestic law enforcement partners in order to accomplish this,” said David J. O’Connor, assistant director of investigations.
In addition to providing security for the President of the United States, the Secret Service is in charge of protecting America’s financial infrastructure. The agency has described AdSurfDaily as a “criminal enterprise,” with the Justice Department asserting that ASD was an example of an “insidious” business that permitted fraud to spread globally.
Just two days after Horohorin’s first appearance in a U.S. courtroom in the District of Columbia, AdSurfDaily members Todd Disner and Dwight Owen Schweitzer claimed that the federal prosecutors who brought the ASD Ponzi case in August 2008 had gone shopping for a “frendly [sic] forum” in which the government could enlist “some of their Washington D.C. operatives to become members of ASD, thereby making them potential witnesses.”
Disner and Schweitzer sued the United States in November 2011 for alleged misdeeds in the ASD case. Among other things, Disner and Schweitzer asserted that undercover agents who joined ASD had a duty to inform ASD management. The Secret Service described ASD as a massive online Ponzi scheme involving at least $110 million. ASD President Andy Bowdoin pleaded guilty to wire fraud last month, admitting ASD was a Ponzi scheme and that the company never operated legally from its inception in 2006.
Disner and Schweitzer now are affiliates for Zeek Rewards, a “program” that plants the seed it can provide an ASD-like return of 1 percent or more per day without being a pyramid scheme and without constituting an investment opportunity. The payout Zeek plants the seed it can provide is on par with the returns advertised by JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid, which does not disclose its base of operations.
A top FBI official said the arrest of Horohorin showed that international agencies are working together to divorce criminals from their abilities to use computers to reach across borders to pull off egregious crimes.
“Horohorin’s extradition to the United States demonstrates the FBI’s expertise in conducting long-term investigations into complex criminal computer intrusions, resulting in bringing the most egregious cyber criminals to justice, even from foreign shores,” said Brian D. Lamkin , special agent in charge of the Atlanta division. “The combined efforts of law enforcement agencies to include our international partners around the world will ensure this trend continues.”
Court and other records show that Horohorin, like ASD, had a presence in both the District of Columbia and the Northern District of Georgia.
BULLETIN: Federal prosecutors have gone to federal court in the Southern District of Florida, asking a judge to delay discovery in the November 2011 lawsuit filed against the government by AdSurfDaily figures Dwight Owen Schweitzer and Todd Disner.
In cases in which plaintiffs sue the government in federal court, assistant U.S. Attorneys who ordinarily may assist in the prosecution of civil and criminal cases put on a new hat and become lawyers representing the government as a client.
An assistant U.S. Attorney is now the lawyer for the government because Schweitzer and Disner effectively sued the office of U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr. in the District of Columbia for alleged misdeeds in the ASD case even as they accused the U.S. Secret Service of assisting in the government presentation of a “tissue of lies” against AdSurfDaily President Andy Bowdoin and ASD itself.
Schweitzer and Disner have not been accused of wrongdoing. Among the curious assertions in their lawsuit against the government was that undercover agents who had infiltrated ASD had a duty to report the agents’ alleged ASD Terms of Service violations to ASD management.
After their ASD days, Disner and Schweitzer moved on to become affiliates for Zeek Rewards, an MLM “program” that plants the seed that returns between 1 percent and 2 percent a day are possible and that Zeek does not constitute an investment opportunity. ASD planted the seed that it paid 1 percent a day and also claimed it was not offering an investment opportunity.
In 2008, prosecutors said ASD was relying on wordplay to try to skirt securities laws. ASD President Andy Bowdoin pleaded guilty to wire fraud in the ASD case on May 18 and acknowledged he was at the helm of a Ponzi scheme and illegal money-making business that had defrauded members since its inception in 2006.
By the end of the business day on May 18, prosecutors asked a federal judge in Southern Florida — the venue in which Disner and Schweitzer brought their lawsuit — to take notice of Bowdoin’s guilty plea before U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer more than 1,000 miles north in the District of Columbia. Even as they pointed to Bowdoin’s guilty plea, prosecutors asked that the Disner/Schweitzer case be dismissed.
Prosecutors say their dismissal motion would eliminate the need for any discovery if approved by U.S. District Judge Judge Cecilia M. Altonaga in the Southern District of Florida. If Altonaga chooses not to dismiss the Schweitzer/Disner complaint, prosecutors said, the case should be moved to the District of Columbia, the venue in which at least three civil-forfeiture actions against ASD-related assets were brought in 2008 and 2009.
In their June 4 motion to delay discovery pending a ruling on the dismissal motion, prosecutors said they emailed Schweitzer and Disner on May 23 “seeking their positions on the defendant’s motion to stay” discovery, but that neither Schweitzer nor Disner responded to the emails.
BULLETIN:Stewart David Nozette, the Maryland man with a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a “Top Secret” security clearance, has been sentenced to 13 years in federal prison on charges of tax fraud and attempted espionage.
The espionage case was brought by the FBI after Nozette — believing he’d been recruited by Israel’s Mossad to spy on the United States — accepted $10,000 left by the FBI in an undercover sting. In effect, Nozette sold out his country for the price of a used car and the expectation that more cash would be forthcoming.
Nozette already was under investigation for tax evasion and financial fraud against the United States when he was arrested in the 2009 sting.
“Stewart Nozette’s greed exceeded his loyalty to our country” said U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr. of the District of Columbia. “He wasted his talent and ruined his reputation by agreeing to sell national secrets to someone he believed was a foreign agent. His time in prison will provide him ample opportunity to reflect on his decision to betray the United States.”
The case was notable for reasons other than Nozette’s bid to sell out his country. Indeed, elements of the case were prosecuted by Machen’s office — an office familiar to readers of the PP Blog because it brought the AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme case (under then-U.S. Attorney Jeffrey A. Taylor) in 2008 and supervised the return in 2011 and 2012 of more than $59 million (under Machen) to defrauded ASD investors.
Michael K. Atkinson, the assistant U.S. Attorney who led the Nozette tax and fraud prosecutions, once was assigned to the ASD case.
Nozette “betrayed his country and the trust that was placed in him by attempting to sell some of America’s most closely-guarded secrets for profit,” said Assistant Attorney General Lisa Monaco.
Monaco is from the Justice Department’s National Security division. She joined Machen in making the announcement about Nozette’s sentence, along with Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General John A. DiCicco of the Tax Division.
Also joining in the the announcement were James W. McJunkin, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Washington Field Office; Paul K. Martin, inspector general for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA OIG); Eric Hylton, acting special agent in charge of the Washington Field Office of the Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI); and John Wagner, special agent in charge of the Washington, D.C., Office of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS).
“Federal agents take an oath to protect our nation ‘against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” said Wagner. “That would include ‘insider threats’ like Stewart Nozette.”
Nozette, 54, parlayed his impressive academic credentials and MIT doctorate in planetary science into a career in which he conducted business with the U.S. government. He worked at the White House, for example, on the National Space Council through the Executive Office of the President of the United States.
Prosecutors said he also worked as a physicist for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and also had access to the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) in Washington, D.C., the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in Arlington, Va., and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
“We are particularly proud that NASA OIG’s fraud investigation of Nozette, which began in 2006, served as the catalyst for further investigation and today’s outcome,” said Martin, NASA’s inspector general.
The indictment did not allege that the government of Israel or anyone acting on its behalf committed any offense under U.S. laws in this case, prosecutors said.
BULLETIN:Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez, the Idaho man accused in November of shooting at the White House, now has been formally indicted on charges of attempting to assassinate the President of the United States.
Ortega-Hernandez, 21, also was accused of assaulting three U.S. officers or employees with a deadly weapon.
Whether the officers or employees were agents of the U.S. Secret Service was not immediately clear. The Nov. 11 White House shooting allegedly occurred after dark. Federal employees work at the facility around the clock.
All in all, Ortega-Hernandez faces 17 charges in the indictment, including damaging U.S. property and firearms offenses. The FBI found “several confirmed bullet impact points on the south side of the building on or above the second story residence area,” the office of U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr. said.
“Several bullets and fragments also were collected in the area near the impact points,” Machen’s office said.
The case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer of the District of Columbia.
Collyer, whose name has appeared on the PP Blog many times, is the judge overseeing the AdSurfDaily Ponzi cases.
Ortega-Hernandez potentially faces life in prison. He has been jailed since his Nov. 16 arrest in Pennsylvania.
UPDATED 6:31 P.M. ET (U.S.A.) A website collecting money through PayPal for the criminal defense of accused Ponzi schemer Andy Bowdoin of AdSurfDaily appears to have lost its ability to gather funds designated for an attorney’s “trust account.”
This message (next paragraph) appears if would-be Bowdoin sympathizers click on any of a number of payment buttons on the site, which is known as “Andy’s Fundraising Army.”
“This recipient is currently unable to receive money.”
The message originates on PayPal’s server.
Why the trust account lost the ability to collect money via PayPal is unclear. The office of U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr. of the District of Columbia said this afternoon that it “typically does not comment on pending cases, and has no comment on this particular matter.”
Machen’s office is leading the Bowdoin prosecution.
Bowdoin, 77, is awaiting a September 2012 trial on charges of wire fraud, securities fraud and selling unregistered securities. The U.S. Secret Service said the ASD patriarch was presiding over a Ponzi scheme involving at least $110 million and thousands of victims.
In September 2011, the Secret Service and federal prosecutors returned to members more than $55 million seized in 2008 in the civil portion of the case. The agency described ASD as a “criminal enterprise.”
Bowdoin began to solicit money through the fundraising website last summer, after repeated delays. Information published on the site suggests Bowdoin collected about $26,800, far short of this stated goal of $500,000. The site positioned Bowdoin as “David,” with the government as “Goliath.”
In recent months, Bowdoin has been pushing a mysterious scheme known as OneX, claiming God had delivered OneX to enable him to pay for his criminal defense.
ASD figure Kenneth Wayne Leaming, a purported “sovereign citizen,” was arrested by the FBI in November 2011. He is detained in a federal facility near Seattle on charged he filed fraudulent liens against at least five public officials involved in the ASD Ponzi case.
Purported “sovereign citizen” Kenneth Wayne Leaming remains jailed near Seattle a week after his arrest on charges of filing bogus liens against five public officials involved in the AdSurfDaily Ponzi case in the District of Columbia, according to prison records.
Leaming, 55, was arrested in Spanaway, Wash., on Nov. 22. He was charged with retaliating against a Federal judge or Federal law enforcement officer by false claim or slander of title, amid allegations he filed false liens against a federal judge, a former U.S. Attorney, a former assistant U.S. Attorney, a current assistant U.S. Attorney and an active-duty special agent of the U.S. Secret Service.
The office of U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr. in the District of Columbia — the venue from which the ASD case was brought in August 2008 — declined to comment yesterday on Leaming’s arrest on the other side of the country.
“Because our office is not handling this particular case, we have no comment on this particular matter,” Machen’s office said.
The office of U.S. Attorney Jenny A. Durkan of the Western District of Washington is supervising the Leaming prosecution. An FBI affidavit filed in the case last week references the name of American-International Business Law Inc., a Spanaway company associated with Leaming.
The company’s name also is referenced in the April 8, 2011, Congressional Record as the presenter of a “petition . . . relative to a claim against the United States of America.” (Story here.)
Whether the firm filed a claim against the United States through the U.S. Congress for a dollar sum is not known.
Meanwhile, American-International’s name appeared in a November 2010 email received by some members of ASD. (Story here.)
Pasted into the November 2010 email was a purported “legal opinion” by a person described as “Keny” of “AMERICAN-International Business Law inc. (sic).”
“Keny” is a Leaming nickname. Advertisements describing Leaming as an attorney appeared online last year, but Leaming appears to have no law degree. Some ASD members, however, appear to have turned to him for legal advice.
When Leaming was arrested last week, he was found in the company of two federal fugitives from Arkansas, Durkan’s office said last week. The fugitives, who were indicted in February 2011 amid allegations they hatched a home-business scheme involving stuffing envelopes, were identified as Timothy Shawn Donavan and Sharon Jeannette Henningsen.
Donavan, 63, and Henningsen, 67, made an appearance before U.S. Magistrate Judge J. Richard Creatura in Tacoma yesterday, according to records. They remain in custody at the Sea Tac Federal Detention Center near Seattle, according to records.
Leaming is being held at the same facility.
A grand jury in the Western District of Arkansas returned mail-fraud indictments against Donavan and Henningsen on Feb. 24. The envelope-stuffing scheme, according to the indictment, was “created solely to defraud persons seeking home-based employment” and operated through entities known as Trial Head Options Inc. and Premier Solutions in Van Buren, Ark.
When the U.S. Court of Federal Claims dismissed the lawsuit brought by Leaming and Oesch last year, Judge Christine Odell Cook Miller noted that their “challenge took the form of presenting claims issued by Tina M. Hall, a notary public in the State of Washington . . .”
Hall’s name appears on the court docket in the ASD case on Jan. 27, 2010, and Feb. 12, 2010 — with entries of “Leave to file denied” by U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer, whom the FBI now says was one of the targets of Leaming’s bogus liens. Hall’s license later was revoked by the state of Washington.
UPDATED 3:59 P.M. ET (U.S.A.) : Kenneth Wayne Leaming, an AdSurfDaily figure and a purported “sovereign citizen,” has been arrested in Washington state.
Leaming, 55, is listed as a prisoner at the Sea Tac Federal Detention Center near Seattle, a spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Prisons said this afternoon. The circumstances under which Leaming was arrested and detained were not immediately clear. Also unclear was the date upon which he was arrested.
Federal prosecutors in the office of U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr. in the District of Columbia — the venue from which ASD President Andy Bowdoin was charged last year with operating a Ponzi scheme involving at least $110 million — did not immediately return a call seeking comment on Leaming’s arrest and whether it was related to his ASD activities.
The office of U.S. Attorney Jenny A. Durkan in Seattle had no immediate details on Leaming’s arrest and detention.
In 2010, Leaming unsuccessfully sought to sue the United States — apparently for the staggering sum of more than $29 trillion — for its actions in the ASD case.
Meanwhile, in 2009, Leaming sought to place the Washington State Bar Association in involuntary bankruptcy, according to federal records. Records also show that Leaming sought to place a Franciscan hospital in Washington state in bankruptcy.
The Anti-Defamation League lists Leaming as a member of an “active anti-government extremist group that calls itself the ‘Little Shell Pembina Band of North America.’”
Leaming, who uses the names of “Kenneth Wayne” and “Keny,” was blocked in 2010 by U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer from filing pro se pleadings in the civil case against ASD’s assets. That case was brought in the District of Columbia by the U.S. Secret Service in August 2008.
Records show that, in 2010, ads listing Leaming as an “attorney” appeared online. Leaming, though, appears to have no law degree.
ASD members have claimed Leaming was providing them legal advice.
Leaming’s company — American-International Business Law Inc. of Spanaway, Wash. — is listed as registered agent for at least 73 companies. Some of the companies use the word “federal” in their names. One company conjures the image of a U.S. government agency in its name, calling itself “Homeland Security Service.” Another company calls itself “Presidential Detail.”
Two other companies use forms of the name “JP Morgan.”
Some sovereign citizens — including members of ASD — have clashed with banks in litigation unrelated to ASD.
In October 2011, some ASD members received an email that used the Leaming nickname “Keny” and encouraged them to file paperwork at the “county” level that identified a federal judge, prosecutors and a U.S. Secret Service agent as “DOJ thieves.”
