PatrickPretty.com

Tag: U.S. Secret Service

  • PRIMING THE PUMP: TalkGold, MoneyMakerGroup Publish String Of ‘I Got Paid’ Posts From Club Asteria Members; ‘It’s No Scam Now,’ Poster Declares

    Two forums listed in federal court documents as places from which Ponzi schemes are promoted have published a series of “I got paid” posts from commentators who say they are members of Club Asteria (CA).

    The “I got paid” posts on MoneyMakerGroup and TalkGold appeared after CA members had complained publicly about not getting paid and fretted about the firm’s slow-loading website.

    Both the complaints and the “I got paid” posts lead to questions about whether CA’s revenue stream is polluted by Ponzi proceeds.

    “It’s no scam now,” a poster on MoneyMakerGroup confidently opined after the “I got paid” posts began to appear. A link under the comment led to the affiliate’s CA registration page,  which implied prospects were receiving guidance from an “Investment” company or professional financial adviser.

    This Club Asteria affiliate's sign-up page is accessible from a link on the MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi forum. The registration page implies that CA prospects are receiving guidance from a professional "Investment" company or adviser. In May 2010, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service identified MoneyMaker group as a site from which the alleged Pathway To Prosperity Ponzi scheme was pushed. Pathway To Prosperity gathered more than $70 million, creating about 40,000 victims from "all of the permanently inhabited continents of the world," according to federal court filings in the Southern District of Illinois.

    Separately on MoneyMakerGroup, another CA poster declared, “I am in over 35 forums and everyone is posting paid.”

    In July 2010, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) issued an alert about investment scams and how they spread on the Internet.  Separately, court filings from May 2008 in the SEC’s case against an alleged $70 million Ponzi scheme known as Legisi include a handwritten note from a Legisi enrollee.

    “Money Maker Group.com,” the note read in part. The note was part of a 267-page evidence exhibit the SEC presented a federal judge. The SEC alleged that Legisi created thousands of victims.

    On both MoneyMakerGroup and TalkGold, posters have repeatedly noted that CA payments come from “Asteria Holdings Limited (Hong Kong).”

    CA says it accepts money through SolidTrustPay and AlertPay, both of which are Canada-based payment processors. Both companies are referenced in federal court filings in the alleged AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme, which the U.S. Secret Service said gathered at least $110 million and created as many as 40,000 victims.

    ASD also was promoted on MoneyMakerGroup and TalkGold. Solid Trust Pay and AlertPay also are referenced in court filings in the Pathway To Prosperity Ponzi case.

    CA also notes that it conducts business with CashX, another Canadian firm. When the ASAMonitor Ponzi scheme and criminals’ forum mysteriously vanished in October 2010, the site’s landing page initially redirected to CashX.

    Some CA members are selling the “program” by describing what it is not. It is not a Ponzi scheme, and it is not an investment, they claim.

  • PP Blog Operated By ‘Self-Appointed Idiot,’ Fan Of Nonexistent Nation Of ‘New Utopia’ Suggests; Blog Invited, Then Uninvited To Ceremony At ‘Palace’

    A man using the anonymous identity of “Mr. Protector,” a hotmail address and an IP in the Netherlands has scolded the PP Blog for a story that described “New Utopia” as a nonexistent nation in the Caribbean.

    New Utopia is the fanciful “tax haven” allegedly dreamed up by Lazarus R. Long, an American who declared himself a “prince” and hatched a plan to form a “new country” that would “rise from the Caribbean on giant concrete platforms built on an underwater land mass,” according to the SEC.

    Using the phrase “selfappointedidiotyouare” [Self Appointed Idiot You Are] apparently to chide the PP Blog for giving less than favorable coverage to the nonexistent nation, the man sent an email to the Blog this morning that both invited and uninvited the Blog to view New Utopia’s “Palace” on a date uncertain.

    “How about we print your words out about New Utopia in size 12 font and then, when New Utopia Construction begins, we can invite you there in front of the Palace and watch you eat the words and the paper they are written on?” the man wrote.

    In the very next paragraph, however, he uninvited the Blog.

    “[H]ow will we know to not allow you to visit The Principality of New Utopia?” the man inquired. “We will find a way of that be assured.”

    Although the context in which the man used the word “Protector” was unclear, it is a word that has been used by members of certain so-called “private associations” that challenge the authority of governments to regulate commerce and the securities industry.

    The AdViewGlobal (AVG) autosurf, for example, identified a member as a “Protector.” AVG has been identified in a racketeering lawsuit as an offshoot of the AdSurfDaily (ASD) autosurf. The lawsuit was filed by members of ASD.

    ASD was accused separately by the U.S. Secret Service of operating a $110 million Ponzi scheme and of committing wire fraud, securities fraud and engaging in the sale of unregistered securities.

    On Feb. 18, the PP Blog reported that federal agents — working with law-enforcement partners worldwide — had broken up a fraud ring operating in part from Florida, Costa Rica and elsewhere.

    Among the defendants charged both criminally and civilly was Jonathan R. Curshen. Curshen has been described as the one-time “honorary counsel” of St. Kitts-Nevis to Costa Rica and a purported “consulate” to New Utopia.

    New Utopia has its own website from which it sells an “International Drivers license” issued by New Utopia for $140.

    According to court records, the nonexistent principality is said to be located undersea “approximately 115 miles west of the Cayman Islands.” It would rise out of the water only after concrete stilts were erected and an above-sea base were anchored to a submerged land base.

    New Utopia, indeed, will rise, according to “Mr. Protector,” the author of the email sent to the PP Blog this morning.

    “Too many of us have worked too hard for too many years to just abandon this project,” he wrote.

    “Your ‘reporting’ does not help,” he complained.

    Long, also known as Howard Turney, was accused by the SEC in 1999 of promoting a fraudulent bond offering over the Internet to fund his upstart country. He settled with the agency in 2000 and was assessed a penalty of $24,000, but the penalty was waived.

    “Prince” Long has used the New Utopia website to complain bitterly about anonymous critics on the Internet. Whether “Mr. Protector” risked a royal scolding from the “Prince” for using an anonymous identity to contact the PP Blog was not immediately clear.

  • PROSECUTION BOMBSHELL: Accused Ponzi Schemer Andy Bowdoin Traveled To Costa Rica In 2008 To Explore Option For Offshore ‘Autosurf’ Firm; AdSurfDaily’s Internal Software System Identified Member Payouts As ‘ROI,’ Despite ASD Claim It Was Not Offering Investments

    Andy Bowdoin

    BULLETIN: UPDATED 9:29 P.M. ET (U.S.A.) Prosecutors have advised a federal judge that AdSurfDaily President Andy Bowdoin and unnamed “others” traveled to Costa Rica in the spring of 2008 to get the lay of the land for an offshore autosurf that would be “another version” of ASD.

    The alleged trip occurred less than two years after the SEC accused 12DailyPro, an autosurf based in North Carolina, of selling unregistered securities in the form of investment contracts, prosecutors said.

    The explosive claim Bowdoin ventured offshore to pursue the creation of an ASD satellite may signal that the government views ASD not only as a Ponzi scheme, but as a business that deliberately sought to dial up its efforts to circumvent U.S. laws and create an even greater Ponzi war chest by establishing a footprint outside the United States.

    Since at least February 2006, the SEC has described the autosurf business model as anathema and a form of obvious securities fraud. Bowdoin was well aware of the SEC lawsuits and scrutiny domestic autosurfs such as 12DailyPro, PhoenixSurf and CEP had sparked in 2006 and 2007, prosecutors said.

    Meanwhile, investigators have evidence that shows ASD’s internal software system described payments to members as “ROI,” an acronym that that means “return on investment,” prosecutors said.

    The assertions by prosecutors — if proven true — may undermine ASD’s defense strategy of arguing it was an “advertising” program, not an “investment” program.

    Prosecutors did not identify by name the surf allegedly contemplated for Costa Rica. In late 2008 and early 2009, a surf with close ASD ties known as AdViewGlobal (AVG) debuted. The launch occurred about four to five months after the U.S. Secret Service seized $65.8 million from the personal bank accounts of Bowdoin in August 2008.

    Bowdoin’s trip to Costa Rica occurred before the ASD seizure, prosecutors said. If true, the claim could be used to prove ASD was seeking an exit plan even before the Secret Service raid. In 2008, prosecutors asserted that Bowdoin had moved millions of dollars offshore and talked about purchasing a home in another country.

    AVG purported to operate from Uruguay, but had servers that resolved to Panama. Some ASD members have said Bowdoin was a silent partner in AVG.

    Prosecutors described the “ROI” development as just another ASD incongruity, advising U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer that Bowdoin was well aware that a serious securities challenge could be made against his firm and chose to ignore the risk and misinform members.

    Beginning as early as January 2007, “[O]thers warned Bowdoin that ASD was nothing more than an investment scheme and that the program needed to be changed if it were to operate legally,” prosecutors argued in a brief to Collyer. “Bowdoin did not heed that advice and continued unabated in offering members higher returns than banks or brokerage firms. Moreover, based on his prior criminal experience, Bowdoin was well aware of the securities regulations and knew he was offering a security.”

    Any argument that ASD was not offering “investment contracts” as defined under the Howey Test should be dismissed, prosecutors said, arguing that ASD meets all three prongs of the Howey Test.

    Bowdoin sought about three weeks ago to have the criminal charges filed against him dismissed, arguing that ASD met none of the three Howey prongs.

    Nonsense, prosecutors said.

    ASD’s advertising was “merely a cover for Bowdoin’s sale of a get rich quick scheme,” prosecutors said.

    And prosecutors also cited other alleged proof that ASD was running an investment program — namely that some employees were being paid in ASD “ad packs.”

    “Bowdoin and the employees of ASD treated the ‘ad packages’ as shares from which they could expect to earn returns,” prosecutors argued.

    Prosecutors also pointed out a section of ASD’s Terms of Service that stated the firm “will” pay members 125 percent of the money they paid in. At the same time, prosecutors quoted video evidence of Bowdoin wooing members by focusing on ASD as a money-making opportunity.

    Bowdoin, prosecutors said, eventually limited the amount of money investors could pay ASD “because he did not want any one member dominating the return pool.”

    The prosecution’s assertions occurred against the backdrop of dozens of competing claims by ASD members who filed pro-se pleadings in the civil portion of the case that asserted the government had no “EVIDENCE.”

    Members made the claim despite the fact that some of the evidence against ASD had been part of the public record for more than a year at the time the claims were made in 2009.

    In a footnote to Collyer, prosecutors said they’d be happy to present the actual video of Bowdoin making various claims instead of simply quoting from a transcript.

    “[T]he government’s review of ASD’s bank records revealed that of the approximately $31 million ASD paid out to early members, more than 98% of that money came from monies paid to ASD by other members,” prosecutors said.

    Although ASD claimed to have funding sources beyond advertising payments made by members  — things such as banner ad sales and ebooks  — those outlets provided only de minimis revenue, prosecutors argued.

    “Each night, there was nothing more than new members funds to divide among existing members,” prosecutors argued. “Moreover, Bowdoin himself admitted, on video, that members funds are pooled and they will share in the profits and losses equally.

    “Specifically, Bowdoin, in the ‘New Member Success Video,’ claimed that “[w]hen sales increase, the rebates increase. When sales decrease the rebates decrease . . .”

    “Clearly Bowdoin, through ASD, was pooling all of the member’s funds which allowed him to make the requisite return payments,” prosecutors said.

    Prosecutors also argued that the ASD case should remain in Collyer’s courtroom in the District of Columbia. Bowdoin argued that the case should be transferred to Florida, in part because he and many witness live there.

    Although prosecutors agreed that many prospective witnesses live in Florida, they argued that witnesses reside in multiple jurisdictions because of the national and international scope of the case.

    In addition to Floridians, witnesses the government may present hail from the District of Columbia, North Carolina, Nevada, Oklahoma, Iowa and  elsewhere, prosecutors asserted.

    ASD also had members from at least 18 countries, and conducted “rallies”  in Illinois and Minnesota, among other states, prosecutors said.

    Read Bowdoin’s claims that the charges against him should be dismissed and that ASD did not meet any of the three Howey Test prongs.

  • BULLETIN: Gold Quest International (GQI) UPLINE/DOWNLINE Groups Will Be Subject Of Hearing By Ontario Securities Commission; Case Alleges Respondents Were Both Investors And Promoters Who Pushed Unregistered Securities Of Bizarre Firm

    EDITOR’S NOTE: If you’re pushing Ponzi schemes on MoneyMakerGroup, TalkGold and other criminal forums, allegations brought by the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) against geographically localized promoters of Gold Quest International (GQI) may interrupt your delusions of invincibility over the next several weeks.

    Upline and downline networks within Gold Quest International (GQI), a bizarre company taken down by the SEC just three months before the U.S. Secret Service raid on AdSurfDaily in 2008, are in the news in the Canadian province of Ontario.

    The Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) will conduct a hearing March 24 to consider taking provincial action against local promoters of GQI, which already has been ruled a Ponzi scheme, pyramid scheme and “sham” investment by the Alberta Securities Commission.

    OSC pointed out that GQI “has never been registered in any capacity with the Commission” and alleged that its promoters within the province also were not registered.

    The case is important because it signals that Ontario regulators have backtracked millions of dollars of GQI transactions that originated in the province, segregated the source of the money to specific groups of promoters within the province and now intend to hold them accountable for spreading financial misery to their fellow citizens.

    The odds of the respondents avoiding sanctions after the hearing may be low. One Ontario man implicated in the GQI scheme already has filed bankruptcy and has been ordered to pay $652,000 in disgorgement and penalties for his role in GQI.  The man, Donald Iain Buchanan, allegedly was introduced to GQI by some of the promoters who are the subject of the hearing next month.

    And the odds may be weighted even more heavily against the promoters prevailing at the hearing because of the bizarre claims of GQI itself, which purported to have a “Lord” among its key managers and said it was immune to regulatory oversight because it was an extension of a North Dakota sovereign “Indian” tribe and was permitted to operate untouched from Las Vegas.

    GQI, which gathered about $29 million in a long-running scheme by promising returns of 87.5 percent a year and huge commissions, sought unsuccessfully to sue the SEC for the astronomical sum of $1.7 trillion. A U.S. federal judge dispatched U.S. marshals to haul key players into court for ignoring court orders, and vast sums of money appear to have gone missing down ratholes in Europe and New Zealand.

    Some of the money also is tied up as a result of criminal allegations — including murder — against James Fayed, the operator of the now-shuttered E-bullion payment processor.

    In its statement of allegations, OSC accused Simply Wealth Financial Group Inc., Naida Allarde, Bernardo Giangrosso, K&S Global Wealth Creative Strategies Inc., Kevin Persaud, Maxine Lobban and Wayne Lobban of promoting unregistered securities. All of the accused companies and individuals have Ontario addresses, according to OSC.

    “During the Material Time, Simply Wealth, Allarde, Giangrosso, K&S, Persaud, Maxine Lobban and Wayne Lobban . . . promoted securities in Gold-Quest to Ontario residents,” OSC charged.

    About 94 Ontario residents plowed $1.6 million into GQI “as a result of promotional activities conducted by Allarde, Giangrosso and Simply Wealth,” OSC charged. “These activities included recommending investment in Gold-Quest, providing information regarding the nature of the investment in Gold-Quest, facilitating the process of investing in Gold-Quest, and, in certain cases, facilitating the transfer of funds to Gold-Quest on behalf of investors.”

    K&S and Persaud, meanwhile, caused about nine Ontario investors to plow about $69,000 into the GQI scheme. Among their alleged customers was Buchanan, who also became a promoter and caused his customers to bring $1.8 million more into the scheme, according to OSC.

    Maxine Lobban and Wayne Lobban also became promoters and caused investors to bring “at least $675,000” into the GQI scheme, the OSC alleged.

    The math of the scheme was doomed to fail, but purveyors were lured by titles and promised both spectacular investment earnings and commissions. Promoters were categorized in upline/downline tiers, the OSC alleged.

    “Individuals who introduced an investor to Gold-Quest would receive the title ‘Administrative Manager’ for the new investor,” OSC alleged. “Administrative Managers would receive an up-front commission of ten percent of that investor’s original investment and then a further four percent per month for a year (for a total commission of 58 percent of the principal invested).

    “The individual who had introduced the Administrative Manager to Gold-Quest would receive the title ‘Managing Director’ for the new investor and would receive a commission of 1.5 percent per month for a year (for a total of 18 percent of the principal invested),” the OSC continued.

    “Lastly, the individual who introduced the Managing Director to Gold-Quest would receive the title ‘Supervisory Managing Director’ for the new investor and would receive a commission of one percent per month for a year (for a total of 12 percent of the principal invested).

    “In sum, when a new investor sent funds to Gold-Quest, 88 percent of the investor’s funds were earmarked for commissions to be paid to the investor’s Administrative Manager, Managing Director and Supervisory Managing Director over the course of a year,” OSC alleged.

    In November 2010, OSC ordered penalties and disgorgement of $652,000 against Buchanan for his role in the GQI scheme.

    “Buchanan’s conduct warrants a substantial administrative penalty,” OSC said. “He was involved in two investment schemes in which Ontario investors invested approximately US $4.3 million.”

    Although commission staff had recommended an administrative penalty of $150,000 against Buchanan, who is bankrupt, OSC doubled the amount to $300,000, saying Buchanan had shown no remorse and that the smaller penalty would not serve as a deterrent.

  • MIND-BOGGLER: Forex Scammer Who Never Traded Forex Charged In $35 Million Ponzi Scheme; CFTC’s Real-Life Complaint Against Keith F. Simmons And Co-Defendants Reads Like Bizarre Fiction

    And people actually are questioning President Obama’s November 2009 decision to create the interagency Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force when things such as this are going on?

    An unregistered North Carolina company that churned tens of millions of dollars in a long-running shell game and described itself as a Forex dealer was operated by a now-convicted felon who worked with another now-convicted felon and told the FBI he never actually traded Forex, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has alleged in court filings that only can be described as alarming.

    Black Diamond Capital Solutions LLC, operated by convicted felon Keith F. Simmons of West Jefferson, N.C., became a cancer on the legitimate Forex landscape, the CFTC charged. The firm and associated companies combined to create a sales force consisting of scammers who ultimately stole from investors and each other, pocketing huge sums to fund businesses not disclosed to investors and to pay for things such as luxury cars, real estate, maid service and sky-diving vacations.

    One of the alleged scammers — Deanna Salazar, a purported alternative-investments specialist and the owner of Life Plus Group LLC of Yucca Valley, Calif. — herself is a now-convicted felon. She has been linked to multiple fraud schemes, including a local one in California in which investors allegedly were told they were financing B-movies, and now has been linked by the CFTC to Simmons’ spectacular Forex Ponzi scheme.

    Salazar, according to the CFTC, never conducted “any due diligence” on Simmons or his Black Diamond companies. Instead, she simply passed along his bogus claims, including a claim that Simmons used an “exclusive” computerized trading system that had led to an “actual result” of $5,000 turning into $194,340 in three years.

    In 2008 alone, according to the bogus “actual” trading results, an account-holder purportedly enjoyed monthly Forex returns that ranged between 4.765 percent and 13.357 percent, according to the CFTC.

    Two other alleged Simmons’ associates — Bryan Coats of Clayton, N.C., and Jonathan Davey, a CPA from Newark, Ohio — also blindly followed Simmons and helped him orchestrate the massive Ponzi scheme, the CFTC alleged.

    Davey, according to records, organized a Belize company known as Divine Circulation Services Ltd. that assisted Simmons in pulling off the scam, which the CFTC alleged traded on religion. Davey also was at the helm of a Belize firm known as Sovereign Grace Inc., a firm that benefited from the scam, the CFTC said.

    Coats, meanwhile, was at the head of companies known as Genesis Wealth Management LLC and Genesis Wealth Partners LP, both of Delaware.

    Multiple companies with high-sounding names were created by the defendants and either assisted in pulling off the scam or benefited from the scam, the CFTC said. Among the names of the companies were Safe Harbor Ventures Inc., owned by Shari Davey, Davey’s wife, and Safe Harbor Wealth Inc.

    Salazar’s husband — Lawrence Salazar — also benefited from the scheme, the CFTC alleged.

    All in all, the CFTC charged, the scheme netted at least $35 million from at least 240 investors. It is believed that most if not “all” of the customers were not even eligible to become investors in the purportedly private program because they lacked assets totaling at least $5 million and thus were not “eligible contract participants.”

    Adding yet-another layer of the bizarre, Simmons allegedly told the FBI and the CFTC that Black Diamond did not engage in Forex — despite the fact it had gathered tens of millions of dollars by holding itself out as a Forex company and customers received statements showing their purported gains, the CFTC charged.

    When the Ponzi began to collapse in early 2009 — and with Black Diamond never having done any actual Forex trading — Salazar, Coats and Davey continued either to work for the firm or to steer business to it, the CFTC alleged.

    On March 19, 2009 Simmons sent an email to Salazar and Coats, instructing them that the company “would be shutting down for restructuring” and that all accounts would be liquidated with investors profits paid out, the CFTC alleged.

    Incredibly, the CFTC alleged, Simmons claimed a month later — in April 2009 — that Black Diamond’s trading was only hypothetical, despite the fact customers had sent in tens of millions of dollars to conduct real trading and received statements showing their gains.

    A months-long round of excuse-making about why customers weren’t getting paid then began, starting with Simmons’ assertion that a restructuring was under way. Coinciding with the restructuring claim were bank statements showing  that Black Diamond had “less than $200,000” in its accounts, the CFTC alleged.

    The CFTC, alleging that Simmons had purported to be an active Forex dealer who’d turned $5,000 from one investor into more than $194,000 and then insisted he had not executed a single trade despite issuing account statements showing gains of more than 13 percent a month, then defaulted to a strategy of claiming multiple “accounting reviews” were under way.

    He then claimed “excessive withdrawal requests by customers were causing delays in the return of funds.”

    Simmons also claimed a “non-existent German liquidity provider by the name of Klaus was attempting to provide $120 million to Black Diamond to payout customers and replace Black Diamond on the purported platform, but his alleged transfer of funds was frozen by bank or regulatory procedures,” the CFTC charged.

    At the same time, Simmons said “interventions” by the Federal Reserve, the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the CFTC had led to a situation that made it impossible for Black Diamond to pay customers, the CFTC alleged.

    Simmons made excuses from March 2009 through Dec. 17, 2009, the date he was arrested on criminal charges to which he already has pleaded guilty.

    Salazar, Coats and Davey strung customers along while Simmons was piling on excuses that were becoming increasingly “complex and outrageous,” the CFTC alleged.

    By passing on the excuses after earlier having performed no due diligence — and by continuing to forward the excuses to investors — Salazar, Coats and Davey “recklessly failed to ascertain the cause of the funding problem at Black Diamond” and helped perpetuate lies, the CFTC alleged.

    Salazar even helped Simmons shape the lies, according to the CFTC.

    In July 2009, Salazar worked with Simmons “to draft the excuse” about why Black Diamond wasn’t making payments, the CFTC charged.

    Coats, meanwhile, also worked with Simmons on creating an excuse that payments were not immediately forthcoming because of “stricter capital requirements imposed on our banking system,” the CFTC charged.

    Davey informed customers that payouts could not be made because the Federal Reserve had forced Simmons to fill out “anti-money laundering” forms and had frozen $16 million until he completed the task.

    In an approach often employed on Ponzi scheme and criminals’ forums such as TalkGold and MoneyMakerGroup, Simmons and Coats warned investors not to contact regulators or attempt to interfere with payment facilitators.

    “Simmons threatened certain customers that if they contacted the alleged paymaster, Black Diamond would lose access to the paymaster services and the payout to customers would be jeopardized,” the CFTC alleged.

    The agency did not identify the alleged paymasters in the complaint.

    And in an act reminiscent of some of developments in the AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme case, Coats allegedly warned investors that the CFTC was “randomly calling all Forex . . . clients across the America to try and identify possible Madoff scams,” the CFTC alleged.

    It was Coats’ “suggestion,” the CFTC alleged, that “members not have any discussions with the Commission.” The suggestion occurred while Black Diamond was refusing to return clients’ money.

    In the ASD case, members were urged not to cooperate with the U.S. Secret Service and not to fill out forms that would identify them as victims of a scam.

    Salazar, Coats and Davey continued to solicit funds for Black Diamond even though the company was not paying out and was engaged in chronic excuse-making, the CFTC alleged.

    Despite assertions that Black Diamond had a miraculous trading platform and expert software developers, “the so-called system developers and the Black Diamond trading platform never existed, the CFTC charged.

    Although Salazar’s customers plowed more than $7 million into the scheme — including more than $2 million paid directly to Salazar that was supposed to go to Black Diamond — she “failed to send Black Diamond approximately $1.5 million,” the CFTC charged.

    Black Diamond transmitted more than $1.9 million to Salazar, but she returned only $600,000 of that sum to customers and kept $1.3 million for herself, the CFTC alleged.

    Of the $2.8 million Salazar cherry-picked in the scam, the CFTC alleged, she used more than $400,000 to purchase cars and took “expensive personal trips.”

    Coats’ customers plowed more than $27 million into the scam, and Coats took purported management fees or owner gains of more than $400,000, including about $200,000 after Black Diamond quit paying customers, the CFTC alleged.

    Customer funds were used by Coats to acquire an “expensive car,” maid service, home improvements and “a sky diving trip,” the CFTC said.

    Davey used customer funds to make $1.3 million in “loans” to his “Sovereign Grace” firm and other companies he controlled. He also bought 47 acres of land and built a “lavish home,” the CFTC charged.

  • SPECIAL REPORT: Forex Firms Named In CFTC Sweep Used Same Offshore Processor As Alleged Imperia Invest Fraud; Name Of Man Linked To ‘Perfect Money’ Appears In Ponzi Forfeiture Complaint In Which Feds Tied Cash To International Narcotics Trade

    InstaForex, a company accused by the CFTC last month of targeting U.S. customers to purchase unregistered offerings and paying through Perfect Money, says participants can win this Lotus — but they have to pay to play by depositing at least $1,000 USD. Sweepstakes that require a purchase by participants are illegal in the United States.

    SPECIAL REPORT: UPDATED 2:27 P.M. ET (U.S.A., FEB. 9) Federal court and web records show that at least three of the 14 purported Forex dealers named defendants in a major sweep of unregistered firms last month by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission advertised that they accepted funds from Perfect Money.

    Perfect Money is a murky money-services business purportedly based in Panama that allegedly was used by a company that defrauded thousands of deaf investors by promising Visa debit cards and returns of 1.2 percent per day, according to federal records. The name of a man purported to be Perfect Money’s contact person in Panama City is referenced in federal court filings that tie money from the alleged EMG/Finanzas Forex fraud scheme to an international narcotics probe that led to the seizure of at least 59 bank accounts in the United States and the companion seizure of 294 bars of gold and at least seven luxury vehicles.

    The number of purported Forex dealers that allegedly accepted Perfect Money and were named defendants in the CFTC sweep could be higher than three because not all of the defendants publicly disclosed the precise mechanisms by which they accepted payments from U.S. customers.

    According to court filings and web records, some of the companies also advertised that they accepted funds from Liberty Reserve, another murky offshore processor, and even PayPal. PayPal’s Acceptable Use Policy specifically bans the use of its services for “currency exchanges,” businesses that support Ponzi and pyramid schemes and businesses associated with “off-shore banking.”

    PayPal says it requires “pre-approval” for any businesses “selling stocks, bonds, securities, options, futures (forex) or an investment interest.” Whether any of the businesses named in the CFTC Forex complaints received approval from PayPal to either use its name in promos or use its services to collect money is unclear.

    Records show (see paragraph 17 of SEC complaint) that Perfect Money payments were accepted by Imperia Invest IBC, the mysterious offshore company accused by the SEC in October 2010 of pulling off a spectacular fraud that fleeced at least 14,000 people of millions of dollars. Included among the Imperia victims were thousands of Americans with hearing impairments, the SEC said.

    Imperia was promoted on Ponzi scheme and criminals’ forums such as TalkGold, which also promoted at least two of the companies named defendants in the CFTC’s Forex sweep. One of the companies — InstaTrade Corp., doing business as InstaForex — is advertising on TalkGold that participants will have a chance in the months ahead to win a Lotus Elise, a sports coupe that carries a price tag of more than $50,000.

    To win the expensive car, however, investors have to pay to play, according to InstaForex. Sweepstakes that require a purchase are illegal in the United States, according to the Federal Trade Commission.

    InstaForex investors can qualify to win the Lotus by replenishing “the real trading account in InstaForex Company with 1000 USD or more during [the] Campaign period,” the company says in stilted English.

    “Participant has a right to register in the Campaign more than 1 account and raise his/her chances for the victory,” InstaForex continues in stilted English. “However, in case contest administration detects more than 100 accounts registered by one person, it reserves the right to decrease the number of accounts till (sic) 100.”

    Meanwhile, the name of Roger Alberto Santamaria del Cid — the purported contact person of Perfect Money — appears in federal court filings in the EMG/Finanzas Forex forfeiture case. The EMG/Finanzas case was brought last year by a federal task force based in Florida and alleges that tens of millions of dollars seized in Arizona as part of the probe were linked to the international narcotics trade. (See Paragraph 10 of the federal affidavit for the reference to del Cid, who is identified as the “Secretary” of EMG. Del Cid is referenced in domain-registration data for PerfectMoney.com as the contact person for Perfect Money Finance Corp.)

    Elements of the prosecution against more than $100 million in assets linked to EMG/Finanzas were brought by members of the same task force that brought civil and criminal prosecutions against Florida-based AdSurfDaily. Some of the members of the task force have experience working with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the U.S. Secret Service, the IRS and other agencies to reverse-engineer fantastically complex financial crimes.

    At least one of the investigators, according to records, was instrumental in bringing the successful money-laundering conspiracy prosecution against the e-Gold payment processor in 2007. The e-Gold case was brought in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. It resulted in guilty pleas announced on July 21, 2008.

    About two weeks later, the U.S. Secret Service raided ASD’s headquarters in Quincy, Fla. Federal prosecutors later alleged ASD was operating a Ponzi scheme that had gathered at least $110 million — and had ceased using e-Gold “shortly after” the e-Gold indictments were announced in April 2007.

    Federal prosecutors also alleged that 12DailyPro and PhoenixSurf — two autosurfs charged by the SEC with operating Ponzi schemes — also had used e-Gold. In December 2010, prosecutors said that ASD also had the ability to accept money from e-Bullion, yet-another processor accused of accepting and distributing Ponzi funds from various schemes.

    James Fayed, the operator of e-Bullion, was accused of arranging the July 2008 murder of Pamela Fayed, his estranged wife and potential witness against him. Pamela Fayed’s body was found in a California parking garage  just days before the ASD raid in Florida.

    Erma Seabaugh, known among ASD members as the “Web Room Lady,” used E-Bullion in November 2007 to transfer $10,510 to ASD, according to a forfeiture complaint filed in December 2010.

    On Jan. 26, the CFTC sued 14 purported Forex companies simultaneously, alleging that they were unregistered entities that were illegally targeting  U.S. residents. At least three of the companies — ForInvest (Perfect Money reference appears online), InstaTrade Corp. (see Paragraph 21 of CFTC complaint for the Perfect Money reference) and Kingdom Forex Trading and Futures Ltd. (see Paragraph 17 of CFTC complaint for the Perfect Money reference) — accepted Perfect Money, according to records.

    Two of the complaints — InstaTrade and Kingdom Forex — were brought in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the same venue in which the e-Gold case was brought in 2007. The case against ForInvest was brought in U.S. District Court from the Northern District of Illinois.

    Perfect Money advertised a relationship with at least two of the defendants named in the CFTC cases: InstaForex and FXOpen, according to web records.

    On its website, Perfect Money advertised its relationship with InstaForex and FXOpen, two companies accused by the CFTC of targeting Americans with unregistered Forex offerings. The FXOpen website now appears to be blocked from loading in the United States. It was not immediately clear if the site will load in other parts of the world.

  • EDITORIAL: On Club Asteria, FxPowerPro And DisasterClub — And What The U.S. State Department Could Do To Contain The Danger Posed By The Talk Gold Ponzi And Criminals’ Forum And Others Of Its Ilk Worldwide

    Let’s start with the chaos in Egypt this week. Protesters have streamed into the streets to demand that President Hosni Mubarak step down after three decades of autocratic rule. The government initially reacted by shutting down the Internet. As tensions rose, protesters, activists and journalists covering the events were beaten. Some of the protesters were killed.

    When a government shuts down the Internet and starts chilling its people and journalists, it’s for a reason: It does not want the world to witness events, and it wants journalists to know they’ll pay a price for trying to report anything other than the government line to the masses. State-run TV beamed images of tranquility, not images of unrest. When the chaos became impossible to sanitize or ignore, the government blamed events on impure thinkers and their media lackeys, planting the seed that “foreign agendas” were at work.

    It was the cue the loyalists needed to start threatening journalists with death by beheading. Fearing for their safety, the journalists abandoned the immediate turf — but not the story. They started reporting from “undisclosed locations.” The word was still getting out, just not the pictures in the degree desired.

    The immediate events in Egypt, of course, are much more serious than, say, the immediate events at the TalkGold Ponzi scheme and criminals’ forum. Even so, some of the parallels are striking.

    The Egyptian government, for example, is trying to control the message. So is the TalkGold forum, which wants the Ponzi shills and criminals who’ve involved the worldwide masses in one catastrophic fraud scheme after another to know they have a safe haven. TalkGold also wants the critics to know the Mods regard them as naysayers and trolls who can be “banned” without notice, rather like the Mubarak regime regards those muckraking reporters and their “foreign agendas.”

    It won’t work at TalkGold for the same reason it won’t work in Egypt: People still have eyes and ears and the ability to be discerning. There may be only one Tahrir Square in central Cairo to control, but “undisclosed locations,” voices, cell phones, cameras and reporters’ pads and tape recorders are in plentiful supply. They can’t be controlled.

    Egypt’s bid to control the message has resulted in a catastrophic PR problem on top of a political crisis. Meanwhile, TalkGold’s ineptitude, ham-handedness and arrogance has set the stage for its own PR disaster. You can read about it on RealScam.com, which sides with the afflicted masses, not the people who’d afflict the masses.

    While state-run TV in Egypt is airbrushing the dangers of autocratic rule and beaming images of tranquility as the country’s inhabitants try to figure out how they’ll get by for yet-another year on the wages of poverty, TalkGold is airbrushing the economic and security dangers of viral criminality and seeking to tranquilize (and recruit) the masses by using flowery language and even flattery to tell them that opening an account with an offshore payment processor and sending money to any one of hundreds of schemes is their ticket out of the ranks of hopelessness.

    Poster “Ken Russo,” for example, would have the people of Egypt — and the poverty-stricken people of the United States and other countries  — know that the latest “program” he is promoting is one of the “best” he has ever seen.

    One of “Ken Russo’s” current favorites is Club Asteria, which claims to “care” and contends that its “100,000 PLUS MEMBERS CAN’T BE WRONG.” Meanwhile, Club Asteria further claims to “Empower our Members” and to “help expatriates and immigrants to become more successful in their personal and professional lives and enable them to send money home to their loved ones.”

    Tugging at heartstrings, Club Asteria further claims that “[t]hrough our philanthropic efforts we make an immediate difference for struggling individuals, families and communities by focusing on improving nutrition, housing, health care and education.”

    That performing legitimate due diligence on Club Asteria is virtually impossible doesn’t seem to compute with “Ken Russo” and other affiliates. The mere fact the “program” is being promoted on TalkGold is reason enough to avoid it. Any business the company generates from TalkGold likely is radioactive. Club Asteria, for example, could find itself in possession of money that has flowed from fraud scheme to fraud scheme. Even if Club Asteria were legitimate, the fact it is being promoted on TalkGold puts it at one of the principal intersections of crime and fraud.

    About the only good thing about the Internet being down in Egypt this week while its people took to the streets was that “Ken Russo” and his fellow promoters couldn’t sell Club Asteria and other highly questionable “programs” to the disaffected Egyptian masses. (On a side note, one of the companies named in a Forex lawsuit by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission(CFTC)  just days ago announced on TalkGold that the shutdown of the Internet in Egypt had disrupted its ability to interact with Egyptian clients and other clients in the region. A poster purporting to represent FXOpen — under an underlined  heading of “Arabic Live Chat Disruption” — noted that “[o]ur hopes and prayers go out to the Egyptian people.”)

    And even as the Egyptian government is inciting violence against journalists — to the degree that the U.S. Department of State issued a special statement on the matter — the TalkGold forum is banning posters who speak ill of Ponzi and fraud schemes that are gathering untold sums of money, channeling cash to some of the darkest corners of the Internet and keeping people in financial bondage.

    Here is an idea for the Department of State and Secretary Hillary Clinton: Warn Americans — and other peoples of the world — about sites such as TalkGold. Mention them at a Congressional hearing. Instruct U.S. diplomats the world over to inform their host governments about the security and economic dangers posed by TalkGold and a sea of similar sites. Tell elected officials that the State Department is serious about monitoring sites that are keeping people in human bondage by spreading financial misery globally. Define Talk Gold as a global pariah, an enterprise without a state that would be proud to claim it. Inform the world regularly that the only form of diplomacy on TalkGold is robbery without a gun.

    TalkGold has been named repeatedly in court filings that identify it as a place from which fraud schemes are openly pushed. The ink on recent CFTC lawsuits that identify two of TalkGold’s paid Forex advertisers as the purveyors of unregistered offerings targeted at U.S. citizens is barely dry, and yet the unabashed cheerleading continues.

    The alleged AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme, which also was pushed from TalkGold, gathered at least $110 million. It caught the attention of the U.S. Secret Service and resulted in civil and criminal probes that could put people in prison for decades, and yet the unabashed cheerleading continues.

    All the autosurfs prominently touted on TalkGold are just recycled forms of ASD, which itself allegedly was a recycled form of 12DailyPro, which the SEC smashed five years ago this month.

    It’s the same thing with Pathway To Prosperity, yet-another alleged scheme promoted on TalkGold that gathered tens of millions of dollars and could put people in jail for decades. All of the HYIPs promoted on TalkGold are just recycled forms of Pathway to Prosperity, which was busted by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, and Legisi, which was busted by the SEC after the U.S. Secret Service infiltrated its operations by using an undercover operative. The state of Michigan also used an undercover operative in the Legisi probe.

    The best way to deal with TalkGold and similar sites is to tell the world that they promote global criminality and rank illicit profits above human rights and common human decency.

    Like Egypt in its current state, TalkGold is not about freedom — financial or political. It is about the institutionalization of corruption. If TalkGold were an oncological hospital, its doctors would be cheerleading for the cancer to spread and its nurses would be rooting for the highest death rate because intervening to cure the disease and comfort the afflicted would be bad for institutional and personal profits.

    A purported Forex program known as FxPowerPro currently has a 20-page thread on TalkGold. Among other things, FxPowerPro is claiming that “YOUR STABILITY IS OUR PURPOSE.” Its website appears to come from an editable script kit used by hundreds of sites globally, and it says it will accept any sum between $5 and $20,000. FxPowerPro proudly displays a link the the TalkGold forum.

    A few days ago an eagle-eyed PP Blog reader passed along some information about yet-another incongruous program known as “Disaster Club.” Disaster Club appears to be a new wrinkle on cash-gifting schemes. It purports to arrange member-to-member “grants,” asking visitors if they’d like to turn a “One-Time $100 into $17,700.”

    Bizarrely, Disaster Club uses a presentation by which it names four hypothetical members: “Job,” and “Cain, Abel and Eve.”

    “After joining the Club you will receive the name of your assigned member, and each week on Monday you are to send a grant in the amount shown in the grant schedule directly to that assigned member,” Disaster Club says.

    “Should you join the Club between Tuesday and Sunday, send your grant as soon as you receive your assigned name, do not wait until Monday,” Disaster Club coaxes. “Every grant thereafter will be sent according to the Monday schedule. To create a cash explosion from your home three members will each be given your name to send their $100 grants to ($100 X 3 = $300) and each stage you will keep the stated amount shown from the amount you received from the 3 members $100 + $100 + $100 = $300 you keep $50. Then according to the grant schedule shown, you are to send your grant directly to the same member (Job), and the same three members (Cain, Abel and Eve) will each send their grants directly to you.”

    Disaster Club purports to be headquartered in Florida and claims to be a “club that allows like minded members to pool their resources together to help the hurting and homeless victims of any Disaster in any State, or even help others anywhere in the world.”

    The “opportunity” does not appear to have its own thread at TalkGold yet, but there are plenty of disasters already waiting there for its readers. Just don’t expect to get a warm reception if you have a “foreign agenda” — you know, like those muckraking enemies of the Mubarak regime in Egypt.

    Although it’s not likely you’ll be threatened with beheading at TalkGold, you might get deleted if you tangle with “Ken Russo” and others and challenge readers to use their heads for something other than a hat rack.

    There is nothing decent about Talk Gold and its cancer-spreading cousins worldwide. Only the broadest public-awareness campaign can succeed against the threats they pose to the governments of the world and billions of Internet users globally — and the U.S. State Department could make a difference by describing the criminal forums as places from which human rights are set up to be trampled 24/7/365.

    Any true diplomat from any country worldwide who spent so much as 15 minutes on TalkGold could see the danger to countries, governments and citizens worldwide. The world’s diplomatic corps are uniquely positioned to do something the world’s law-enforcement corps cannot do: be at all places at all times.

    A sustained effort by the world’s diplomats to identify and monitor the fraud sites — and openly share the information with the people of the world — could go a long way toward containing a plague that only will mushroom into a catastrophe if left alone.

  • BULLETIN: Florida — Again: Multiagency Probe Leads To Federal Criminal Charges Against 9 People In Interconnected Ponzi And Fraud Schemes

    BULLETIN: An investigation by the U.S. Secret Service, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and the Miami Police Department has led to criminal charges against nine defendants in three Florida fraud schemes that allegedly were interconnected.

    Seven of the defendants were indicted. Two others were charged via criminal information, and the investigation is ongoing. The probe demonstrates that, in an era of seemingly ceaseless white-collar crime, investigators are using leads uncovered in one case and following them to discover fraud schemes that perhaps would have gone undetected were it not for the discovery of an initial scheme.

    Charged with conspiracy to commit bank fraud connected to a Ponzi scheme were Maria Baksh, 50, of Hollywood; Juan Cardenas, 48, of Miami; Gabriel Cifuentes, 63, of Hialeah; Maureen Cifuentes, 35; of Hialeah, Lucia Garcia, 58, of Pembroke Pines; Roberto Hernandez, 66, of Miami; Maribel Roman, 47, of Hialeah; Reinaldo Roman Jr., 39, of Hialeah; and Roberto Rodriguez, 43, of Miami.

    The case is tied to the purported “jewelry” Ponzi scheme of Luis Felipe Perez, 38, of Fort Lauderdale. Lopez was charged both civilly (SEC) and criminally last year (Secret Service/ICE). He was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to securities fraud.

    Investigators said he pocketed $6 million from his Ponzi scheme, which gathered $40 million. Investors were told they were financing his purported jewelry business and pawn shops in New York, authorities said.

    Perez, investigators now say, recruited “many” of the new defendants and referred them to Berta Sanders, 61, of Miami Lakes. Sanders, a CPA, helped them secure $12 million in commercial lines of credit by preparing false tax returns and false income statements submitted to Wachovia Bank. Proceeds from the loans were diverted to the Perez Ponzi scheme.

    “When Perez’s Ponzi scheme ultimately collapsed in May 2009, most of the fraudulent loans obtained from Wachovia defaulted,” prosecutors said, noting that the scheme cost Wachovia $10 million.

    Sanders, who has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bank fraud, is scheduled to be sentenced Feb. 22 by U.S. District Judge Paul C. Huck.

    Viewed as a whole, the case featured the Perez Ponzi scheme and a related bank-fraud scheme over which Sanders allegedly presided for a 10 percent cut of the bogus loans she engineered, prosecutors said.

    It also featured a conspiracy by which other defendants fleeced the bank by allowing Sanders to prepare fraudulent documents so they could get the money to plow into the Ponzi scheme, prosecutors said.

    The investigation was undertaken by elements of the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force.

    While investors were imagining “guaranteed annual returns of 18 percent to 120 percent through monthly interest payments,” the SEC said last year, Perez spent $3.2 million of their money on a home, $1 million on jewelry for himself and his wife, $400,000 to lease luxury cars, $300,000 on clothing for his wife, $300,000 for travel by private jet and $100,000 on artwork.

  • URGENT >> BULLETIN >> MOVING: Accused Fraudster Andy Bowdoin Enters Defense That Could Provide Legal Cover For Autosurf Ponzi Schemes If He Wins Case; ASD Operator Claims Business Model Stands Up To ‘Howey Test’ Scrutiny

    Andy Bowdoin

    BULLETIN: In an argument that almost certainly will give comfort to operators of some of the most corrupt and insidious businesses on the Internet, AdSurfDaily President Andy Bowdoin has advised a federal judge that his company and business practices are legitimate because they stand up to scrutiny when the “Howey Test” is applied.

    Bowdoin, 77, made the argument despite the fact the government claims that he signed a proffer letter at least two years ago in which he acknowledged ASD was operating illegally and that the prosecution’s material allegations were all true. In 2009, Bowdoin acknowledged in his own court filings that he had made statements against his interests over a period of at least four days in the hopes of avoiding a prison sentence by cooperating with investigators.

    But Bowdoin now says criminal charges of wire fraud, securities fraud and selling unregistered securities as investment contracts brought against him last year “must” be dismissed. It is believed that hundreds — if not thousands — of autosurfs are operating over the Internet at any given time.

    Separately, Bowdoin filed a motion to transfer the case to the Northern District of Florida’s Tallahassee Division from the District of Columbia, saying that trying the case in Florida was the fair and most cost-effective thing to do. The government is expected to oppose Bowdoin’s bid to move the case from Washington to Tallahassee.

    U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer, who was assigned the civil forfeiture case against Bowdoin’s assets after the U.S. Secret Service raided ASD in August 2008 and ordered $65.8 million found in Bowdoin’s personal bank accounts ceded to the government after nearly a year and a half of litigation, also was assigned the criminal case. Criminal charges against Bowdoin were announced in December 2010.

    Although Bowdoin previously claimed Collyer was biased against him and sought unsuccessfully to have her removed from the civil case, he has not raised the issue of bias so far in the criminal case. Instead, he petitioned Collyer for an order that would remove the case from her courtroom and put it in the hands of a federal judge in Florida, arguing that most of the witnesses in the case resided in Florida and that hearing the case in Collyer’s court would force unnecessary costs and transportation burdens on both Bowdoin and witnesses.

    An affidavit signed by Bowdoin requesting the transfer was filed yesterday. It appears to have been notarized by Judy Harris of Tallahassee, whom some ASD members said operated the AdViewGlobal (AVG) autosurf with her husband, George Harris. George Harris is the son of Bowdoin’s wife, Edna Faye Bowdoin, and a Tallahassee home owned by the Harrises was seized in an ASD-related forfeiture complaint filed in December 2008.

    Both George and Judy Harris benefited from the ASD Ponzi scheme because a $157,000 mortgage on their house was retired with Ponzi proceeds, prosecutors said in December 2008.

    The Harrises also received a car valued at nearly $30,000 from the scheme, and the car also was paid for with Ponzi proceeds, prosecutors said.

    Florida records show that Judy Harris has been a licensed notary since at least October 2008. Why she would notarize a document for Andy Bowdoin when she, her husband and her mother-in-law were alleged to have been a beneficiaries of the ASD Ponzi scheme was not immediately clear.

    AVG, which purported to be headquartered in Uruguay and launched after the seizure of assets linked to Bowdoin and the Harrises, suspended payouts to members in June 2009. The surf blamed members’ greed for its problems. The name of Judy Harris also appears in a document filed in April 2009 with the Florida Department of State that canceled the fictitious registration of AVG, which also was known as the AV Global Association.

    Andy Bowdoin’s New Argument

    Prosecutors have not responded to Bowdoin’s new assertion filed yesterday that ASD can stand up to Howey Test scrutiny. A blistering response is expected in the days ahead because a ruling in Bowdoin’s favor to dismiss the case or an outright win by Bowdoin at trial could have grave economic and security implications for the United States.

    Autosurfs operate in the darkest corners of the Internet, fueled by corrupt promoters and scammers who position them as legitimate  “advertising” businesses that share revenue with participants. Untold sums of money — believed to be in the billions of dollars — have disappeared in recent years, and prosecutors say the enterprises operate as virtually pure Ponzi schemes.

    Purveyors almost certainly would view any win by Bowdoin as a mandate that legalized Internet-based Ponzi schemes and created a virtual license to collect vast sums of money and simply pocket it by claiming member payouts, which ASD called “rebates,” were not guaranteed.

    “[N]o guarantee or promise of any profits, any specific level of rebate payouts, or return on an alleged ‘investment’ occurred during the AdSurfDaily operation,” Bowdoin claimed. He also asserted that the allegations against him were Constitutionally vague and that none of the four civil cases brought against autosurfs — 12DailyPro, PhoenixSurf, CEP Holdings and the forfeiture case against ASD’s assets filed in 2008 — has clarified the legal issues.

    “As none of these actions has proceeded to final judgment, no judicial opinion has yet clarified whether payment of membership fees by advertisers into auto-surf businesses constitute unregistered sales of ‘securities,’ as alleged by the government,” Bowdoin claimed.

    The criminal charges “must be dismissed because the ad-surf business model employed by AdSurfDaily, Inc. and [Bowdoin’s] related businesses, as alleged in the indictment, cannot constitute an SEC-regulated ‘investment contract’ security as defined under the three-prong test established” by Howey, Bowdoin argued.

    The Howey Test is a threshold securities test and litigation benchmark from the 1946 U.S. Supreme Court decision in S.E.C. v. W.J. Howey Co. The decision spoke to the issue of what constitutes an “investment contract.”

    Bowdoin now claims the entire case against him is fatally flawed because he never sold investment contracts as defined under Howey.

    “[T]he Howey test,” Bowdoin argued, “determines whether a particular instrument or transaction is a prohibited, unregistered ‘investment contract’ by searching for the presence of three factors: ‘(1) the investment of money (2) in a common enterprise (3) with an expectation of profits to be derived solely from the efforts of the promoter or a third party.”

    ASD did not meet any of the three prongs of the Howey Test, Bowdoin argued.

    It was not an investment because ASD was an advertising company, not an investment company through which participants placed money at risk in anticipation of profit, Bowdoin argued. Therefore, he asserted, ASD did not meet the first Howey prong.

    Meanwhile, Bowdoin argued that ASD did not meet the second prong because participants did not place their money in a “common pool” put at risk in expectation of a profit.

    “[T]here was no ‘common enterprise’ at work here,” Bowdoin argued.

    And because ASD members had to click on ads and view them to get paid, they performed “actual efforts,” taking the third prong of the Howey Test out of play, Bowdoin claimed.

    “Here, the payment of both rebates and referral commissions were directly tied to the actual efforts of the advertisers,” Bowdoin argued.

    Prosecutors, though, asserted in the ASD forfeiture case that ASD told investors that rebates “will” be paid until investors received back 100 percent of the money they plowed into the scheme, plus a profit of 25 percent.

    Gerald Nehra, an attorney and expert witness for ASD in the forfeiture case, conceded under cross examination in 2008 that the ASD Terms of Service specified that rebates “will” be paid.

    Bowdoin’s most recent arguments also put him with odds with dozens of ASD members who claimed in court filings that the government had no “evidence” and no “witnesses.”

    In his filings yesterday, Bowdoin said he believed that the “vast majority” of the prosecution’s witnesses resided in Florida. He said he planned to counter them with witnesses of his own — as many as 136 — including George and Judy Harris, Rob Cefail of InTouch Marketing of Clearwater, and Tari Steward, who also provided Clearwater-based marketing services.

    At least 56 of ASD’s witnesses were ASD employees, Bowdoin said. The document was notarized by Judy Harris.

  • ‘FRAUD CREEP’: The Two-Word Term That Explains How Crime Expands On The Internet To Affect Tens Of Thousands Of Victims At A Time

    EDITOR’S NOTE: Our definition of “fraud creep” — and suggestions on the context in which the term should be applied — appears lower in this story.

    First, some background . . .

    Investigators now are counting victims of massive, web-based fraud schemes tens of thousands at a time. Such scams pose both budgetary and logistical challenges to law enforcement, bankruptcy trustees and court-appointed receivers — and a single scam may take years to unravel. In recent court filings, federal prosecutors said they had amassed 500,000 pages of emails, 100,000 pages of banking records and 5,000 pages of other records as part of the AdSurfDaily Ponzi probe, which began in July 2008. The U.S. Secret Service raided ASD’s headquarters in August 2008.

    The ASD Ponzi scheme, which operated from Florida, may have defrauded 40,000 or more victims while gathering at least $110 million, prosecutors said.

    Meanwhile, in a civil case brought in Utah in October 2010, the SEC said Imperia Invest IBC defrauded more than 14,000 investors worldwide while gathering small sums that ultimately led to a haul of more than $7 million. Among the victims were thousands of deaf investors in the United States.

    Imperia claimed until late 2009 to be located in the Bahamas, but the Bahamian address was “fictitious,” the SEC said, adding that Imperia later claimed to be located in Vanuatu.

    But Imperia was “not registered to do business in Vanuatu and the address listed on its website appears also to be fictitious,” the SEC said.

    Despite the fact Imperia gathered money from thousands of Americans, “[n]either Imperia nor its securities are registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission,” the SEC said. “Imperia is not licensed or registered with the Commission, with any state, or with any Self Regulatory Organization.”

    In a separate civil case brought in Nevada last month, the FTC accused Utah resident Jeremy Johnson, I Works Inc. and other companies of orchestrating a massive, continuity-billing scheme that used 51 shell companies, maildrops and “straw-figures” as company officers “to keep the scam going.”

    The complaint names as defendants 10 individuals, 10 corporations and the 51 shell companies. Citing court documents, the Salt Lake Tribune reported that Johnson’s companies allegedly took in more than $350 million and ensnared 15,000 consumers a day at the height of the scheme.

    Customers were lured into purchasing “trial” memberships for “bogus government-grant and money-making schemes,” and then were “repeatedly” charged monthly fees “for these and other memberships that they never signed up for,” the FTC said.

    “[T]his scheme has caused hundreds of thousands of consumers to seek chargebacks — reversals of charges to their credit cards or debits to their banks accounts,” the FTC said.

    “The high number of chargebacks has landed the defendants in VISA’s and MasterCard’s chargeback monitoring programs, resulted in millions of dollars in fines for excessive chargebacks, and prevented the defendants from getting access to the credit card and debit card billing systems using their own names,” the FTC said.

    “To keep the scam going, the defendants tricked banks into giving them continued access to these billing systems by creating 51 shell companies with figurehead officers, and by providing the banks with phony ‘clean’ versions of their websites.”

    Like ASD’s Andy Bowdoin, Johnson denies wrongdoing.

    Making Sense Of It All

    Today the PP Blog offers a two-word term, contexts in which we believe the term applies and proposed definitions as a means of educating the public by describing a complex process of organized, international theft and reducing it to its essence. Understanding how online schemes proliferate — and the emotions they trade on and “scam signals” they send — may help consumers protect themselves from the fraudsters.

    fraud creep [frawd kreep]

    1. Principal definition: The tendency of a web-based financial crime undetected by law enforcement to expand across the Internet until it achieves critical mass, reaches the limits of a criminal organization’s ability to manage and forces investigators to respond. Such a crime may creep (advance slowly) to ultimately create thousands or even tens of thousands of victims globally.

    2. Associated definition: A criminal business model (fraud-creep enterprise) that includes a suggestion of exceptional earnings and generous recruiting commissions and the use of tailored messages that appeal to greed, envy, despair or anger. A fraud-creep enterprise also may be characterized by images of wholesome or enticing amenities designed to attract prospects to an illicit scheme whose purpose is hidden or undisclosed.

    3. Associated definition: A form of deceit (fraud-creep plan) employed by hucksters, particularly on the Internet, characterized by efforts to popularize an illicit pursuit by withholding critical information and demonizing market regulators. Profits are reaped by tapping into disillusionment and despair and creating a bogeyman or figure of blame to rationalize participation in a dubious or illegal enterprise. The bogeyman or figure of blame often may be the government, a branch of government, a law-enforcement or regulatory agency or government employee.

    4. Associated definition: A particular instance of such deceit in which an appeal is made to recruit holders of a particular political philosophy into a scam. Politicians and other public figures may be demonized in this form of fraud creep, which may include vicious name-calling or passive-aggressive slime. Images of success may be juxtaposed against images of people or entities cast as barriers to success. This form of fraud creep also may be accompanied by an effort to create marketplace sympathy and to sanitize and expand a fraud scheme by suggesting evil forces are seeking to prevent investors and eager entrepreneurs from creating wealth by erecting barriers or denying them access to the marketplace.

    5. Associated definition: One who practices fraud creep — i.e., a fraud creep.

    Usage example: As the economy struggles and mortgage foreclosures pile up, law-enforcement agencies nationwide are seeing more and more examples of fraud creep in which criminals succeeded in  making Internet scams go “viral” by luring thousands of prospects with images of amenities they’ll purportedly enjoy by registering for a program and sending money.

    Usage example: The ASD fraud-creep and Ponzi scheme gradually expanded to fleece more than 40,000 investors out of at least $110 million, investigators said, noting that participants were lured by the promise that they would be paid $5,000 if a family member or friend they recruited spent $50,000 on “advertising.”

    Usage example: Although Smith routinely bemoaned “Washington” while showing a video of himself behind the wheel of a Maserati parked outside a mansion in a driveway lined by exotic flowers as a groundskeeper toiled nearby, authorities say the investigation uncovered a classic case of fraud creep: Smith simply decided that registering with the SEC was for the “fools who don’t understand the Constitution.” The Maserati, authorities said, was a day rental — and Smith paid the groundskeeper $100 to let him film the driveway and mansion scenes on a Saturday morning when the owners were on the golf course.

    Usage example: The stage was set for fraud creep, authorities said, when the accused huckster — a recidivist who did not disclose his previous conviction for securities fraud in a $20 million scheme  — persuaded  unsophisticated investors that the FBI was forcing the best companies to move offshore and that the SEC and IRS were trying to destroy the middle class.

    Usage example: Authorities began to suspect fraud creep when Jones incongruously explained to investors that the United States was turning into both a “Nazi” and a “Socialist” state and making it impossible for honest “Main Street Capitalists to deliver the American Dream and do what the market does best: get poor people and illegals off Food Stamps and turn them into productive citizens.”  Although Jones, a U.S. resident, frequently talked about his “attorney” and the efforts he had undertaken to ensure his offshore company complied with all laws and regulations,  he refused to provide prospects the name of the attorney, claiming that a previous attorney had been hounded by callers who had sought to verify claims about the program.

    Usage example: Federal agents announced the arrest of yet-another alleged fraud creep today, saying the Florida man was either running or participating in multiple fraud-creep schemes, including autosurfs, HYIPs and penny-stock scams.

    Usage example: Fraud creeps on the fraud-creep forums were urging their marks not to file complaints with regulators or law enforcement — and not to contact the offshore payment processors that had processed all the Ponzi payments for the suddenly defunct HYIP. One forum fraud creep opined that the government would steal any remaining money. Another issued a dire warning that a receiver was sure to be appointed by the court and that the “greedy” receiver and “brain-dead” judge would conspire against the participants. Yet-another fraud creep ventured that the government would use the remaining fraud proceeds to help it finance its own Ponzi scheme: Social Security.

    Usage example: In court documents, federal authorities said fraud-creep forums such as TalkGold, MoneyMakerGroup and ASAMonitor were helping fraud creeps and fraud-creep schemes steal millions of dollars globally.

  • EDITORIAL: ASD By The Numbers: Why America And The World Should Be Shocked — And Why Serial Autosurf And HYIP Promoters Should Be Prosecuted

    ASD's Andy Bowdoin.

    UPDATED 12:04 P.M. ET (U.S.A.) In court filings this week in the AdSurfDaily autosurf Ponzi scheme case, federal prosecutors in the District of Columbia revealed a series of jaw-dropping numbers. The biggest of these is 500,000 — the number of pages of emails gleaned so far in the investigation, which began in July 2008.

    Because prosecutors put the qualifier “at least” on the already-staggering number, it is clear the number actually could increase. Each of the pages is subject to the discovery process, meaning that attorneys from both sides and perhaps the court itself faces the monumental challenge of sifting through at least half a million pages of scheme-related correspondence.

    Other big numbers in the alleged $110 million ASD Ponzi include 100,000, the number of pages of bank records, and 5,000, the number of pages of documents that emerged after the U.S. Secret Service searched ASD’s office in Quincy, Fla., and the home of company president Andy Bowdoin.

    To date, investigators have identified 40,000 potential ASD victims. This number also could grow because there is reason to believe that “there may be members who provided funds to ASD but whose information ASD did not enter into its database,” according to prosecutors.

    ASD’s database included information on 97,000 members. Some participants have claimed ASD actually had 120,000 members. Regardless of the final number that emerges, ASD created victims by the tens of thousands, including victims who do not live in the United States, prosecutors said.

    The import — and the danger of these numbers — is that ASD is only one autosurf. There may be hundreds if not thousands of autosurfs operating in the world at any one time, along with hundreds or thousands of HYIPs. Like other autosurfs and HYIPs, ASD was promoted on Ponzi forums such as TalkGold, MoneyMakerGroup and ASA Monitor. The Ponzi pitchmen love American money, and commission-grubbing American salespeople and serial promoters who play dumb to line their pockets at the expense of their fellow countrymen specialize in spreading the misery globally.

    In May, the PP Blog reported on criminal charges filed against Nicholas Smirnow, the alleged operator of the Pathway to Prosperity (P2P) Ponzi and HYIP scheme. The numbers that have emerged from that alleged scheme are equally stunning: $70 million fleeced from 40,000 victims in 120 countries from “all of the permanently inhabited continents of the world,” according to the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.

    The criminal complaint filed against Smirnow specifically references the TalkGold, MoneyMakerGroup and ASA Monitor Ponzi forums — the same forums from which ASD and countless other schemes have been promoted.

    Legisi, yet another alleged scheme pitched at the forums, also produced some big numbers. Among them are $72.6 million fleeced from at least 3,000 victims. Matthew Gagnon, one Legisi pitchman, netted $3.8 million alone from the scheme, according to the SEC.

    So, in just the three alleged schemes referenced in this column — ASD, P2P and Legisi — the numbers shape up like this: at least $252.6 million gathered from at least 83,000 victims. If the P2P and Legisi cases are shaping up like the ASD case from the standpoint of paper production, investigators, attorneys from both sides and the courts may have to go through more than a million pages of documents and corresponding bank records to make sense of it all.

    Meanwhile, the wink-nod, serial promoters continue to ply their trade on the Ponzi boards — all while the U.S. and world economies are trying to navigate the choppiest waters since the Great Depression. While the serial promoters are lining their pockets at the expense of Moms and Pops from virtually every corner of the earth, they are anticipating the danger signs consistent with the implosion of their currently favorite Ponzi — and they are preparing their next round of lies to protect their illicit profit pipeline and explain away the problems that inevitably will emerge.

    Some of the professional criminals will tell their marks that it is their duty to be patient when Ponzi payments slow down. They’ll add that problems affect all enterprises regardless of size, and that it’s not unusual for payment bottlenecks to occur. They’ll explain that it likely is a problem with software or the need to acquire a new server to accommodate traffic. After all, they’ll say, “growing pains” are something to celebrate because they signal the success of the enterprise.

    And the serial criminals also will talk about a doubting recruit’s duty to be loyal to the enterprise. After all, they’ll explain, the company is doing the right thing by acquiring the equipment and manpower needed to streamline operations and thus return to a normal payout schedule.

    While the professional Ponzi criminals are explaining all of this, investors will become further separated from their money before the final round of excuse-making begins. Investors will be cautioned not to contact the authorities and told not to contact the payment processors. After all, the serial pitchmen will explain, if the authorities seize the cash or if the payment processors freeze the accounts, no one will get paid.

    When the scheme ultimately collapses, some of the serial criminals will shrug their shoulders and feign surprise. They’ll explain why they had every reason to believe that this one was different, that they’d been assured by the Christian operator it was different. No matter, they’ll say, perhaps positioning themselves as people of faith. Recruits who invested more than they could afford to lose have only themselves to blame, they’ll claim. (This is if they call it “investing” at all; many serial criminals avoid that word like the plague. After all of these years and all of this Bible-thumping, they still apparently believe that it’s possible to skirt securities laws by avoiding the word “investment” and calling it something else.)

    Then they’ll unapologetically move on to the next scam. After all, they’ll explain, they have a right to make a living. Some of them will explain that the government, which refuses to see the beauty of the autosurf and HYIP models, is to blame. Along the way they’ll create some clone promoters, and the clones will multiply. The clones will add to the purported, pro-Bible (and antigovernment chorus) — and before long, investigators trying to reverse-engineer a single case will be sifting through 500,000 pages of emails, 100,000 pages of bank records and 5,000 pages of records created as the result of the execution of a search warrant or as a result of actual documents seized.

    Agents then will begin the mind-numbing and time-consuming process of identifying victims by the tens of thousands.

    Some of the victims will lose their homes because they borrowed against their equity to take advantage of “bonus” ad packs and to maximize their “earnings” through “compounding.” Others will have lost savings set aside to educate their children. Still others will have lost their life savings and money set aside for retirement.

    Many of the people who created all the pain will sprint back to the Ponzi forums — and the government will be left to clean up the colossal mess. The Ponzi pitchfest is in constant motion as property values decline in neighborhood after neighborhood, driven by the foreclosures glut. The Stepfords among the promoters will write their Congressman or Senator or perhaps the Inspector General at the Justice Department.

    They’ll more or less say that it would be in the interests of America if the Congressman or Senator or Inspector General would see fit to fire all the prosecutors and agents who made these unseemly events occur.

    And then they’ll gather up their lists of suckers and try to recruit them into yet-another MLM, autosurf or HYIP nightmare. This they will call “freedom.” Some of them will be angry. Some of them will write rambling diatribes on forums. Invective will be part of the diatribes. Some of them will call public officials “Nazis” and “Socialists,” perhaps even in the same fractured paragraph. Some of them even will try to sue the government or have the prosecutors and judges charged with crimes. They’ll talk about “treason” and high crimes against the Constitution.

    What they will never do is make any sense.

    It is impossible to imagine that any government agency has the resources to take down all of the corrupt MLMs, autosurfs and HYIPs. But one can imagine a systematic process by which the government identifies the serial promoters and plans a litigation strategy from which will emerge the “shot heard round the world” of corrupt online investment “opportunities.”

    That day cannot come soon enough — and the numbers demand it: more than $250 million gathered from victims of just the three alleged schemes referenced on this page, perhaps 1 million or more emails and other documents produced by the investigations, at least 83,000 victims from virtually all corners of the earth, an untold number of agents/investigators from multiple government entities forced to sift though monumental piles of evidence.

    It is clear that wealth is being drained by the billions. It is equally clear that vast sums of money have gone missing in the Age of Terrorism.

    Clearest of all, however, is that the corrupt MLMs, autosurfs and HYIPs cannot thrive without their greedy and dangerous promoters — and that highly public lawsuits and early morning raids designed to hold the wink-nod Ponzi pitchmen accountable would send an unmistakable message that pain is in your future if you promote these criminally toxic businesses. Serial promoters deserve the same treatment as mid-level drug dealers.

    No economy can thrive if a single case among thousands of potential cases is producing 500,000 pages of emails and creating 40,000 victims while consuming tens of millions of dollars — and if “shell companies,” the “shadow banking system” and wink-nod, serial promoters are driving the wanton criminality and letting the cancers metastasize globally.

    Here’s hoping such an operation aimed specifically at corrupt MLMs, autosurfs and HYIPs already is under way.