Check out this release today (December 11, 2008) from the Security and Exchange Commission:

"SEC Charges Bernard L. Madoff for Multi-Billion Dollar Ponzi Scheme

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 2008-293

Washington, D.C., Dec. 11, 2008 — The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged Bernard L. Madoff and his investment firm, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, with securities fraud for a multi-billion dollar Ponzi scheme that he perpetrated on advisory clients of his firm. The SEC is seeking emergency relief for investors, including an asset freeze and the appointment of a receiver for the firm.

The SEC's complaint, filed in federal court in Manhattan, alleges that Madoff yesterday informed two senior employees that his investment advisory business was a fraud. Madoff told these employees that he was "finished," that he had "absolutely nothing," that "it's all just one big lie," and that it was "basically, a giant Ponzi scheme." The senior employees understood him to be saying that he had for years been paying returns to certain investors out of the principal received from other, different investors. Madoff admitted in this conversation that the firm was insolvent and had been for years, and that he estimated the losses from this fraud were at least $50 billion.

"We are alleging a massive fraud — both in terms of scope and duration," said Linda Chatman Thomsen, Director of the SEC's Division of Enforcement. "We are moving quickly and decisively to stop the fraud and protect remaining assets for investors, and we are working closely with the criminal authorities to hold Mr. Madoff accountable."

Andrew M. Calamari, Associate Director of Enforcement in the SEC's New York Regional Office, added, "Our complaint alleges a stunning fraud that appears to be of epic proportions."

According to regulatory filings, the Madoff firm had more than $17 billion in assets under management as of the beginning of 2008. It appears that virtually all assets of the advisory business are missing.

Madoff founded the firm in 1960 and has been a prominent member of the securities industry throughout his career. Madoff served as vice chairman of the NASD, a member of its board of governors, and chairman of its New York region. He was also a member of NASDAQ Stock Market's board of governors and its executive committee and served as chairman of its trading committee.

The complaint charges the defendants with violations of the anti-fraud provisions of the Securities Act of 1933, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and the Investment Advisers Act of 1940. In addition to emergency and interim relief, the SEC seeks a final judgment permanently enjoining the defendants from future violations of the antifraud provisions of the federal securities laws and ordering them to pay financial penalties and disgorgement of ill-gotten gains with prejudgment interest.

The SEC's investigation is continuing.

The SEC acknowledges the assistance of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York.

# # #

For more information, contact:

Andrew M. Calamari
Associate Director, Enforcement
SEC's New York Regional Office
(212) 336-0042

Alexander Vasilescu
Chief, Trial Unit
SEC's New York Regional Office
(212) 336-0178"

Take THAT ASDCashGenerator! Now, Site Down and Shut Up!

P.S., ASDCashGenerator indictments may be coming soon.

Patrick Pretty, who has done an amazing job with a sort of "ASD CourtRoom Proceedings for Dummies" series (officially called the "ASD Fantasy Courtroom" series) has posted:

"The site appears not to be connected to ASD. Rather, some promoters for the new service appear to be trading on ASD's legal troubles to drum up business."

I see that Patrick Pretty is careful to say "A person by the name of Jack Schrold" which means he is not prematurely connecting dots that may or may not be there.

In fact intrigue about AdGateWorld seems to have all but disrupted the ASDCashGenerator thread at Scam.com – (Something Borrowed, Something Blue?)…

I'd recommend you start with Patrick Pretty's posts here:

AdGateWorld post 1

AdGateWorld Post 2

Click here for the disrupted ASDCashGenerator thread at Scam.com.

I'm don't really have an opinion about EZWealthSolution yet, but I did notice that in most places nobody's talking about the actual products being sold and tend to just give examples of the kind of money they're making with the program.

Of course with a program actually named EZWealthSolution I suppose that would make sense.

But it could be fine. I'm going to kick the tires a bit and do some further research – and of course I'll likely get some comments here from people in the program.

I did see someone mention that the owner designed the system so that the associates earn 100% of the sales made.  That's certainly possible if he's selling something on the backend or has some other way of monetizing the membership. In fact there are companies have paid out more than 100% on front-end products.

Anyhow, I mostly just wanted to get this slated for the "pending review" list in order to start doing further due diligence on it.

Chris ran a WSO (Warrior Special Offer) on one of his products here which was received quite well.

The rest is left in place for historical purposes only:

One of the more heated debates about ASD Cash generator was started in the Warrior Forum and was started by Chris Endres who was a huge proponent of the ASD Cash Generator business model.

Unfortunately, since the WarriorForum moved, that thread is gone and the cached version of the thread where Chris Endres was aggressively defending ASD and seemed to imply that other people who were attacking it didn't know what they were talking about will likely only be here for a short time.

Jack Aarons does have an interesting thread with some of Chris Endres' emails, including his contact informatoin at Scam.com here.

It would be interesting to understand this alleged comment Chris made:

"I have chosen to remove all of my advertising from the internet
regarding ASD. I make this choice because I desire to avoid ads
much of the backlash as possible. Am I ashamed that I believed in
ASD? No, greater people than I lost more than I have."

If that's really what Chris said, what does he mean by "greater people than I"? It seems like an odd turn of the language to me.

You can learn a bit more about Chris Endres here:
http://csendres.wordpress.com/about/
ChrisEndres.biz

You can read some of Chris Endres' articles about ASDCashGenerator and Andy Bowdoin at the following places:

• Auto Surf Giant ASD Ad Cash Generator Breaks 100k Members
• ASD Ad Cash Generator – Making Money on the Internet Just a Few Clicks a Day
• ASD Ad Cash Generator (Duplicate?)
• Chris Endres mentions how to get a free ASD Cash Generator website in this article
• Chris Endres's helpful information about ASD Cash Generator at Zimbio
• Chris Endres' quiet plug for ASD Cash Generator at the end of this article about advertising online.

So far the ASDCashGenerator lawsuit and investigation has been a civil matter. The investigation is into whether ASDCashGenerator/AdSurfDaily committed fraud.

6/25/2008 UPDATE: BlogCatalog just accepted the WorkAtHomeTruth blog today.

7/20/2008 update: New ASD Parody Song. Please don't take this song too seriously. Here's the deal…while I'm eminently qualified to comment on advertising value I will make no pretense to have any significant knowledge or understanding of comp plans such as ASD's…so this is a Parody song folks and is for entertainment purposes only. Yes, I am on the side of those who suggest you don't get involved in ASD, but I'm also willing to entertain the idea that I could be wrong.

With that in mind…here's the song:

Especially when I saw that they hilariously had accepted an Ad Surf Daily Blog. Ad Surf Daily is the stunningly bizarre program that people are buying into even though their advertising system costs about 1,000 to 4,000 times more than mainstream standards.

For example ASD Cash Generator – a.k.a. ASDCashGenerator promises you will get competitively priced views of your website…in fact…for just $1.00 you will get – and this is the really funny part – you will get ONE view of your website.

Wait. How is that competitive pricing when I can go to Adwords and get 1000 views of my website for as little as 25 cents?

Well, I guess that's what MyBlogCatalog considers a quality site. LOL.

It gets even funnier, though.

I'm not 100% sure if the following is true, but according to a friend of mine ASD Cash Generator recently put out this announcement:

" >
> Months ahead of schedule Google and ASD Offer Universe are now teaming up to
> show Google ads on the site. Google, after seeing all of the major
> advertisers already being shown on www.asdofferuniverse.com agreed to enter
> into a relationship with ASD. This is a huge development because ASD is PAID
> every time someone just CLICKS on one of the Google ads on the top of each
> category page. You, as an ASD member can now simply click on the Google ads
> without even having to buy a thing or fill out a lead and ASD is paid. The
> payment for each click can be as high as $5.00 a click."

Ummm. Isn't that called putting up Adsense on a website, something just about anybody can do for free?

Oh, and isn't encouraging clicking on adsense ads against Google Adsense terms of service? Hmm. Google apparently seems to think so here:

Google Adsense Policies

6/25/2008 12:10 PM Central Time Update:

It gets even better! Ad Surf Daily has sent out instructions teaching people how to click on Google Adsense Ads on their site. LOL. Whoa, doggy.

This is my favorite part of what they apparently sent out (again this is according to my friend):

"10) Click on at least 10 ads a day each day. This means that you steps 3 through 7 described above ten times. If all ASD members do this each day the money will come pouring in and augment the rebates and bonuses that ASD is paying out."

But I'm just one guy. Let me know what YOU think about all this.

Paul Schlegel, Founder
WorkAtHomeTruth.com

TrafficThatWorks.com