OpTree

As we reported last week, the California Attorney General has filed a $25m lawsuit case against YourTravelBusiness.com and its affiliates YTB et al. There have been numerous emails and websites which have been trying to detail what is the  real meaning behind the suit and what is really going on at YTB.

Attorney General Brown charges the company, its affiliates, and the company’s founders J. Lloyd Tomer, J. Scott Tomer, J. Kim Sorensen and Andrew Cauthen with operating an “endless chain scheme,” an unlawful pyramid in which a person pays money for the chance to receive money by recruiting new members to join the pyramid. Brown also charges the company with unfair business practices and false advertising practices including:

* Deceptive claims that members can earn millions of dollars with the company
* Operating without filing legally mandated documents with the attorney general and the Department of Corporations
* Selling an illegal travel discount program

Under California’s unfair business practices statue, the company is liable for $2,500 per violation of law. Attorney General Brown is suing YourTravelBiz.com to get a court order that:

* Bars the company from making false or misleading statements
* Assesses a civil penalty of at least $15,000,000 and at least $10,000,000 in restitution for Californians who were ripped off by the company.

The lawsuit against YourTravelBiz.com, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, also names affiliates which include YTB Travel Network, Inc., YTB Travel Network of Illinois, Inc., as well as the company’s founders J. Lloyd Tomer, J. Scott Tomer, J. Kim Sorensen and Andrew Cauthen. For a copy of the lawsuit click here.

It may not be a coincidence that we reported that YTB may be considering adopting a Franchise model which could shift away from the MLM model.  This one is far from over.

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ASD Cash Generator - a network marketing company that buys and sells advertising packages, has apparently been shut down by the SEC.

According to the company, ASD is a “Gateway to Financial Independence.” The company makes money by charging customers fees each month to buy advertising packages that they can they resell. Members can also make money selling monthly memberships to new recruits. According to ASD, purchasers can earn rebates up to 100 percent of their ad cost, and can even earn an additional 25 percent by convincing others to purchase packages for resale as well.

Details of exactly what has gone down are still a bit fuzzy, but from what we can gather, the Florida based company was sued by the Florida’s attorney general, Bill McCollum. Just last week, the company was raided by the U.S. Secret Service and was shut down by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia who claims that ASD was running a “massive internet based wire fraud scheme.

In the lawsuit filed in Florida, McCollum says that ASD and its President, Thomas Andy Bowdoin Jr, and employees, have conned and defrauded countless people out of money and McCollum is seeking civil damages as well as an injunction against the company, its president and employees to stop them from operating their deceptive business.

The Secret Service raided the ASD office last week and seized the Presidents home. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia called the business a “Ponzi scheme, masked as an advertising company. Nobody has been officially charged with a crime just yet, but the investigation is ongoing and for the time being, the company is shut down. The official message on ASD’s website reads:

–Upon direction from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the District of Columbia, ASD will not be able to move funds into company accounts, or out of them. We will work to resolve this problem, and return to normal operation, as soon as we are permitted to do so.
-ASD Management

Bowdoin has not been answering calls, but on a message on his answering machine it says that he will not be making any comments on advice of lawyers. While I do not fully understand the business, something does seem a bit off about the services they are offering, and the amount of money the company has been raking in, is almost unreal. Bowdoin has told officials that he expects sales of more than $100 million this year with ad sales over the first half of the year reaching $40 million. There are over 75,000 members in the ASD network.

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