Last weekend, the #(*@$@! hit the fan for people who just invested large lump sums into Ad Surf Daily Cash Generator, a reported advertising service with a twist.

The ‘twist’ was an investment/business opportunity rolled into the service which promised people incredible sums of money in return for them looking at a few ads on their computers a day in what is known in the internet marketing world as a traffic exchange.

Here is what you need to know about autosurf companies, as taken from this website: http://www.sec.gov/investor/pubs/autosurf.htm.

In the world of marketing, people often get compensated — with cash or free products and services— for doing fairly easy things, like sampling new ice-cream flavors, filling out surveys, or allowing a firm to monitor the television shows you watch or the websites you visit.  While some “money for nothing” opportunities may be perfectly legitimate, others can turn out to be frauds.

For more information on investing wisely and avoiding costly mistakes, please visit the Investor Information section of the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov/investor.shtml.

“Auto-surfing” is a form of online advertising that purportedly generates advertising revenue for companies that want to increase traffic to their websites.  The premise behind auto-surfing is that companies that advertise on the Internet are willing to pay to increase traffic to their web sites.  These companies hire an auto-surf firm or “host,” which in turn pays individual web surfers to view certain websites on an automatically rotating basis.  The more sites the individual visits, the more money he or she stands to earn.

While auto-surfing may sound easy and appealing — and risk-free — there can be a hitch.  Some auto-surf programs require their surfers to pay to participate, although perhaps not initially.  When you first sign up to auto-surf, the firm might assign a limited number of sites for you to visit and pay you accordingly.  Once you’ve made a modest amount of money, the firm might encourage — or even require — you to purchase a “membership” so that you can maximize your earnings.  The program will promise high — often double or triple digit — returns on your investment in the program, often within days or weeks of joining.

The line you’ll hear is that the more you click, the more you collect.  But the reality is that any scheme that requires you to pay to participate — and promises handsome rewards in no time at all for little to no effort on your part — bears many of the hallmarks of a “Ponzi” or pyramid scheme.  These schemes look deceptively legitimate because the fraudsters behind them typically use money coming in from new recruits to pay off early stage investors.  But eventually the pyramid will collapse when it gets too big.  It’s simply not possible to “rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul” forever.

The SEC warns investors to be wary of any sort of “get rich scheme quick” scheme — and to be especially leery of opportunities that require you to pay to play.  Before you pay a dime to make extra cash in your spare time, be sure to do a little due diligence:

• If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Compare promised yields with current returns on well-known stock indexes.  Any investment opportunity that claims you’ll get substantially more could be highly risky — and that means you might lose money.

• Check out the company before you invest. Contact the secretary of state where the company is incorporated to find out whether the company is a corporation in good standing.  Also call your state securities regulator to see whether the company, its officers, or the promoters of the opportunity have a history of complaints or fraud.  If a supposedly upright business lists only a P.O. box, you’ll want to do a lot of work before sending your money!

• Steer Clear of Testimonials. Watch out if the company’s promotional materials, contain “testimonials” from supposedly satisfied customers, especially if all the “testimonials” are full of praise.

• “Guaranteed returns” aren’t. Every investment carries some degree of risk, and the level of risk typically correlates with the return you can expect to receive.  Low risk generally means low yields, and high yields typically involve high risk.  If your money is perfectly safe, you’ll most likely get a low return.  High returns represent potential rewards for folks who are willing to take big risks.  Most fraudsters spend a lot of time trying to convince investors that extremely high returns are “guaranteed” or “can’t miss.”  Don’t believe it.

Now, as for what will happen with ASD, that is still up in the air and things are changing all the time I hear.

As reported on this website: http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2008/08/ad_surf_daily.html?campaign_id=rss_blog_techbeat

“Ad Surf Daily recruited members with dozens of YouTube videos featuring everything from company founder, Thomas “Andy” Bowdoin, discussing business with his attorney to ASD members praising their new found financial freedom.

The videos helped convince some that the company was legitimate. “People look at the Web site and it seems to good to be true, but then they Google it and if they see the first six people saying it’s good, then they think it’s good,” says William “Bill” Cowden, Chief of the Asset Forfeiture Unit for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in D.C. “Due diligence amounts to doing a Google search.”

Now, if you check the scam forums, people love and hate ASD. I know many people here in Minnesota invested BIG TIME into this program. I did not, and the reason I did not is two fold.

1. These always eventually shut down by some govt agency
2. These always fizzle out when the money dries up and the last one in is a rotten egg, as their money cannot feed the enormous amount of money needed to pay people at the top. I don’t want to bring people into a program that I know has a limited sketchy lifespan.

Now, I am certainly not immune from getting burned, I have got sucked into my share of programs that looked awesome, but in the end, was leaving people high and dry and got shut down or changed their comp plan and kept all the people’s money, or just … VANISHED!

My list would be pretty long… so… I can speak from experience here.

Now, what I think is really interesting and also really frightening is that the US Government is “Googling” company keyword names and phrases to see what is coming up and in many cases, it’s video from Youtube and many web 2.0 sites (take note how powerful these tools can be in the right biz opps… with compliant advertising).

William “Bill” Cowden, Chief of the Asset Forfeiture Unit for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in D.C, knows how to look through google and see people flashing their cars, their money and their bling. Be so careful what you say and promise and how you entice people to join your in a program with video, not just future prospects see these now! The US Government is watching.

Here is the actual lawsuit filed against Ad Surf Daily Cash Generator, which you can download in PDF.

Now to make this even more interesting there is a huge discussion forum going on over at http://www.scam.com/showthread.php?t=36519 where people are debating and hypothesizing about what the outcome of Ad Surf Daily will be.

Here is the opinion of one of the posts from member: Xavier…

This case, as I’m sure most are aware, is being prosecuted the the United States Secret Service, under their jurisdiction of wire funds transfers and general guardians of the currency system. They are not going to appoint a receiver they are just going to force the dissolution of the company. The government is seizing the funds and filed suit of forfeiture, which means the Treasury has the money and has no intention of giving any of it back. If ASD (the corporate entity as no one else has a vested interest) wants to get the money back they have only one avenue, suing the Treasury and their legal burden is to prove that NONE of the funds are the proceeds of illegal activity, which is not going to happen so just let go of any hope of getting your money back from the seized funds. It is a fact that just participating in a ponzi scheme is illegal and I don’t think many members who weren’t what would be considers insiders or major promoters are looking at criminal prosecution the reality is the courts are not going to provide remedies to people who were breaking the law. From a legal standpoint the argument that the money siezed was the “members” money is akin to someone who attempts to buy cocaine from an undercover DEA agent trying to get the buy money back. I do have one straw some members can cling to, you can bring a civil suit against your upline for a refund, and they are just about defenseless against the claim if you care to file it, although if you have a downline that would pretty much get it tossed and if you surfed for refunds that wouldn’t help. Basically, if you’re one of the very few people who really did intend to buy “advertising” you have a good case, but if you went and surfed your 15 sites a day in expectation of rebates I have a feeling that would pretty much disqualify any relief any court would grant.
If you took out more than you put in, take some advice and go see an attorney as soon as you can, they’re going to be asking (well, demanding actually) that you send them back all you made and they’ll even charge you 15% interest on it.

Harsh as it sounds, the good people in CEP who went out and just joined the next big ponzi scheme have made the government a little angry and quite honestly I don’t think they really care too much about who lost money this time, they have bigger fish to fry, if you know what I mean.

Readers, just know this… businesses come and go, legit and nonlegit, do everything you can to learn before you join any business. Remember though.. there is risk before the reward and running ANY kind of business takes super tough hard work and determination. Not everyone will make money when they join a biz opp. As a matter of fact… only 2-8% ever do. Question to the reader is… how will you become one of the 2-8%’ers out there who do and do it legitimately?

What are your thoughts on ASD and such?