Hello Peter, Like I said, I understood what you were saying. It is very serious and very scary hearing all this news. Being fairly new to the internet world, I still have allot to learn. LOL!! At least it wasn't in CAPS. (just kidding) You and Linda run some excellent Forums. I will keep watching and listening for more developments on this situation. Thank you again Linda and Peter.

I had not even heard of autosurf until starting to read the forums here at adland. So many people were making such wonderful claims about it that I just had to check it out. Boy am I glad that I also read Linda's forums and was a little wiser about the whole thing. After I really stopped and thought about how it worked it seemed a little shady to me. Martha

Dear Linda and Peter, I have one more thing to say, especially to Peter's proposition that any who partook may be prosecuted. I did due diligence on the company, and everything looked solid. It was stated right on their main page (the old one) that 12DP had off-line investments and multiple income streams, not just relying on new members to pay the old. I even found an independent site, sorry--I really need to use my "bookmarks" more--a watchdog site that reviewed sites like these, and it said it was extremely surprised to find everything in order, the site solid, and that they did, indeed, have off-line investments. From the way other sites were evaluated, I think they were sincere in their findings, and again, I wish I could give you a url--if I can find it again later today, I'll come back and post it. Peter, I don't see how the government can come after the members of 12DP when they were apparently blatantly mislead. I'm not saying they may not try, but I seriously doubt it. It is my personal belief that this is the first in a "sweep" of such companies in an effort to protect the unwary, and that individuals, other than the owners of such companies, will probably not be the victims here. I have 2 SEC reports, press releases from the SEC dated Monday, posted in my blog, and 2 forum threads going on this. There were many people struggling, myself included, who I think were blatantly lied to. Especially since the second report alleges that Charis Johnson funnelled 1.9 million dollars into her own personal bank account since mid 2005. And I have to say, if the allegations are true, hats off to Miss Johnson for being able to "hoodwink" over 300,000 members, some of whom I know to be highly intelligent and very good detectives who found nothing wrong with her program. Now THAT takes talent. And Linda, thank you for your kind words. I was really depressed yesterday, not for myself, but for all who really needed this pipe-dream to be true and have been horribly disappointed. I do try to learn from my mistakes, and then try to pass on that knowledge. Hopefully, I can help others to avoid them. Sincerely,

It's hard to keep up with everything but there are a couple of comments I'd like to add: ======================================== To be honest, saying "I told you so" is not satisfying. ======================================== I think it's also counter constructive/productive. It's much better to know that the facts are out there . . . now . . . what did we learn? And how can we use that information to our best advantage in the future. ======================================== NO AUTHORITY IS HIGHER THAN REALITY ======================================== I really liked that one Cheri. I think I'm going to add it to my Inspirational Quotes Forum. ========================================= They're crappy traffic because no one is looking at the sites to shop, they're looking at sites to earn money . . . ========================================== From the initial thread on this topic, this was one of the most important pieces of information that I learned. While your success online is due to the amount of traffic you get to your site, and even more important factor is the quality of that traffic! You want people looking for what your selling!!!!

Hi Shannon, I can and do appreciate your point about how they were able to hide the reality of the situation. But there are hard cold facts when it comes to matters like these and they are not mine, they are the FTC's, and the SEC's. The Federal Trade Commision states the following in regards to being involved in a Ponzi or Pyramid scheme. Your Responsibilities If you decide to become a distributor, you are legally responsible for the claims you make about the company, its product and the business opportunities it offers. That applies even if you're repeating claims you read in a company brochure or advertising flyer. The Federal Trade Commission advises you to verify the research behind any claims about a product's performance before repeating those claims to a potential customer. In addition, if you solicit new distributors, you are responsible for the claims you make about a distributor's earnings potential. Be sure to represent the opportunity honestly and avoid making unrealistic promises. If those promises fall through, remember that you could be held liable. So in the end it not my proposition but that of the FTC. One very important thing to remember is that everyone had the same chance to join and had to make the decision for themselves. We did the math, we pointed out that anything that offers the potential earnings that these autosurfs did just could not be above board, if they were then the banks might also have seen the investment potential and joined in. We made decisions based upon those facts, I could have just as easily joined in but something said this just isn't right. I did not have to read past the 144% in 12 days. No other website that made it seem credible could have changed my mind. I suppose a big part of that is having been doing business on line for as long as I have and seeing as many scams as I have come and go. Gary made reference to something I said in a previous post, "If it looks like dog poop, and it smells like dog poop, then don't ask me to taste it, as two out of three aren't bad. To me it had the look and smell, so I did not have to go any further, and today I am very pleased that I did not. In regards to the government coming after people that might have been duped, I agree. I doubt that they will, unless, they were also dupping others into signing up and upgrading. In the courts there is something called Deliberate Ignorance. It is described as follows: DELIBERATE IGNORANCE When knowledge of the existence of a particular fact is an essential part of an offense, such knowledge may be established if the person is aware of a high probability of its existence, unless he actually believes that it does not exist. In other words, a person acted 'knowingly' if either: (1) the person actually knew a particular fact; or (2) that he deliberately closed his eyes to what he had every reason to believe was the fact. As I said before it is up to the powers that be to do whatever they will, but we have to remember that this is about 50 Million Dollars (Just with 12DP) and the tax that would be owed on that is astrnomical, I don't think this will be something that is just swept under the carpet. If you would care to read the FTC Consumer Alert please click HERE.