Traffic Monsoon TRO extended until preliminary injunction decision
Following one or more hearings on the SEC’s Motion for a Preliminary Injunction, Judge Parrish has extended the previously granted Temporary Restraining Order until further notice.
Traffic Monsoon and Charles Scoville remain prohibited from
soliciting, accepting, or depositing any monies obtained from actual or prospective investors, individuals, customers, companies, and/or entities, through the Internet or other electronic means.
Scoville and anyone else directly connected to him and Traffic Monsoon have also been ordered to repatriate
any and all funds or assets that presently may be located outside of the United States that were obtained directly or indirectly from (Traffic Monsoon) investors.
Presumably this includes the $3.35 million Charles Scoville has stashed away offshore.
These funds are to be deposited into an interest bearing account held with the court.
This Court hereby takes exclusive jurisdiction and possession of the assets, of whatever kind and wherever situated, of (Traffic Monsoon and Charles Scoville).
Not to sure what that’s about, but it seems the court has temporarily taken control of Scoville’s assets and victim funds from the previously appointed Receiver.
Except as otherwise specified herein, all assets of the Defendants (“Defendants’ Assets”) are frozen until further order of this Court, including but not limited to any accounts held at PayPal Holdings, Inc., Payza, Solid Trust Pay, Allied Wallet LTD, and JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A.
The final part of Parrish’s order stays all litigation against Charles Scoville and Traffic Monsoon that the SEC is not a party to, or seeks to recover victim funds currently frozen.
The stay has been ordered until further notice (which will presumably be extended till resolution of the SEC’s preliminary injunction hearing).
At the time of publication there’s no indication on the case docket as to when the SEC’s preliminary injunction motion might be ruled on.
Stay tuned…
Update 8th November 2016 – A new filing from the Receiver reveals the next hearing in the case is scheduled for November 30th.
Update 29th March 2017 – On March 28th Judge Parrish confirmed Traffic Monsoon was a Ponzi scheme and granted the SEC’s preliminary injunction.
The Receiver works under the supervision of the court, so there’s no change here. The court always had control, as the receive needs to submit all actions to the court for approval.
Thanks for clearing that up.
Guessing the preliminary injunction decision will come by the end of the month so not much for the Receiver to do except sit tight.
The main concern was Scoville’s $3.35 slush fund. He’s been ordered to return that so as long as the freeze is in place nothing is lost.
I suppose if the Receiver wanted to be pro-active she could follow up on the subpoenas served.
There is something called the Registry of the Court into which funds and various assets can be deposited and held until the ownership of such funds and assets has been determined.
Update: A filing from the Receiver today reveals the next hearing is scheduled for November 30th.
The Receiver is requesting permission to file a post-hearing
statement on behalf of the Receivership Estate, which I’ll cover if approved and filed.
Charles Scoville’s Facebook page has been pulled (last 24 hrs).
Traffic Monsoon page has been scrubbed back to August 22nd.
While waiting for the judge’s ruling on 11/30, you can now learn the words to the Traffic Monsoon song.
Not kidding about the TM song! You can see the video on Jose Nunes’ FB page. I’m sure you all will have the words down in no time.
the request to file a post hearing statement was granted by the court on 8th nov, 2016.
the receiver peggy hunt has up till 5 pm on nov 28th, 2016 to file this statement.
i don’t know if she has filed this document already, today being the 24th.
I’ve been checking the docket on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.
Can confirm that as of today nothing has been filed.
with the hearing for the preliminary injunction coming up on 30th nov 2016, scoville is back to explaining his interpretation of how traffic monsoon worked:
hey scoville, it does Not matter whether the $55 was ‘promised’ or not.
the ‘fact’ is that TM investors were Paid $55 for every $50 they put in.
if investors were not getting paid over the $50 they put in, no one would have been buying adpacks at all!
scoville keeps repeating this argument, dressing it up in different ways, but he never cites examples where investors were paid anything less than $55.
He also changed it to “sales commissions” from “revenue sharing” in one of his latest nonsensical posts on FB. Guess he is trying out that terminology to see how effective it is with the members to use at the trial.
After today’s hearing the matter has been taken under advisement.
The primary issue appears to be whether or not the SEC has jurisdiction over a Ponzi scheme technologically based in the US but primarily promoted offshore.
If they don’t, IMO, that sets a dangerous precedent.
I think criminal charges could settle the matter (Scoville is after all a US citizen), so hopefully if they’re coming they’re filed sooner rather than later.
Otherwise what, Scoville leaves the US and goes back to scamming people from the UK? Surely that’s not going to fly.
sltrib.com/news/4655183-155/age-of-the-internet-creates-questions
i think the fact that TM was also registered in the UK and that scoville [mainly] lived in the UK, raises questions as to where the ‘transactions’ between TM and investors took place.
the ‘weight’ of the evidence points to the US – US citizenship, US registration, US servers, US banks, usage of US phone cell company, running some call centers in the US etc
scoville may have lived in the UK for extended periods and also registered his business there, but the weight of evidence points to the transactions being ‘directed’ towards the US. in internet based cases, questions about jurisdiction are tested by where the transactions are ‘directed’ towards.
since TM was a one man operation, the transactions can be said to be directed towards him. his physical entity may be anywhere in the world but as a legal entity he is placed in the US, IMO.
i haven’t seen the TM website. was there any mention of utah on it as the office? was there any mention of scoville being a resident of utah and a US citizen made?
jurisdiction in an internet world is a complex question, and it will be interesting to see how the court rules on this.
I don’t know if it was for the whole duration of the scam but his Utah rented flat was Traffic Monsoon’s corporate address at one point.
Oh Dear! You fellas don’t seem quite as sure as you are a few weeks ago about all this!!
Imagine if this judge sees the light and TM for exactly what it is? OMG I’m gonna come back here waiting for those written apologies you promised!! Lmfao!!
Regardless of the outcome toward the fact TM is nothing more than a ponzi disguised as a PTC, theres a very strong possibility that Charles will be facing the same charge of Wire Fraud as our good friend Thomas Anderson Bowdoin Jr of AdSurfDaily who received 78 months in prison for operating a Ponzi traffic exchange with a model no different to TM 😛
Lets not forget that Charles has outright lied about the ownership of TM considering a few days after the site was shut down another one pops up at the same IP under the name TrafficMonsoon.plus which is preloaded with 150,000 members from the TM database.
Then it is moved to another name but the same IP under the domain TrafficHurricane.plus
Now how could that happen AFTER the SEC shut the site down unless Scoville gave access to all the files and database to Ernie Ganz prior to the shutdown?
Lies, Deception, Money laundering, Ponzi and god knows what else. Charles will not get off lightly on this one considering he has a string of failed ponzi sites prior to TM to answer for.
And TM returning and members getting paid what they have scammed from others? Do you really think that is going to happen when the ROI obligations are now 4 times the income of the site?
Get real and accept that whether or not TM is deemed a ponzi it won’t be coming back. It may return in a different form but like any other Limited Liability Company that changes its name, it will not be obligated to pay anything out owed to anyone under the old name. 😛
The above post just shows the ignorance of how TM works, every penny that has ever been owed has been paid, current ‘debt’ is also covered as will all future payments , that’s how it has always worked and that is how it will always be.
Bottom line here is whether or not there were enough funds to completely pay off everyones accounts assuming no future adpacks were purchased. The answer is NO.
It is crazy to think that the same rate of return was paid each and every day since the launch. Clearly this means that there was no “Sharing Based on Revenue”… unless the exact same amount was being made each and everyday which is nonsense..
TM is a ponzi.. always has been and always will be. New Money Paid old money and the only reason it lasted so long was the population of the share owners… some 3.5 million…..
Pretty obvious that little was being made on advertisers buying pure advertising packs as has been admitted…
The judge will likely realize this because if she doesnt….. oh boy….. Who Lets The Dogs Out!!!
Indeed you are ignorant. Afraid to read the chucky interview with the SEC I see. He admits there wasn’t enough money in paypal to pay whatever was owed when the money was ‘unfrozen’.
Please tell me you are not serious! How can a site that generated just over $200 million in revenue from ad-packs pay back over $800 million in ROI?
I don’t know how many times this FACT needs to be repeated but IF TM had put a finite date on any revenue share you might actually have a point but it does the complete opposite and says VERY CLEARLY that you will receive a share of future revenue IF AND ONLY IF ADERTISING IS SOLD and eventually you MIGHT get back $55!
Historically people did get the maximum $55 from each adpack but as stated very clearly on the website and terms and conditions past performance is not a guarantee of future performance so therefore each and every person who purchased an adpack also completely understood that they might in fact get $0 back!!
It doesn’t get anymore simple than that.
@David
A set ROI timeframe has not been a prerequisite for determining wire fraud in any action I’ve seen brought by the SEC. Nor will you find it a determining factor in any Ponzi related litigation every filed in the US.
It’s a strawman argument. Using newly invested funds to pay off existing investors is what constiutes Ponzi fraud.
$55 out is more than the $50 deposited, hence it’s an investment with a ROI.
All Ponzi schemes can’t meet their ROI liabilities, it’s basic mathematics. So that discards the “everyone knew they were going to lose money” argument too.
Sound familiar?
It should because that is exactly the same line Traffic Monsoon used to try and shirk responsibility of the daily ROIs and here it is on AdSurfDailys Terms page:
web.archive.org/web/20080617061351/http://www.adsurfdaily.com/terms.php
And if you know the history you’ll also know that particular owner was sentenced to 8 years in prison for operating a ponzi as well as pleading guilty to wire fraud.
Never said everyone knew anything about losing money so please don’t try to put words into my mouth!
When you buy advertising just as long as you get the advertising you have paid for you have not lost anything , the only difference here is that you have the opportunity to share in the revenue generated by the company selling the advertising.
This is NOT a ROI this is simply an incentive just like the incentive my supermarket (Ozedit: Supermarkets don’t pay you more than you spend at the store. Offtopic derail attempts removed.)
Maaate. The pseudo-compliance is set to “full of shit” mode with this one.
Buying advertising doesn’t pay a ROI, an investment does.
Good to see you’re acknowledging what Traffic Monsoon offered was different to selling advertising.
As to the ROI, $50 in $55 out is clearly a ROI. You can name it whatever you want. It is what it is.
This’ll be news to the investors who have sued, because they were promised a return. They didn’t give two hoots about the advertising.
Then again given they only delivered a small % of the advertising paid for even by your standards they lost something.
Really if you paid in and got some of the advertising you thought you were paying for and are happy to get no return, then good for you. TM not being here will make no difference loads of others will sell you advertising, hell I’ll sell you adverts which don’t get displayed and gives you no returns – no questions asked.
I’ve already stated previously before it was deleted that I had a VERY successful advertising campaign on TM.
(Ozedit: Offtopic derail attempts removed)
1. You’re an affiliate, so it’s internal funds.
2. You running an ad campaign doesn’t negate the fact that $55 ROIs were paid out on $50 deposits using subsequently invested funds.
3. The SEC has confirmed that most of the adcredits bundled with affiliate investments weren’t used. That sums up why people were investing.
Which, if true, would be the exception rather than the rule.
If the advertising results were so great, then it would have made much more sense to purchase the same product at $11 and get 4 times the advertising power.
If you had a “very successful” campaign on TM, I’m guessing that earned you more than the $5 profit you got on an AdPack. So it would be bad business to opt for advertising that actually earns you less of an ROI.
Oh well if we’re just in to the realm of argument by assertion, I had a real crap time of it, no one responded to my ads, I lost a ton of money. It was the worst money I ever spent.
No more or less reason to believe my assertion that yours. (Though I’ll freely admit I made that up, I was never dumb enough to put a penny into such a scheme).
What’s far more important than silly anecdotes is the actual evidence being presented in the court, you know the statement that Scoville made, the numbers being produced by the receiver. etc.
I have never received a single penny from any adpacks but I had seen a significant increase in visitors to my website and a big increase in business turnover as a result of this.
(Ozedit: Offtopic derail attempts removed)
That puts you in the same basket as the majority of Traffic Monsoon investors.
You got scammed. The fact that you won’t acknowledge it yet suggests this is your first Ponzi rodeo too.
My condolences.
I purchased advertising (Ozedit: Snip. A “purchase” doesn’t pay a ROI, an investment does.)
@David
I’m marking “Traffic Monsoon wasn’t a Ponzi scheme because I said so” comments as spam. Stop wasting my time.
Ditto abuse or anything from you that doesn’t address the fact that Traffic Monsoon advertised a $55 ROI on a $50 deposit.
Yes, Traffic Monsoon’s pseudo-compliance saw them not use the terms investment or ROI on their website. $50 in $55 out however is clearly an investment with an attached ROI.
As I’ve pointed out many times I make purchases everyday at my grocery store and I get cashback (Ozedit: Cashback doesn’t pay you 100%+ of what you spent, a ROI does. Strawman arguments removed.)
Paul I am happy to send you a breakdown of my website traffic at any ping to back up my ‘assertion’.
In what way would that be any less anecdotal evidence?
I can send you a breakdown of my website traffic demonstrating that my website died a death after encountering TM. Will you believe it?
It’s like banging my head against a brick wall!! lol I’m going to bed but going back to my original post on this occasion, IF the judge and the court find TM has done no wrong I sincerely hope you will all give me a sincere apology 😉
The tracking I have shows where the traffic came from and I can show you a HUGE spike in traffic to my website and which of these visits were then used to purchase items from my website …. that’s how this whole interweb new fangledangled thing works don’t you know!?!?
if the judge was convinced that TM was not a ponzi she would have dismissed the case.
she has taken the case under advisement because of some technical issues regarding ‘jurisdiction’. whether a ‘security’ has been ‘transacted’ in the US is a complex question and a grey area in law.
confusion over jurisdiction in no way means that TM was not a ponzi, so i don’t know why david has jumped in here rehashing the same old tired arguments.
Perhaps that’s how you’ve managed to convince yourself that paying out money to receive adverts which at best were served to a very narrow audience (and in reality the vast majority weren’t served) is a fantastic idea which should be allowed to go ahead unchecked.
You’ve convinced yourself that paying $39 extra to receive no extra return is also a really fantastic idea.
And I can show you tracking which shows my website had no traffic, and I can categorically state it was because of TM. So you must believe me and of course (please ignore that it’s an absolute logical fallacy), that because you must absolutely believe me, then it’s true for everybody else also.
You must also ignore all the other rather obvious evidence that have come from reliable and verifiable sources (Scoville himself, TM itself and the receiver). You must ignore the former affiliates taking legal action because they believe they were promised a return etc.
If you want to stick your head in the sand to the fact that the vast majority of people were participating were doing so on the expectation of a financial return which couldn’t possibly be met, then I doubt anyone here will care less.
The case that has been brought to the courts is that TM is a ponzi, that has no jurisdiction either it is or it isn’t very simple
while we have been busy following the court hearing and the reason for the judge taking the matter under advisement, we missed a comedy show that played out along the sidelines.
so william bryant, the word salad mumbo jumbo self appointed facebook lawyer of TM, decided he would go to the 30th nov hearing to have a face off with peggy hunt and to talk some sense into the judge.
he felt he was uniquely positioned for this^^ task as:
…an affiliate who was apparently impressed by how bryant’s strong mind worked asked:
‘Do you ask God to help you ?’
…to which bryant modestly replied:
‘No! I”m the agent “God” sent to help’.
declaring that TM affiliates are like Army Ants bryant then devised an Attack Plan:
after sufficiently pumping himself up with such war talk^^ the ant king who doubles up as the agent of god, set out to meet peggy hunt and get TM back to it’s legitimate mound.
so er, this is what bryant says happened:
so TM lawyer comes up and then drags crazy guy out of court:
yup, i can understand why the lawyer didn’t want bryant to tell the judge he had joined TM to make ‘lots and lots of money’!!
using a wall as a whiteboard, bryant then proceeded to teach the lawyer a thing or two about TM and about himself:
to bryant’s amazement instead of falling at his feet with gratitude, the lawyer:
the explanation bryant supplies for the very upset lawyer not returning to the court room is:
^^^ROFL yet?
and the crowning glory of it all, is that bryant has returned from utah convinced that he has achieved his game plan:
yup, how many conspiracy shade throwers do you know eh??
I almost feel sorry for Scoville’s lawyers.
…almost.
From the case docket (30th Nov):
Scoville has filed a Motion to Dismiss, which is pretty much a rehash of his opposition to the preliminary injunction.
Not sure why he’s filed it prior to a decision on the injunction. If the injunction goes in favor of the SEC, the Motion to Dismiss is DOA (same arguments).
Rather than waste their time replying to the same Facebook arguments, the SEC filed a motion requesting a continuance of the deadline.
They’ve been granted an extension, with a reply to Scoville’s Motion to Dismiss not required until 28 days after the preliminary injunction decision is made.
Smart move, the motion to dismiss has nothing new in it that’s not already being argued out in the motion for a preliminary injunction.
I wonder how much of Traffic Monsoon investor funds was spent filing premature motions?
Oh dear. Shirley Scoville’s Paypal account has also been limited through her Funding Justice account.
Ooops!
wheretofindwealth.com/paypal-attack-scoville/