Bill Reynolds - Life Real Loud - John Lefebvre, Neteller and the Revolution in Online Gambling

So I’m talking to these DOJ guys and they’re asking me why I quit Neteller, and they want me to say something like, “I’d been breaking the law and now I realize I have to stop.” But instead I’m telling them, “I worked hard, made a couple of bucks and now I want to get back to my life. My partner Steve, he’s different. You know, some guys just want to be Warren Buffett …”

“Yeah,” says one of the FBI agents, “and some guys just want to be Jimmy Buffett.”

The best way to set up a story about Lefebvre, a friend tells me, is to compare two Canadians who, in parallel, got into trouble with U.S. authorities. One is a well-known, flamboyant, loquacious, upper-crust Toronto media mogul named Conrad Black, who hobnobbed with English royalty, idolized Napoleon Bonaparte, played war games with toy soldiers, and spent lavishly on his buxom columnist wife. The unflappable “Robber Baron” was taken down by jury trial in Chicago on July 13, 2007. Now he is on the prowl — as socialite, author/historian, and talk show co-host lobbing Nerf balls at guests — attempting to restore his good name with Toronto high society.

The other is John Lefebvre, a not-so-well-known hippie rock ’n’ roller and internet entrepreneur from Calgary. He made a mega-fortune after the company he cofounded took its innovation public on the London Stock Exchange. While he purchased many baubles for himself, he also spread his money around to family, to friends, to his alma mater, and to charitable organizations, dedicating a healthy portion of his fortune to causes he thought worthy of people’s support and attention. And so while Conrad Black is the modern Robber Baron, Lefebvre — the flip side of this hit single — is the modern Robin Hood. I agree. That’s a good story, which ignores the fact that Black cheated his shareholders while Lefebvre crossed the DOJ.

Then again, the story is also about not only Neteller but Lefebvre himself. He likes to talk in hippie language from the sixties (“Some cats are comin’ ’round later”). Sure, he can play the eloquent, hyper-enunciating lawyer, but he’ll quote Lennon when he’s not quoting his own lyrics. He thought dropping acid over forty years ago was his greatest formative experience — and still does. He believes in the ideals of his generation, which are currently being played out in the politics of global warming. His sharp, deductive mind questions everything around him, whether it’s his producer’s moves in the studio or the outmoded business practices of North American car companies (reduce the number of models, he says, and they can still prosper — and they did).

Lefebvre can be fiery. He’ll explode with indignation, machine-gunning the conversation with expletives, the most oft-used being “fuck,” “fucking,” “asshole,” “cocksucker,” and “cunt.” Sort of like George Carlin’s 1972 list, but not quite. This sounds like overkill on paper, but mostly it’s colorful coming from Lefebvre, if exhausting. Sometimes when he’s vocal about political peeves — the butchery of infibulations, for example — his one-way hectoring veers into offensive territory. I’ve seen him give women a tour of his massive resort property redevelopment on Salt Spring Island, be otherwise perfectly amiable and charming, and then insist that it’s not okay for men to go around slicing out clitorises. He means well, of course.

Most of the time he worms inside your head with his insistence that the world should be freer, that people should be freer, that all human beings should be able to say and think what they want. This simple mantra is not without merit, and his energy in delivering it is contagious.

Lefebvre would not be who he is without contradictions. He is impulsive and hedonistic, yet empathetic and conversational. He wants to save the earth with his money, yet he buys carbon points and flies around in a personal jet. He loves to throw around his money and make sure everyone has a good time, yet he’s the one who controls that good time. Like more famous men of his generation, he seems to embody that dual spirit of doing whatever he wants and saving the world simultaneously. Problem is, there is consumption and then there are limits, and we’re bumping on limits now. Lately, Lefebvre’s answer to the world’s problems is this: we need to go through a crisis and lose a few billion in order to make this place sustainable.

A Catholic born and raised, Lefebvre has no time for religion, yet religious imagery pops up in his speech regularly. He’ll become consumed by an offbeat television show like John from Cincinnati , which is about an idiot savant Christ figure and a surfing family, and defend it even though it tanked (maybe it was the overdose of profanity). When it came to naming his first album, he betrayed two things: one, a lifelong infatuation with puns, and two, a deep interest in what the world has come to label “religion,” even as he denies it. “I admit the whole conceit of Psalngs ,” he tells me. Psalms/Psalngs — get it? “I’ve told you all the songs are about love, light, and God, but I probably wouldn’t say that anymore. People get confused when they hear the word God . They think you mean something aside from the myth. To me, it’s a reference to that from which flows the miracle of love.”

Over the time I’ve gotten reacquainted with him — since his FBI bust about seven years ago and subsequent fall from grace as the philanthropist Santa Claus — Lefebvre has maintained a courageous sense of normalcy. It has taken a lot just to be himself, increasingly so as the FBI refused to let him off its barbed hook. He has flashed uncharacteristic anger at times. He has looked sullen at others. And he has pampered himself with wine and food, which shows. Now in his early sixties, he can no longer afford to add the pounds. Yet he has, eschewing exercise in most forms except tennis. It’s the one visible reminder of how much the DOJ has changed him.

Mind you, he has tried to take control. His Facebook status page flashed this public confession on July 28, 2013: “It’s official, I’m under 240 for the first time this century. Since May 6, 2013, down thirty-two pounds. I’m 239.6 and all my clothes are like sixties teeny boppers, hangin’ off me.” He has been trying to avoid potatoes, pasta, pancakes, and sugars, and he has restricted himself to one or two bottles of wine a week. If he keeps that regimen up, the cellar on Salt Spring might remain stocked for a while.

Previously, when he was out on the town at a local restaurant, which happened at least a couple of times a week, if he found a vintage wine on the menu to his liking, he would talk to the owner and negotiate a buyout of the supply. He would drink that wine whenever but save the four-hundred-dollar-and-up stuff. Perhaps he would wait until his oenophile friend Jim Hoggan happened to be in town, perhaps not. He might just savor it alone. But there had to be a limit to tossing good money away. For instance, he might have thought twice about wasting a brilliant red on a certain writer who had trouble telling the difference between a fifteen- or twenty-buck mass-production job and an aging cab’s luxuriant bouquet.

Lefebvre has indulged in one other vice — something he wouldn’t consider a vice at all — nonstop since he was old enough to do so. His epitaph, he says, should read:

HERE LIES

JOHN DAVID CULLEN LEFEBVRE

1951–20XX

HE NEVER STOPPED TOKIN’

Lefebvre hasn’t changed much, yet I’m certain his wealth cannot help but affect those who come into his orbit. His philanthropy has made many pay attention to his pet causes and feel grateful. “John,” I ask, “who are your enemies?”

“When you give away so much of your own money to so many people,” he replies, “there aren’t many around. I don’t know, maybe Terence Corcoran at the National Post ?” (Corcoran thinks global warming is a hoax that gets in the way of business competitiveness.) “Or you could talk to my ex-wives,” he adds, “they’ll tell you the truth.”