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

When Louise finally made the move out of her parents’ home, a feeling of calm came over her: “I still knew a lot of army people in Calgary, plus my old friends, and we had a great housewarming. When I saw all that happen I thought this is wonderful that I have my own home again. It’s good.”

During the period 2002–03, when her son set up and ran a Neteller office in San José, Costa Rica, he would make time for frequent visits with friends and family back home. John understood and spoke Spanish badly — at best at a second-grade level — so his ears thirsted for the ubiquity of his native tongue. On one of these breaks, he said, “Hey Mom, let’s go for a walk. I want to buy you a house.” They walked over to their old Roxboro neighborhood. They started to walk all along Rideau Road, in the middle of the road.

“There may be some traffic here, John. Why are we walking here?”

“Because it’s our street, Mom. It’s our neighborhood.”

Anne, John, and Ted grew up on Rideau, and John wanted to reclaim it.

“My children really loved that neighborhood,” says Louise. “It was a lovely place to be. We had tar-topped streets. It was a bit oily, but it was there to hold the gravel down.”

John’s version of childhood is much the same, except there are some things mothers need not know. He recalls,

We lived at my grandparents’ place on Garden Crescent, and then Mom bought a house in Roxboro, which turned out to be a kind of ritzy district but wasn’t when we lived there. It was a nice place to grow up, the river and the hill. When we were six or seven we used to take girls up the hill and make them show us their parts. Up by the Chinese cemetery, see if we could make them let us smell them. “Can I smell your bum?”

“Okay, but don’t look.”

“Okay, I promise I won’t.”

Robb Lucy made me do it. I remember we were at this one place and Robb got a look at this one beautiful young lady, she was probably four years younger than us, we were probably eleven and she was seven, and Robb said, “You should let John have a look.”

She said, “I don’t want to, I feel shy.”

“Well, what if you just pretend it’s just me looking and John peeks over the barbecue, would that by okay?”

She says, “Yeah.” So Robb got another look, but I was allowed to peek over the barbecue. And then her big brother walked by in the driveway and we were completely busted. “They made me do it!” she says, and then Robb yells, “Run!” As if they didn’t know who we were or where to find us. “Run!” That was smart.

We had tons of fun. There were places where we could throw crabapples at cop cars and run, ring doorbells and run. We used to play war. I remember Debbie, she was just about our age, she turned out to be a junkie — probably because of the way we abused her. We’d play war and Debbie would be the nurse. We’d have fights about who got wounded first.

“I got wounded before you did.”

“No you didn’t, I did!”

So Debbie would nurse us, and that was lovely.

With girls I realized there was something there to be interested in, I guess. Hate to admit it, but yup. It was all Robb Lucy’s fault; it wasn’t me. Robb would go into yards at night and say, “You just wait here, I’m just going to go in and steal some carrots and I’ll be right back. It’ll be okay.” And then he goes in and rather than stealing carrots he sneaks a look into the basement where the girls are having a slumber party. And then he comes running out and says, “It’s okay!” And he just keeps running. So then I’m standing there and the dad comes and grabs me. Robb was such a smart aleck.

Louise has remained single since Mun died. She made the decision early on: “I met another fellow named Lefebvre once. He was so much fun and, yes, he wanted to get married. But I thought: I know what I have; I don’t know what I might get. And with three babies, you’re not the most popular date in town, either.”

“It’s difficult, it really is,” she continues. “I thought it would be nice to have someone to take you out to dinner and that sort of thing, but the longer I’ve been on my own …” She gestures to the condominium she’s living in now. “A lot of people live in these apartments with one big closet in each bedroom; I need both of them. I guess I was a little leery about making that kind of commitment.”

Louise worries about her son and the stress he’s being put under by the FBI: “I hope this thing ends soon and they take as much money as they want, but don’t do anything else. He says, ‘Mom, stop worrying. I’m not going to tell you anything if you keep on worrying.’ But I just noticed him this weekend with the pressure …”

As the afternoon I interview Louise happens to be during prep week for Emily’s marriage and celebration, Louise gets to watch her son fidget in his lower Mount Royal house, trying to keep it tidy for the coming onslaught of guests and relatives from Canada and Ireland. “He was up washing dishes,” she says. “Yet when he’s here, I do that and he would say, ‘Come in here and sit down. You don’t need to do that now.’”

I offer that, yes, he does seem quite agitated and preoccupied, but I assure Louise that it’s the added pressure of the wedding that has him going, not the fact that he is still waiting to be sentenced. Lefebvre pled guilty on July 10, 2007, and now here we are, mid-October 2008, and there’s still no word. Jane McMullen, who helps run the Lefebvre Foundation, a nonprofit that doles out money as it sees fit, has been lining up the funds to pay the huge forfeiture the DOJ demands. The FBI seems to want the money right now, yet is willing to let Lefebvre dangle out there, suspended in presentencing, as bait for other internet gambling targets they have: “Hey, we got Lefebvre and Lawrence down for forty and sixty mil and up to five years. Come in and talk to us. We might give you a similar deal.” Sure, that could weigh heavily, but right now it’s the wedding.

“Sure it is,” says Louise. “Pádraig’s family was invited, but they didn’t expect so many people to be part of the family. It’s turned out the family is a hundred people. They’re set for it, but …”

Lefebvre will be set for it. Uptight is anathema to him. This goes back to his insouciant teenage rebellion days. His hair grows long, his freak flag does not fly half-mast. He wants to wear what he wants to wear. Sure, he was drunk on money after the Neteller geyser exploded, buying whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted, wherever he wanted. But, eventually, jeans and T-shirts started to look good again. While everyone else places a premium on formality, Lefebvre might or might not play along. Louise knows this:

We had one dinner. We worked hard on it, with all the girls dressed to the nines. In came John with his orange shirt on his belly and the holes in the knees. There he is, being a hospitable host. His friend Hilary, she looked gorgeous. He doesn’t feel you have to all dress the same way just because you’re all together.

We were so, so conscious of the unimportant things. And John wasn’t. He was conscious of the important things. And in that I love him dearly.

Can I go and get my hair done now?

A Revved-up Teenage Head

Lefebvre spent his teenage years mostly up to no good, “running around and drinking and stealing booze.” He had accelerated to St. Mary’s a year ahead of his friends and found he had to prove himself socially. His mom said his learning ability was exceptional, yet it was tough to leave his buddies behind: “He purposefully tried to stay back when he got to St. Mary’s because the kids would call him an egghead.” Lefebvre endured the usual taunts before things turned around in high school. “For a few years there,” Louise admits, “he got cool.”