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

Lefebvre stands frozen for a second. Holy shit, now what? He runs around the house in a panic trying to locate the bag of pot he was toking from last night. He’s got to stash it somewhere quickly, but he can’t find it!

He hears the ring again. Fuck! He walks up the spiral stairs. The house, because it backs onto the ocean, is at a higher elevation at street level. From Malibu Road and up the walkway to the entrance and vestibule and then to the guest room and adjacent washroom is all one version of reality. But then there are two spiral staircases. One ascends to the master bedroom, with its outdoor shower unit on the roof, its large sauna for warming the body after a dip in the ocean, its pearl inlay chest of five drawers, and the second bedroom. The other descends unimpressively at first then grandly to the main living space. To walk down these steps is to enter another world — the full majesty of the ocean view comes into play, the din of crashing surf a jolting but welcome visual and aural sensation. The sumptuous living room on the right — with its Bösendorfer grand piano and centuries-old Mongolian rug — dominate the foreground. To the left, in the middle of the space, the dining area, with its massive, dark, ancient-looking table for sixteen, suggests conversation, frivolity, fine wine, and dining in a casual environment. Panning left, the stainless-steel trophy kitchen, kept immaculately clean by Lefebvre’s housekeeper, Luisa Esquivel, has the standard kitchen table near the floor-to-ceiling glass windows for tea, for breakfast, for writing, for emailing, and for other less formal occasions and tasks. Along the entire west face of the house runs a deck filled with come-hither lounge furniture. The probability that Lefebvre will invite the FBI outside to sit on chaises longues is low. He answers the door.

“John Lefebvre?”

“Yes.”

“John Lefebvre involved in Neteller Inc.?”

“Yes.”

“We’re here to arrest you on charges of money laundering, racketeering, and conspiracy.”

“Oh.”

“Please put your hands behind your back.”

Lefebvre is cuffed. They don’t have to tell him his life is about to change. He understands what’s about to happen is no good — no fucking good at all — and it’s going to take strength, quite a bit of strength. He grasps this, absorbs this, this hardcore, visceral feeling that gnaws at him. Beyond the gnawing, though, above all else, he knows what he really needs to do right here and now, in this particular instant, is to be cool. Be cool .

Whatever happens, you’ve been to jail before . Except this time, he realizes, he’ll be going to a jail in Los Angeles. This freaks him out more than anything else at the moment — he’ll be spending some indeterminate period of time in a spooky situation — so he repeats a little mantra to himself: Be cool, just be cool. Be cool. Just be cool …

The two FBI agents and three U.S. marshals escort Lefebvre down his spiral staircase and into his kitchen. They ask him to sit down at his kitchen table. He looks at his tea and it takes Lefebvre a few milliseconds to think, How the fuck do these guys expect me to drink my tea? There’s no way …

“Hey you guys, I’ve just made myself a cup of tea and I can’t drink it with my hands cuffed behind my back. Do we need it to be this way?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not trying to be argumentative, but help me to understand why my hands need to be cuffed behind my back. I don’t think you know who you’re dealing with here. I’m a gentleman. What is your concern? Maybe we can allay it.”

“We don’t know you’re a gentleman. We don’t know if you have guns here somewhere. We don’t know that you’re going to pop one of us in the head and run for it down the beach or …”

“Look, guys, I own twenty million worth of property on this beach. I have a daughter, I have family, I have a home, I have a mother. I’m not, you know … I’m a gentleman.”

“I’ll put your cuffs on in front of you if you make me one promise,” says the federal marshal, “that you’ll not rise from your chair.”

“Why? I will make that promise, but I’m just interested.”

“We have to do it that way, it’s a security matter. We don’t know what you might be tempted to do.”

“Okay, you have my promise.”

The marshals and FBI decide he won’t make a break for his weapons stash and off them before jumping on his Ducati and making a break for the border. They decide he is what he says he is — a gentleman. A marshal un-cuffs Lefebvre’s hands. He asks Lefebvre to put his hands out in front out him. He cuffs Lefebvre’s hands in front of him. Both of Lefebvre’s hands are now on his table.

Not only can Lefebvre now drink his morning tea in his chair at his kitchen table in his house, surrounded by five guests who have invited themselves in on a holiday Monday morning just after 9 a.m., he can also use his cell phone.

Lefebvre talks his way into being allowed to make more than the standard one phone call. He needs to make two calls, right? For sure one call has to go to Lisa, his lunch partner. He’s a gentleman. He doesn’t want to stand up his friend and blow off their date. More important, he needs to explain to her about Hilary, about how they’ve been hanging out for three or four weeks now, a couple of times in Canada, a couple of days at Christmas, and how even from a distance, Malibu to Salt Spring, something indeed has been stirring over the phone and back and forth on email, and how he’s about to enter into what he likes to call an accommodation with another lady, and this lunch date they were to have, it had an agenda, breaking up — not that they were ever “together” together but, well, you know what he means.

Lefebvre sips his tea for a bit. Then the five officers escort him up the stairs of his house. The FBI agents and U.S. federal marshals make sure the house is locked. They escort their captured quarry to a squad car. Lefebvre informs the agents, “I need to talk to my assistant in Canada who’s going to make arrangements for my legal counsel and whatnot.” Lefebvre calls Geoff Savage, his business manager, “the CEO of John.” Savage doesn’t answer. Now he has to make a third call. He tries for Marian Bankes, Savage’s assistant.

“Hi Marian, it’s John. I’m in the back of a black squad car that’s being piloted by U.S. federal marshals. I’m sitting beside an officer for the FBI. I’m under arrest and they’re taking me downtown. I need you to let Geoff know that I’ll be needing some assistance and I’m not going to be home tomorrow.”

Bankes is stunned. Unable to comprehend what her insouciant, hippie hedonist, environmental philanthropist, multi- multi- multi-millionaire employer has just mouthed into the receiver. Lefebvre is the nicest guy in the world, the sweetest boss — he gives all his money away to people who need help, to worthy causes large and small — there’s got to be some mistake! She’s got to find Geoff and get him on the case ASAP.

Lefebvre looks at the federal marshal. “Is that right — I’m not going to be home tomorrow?”

“No.”

While the FBI visits Lefebvre, Stephen Lawrence is being brought into a U.S. Virgin Islands courtroom in ankle chains. An AP news report says he has been arrested on St. John Island on a “warrant from the U.S. Attorney’s office in New York,” accused of “funneling billions of dollars in illegal gambling proceeds to overseas betting operations” and charged with “money laundering.”

A rumor will spread that Lawrence has been duped. The FBI needs both Lawrence and Lefebvre to be on American soil at the same time to execute the bust. If only one is on U.S. soil, the other naturally will bolt. Lawrence is with his family on a cruise ship next door, so to speak, in the British Virgin Islands. Lefebvre’s already in Malibu, and now Lawrence is so tantalizingly close. So the rumor goes, the skipper of the ship is an American and the FBI orders him to feign engine trouble and head for U.S. waters. When Lawrence and his family disembark in St. John, the Neteller cofounder is nabbed and chained. Not a great image for the FBI to imprint on the guy’s daughter.