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

Lefebvre strolls into the mess hall for breakfast. He looks around. He’s carrying a piece of white cake with rock-hard pink icing on it. They call it coffee cake. It’s either that or cardboard puffed-rice-type things. Plus the half-pints of milk his German confederate bargains for every day. There’s nowhere to sit down at the “white” tables, so he joins a table of five black guys. He says, “Can I join you guys for breakfast?”

Guy looks up and says, “Free country.”

Lefebvre thinks, Okay, better just sit down and shut up . He takes one bite out of the white cake with the pink icing and thinks, Oh man. I don’t really, I don’t know if I want this . He says to Free Country guy, “Do you want my cake?”

Free Country says, “Hey, why would I take cake from you when I can go over and get some more of my own.”

Lefebvre says, “Okay. Thank you.”

He gets the hint and gets up from the table. After the eight-to-ten lockdown, the races actually do mix and mingle a bit. During the day, Spanish guys and Chinese guys will hang with white guys. They’ll play card games together, but at mealtime the racial divisions are fucking strict.

Lefebvre approaches another white guy during the mix-and-mingle. “I got a feeling I committed a faux pas this morning.”

“You’re fucking right you did.”

“What? Tell me, I need to know.”

“Yeah, you don’t do that.”

“Who do I offend? Do I offend the white guys or the black guys?”

“You offend everybody.”

“Man, I don’t get it. I really don’t get it. Black guys, white guys — what the fuck? What the fuck’s with you guys? What’s the fucking difference?”

“It’s not to get, it’s to do. You’re lucky it happened in here. If it had been in, you know, any place else, the black guy would have put you down on the floor, you’d have got kicked in the nuts, you’d a tried to get up and get the cereal off your face and a white guy would come over and give you the same thing again.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“Where are you from?”

“Canada.”

Just after lunch, guards take Lefebvre to court for his bail hearing. Another half-dozen guys from his cell block are down for the same thing. Guys stand up and listen about their bail bonds, how much it’s going to cost to get out. No bail, $1,000 bail, $5,000 bail. If you’re in jail charged with a beef, you can you pay ten percent or maybe fifteen percent of a bail bond. A bondsman will pay the rest of it. He goes on the line for it. If you mess up, the bail bondsman comes after you. Free enterprise.

It’s Lefebvre’s turn. He stands up. Devona Gardner, his bail supervisor, is his pretrial interviewer. She asks, “You travel much … how many countries have you been to?”

“You mean this year?”

“No.”

“Really? Fifty? I don’t know. Probably easier for me to tell you the countries I haven’t been to.”

That’s it. “He’s a flight risk,” she says and recommends incarceration.

After Bankes managed to alert Savage, he’d contacted Neteller’s Calgary office. Gord Herman, the company’s president, stepped up. He found Vince Marella, a founding partner of the Century City law firm Bird, Marella, Boxer, Wolpert, Nessim, Drooks & Lincenberg. Marella is a quintessential Beverly Hills lawyer who wears fine-tailored suits and whose focus is white-collar crime.

“Your Honor,” says Marella, rising. “We’ve reached an accommodation with the Department of Justice. My friend will assist me here, but we’ve come to terms of release. My friend agrees that there will be a bail bond.”

His Honor says, “What are the terms?”

Marella replies, “Five million dollars cash bail.”

By the time Lefebvre gets back to his cell, everybody in the joint, not just his floor, knows there’s this guy in the cell block who’s just paid five million cash bail. Suddenly, everything is different. Suddenly, he gets to sit at the middle table in the lunchroom — the table where the biggest white guys sit. Everybody treats him with respect. They come up to him at the big white table and ask him questions about what they should do about this, what should they do about that.

January 16, 2007, Geoffrey Savage writes: “Word is John’s bail is set at $5 mil. Conditions: turn in passport, travel restricted to Central District of California and New York, daily reporting to pretrial coordinator and appear in New York Jan 29. Jane’s trying madly to get the money there ASAP so that he’ll be released sometime late tomorrow.”

January 16, 2007, 5:37 p.m., Emily Lefebvre writes: “Hi Geoff, Here are both of my phone numbers, in case they get lost, or Dad can’t get his BlackBerry back or whatever. 011-353-85148-XXXX. 011-353-1202-XXXX. Thanks for the info.”

January 16, 2007, 6:40 p.m., Jane McMullen (née Bergman) writes: “Hi Emily: I am told I will have enough CAD$ in my account first thing in the morning from the bank! I then need to convert to USD and wire to the lawyer in U.S.! I am planning on getting up at 6 a.m. Calgary time which is when the foreign exchange branch of Toronto Dominion opens to arrange in advance the contract to do the foreign exchange. That way the minute funds show up in the account I can wire the funds to the U.S. lawyer — at least it’s California and they are one hour behind us. Hopefully the funds will get there early enough for them to be able to do their thing to get your dad released tomorrow!! I will send you an email and let you know when I have wired the funds to the U.S. or if I run into any complications. Love you!! — Jane”

Day Three, Wednesday, January 17, 2007, MDC L.A.: Marella goes to see Lefebvre in the morning:

“John, we’ve got a problem.”

“What’s that?”

“They won’t give Jane the money.”

McMullen has been working on the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce in Calgary to get it to release some of Lefebvre’s assets — at least enough to pay the $5-million bail. The CIBC personnel aren’t so sure they should be releasing funds to a guy the U.S. DOJ has identified as a money launderer. Lefebvre puts his head between his knees. He sits in this position for thirty seconds. Finally, he sits up. He looks at Marella and smiles. “You know, Vince, it was a great run.”

“They haven’t actually frozen your accounts,” says Marella, “but your bank is reluctant because your name is all over the Canadian newspapers as a money launderer. Jane has gone into the bank and said, ‘Show me the document by which you withhold those funds. You have a contractual obligation to give me those funds.’”

“That’s my Jane right there,” Lefebvre says.

That’s his Jane, indeed. McMullen has guts. She fights the bank hard, demanding proof that it can withhold Lefebvre’s funds, but the encounter takes a toll as TD Canada Trust personnel enrage and upset her. By the time the meeting is over she is beside herself. She breaks down, crying, shaking. “If you don’t have a check for me this afternoon,” she warns them, “I’ll have a statement of claim on your desk suing you for breach of your obligations under the Bank Act. What do you think of that?”

January 17, 2007, 12:34 a.m., Geoffrey Savage writes: “Hi Emily. John will be able to talk to you from home in Malibu when he’s out. He’ll probably need some sleep so let him call you. Don’t know if the FBI took his computers or not so don’t count on that working soon.”

Day Four, Thursday, January 18, 2007, MDC L.A.: A guard knocks on Lefebvre’s cell at five in the morning, waking him up two hours earlier than usual. Great , he thinks, bail’s finally come through . “Have your breakfast,” the guard says, “we’re shipping you out.