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

Around the same time, in October, Lefebvre lent his brother the jet. “Ted’s an oil and gas guy,” says Lefebvre. “He’s one of the leaders of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Landmen (CAPL). So he goes to the American APL, too. That year they had the American meeting in Albuquerque and the Canadian meeting in Montreal. He and his boss weren’t going to take in both unless they had private aircraft, just because of tight connections. So my plane flew into Albuquerque with my brother — J.E. Lefebvre, not J.D. Lefebvre.”

Lefebvre imagined the scenario unfolding on the tarmac: “All these FBI guys down there on the runway with their walkie-talkies: ‘They’re on the runway. They’re landing. They’re getting out … It’s not him! He’s not on the plane! Turn your backs! Abort! Don’t let anybody see you!’” And he imagined his brother surrounded by guys wearing black suits and black sunglasses and white socks. “That probably wasn’t the only time they were following my plane.”

Around the same time, he said, another unsettling event happened. A lawyer approached Neteller with some information, saying, “We think you’re in the crosshairs.” No one took it seriously.

Michael Lipton, as a gambling lawyer, took it seriously. He didn’t want to speculate too much about the DOJ targeting a Canadian company, but he did have a few ideas: “First of all,” he says, “it was foolish of both of them to be in the United States. They knew about Carruthers. I guess they were deaf, dumb, blind, and stupid.”

Lipton believed the DOJ wanted to stake out a strident position: the United States is not a jurisdiction that is hospitable to gaming. According to Lipton, their thinking went, “Anybody who comes here, we don’t give a shit.” He also thought the prosecutors looking into this case might see the former Neteller executives as “low-hanging fruit,” men who could be “stepping stones” for their futures.

Lipton also clarified that the DOJ’s aggressiveness extended beyond current company operators to founders and owners. If you had divested from the company you started, well, too bad. So far as the DOJ was concerned, you were still involved. “You’re not going to be able to bury your past,” he says. “That was a strong statement the DOJ wanted to make.”

All Lefebvre will say about being deaf, dumb, blind, and stupid is, “We didn’t think they’d prosecute.”

In December, Lefebvre stayed home on Salt Spring until a couple of days before Christmas. Then he flew to Calgary and stayed at his Mount Royal house. His brother, Ted, and Ted’s wife, Gail, hosted Christmas at their place. Emily and Pádraig were in town with a couple of Calgary friends and some Irish buddies as well. After dinner with her grandmother, aunt, and uncle, Emily and the gang flew to L.A. to hang out at both Malibu 1 and 2.

“That was the first time we had bush fires down there,” Lefebvre says. He flew down to join his daughter early in the new year. He continues, “I remember I was downtown, in the guitar store at Westwood, buying guitars. Emily phoned and said, ‘Have you heard anything about fires out here?’ So we turned on the TV in the guitar store and, sure enough, big fires in Malibu. I phoned Emily back and she said, ‘We went out on the street. It looks like tons of smoke coming this way.’ I said, ‘It might be a good idea to get your passports and head down to Malibu 1,’ which is twelve houses further west.”

The Santa Ana winds — assisted blaze destroyed four homes, including the mansion belonging to Suzanne “ThighMaster” Somers.

“Then I tried to get home,” Lefebvre recalls. “It was tough to get into the neighborhood. You had to prove you were from there. It was weird. Finally, they let me in.”

That was Monday, January 8. Emily, Pádraig, and their friends packed up and flew home a few days later. Then Lefebvre had both places to himself for the weekend. It was a long weekend because Monday was a holiday. Martin Luther King Day.

My Bail’s Bigger Than Your Bail, Part 2

Day Five, Friday, January 19, 2007, Oklahoma City Federal Transfer Center (FTC): Con Air touches down at Will Rogers World Airport, located on Oklahoma City’s west flank, about three miles west of Interstate 44, which hems in most of the city’s subdivisions. The plane taxis down a runway to the southwest corner of the airport, docking at a building shaped like a hexagon. From there, prisoners deplane directly into the FTC.

Think of Oklahoma City as a hub, sort of the O’Hare of Con Air. Marshals escort prisoners through an enormous holding tank, which has steel coverings all over it, like on the back of transport trucks, so no damage can be inflicted. Lefebvre stands in the room with a bunch of other guys. They make him fill out a sheet of paper. They hand him a pencil, a stubby one, like a golf pencil. They don’t want him stabbing anybody. He jots down what is necessary. The guy with the skull tat for a head is in there with him. He meets some other guy sporting a nicely trimmed mustache — smallish guy but looks like he takes care of himself. He wasn’t on the Con Air flight, but he’s in the same tank. Lefebvre finds out he’s twenty-two years into a forty-year sentence for trafficking pot in Texas, and wonders about it. Sixteen hundred pounds is a lot of weed, but still.

Unshackled, Lefebvre pulls out his phone. He tries his lawyer. Knowing these guys, he figures they won’t tell Marella where they’ve taken him. It’s up to him to make contact and let his lawyer know exactly which godforsaken shithole he’s ensconced in, but you can’t dial out to cell phone numbers on Con Air or in Oklahoma, and cell numbers are all he has. He has one other useful number, Marella’s office line, but now it’s after five o’clock on the coast so it’s on message. What he really needs is a calling card or a U.S. credit card. Lefebvre doesn’t have anything except Canadian credit cards and his cell, so he’s SOL.

While Lefebvre ponders how he’s going to survive the Oklahoma circle of Dante’s Inferno, Stephen Lawrence arrives in New York from the Virgin Islands. He is ready to appear before the Honorable Douglas F. Eaton, United States magistrate judge, for his arraignment/bail proceedings. It’s the first round of United States v. Stephen Eric Lawrence, and his lawyer, Peter Gillies Neiman, Esq., will attempt to win some freedom of movement for his client. United States Assistant Attorney Timothy J. Treanor, Esq., has other plans. He will try to prove to Judge Eaton that the ridiculously wealthy Lawrence is a classic white-collar criminal and a major flight risk who should be placed under strict supervision until he can establish a compliance record with pretrial services.

The day before, the Calgary Herald had run an article about the bust of two hometown success stories. The reporter quoted Toronto gaming lawyer Michael Lipton, whose assessment wouldn’t bolster the defense’s confidence: “The U.S. is exerting its long arm in an effort to totally stamp out online gaming in their country, and in this case are pushing as hard as they can.”

In Courtroom 5A, 500 Pearl Street, New York, Judge Eaton asks, “What is the government’s position on bail?” and the FBI lawyer gives him a mouthful. Treanor says the government is “troubled” by Lawrence’s failure to disclose his assets fully, adding that “it’s really a matter of public record that Mr. Lawrence made well in excess of $100 million from his involvement in Neteller PLC, which is the business at issue in this case, and he has disclosed only a fraction of those assets in his pretrial services report. We’re concerned that Mr. Lawrence will use those assets to remove himself from U.S. jurisdiction.”