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

Meranda’s final days with Neteller were spent working out of her house. Bob Edmunds and Gordon Herman wanted to shut down the San José office but keep her on. They kicked some expense money her way to set up a home office. Meranda took the offer but then found — as many do — that she worked harder when work was home. Before Rob took over John’s responsibilities, Meranda says they hired a guy named Bruce, who was unfamiliar with Neteller’s informal work-hard, play-hard, no-bullshit ethos. He acted like a typical Canadian bureaucratic boss, concerned with displaying power over his employees. Bruce didn’t realize he was supposed to get out of the way and let them do their jobs. He assigned Meranda tasks and reports that had nothing to do with improving the company’s fortunes. As she put it, “He made me waste time doing silly stuff that wasn’t really needed.” It made her miserable.

John was clearly the guy who stirred the drink in Costa Rica, but then he met Cecilia, and, after a torrid start, the relationship seemed to develop a kind of evanescence as it formalized. And so, yes, John fled to Malibu, leaving Meranda behind with Matteo and working for Rob. As for Cecilia, she wasn’t going anywhere. This was her home, which was our next stop.

Cecilia’s compound is located in a subdivision called Trejos Montealegre, outside San José. When people give directions, there are no formal addresses. Go past the intersection, you know, the one with the store on the corner — you’ll see it — then turn right. Watch out for that tree, yeah, that one, jutting into the road. You can’t miss it, they’ve painted the trunk white. After you steer around it, go another hundred yards or so, hang a left down that street, then turn left on that street and there, see, that’s Cecilia’s place.

And when you make that first left, take a look out the passenger side. Notice the garbage strewn across the dirt shoulder, half burned. People just pile stuff up and light bonfires: TVs, computers, paper, plastic — you name it, they burn it. Even people living in million-dollar homes can’t be bothered to recycle. They won’t believe you if you tell them computers are filled with toxins. Future generations, they’ve never heard of it.

John had a story about that. There was a bridge nearby. Underneath it, squatters eked out an existence and threw their garbage out onto the street. He suggested to Cecilia that they could pay the kids to clean things up, give them part-time work, pay them by the bag and clean up the neighborhood. Cecilia told him he was out of his mind. The kids wouldn’t pick up anything except bags from down the street and charge him for them. John wasn’t going to fight that logic.

Matteo may be of Italian descent, but he’s also a Tico and a father, and he cares enough about the pollution to become a pest to police. He phones them every time he sees a plume of smoke: “Do you know my daughter has asthma? Get them to stop!”

“Ah, Matteo, how are you?” He’s on a first-name basis with the cops. “Don’t worry, we’ve sent someone to go snuff out the fire.” First rule of law enforcement: placate.

The fire continues to burn. Matteo goes out to inspect. Liars. They let the entire area burn, along with all the toxic plastic junk. Recycling in San José is a work in progress.

Meranda and I drive toward Cecilia’s place in the big van. Meranda is visibly nervous. “I don’t know,” she says, shaking her head. “It’s been a long time.” John and Cecilia and Meranda and Matteo, they were buds back in the day. They used to hang out together — a lot. Then J and C broke up, and it was devastating. M & M worked for J and knew J first. Battle lines, however reluctantly on M’s part, had to be drawn. It wasn’t that M didn’t want to see C. They always got along. But M was still at Neteller, so it was awkward.

The point is, Meranda hasn’t seen Cecilia in years. She’s bumped into her on the street a couple of times, said hi, but that’s it. Understandably, she’s a little scared of the reaction she might get from her erstwhile pal. She rings the doorbell. The gardener notices us and comes over. He asks what we want. Meranda answers in Spanish. We want to see Cecilia, if possible, por favor . He leaves. A cleaning lady comes to the door. She asks what we want. We want to see Cecilia, if possible, por favor . She goes away. Another cleaning lady comes to the door. She asks what we want. We want to see Cecilia, if possible, por favor . Meranda apologizes again for the unannounced intrusion. No problemo if we can’t see her, we were just in the neighborhood.

We wait. I recall John’s vexation at having to wait three hours for Cecilia one night after they had agreed to go out to dinner. We could be here a while.

But no, I’m wrong. After about ten minutes, Cecilia makes her appearance. She walks slowly toward us. She comes to the gate. We peer at her and she peers at us. The gate separates us. She is not going to open the gate for her dear old friend Meranda; this is the implication. She remains ensconced behind black wrought iron, protected from us, from the world. She looks as if she has isolated herself, as if she has come down from self-imposed exile in the bell tower because an unexpected visitor has come to her self-designed prison. Even though it is perhaps not quite visiting hours, she wants to see who it is who dares to disturb her peace. She is lithe, maybe even wiry. Cougar-like, yes, although out of cougar range now, probably in her mid- to late sixties but looking like she would prefer to remain forty despite the wrinkles. She wears a dark shirt and dark trousers to greet the intruders.

After John and Cecilia broke up, a mean-spirited rumor circulated that she’d started dating a KFC executive but dumped him because he wouldn’t bring home any chicken. When he explained he was on the business side of the operation, not the cooking side, she didn’t or preferred not to understand — a real tica, they called her.

“She’s let herself go since they broke up,” Meranda says later. “Cecilia use to doll herself up in a witchy way.” In her wedding photo, she has rich brown hair, whereas the woman standing in front of us maintains her hair at a considerable length but its color is now many shades of gray.

Cecilia won’t look at Meranda, which is meant to be a cut. Meranda feels bad. No warning — we came to her door. What did we expect? Meranda apologizes for the visit but wants to say hi and introduces me as someone who is writing a book about John and would like to speak to her. Planning ahead, I thought it would be a good idea not to ask permission to talk to her about her relationship with John (what I really want to talk about), but instead mention Punto de Vista, the place her son David Konwiser redesigned from the original plans John and Cecilia drew up. This tactic, based on the theory that if you want to soften someone up you should talk about what they want to talk about first, turns out to be exactly the wrong one. It gives Cecilia an out. She thanks me for the compliment but says, “John had nothing to do with the project,” and legally she doesn’t want to say anything. Meaning if she talks and I write something down she could be implicated in the Neteller bust — obviously there’s a fear of losing what she has. I’m shut down.

I stand here before the mysterious, beautifully desiccated lady named Cecilia and, like a moronic stone statue, do not snap off a picture. What is she going to do, reach out and grab my camera? She’s behind bars. Take a shot, dummy. Then again, hers is an image not easily forgotten — shrew-like, a paranoid Marianne Faithfull as rich exile.

Oh well, do not cry for Cecilia. John gave her the cars, his stake in the houses, plus he bought her another house next door. Musicians are moving in, John, they’re going to be so noisy, please, help me. Okay, okay, here’s another house. So Cecilia came out of it with something like three houses up front, plus the one in the back where all the Neteller employees partied and slept — plus the resort. John reportedly pacified her further with something between $1.3 million and $3 million, depending on who’s talking. John is not, but he won’t deny it, either.