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

On August 12, 2006, the CW impersonated a gambler and opened a Neteller account and transferred $400 from a Miami bank account. Sitting at a computer in Miami, the CW visited a website in Antigua, transferred her Neteller dough to the website, and made “at least two” bets on NFL games. Two weeks later, the CW pulled the reverse routine, not in Miami but in New York State. She used a computer in Westchester County to access her Antigua account and transferred two hundred back into her Neteller account. Then she placed fifty on an NFL match using funds in the Antigua account. She was discovering the Neteller system’s elegance and ease of use.

Focusing on the Manhattan transaction, since that was the origin of the arrest, FBI agents realized Neteller’s transactions were going through an American ACH. This was where they claimed a conspiracy took place: Neteller “concealed the nature of the transactions” by pushing them through JSL Systems, Inc., co-owned by Lefebvre and Lawrence. JSL was a U.S. subsidiary whose sole purpose was to move American cash into a National Bank of Canada account called Carload, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Neteller, before moving the money to Neteller PLC. The FBI reviewed the records and said $98 million was transferred in this way in the first three months of 2006.

The question that popped out was, why did the two cofounders own JSL while Neteller owned Carload? If the company — not its two top executives — had owned JSL then maybe Lawrence and Lefebvre would not have become such easy targets. The other tidbit certain to play a role in the length of the sentence was Lefebvre’s early drug bust. In Part B, “Defendant’s Criminal History,” Sections thirty-four, “Criminal History Computation,” and thirty-five, “Other Arrests,” were germane. First, it said Lefebvre had no known convictions, which was good news for him because it meant his criminal history point total in Castel’s eyes would be zero. So how will the 1969 bust for selling LSD affect sentencing? Not at all. Lefebvre owned up to the arrest and conviction to the court, but the case was sealed “because it is a foreign conviction.” So much for any dark theory about how a decades-old drug prior might quadruple the length of Lefebvre’s sentence.

On Wednesday, August 31, 2011, Lefebvre phoned to talk about the court date: “My last bail piss test was at pretrial services in Los Angeles. They actually didn’t even ask me to piss, but they could have. Thereafter I knew that I would be reporting at any time to the probation officer in New York, so I’m on best behavior. I haven’t made plans yet. I’ll probably go down a couple of days before and just sit quietly — go watch people in Central Park taking pictures of wilderness.”

Hilary Watson, and maybe a friend or two of hers, would fly down from Salt Spring and the East Coast. For sure buddy Jim Hoggan and his wife, Enid Marion, would fly in from Vancouver. His daughter, Emily, and her husband, Pádraig, would come from Ireland to support him in the courtroom. Lefebvre said,

On Friday night, we’ll probably have some kind of so-called celebration, dinner somewhere. I’ll probably make some reservations. I don’t feel like telling people not to come, but I don’t really feel like having a bunch of people hanging around either. I feel like I just have to roll with it. My overall feelings about this are not celebratory; my overall feeling about it is I’m getting hosed and that I’m biting my lip in the face of hypocrisy. And for people to slap me on the back is much like going to a funeral and having people say, “Well, it’s good to have that behind you.”

Nearly five years in limbo had passed. The wait almost over, the dam Lefebvre built within himself to keep the bile, hurt, and anger at bay no longer had much foundation. He said,

It’s taken me a tremendous amount of work to get to where I’m at peace, letting go of the feeling of offense that’s happened to me long enough to stand in front of His Honor with good conscience. When he says, “Do you have anything to say,” the answer will be, “No.”

I despise the idea of maturing. I mature only if and for so long as I have to, and even that is all too mature.”

Later, Lefebvre added that he despised the word “responsibility” almost as much as “maturing.”

He continued,

I’m on at two o’clock. Now there is some recent social science about appearing before the parole board. You have a seventy percent higher chance of being granted parole before lunch than after lunch. The later in the day you appear, the higher your chances are against getting parole. They call it information fatigue. But in my case there’s some notion — nobody’s promised it or anything — Steve and I will be dealt with more or less equivalently. I don’t think it matters who goes first, we’re going to wind up with more or less the same shtick.

As Lefebvre approached his final hurdle, he still hadn’t spoken to his former business partner and friend. “He won’t take my call.” Pressed a little, Lefebvre admitted he could concoct a situation where he’d bump into Lawrence on sentencing day. “I could hang around outside his courtroom,” he said before adding, “I don’t know that that’s high on my list of things to do that day.”

On Friday, September 9, 2011, Lefebvre encountered a new detour off the road to freedom. He emailed: “Hey, postponed to Oct 25. Federal marshals lost track of $16 million of my forfeiture. And no, they didn’t credit me twice. Can’t be sentenced without His Honor saying on the record that the forfeiture is paid in full, otherwise I’m litigating with a black hole for the rest of my life.”

Lots of things have been lost in this protracted process. And not just things. The accused, for instance, got lost in the jail system between MDC L.A. and NYC. His wallet went missing for a time. And where was his passport again? And you know, Mr. Lefebvre, forty percent of your forfeiture, heh-heh, well, we can’t seem to find it.

Steve Lawrence’s sentencing, meanwhile, will go ahead as scheduled, which severs the parallel-prosecutions story line.

On Friday, September 23, 2011, at 10 a.m., on a gray Manhattan morning, Lawrence is back in 12C of the Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Courthouse, 500 Pearl Street. The Moynihan is a solid, imposing building made with granite, marble, and oak that stands on the infamous Five Points, the gathering locale for nineteenth-century brawls, portrayed in 2002 by Scorsese’s Gangs of New York . Moynihan, Hillary Clinton’s predecessor, was an important, long-running U.S. senator from the state of New York. He was instrumental in securing the necessary financing for the $1-billion redevelopment of Foley Square and its law buildings. The Moynihan, the second-largest federal courthouse in the nation, stands twenty-seven stories tall and contains forty-four courtrooms. Moynihan helped pick many of the judges who mete out justice equally and impartially here, but not Castel. On March 5, 2003, President George W. Bush nominated Castel for his seat on the District Court for the Southern District of New York.

The elusive Lawrence, who avoided a press photographer at the front of the courthouse, sits slope-shouldered and bald in a dark blue suit. From the back he looks like Homer Simpson at a funeral. He turns briefly and reveals more chiseled features. He has a fine nose, a receding chin, bags under his eyes, but also a full complement of smile lines — what one might expect from someone who’s spent happier days in the Bahamas but likely a few sleepless nights in New York. The court is empty save for three people sitting in the next pew, immediately behind Lawrence. His wife, Perle, is flanked by two others — his brother, possibly, judging from the nose, and a second woman, a patrician blond in her early forties. Lawrence’s lawyer Peter Neiman, late thirties and looking a bit like Al Pacino circa Dog Day Afternoon , sits beside him.