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

Castel’s resolve becomes more visibly evident as the two federal marshals standing behind Lawrence move closer to the prisoner. He’s obviously seeing a need to combat the public perception that white-collar criminals can pay fines and otherwise walk away scot-free. By imposing a short sentence, one and a half months, to be served immediately, he wants the defendant behind bars to physically pay down his debt to society before getting on with his life.

Neiman points out that before Lawrence made good on his $60-million forfeiture he was permitted to go back to Canada, twice, to visit his ailing father and then to attend his father’s funeral. Both times he returned. In fact, Lawrence had traveled all over the world and always returned, so why would he renege on his enormous forfeiture and face the life of a fugitive? Good point, but Castel’s mind is made up: “I respect your arguments and they are very well presented” is all he offers.

Then Devlin-Brown gets into the act, reiterating the point about Lawrence’s full, complete cooperation with the FBI and reinforcing Neiman’s view that the defendant poses no flight risk. No dice. “My decision has been made,” concludes Castel. “Thank you. We are adjourned.”

The prisoner blinks. He stands about five-foot-seven. He hugs his wife, turns, and leaves with the marshals. And that, quite likely, is the last anyone will see or hear of the press-averse, hyper-wealthy Mr. Stephen Eric Lawrence.

Two days before Lefebvre’s sentencing, on Sunday, October 23, 2011, I meet him and his entourage at the Twenty-Third Street stairway entrance to the High Line, Manhattan’s elevated antiquated railway line turned sleek linear park. He’s with Hilary Watson, who has stuck by him through almost five years of intense FBI scrutiny. Emily and Pádraig arrived from Dublin the night before. Lefebvre and Watson boarded a flight from Seattle and got in Friday around nine in the evening. “The final chapter,” he says as he greets me and my wife, Laura. “Well … I hope not.”

“What about visiting hours in jail?”

“Sure, Plexiglas and phones. That’s good for a chapter — or maybe a paragraph.”

“When’s the last time you were this clean shaven?”

“About five years ago, when I went to see the judge for the first time. I thought I’d make it easy for him. Make sure His Honor recognized me.”

Watson does her best not to look stricken, yet she is visibly emotional and occasionally teary-eyed about what everyone now expects will be a remand to custody on Tuesday following the 2 p.m. hearing — after Castel finishes rhapsodizing about the 1919 World Series theft.

My wife thinks the worst — that Lefebvre is going to get slapped with six months. That would be “eating a lot of chicken à la king,” as he puts it. The reason she believes this will happen is that, unlike Lawrence, this is not a first offense for Lefebvre. That old drug bust, way back in 1969, at age seventeen, is going to be recalled, duly noted, and come back to bite him in the jumpsuit. We do not yet know that the Canadian offense has been sealed off.

Then again, Castel might buy what will likely be Marella’s argument: that Lawrence was the principal founder of Neteller, not Lefebvre; that Lawrence hired Lefebvre, enticing him with a hefty cut of the company ownership pie; that really, when you think about it, Lefebvre’s purpose in the company was twofold — one, to find investors (which he did), and two, to be the marketing guy, the public face, Meat Loaf with the Man Purse (which he also did, quite well); and that Lefebvre was not a business guy and actually knew SFA about computers and gambling and software and writing code and unclogging the payment route for online gamblers (“I was just a guy Steve could trust with the shop while he was out”).

But Lefebvre learned fast. He sold the idea, he was charismatic, and everybody wanted to work with him. He was a helluva guy to be around, and he was a helluva good boss to work for in Calgary and San José.

That might just work. Castel might buy Marella’s argument because, who knows, maybe Castel is a bit impressionable.

“Didn’t it ever occur to him that the first time Steve ever stepped inside a soup kitchen was after his arrest?” asks Lefebvre.

Pádraig pipes in, “Do they even have soup kitchens in the Bahamas?”

“When we were putting together the documents showing my donations,” Lefebvre says, “we came across Steve’s one and only donation to a charity — and it was to the Lefebvre Foundation. Steve wanted to give me money because I lent him my jet. I told him to fuck off. ‘I don’t want yer money, Steve. I’m not takin’ it, okay?’ So he said, ‘Okay, then,’ and made a $2,000 donation to my foundation. That was Steve’s charity work.”

“Wait,” I wonder, “what about his own charity foundation, the one in his wife’s name?

“Oh,” Lefebvre wonders, “he’s got his own foundation, does he?”

“It’s in his wife’s name but he has access to it,” I answer. “During his arraignment this became a heated point. The prosecution under no circumstances wanted Lawrence to walk out on $5 million bail. He had access to his wife’s foundation, they reasoned, access to at least $200 million in other words, plus the guy had to have other assets out there they didn’t even know about, so $5 million was nothing. He was a high roller and there was nothing stopping him from walking. The judge did not buy the argument, but they did jaw back and forth for a while.

“And your name came up, John,” I continue. “The prosecutor used the example of the other Neteller founder, how Lawrence had been arrested first and how you’d been tipped off.”

Lefebvre looks at me, incredulous. “Oh yeah? Tipped off, eh? And what the fuck would I be doing standing around making tea in my house in Malibu if I’d been tipped off?”

“That’s what I was wondering.”

“Come to think of it,” he remembers, “when I was sitting in handcuffs at my own kitchen table, negotiating with them for the right to have my hands cuffed in front of me instead of behind my back, so I could drink my tea, I did receive a call on my cell. And it was Steve, I think. But the lady from the FBI said, ‘I’ll take that call.’ I presume Steve hung up.”

On Monday, October 24, 2011, we meet up at the Mark, a swank hotel on Madison and East Seventy-Seventh (they’re all swank around here). Lefebvre seems to be in a playful mood. Just rolling with it. He’s got his friends and daughter here for his Last Supper. “Hey,” he shouts, “can you guys just turn around and face the wall when the judge starts to speak? That’ll send a message. Or I could go over to Zuccotti Park and give everybody a hundred bucks and a pack of smokes to heckle the judge. He’s already decided: proceeds of crime, deduct the amount given to charity. What’s the sense in that? You mean those weren’t proceeds of crime? I gave forty million to the biggest charity of all, the government.”

Still joking around. The Mark’s female clientele sport leathery faces, gold jewelry, and poufy hair. The male clientele are senior and middle-aged guys with small bodies and big heads, like Picasso. A few of them have striking, imperial looks, like they screw each other relentlessly and mechanically to no effect — kind of like Duchamp’s Bride Stripped Bare contraption. Regardless of gender, the look of the rich emanates from colonically irrigated, collagen-enhanced, massaged and pedicured bodies. (Or so I think.) And then there’s the older man who looks like the Law & Order guy with the froggy face.

Lefebvre orders magnums of Margaux 2000, which sell online for anywhere from $1,500 to $3,500 a bottle. He orders two, plus two other high-end reds. When the waiter returns, Lefebvre smells the Margaux cork. “Oh!” And smells the bowl. “Ooh!” And smells the bowl again. “Whoa!” he tells the waiter, “I’m from Calgary and I know horseshit when I smell it.”