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

Lefebvre passes it over to his pal. Hoggan has taught Lefebvre a lot of what he knows about wine. He sees his friend’s excitement and sticks his snout into the glass. “Oh yeah, John. That’s amazing.” Lefebvre, always affable, says to his waiter, “Hey Joey, you should pour yourself a little taste of that.”

Lefebvre still can’t get enough. As his sings, “It’s no use / I can’t quit the juice.” Red, red, red. It is not clear whether he has ever been spotted holding a glass of white.

When asked about his acquisitiveness, he says,

I have a couple of Sub-Zero fridges. Sometimes they’re full; sometimes they’re empty. I do have some wines in there that I keep. I have three or four bottles of 1990 premier class grand cru. I’ve got six of the 2000 Château Broughton Rothschild, which is a premier class grand cru. They say 2000 is maybe the best year in French history. I paid $1,100 each for those bottles. When I drink them there will probably be $3,000 or $4,000 worth of wine in each bottle. The greatness of those wines derives from the fact that they will be greater in twenty years. You just hang on to them and in twenty years you get the treat.

He also says he will probably drink those bottles alone, despite being an amiable host, a master of the kibitz, and a lover of company. Those are wines to be savored in private moments. He’ll make an exception for Hoggan, if he’s in town. But right now, while Lefebvre and Hoggan are the true oenophiles, everyone at the table must drink from the cup.

Lefebvre won’t know which jail he’ll get until tomorrow, either the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) holding pen for pretrial and holdover inmates across the street from 500 Pearl Street, or the one in Brooklyn. Lawrence is “staying” five miles south of the Moynihan building, in the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn, on Twenty-Ninth Street at Second Avenue, near Gowanus Bay. Maybe the FBI will separate them; maybe they won’t.

Whatever amount of time Castel decides is necessary for redemption, Lefebvre’s way of getting through bad times has always been to read books, lots of books. This time, although he’d like to, he won’t be able to take any inside with him. Those are the rules. The authorities want to be sure friends or associates don’t sneak in an iron file or, in Lefebvre’s case, stamp LSD onto a page or two. No, to receive books an order must be placed to Amazon, which apparently has a contract with the government to supply prisoners in jail. Now there’s a tidy racket. Lefebvre wants Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84 and Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick . My wife suggests George Eliot’s Middlemarch . I suggest DFW’s Infinite Jest and Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle . Hey, listen, he’s going to be doing at least forty-five days, so he might as well cogitate with some big-ass books. If he does more time because of his prior, well, someone will circumnavigate the bureaucratic waters. Hoggan’s going to be in Manhattan until Friday and will try to get him the books he wants.

The Mark is the final supper of three nights of Last Suppers. On Saturday night, Lefebvre and company made reservations at the Surrey dining room. He and his party are staying at the Surrey hotel, one block south of the Mark. On Sunday afternoon, everyone headed downtown to Zuccotti Park to hang out at Occupy Wall Street, ask questions, and get a feel for the scene before walking north to the High Line, where they caught up with us.

After walking the tracks — and taking in Neil Denari’s ingenious HL23 condominium tower, a retro space-age glass design, shoehorned between existing structures, pushing itself wider as it climbs higher — we dine al fresco at the Standard Grill in the Meatpacking District, near the south entrance to the High Line. Later, we meet up at Les Halles Downtown, Anthony Bourdain’s second location, on John Street, a couple of blocks from both 1 WTC and OWS. This Les Halles is a little too subterranean, without the French bistro atmospherics of the original on Park Avenue South. The next morning, everyone meets again, this time in Morningside Heights, at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Amsterdam Avenue and 112th Street. The gothic revival building is apparently the fourth-largest Christian church in the world. It still has not been fully restored since a 2001 fire, and some people now refer to it as St. John the Unfinished. It is still a good enough location for actor James Gandolfini’s funeral. Hilary’s friend Oscar Hansen is aching to tour the building, and the name of the church is not lost on anyone. The John we know, his business remains unfinished as well.

After the sightseeing we jump in a couple of cabs and head south forty blocks to Salumeria Rosi, the “Upper West Side’s slice of Italy,” at Amsterdam and Seventy-Third, for a decadent lunch of rich meats and cheeses and wines. After all the plates have been removed, diners satiated, effusive praise offered in return, the staff, having experienced this most excellent customer in their midst, are ordered to pour forth complementary plates of cheeses and desserts in succession from the kitchen.

A walk through the park and a snooze later, everyone reconnects at the Mark, on the other side of Central Park. My wife cracks, “How many of the apostles were in it for the free food?”

By evening’s end, Lefebvre has a grim visage. Being rich is wonderful, but a great meal and superb wines for people he knows and loves gets him only so far. Basically it kills some time. He looks resigned, a little depressed. Problem is, thinking about it doesn’t matter one way or the other — the dark cloud hangs just the same. On one hand, there will be no miracle intervention. On both hands, there are no stigmata, no marks of the Passion of Christ. He’s not a hero and he’s not a martyr — he’s simply going to jail.

On Tuesday, October 25, at 2 p.m., it is Lefebvre’s turn in courtroom 12C. Deputy Clerk Florence McAnther sits to the left of Castel’s enormous, elevated desk. The first row is empty. Then there is a bare table. At the next table down from Castel, looking toward the judge, Jonathan S. Abernethy, a New York lawyer affiliated with Marella’s firm, has joined the Century City lawyers and the defendant. He will hold the credit cards and the passport and make sure Lefebvre gets them back on December 8—or whenever he gets out. Beside Abernethy, left to right, looking toward Castel, are Gluck, Lefebvre, and Marella.

Behind the defendant and his lawyers is a show of support. There are benches, one row of five, one row of four. In the first row are Jim Hoggan, Enid Marion, Emily Lefebvre and her husband, Pádraig Ó’Cinnéide, and Hilary Watson. In the second row, on the left, I sit with Laura Lind. Three spaces over is Oscar Hansen.

Presenting the government’s case, from the other side of the aisle, are Assistant U.S. Attorney Niketh Velamoor and his ever-present boss, U.S. Attorney of the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara. Also in attendance, sitting behind them, is Neiman, Lawrence’s lawyer.

Castel announces he has the presentence report, recommendation, and addendum, along with an addendum approved by Probation and dated October 18. He has a submission from Marella dated October 11. He has a second supplemental sentencing submission dated October 24—yesterday. He has a letter from the Aboriginal Mother Centre, Vancouver, dated August 1, 2008. He has the proposed consent-of-forfeiture document — someone found the missing $16 million. And he has the government’s sentencing letter, dated October 20. He says he has read the guideline calculations from the presentence document, which highlights the substantial assistance Lefebvre has given the government.