| Money Seizures Imperil Bodog Empire |
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David Baines Wednesday, August 06, 2008 In April, former Vancouver resident Calvin Ayre caught industry observers by surprise when he announced he was quitting his online gambling empire, Bodog, purportedly to regain his privacy and further his charitable activities. The surprise was compounded when he claimed he had transferred ownership of Bodog a year earlier to the Morris Mohawk Gaming Group, which runs hundreds of gaming websites from the Kahnawake reserve near Montreal. "I was really more of a brand ambassador for Bodog the past while anyway -- but it was fun while it lasted," he said on the Bodog website. Are we really to believe that Ayre, who had been flamboyantly and boisterously playing the role of Bodog's fun-loving top dog until then, had actually checked out months before, and that his motive was simply to live a life of quiet reflection and philanthropy? I think not. It is widely known that the U.S. government, which has declared war on unlicensed Internet gambling, has Ayre in its crosshairs. It is more likely that he is trying to distance himself from any future prosecutions. This theory was reinforced last week when Forbes magazine reported that the U.S. government has seized $24 million from U.S. bank accounts linked to Bodog. More than half the money was seized in January and February, before Ayre suddenly decided that a more sedentary life was in order. The seizures were made by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service from the accounts of payment processors, the companies that facilitate the disbursement of gambling money to Bodog customers. "Federal filings make very clear that a serious criminal investigation of the Bodog enterprise is ongoing," Forbes noted in its article. "At a minimum, word of the seizures is likely to rattle the confidence of U.S.-based online gamblers that they will receive their winnings, not only from Bodog but from the industry's other remaining participants." This does not augur well for Riptown Media (now Fiver Media Vancouver), which provides advertising and promotional support for Bodog from an office in downtown Vancouver, or Triple Crown Customer Service, which provides customer account support from an office in Burnaby. IRS special agent Randall Carrow, in a June 25 affidavit filed in U.S. District Court in Baltimore to support the seizures, outlined the case against Bodog: "Since approximately 2006, I have been investigating the operations of an Internet gambling website called Bodog.com. Bodog is owned and operated by Calvin Ayre, a citizen of Canada now living in Costa Rica. "The physical structure of Bodog is located variously in Vancouver, B.C., the Kahnawake Reserve in Canada, and Costa Rica. However, Bodog operates extensively in the United States, taking bets from U.S. gamblers over the phone and via the Internet. "Because of various developments (Department of Justice prosecutions and new federal legislation) it has become more and more difficult for Internet gambling website operators to move money into and out of the United States. To continue to make 'payouts' to gamblers, some Internet gambling operators have begun using money-processing businesses in the United States. "Based on my training and experience, I know that, typically, the gambling website operator will send a U.S. processor a cheque or wire transfer of a relatively large sum of money, usually hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. The processor then distributes the money to individuals, either by cheque or electronic transfer of some type." Now that the IRS has a choke-hold on Bodog's financial conduits, it may be only a matter of time before the firm taps out (to use the lexicon of its mixed martial arts division, Bodogfight) and heads for the showers. |
