Ayre profile: US authorities close in on prize catch
From billionaire Forbes cover star to complaining the publication was leaked his indictment documents with "the consumption of the media a primary objective".
On 27 March 2006 US magazine Forbes put Bodog’s founder and online gambling “billionaire” Calvin Ayre on the front cover of its ‘Richest people in the world’ issue with the headline ‘Catch me if you can’.
But almost five years ago to the day it seems that the law has finally caught up with a man who regularly taunted US authorities and boasted about his exploits.
Just hours after eGaming Review learned Ayre’s former domain Bodog.com had been seized, Federal prosecutors in Baltimore unsealed a two-count indictment against the flamboyant Canadian and three other men connected to the business for conducting an alleged illegal internet gambling business generating more than US$100m.
The indictment alleges that from June 9 2005 to January 6 this year the four men conducted an illegal gambling and sports betting business moving funds from Bodog accounts located in Switzerland, England, Malta, Canada and other locations to pay winnings to gamblers, as well as to pay “media brokers” and advertisers located in the US.
It adds that the “conspirators”, as they are referred to in official papers, allegedly caused a media broker to execute an advertising campaign to attract gamblers in the US to the Bodog.com website. From 2005 to 2008 the conspirators allegedly paid over $42m in costs for the campaign.
Along with the help of an informant udercover federal agents allegedly set up Bodog.com accounts via an undercover computer in the State of Maryland depositing through an ewallet, placing bets and then cashing out winnings via cheque or Western Union.
It has taken the Department of Justice more than eight years to claim one of their biggest prizes so far with the authorities known to have begun the investigation as far back as 2004 with work intensifying in 2006. A sign of things to come was perhaps when Ayre spent an estimated $1m on his 50th birthday party in Dublin last year only to fail to appear in person with rumours circulating that he could be arrested should he have chosen to travel.
Ayre, the son of a pig farmer called Ken who was sentenced to four years in prison in the eighties for his part in a drug smuggling operation, allegedly sold everything he owned in 1994 and, with $10,000 in the bank, founded Bodog building an online sports betting and gambling business based first from Antigua and then from Costa Rica.
Ayre junior’s notoriety boomed in the mid 2000s with his wealth and self-publicised Playboy lifestyle seeing his star rise in the media. Interviews in People Magazine’s “Hottest Bachelor” list, Star Magazine’s Most Eligible Billionaire Bachelors list culminated by his profile adorning the front cover of Forbes magazine’s 2006 annual billionaires edition, something he regularly boasted about in future years.
Modelling his “empire” on Richard Branson’s Virgin, Ayre licensed the Bodog brand to seven “brand licensees”. One of these was the Morris Mohawk Gaming Group (MMGG), a privately-owned online gambling company that until recently operated the Bodog-branded website bodog.eu. The remainder (see box out below) include Bodog Europe, Bodog poker network, Bodog UK, Bodog 88, Bodog Nation and Bodog Coffee.
Patrick Selin, chief executive of Bodog UK, when contacted by eGR further distanced himself from Ayre and refused to comment.
According to a Bodog spokesman Ayre has had “nothing to do with the day-to-day running of any Bodog licensee” for some time. More recently, licensees such as Bodog UK, that secured a UK Gambling Commission licence last year in order to operate online poker, casino and sports betting here, has deliberately chosen to distance itself from Ayre due to the many years his business spent taking bets from US customers. The spokesman added that all other licensees are “business as usual”.
MMGG, headquartered in the Mohawk Territory of Kahanawake in Quebec in Canada, closed its doors to US customers on 14 December last year after announcing it would do so earlier that summer. In July last year Bodog said it would let the agreement run down by the end of December, citing fears of a “negative perception” of its brand in the UK and Asia. MMGG’s licensing agreement for the Bodog.eu domain officially ended on 31 December.
Speculation at the time suggested the move to a dot.eu domain was a pre-emptive decision ahead of further domain name seizures by the US Department of Justice following Black Friday last April. They had foreseen the inevitable.
Since that date, however MMGG has continued to operate offering US customers the opportunity to bet, play poker and gamble on its online casino via its Bovada.lv domain. Run from a Latvian domain that ironically also uses Las Vegas initials, claims to offer “American players the opportunity to bet on all major sports, industry leading poker software, over 120 casino games, and top North American horseracing tracks”.
The site is run by former Olympic sprint kayaker Alwyn Morris who won a gold and a bronze at the Los Angeles Olympic Games in 1984, but it is unclear at this stage whether or not the US Department of Justice is monitoring its activities.
At its peak Bodog employed hundreds of advertising and marketing support staff in Vancouver as well as customer call centre personnel in Burnaby, British Columbia, with Ayre spending his millions on numerous properties including a 10,000-square-foot custom-built mansion complete with armed guards, two Vancouver penthouses worth $6m and a 150-acre property in Langley where his father, Ken lives.
In 2005 Bodog trebled its revenues from the previous year generating an estimated $7.3bn US in wagers, enough to make it the seventh-largest online gambling operation in the world, according to this publication at the time. This instantly transformed him into a paper billionaire, with Forbes ranking him as the 746th richest person in the world.
Defiant to the last he published a statement on his own website last night comparing his indictment to an “abuse of the US criminal justice system for the commercial gain of large US corporations” and insisting that it is “clear that the online gaming industry is legal under international law”.
The 2006 Forbes cover story, published just months before UIGEA is known to be one of Ayre’s proudest moments, a chance to show off his gains and taunt the US authorities even further “ the first line setting the tone for the way he wished to be portrayed. “Calvin Ayre has gotten very rich by taking illegal bets over the Internet,” the Forbes journalist wrote. But yesterday, the boasting finally stopped with Ayre claiming that the indictment was leaked to his former favourite publication Forbes “before they were filed anywhere else and drafted with the consumption of the media as a primary objective”.
As his self-titled website’s tagline of “drinking, gambling and carrying on” suggests he will certainly be doing at least two of those activities in the future, while the other appears out of his reach, for now.
Paraphrasing Sun Tzu’s Art of War in the 2006 article he said: “I’m going to win this war without fighting battles.” Unfortunately for Ayre his prophecy is now unlikely to come true once the legal process to bring him to justice begins.
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Bodog Brand partners
BodogBrand.com was set up in 2005 as an enterprise which licenses the Bodog brand to partners in the egaming sector and beyond. Its headquarters are in Antigua, although it also has business development functions in London and Manilla.
Bodog poker network
Comprised of three Bodog brand licensees, the network plans to allow what it describes as ‘non-Bodog’ licensees to join once it receives the appropriate gaming licences (currently pending) to operate the network as a B2B business. Poker liquidity is pooled across various jurisdictions.
Bodog Europe
Bodog Europe holds an interactive wagering and interactive gaming licence issued by the white-listed Caribbean island of Antigua and holds the exclusive rights to offer egaming under the Bodog brand in Europe and Canada under the dot.co.uk and dot.ca domains respectively. It is headed by former Ongame CEO Patrik Selin.
Bodog UK
Selin is also in charge of Bodog UK, one of the first operators to receive a remote gaming licence after the UK Gambling Commission announced plans to revamp its licensing system. The dot.co.uk site is yet to go live, but is expected to do so this year.
Bodog88
The Asian-facing Bodog egaming brand licensee, Bodog88.com holds an interactive gaming license issued by the First Cagayan Leisure and Resort Corporation based in the Philippines. It offers sports betting and live-dealer casino products in both English and Chinese languages, as well as a poker (via the network) in English with plans to launch in the Chinese language later this year.
Bodog.eu
The Morris Mohawk Gaming Group (MMGG) holds a gaming licence issued by the Kahnawake Gaming Commission and currently holds the exclusive rights to offer egaming under the Bodog brand in the United States under the bodog.eu domain. MMGG’s brand licensing agreement with the Bodog brand expired at the end of last year, with US residents no longer able to access bodog.eu or any other Bodog branded website. MMGG continues to operate offering US customers the opportunity to bet, play poker and gamble on its online casino via its Bovada.lv domain. Run from a Latvian domain that ironically also uses Las Vegas initials, claims to offer “American players the opportunity to bet on all major sports, industry leading poker software, over 120 casino games, and top North American horseracing tracks”. Bovada is not a Bodog business.
BodogNation
BodogNation.com is a marketing initiative by the Bodog brand, launched in January last year as a content and recruitment portal for Bodog brand licensees. It was created as part of an ‘aggressive’ recruitment strategy and provides details of the organisation’s ongoing campaigns.
Bodog Coffee
Last year Bodog bought the rights to Illy Coffee in the Philippines. It is believed that the newest Bodog franchise has been set up with the intention of opening a number of Starbucks-style stores across the Asian country.
Previous licencees
Both BodogFight (involved in mixed martial arts broadcasting) and BodogMusic (a record label which represented artists including Billy Idol) were signed up in 2005. Both ceased operations in 2008.