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 Posted: Thu Jul 27, 2006 11:13 am Post subject: Homie Calvin Ayre waving a red flag at the U.S. |
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Forbes Billionaire #746 says I-gambling is cool:
Homeboy Calvin Ayre waves a red flag at the U.S.
Forbes
Magazine Subscription
* Catch Me If You Can
By Matthew Miller
March 27/06
| Quote: | Ayre presumably has not just the vice squad but the tax collectors in a huff. While 95% of his sales come from the U.S., the 44-year-old doesn’t pay a nickel in corporate or personal income tax here. Is that legit? Foreigners are supposed to pay federal tax on income derived from U.S. business activities. The suckers are stateside, the electronic roulette wheels and digitized sports pools in Costa Rica. Where’s the action? It remains to be seen whether irs agents could make Ayre pay, assuming they could get their mitts on either him or his money.
His taunting analysis of the law: “We run a business that can’t actually be described as gambling in each country we operate in. But when you add it all together, it’s Internet gambling.” (emphasis added)
...Uncle Sam has found ways to make those who help Web casinos sweat. In 2003 Ebay’s PayPal operation paid the U.S. $10 million to settle charges of enabling online betting with money transfers. In January the tabloid Sporting News surrendered $7.2 million to the government, money it earned advertising gambling sites. Ayre has a clever work-around. Most broadcasters in the U.S. don’t want to pay fines for running Bodog.com ads but happily take money for advertising Bodog.net, a free “educational” site that looks almost identical to the Bodog.com money machine. |
Here's what the Loydminster, Sask. homie had to say about the legality of Internet gambling shortly before the Forbes interview:
| Quote: | But according to Calvin Ayre, CEO of online gambling site Bodog.com, interactive poker legality is a grey area. The U.S. Justice Department has danced around the issue while exerting pressure on media outlets to not run ads.
In a MarketingSherpa article, Ayre says his legal experts tell him media outlets running ads for international gambling companies are protected under the Constitution, "until such time as a U.S. judge of competent authority rules otherwise." (emphasis added) (From Sporting News Agrees to $7.2 Million Settlement with U.S. Gov Jan. 20/06 at MediaBuyerPlanner). |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/legal/viewtopic.php?p=253#253
Last edited by legal on Sat Aug 16, 2008 1:29 pm; edited 9 times in total |
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legal
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| Posted: Thu Jul 27, 2006 12:02 pm Post subject: |
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globeandmail.com
Bodog boss Ayre steers clear of U.S.
Net gambling executives feel pressure
By Sinclair Stewart
Posted July 26/06
| Quote: | Ever since Calvin Ayre landed on the cover of Forbes magazine's annual billionaires issue, people have been assailing him with one question: Why isn't he taking advantage of the growing thirst for gambling stocks with an initial public offering of his company, Bodog Entertainment Group?
Last week, they got their answer. A British gambling executive was handcuffed at a Dallas airport by U.S. authorities after a routine stopover, in part because his company accepts bets from Americans. The arrest cast a pall over the gambling sector, which is largely based in Britain, undercutting stock prices and prompting concerns that Internet sports betting and casino operations could be facing a serious crackdown.
"I think my decision to stay private is actually looking good right now," Mr. Ayre said in an interview. "I said a long time ago, if the U.S. Justice Department wanted to make a statement, they would go after a British guy. You're not going to crash my stock by grabbing me."
Just to be safe, though, Mr. Ayre, like other executives in his line of work, is not planning a U.S. vacation any time soon. He was supposed to be hosting an international gambling conference in Las Vegas yesterday, but cancelled the event after the Justice Department jailed Betonsports.com chief executive officer David Carruthers, and charged him with racketeering, conspiracy and tax evasion. The company terminated Mr. Carruthers' contract yesterday.
"I would be shocked if any senior executive of any gaming company would go into the United States right now -- I don't imagine too many people are going to be changing planes [there]," said Mr. Ayre, a native of Saskatchewan who now makes his home in Costa Rica. (Excerpt from globeandmail.com news story July 26/06) |
More on U.S. Internet gambling laws.
More on Antigua's challenge to U.S. I-gaming prohibitions and how you can help SAVE the industry.
Link to this entry
http://www.pokerpulse.com/legal/viewtopic.php?p=257#257
Last edited by legal on Sat Aug 16, 2008 2:08 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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legal
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| Posted: Wed Dec 13, 2006 3:11 pm Post subject: |
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Bodog moves headquarters to Antigua with plans to expand business model:
We were delighted to discover the following alert Dec. 9/06 in the Antigua Sun weekend review:
| Quote: | New investor
The world’s largest privately owned Internet gambling operator, Bodog, is moving its headquarters to Antigua. The announcement was jointly made on Tuesday by Bodog’s founder, Canadian billionaire Calvin Ayre and Minister of Finance and the Economy Dr. Errol Cort. The move comes only weeks after Bodog announced it had bought out the local gaming operations of publicly traded company Betcorp, part of the shifting and realignment that has taken place in the industry since the US passed the controversial, Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act in October |
Very good news for the tiny island nation, which has suffered a financial hemorrhage as a result of new U.S. I-gaming prohibitions now before a WTO compliance review panel.
More on Antigua's dispute with the U.S. at our Caribbean Forum.
See also Canadian billionaire looks beyond the gaming horizon by Patricia Campbell, posted at the Sun website Dec. 7/06, which describes the company's forays into the film and music industry. Here's an excerpt:
| Quote: | Antigua & Barbuda is to be showcased in film productions by the Bodog.com Entertainment Group in 2007. While Bodog is primarily known as an Internet gambling operator, the multidimensional entertainment group owned by Canadian billionaire Calvin Ayre also has an international television production division and a record label, Bodog Music.
Ayre, who this week announced that his multimillion dollar enterprise will now be headquartered in Antigua, says that a number of the company’s activities are likely to benefit the country directly, by creating employment in various sectors, as well as indirectly, by highlighting Antigua and Barbuda’s offerings to potential tourists.
“I think at some point in the next year or so we will do some form of a production in Antigua…. When we produce a show in a country, it is essentially the same as us producing a show about the country because we like to showcase the environment that we produce the show in, so I think that from Antigua’s branding perspective and for tourism… the stuff that we do will create direct employment but should also stimulate some secondary ripples with more awareness of the beauty of Antigua,” Ayre explained. |
Link to this entry
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legal
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| Posted: Mon May 21, 2007 11:06 am Post subject: |
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The Globe and Mail
Report on Business
Monthly Magazine Insert with
Dull Toronto Trombone
Cover story:
Casino risqué
Online gambling, extreme fighting, heat from U.S. authorities—
the fabulous (and somewhat murky) world of
Calvin Ayre, farm boy-turned-tycoon.
By Timothy Taylor
May 2007
| Quote: | ...The hurdles the industry is now facing can be blamed squarely on the U.S. Department of Justice. Its shooting war with the online gambling sector began in July, 2006, when government officials arrested David Carruthers, CEO of BetonSports.com, and charged him with racketeering and fraud. The crackdown continued that October, after Congress passed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), banning banks and credit card companies from processing payments to online casinos. (Proponents of the act tend to cite gambling addiction rates and the risk of criminal or terrorist money laundering through unregulated online gambling sites.) By January, 2007, the sector was in full retreat, with virtually all publicly traded gambling companies withdrawn from the U.S. market. Still, the FBI swooped in and arrested Canadians John Lefebvre and Stephen Lawrence, founders of Neteller Inc., a payment processor that had continued to handle billions on behalf of the industry.
...The more fatal problem, however, has been software-related. Online casinos very commonly use gaming and support software licensed from third parties. In the wake of the UIGEA, many of these third-party suppliers adjusted their systems to block U.S.-based Internet addresses, vaporizing the American customer base for many online casinos. That's what happened to the online poker site Doyles Room when its network, provided by Tribeca Tables, decided it could no longer risk operating in the U.S.
...Yet, superficially at least, little seems to have changed for Bodog. Defying the wisdom of virtually every public company in the business, it continues to service the American market. It's able to do so because of a policy of in-house software control that stretches back to the genesis of the company. Nobody can turn off the taps on them by blocking U.S. IP addresses, because the only significant part of Bodog's operation that has ever been handled externally was the online casino (unlike its sports book and poker room), and that vulnerability appears to have been eliminated. "The online casino was with Realtime Gaming," (Ayre's friend, Christopher) Costigan (of Gambling 911) says. "But my understanding from Calvin is that they've now bought the source code."
Ayre also plays a very deliberate game when it comes to corporate structure and jurisdiction. Bodog has online gaming licences in Antigua and the Kahnawake Mohawk Reserve in Quebec (the legality of the latter's gaming commission is an open question, but seemingly not one that federal or provincial government officials have much interest in pursuing). The company has a bookmaking licence in the United Kingdom, which enables it to take sports bets from anywhere in the world, and servers in Antigua, Kahnawake and the Channel Islands. A call centre and a promotions company, Riptown Media, operate out of Vancouver. Online gambling is illegal in Canada, and Ayre avoids any potential conflict with authorities here by refusing to take bets from Canadians and blocking Canadian IP addresses. (I tried to open an account by phone from Vancouver and was told there were "legal and jurisdictional" issues, but that Bodog was "working on it.")
Having spread his operations strategically around the world, Ayre insists that he is legal in every jurisdiction in which he operates. And a recent World Trade Organization ruling against the United States and in favour of Antigua's right to continue offering online gambling to American residents emboldens Ayre to claim that his operations are sanctioned in the context of international law. That ruling has also motivated him to leave Costa Rica, his home of 10 years, where online gambling has merely been ignored, and to set up shop in Antigua, where it is nurtured as a matter of government policy. "I'm gone already," Ayre tells me, dismissively. "I don't live here any more." (emphasis added)
...Yet even if he is able to duplicate this luxury in Antigua, his sanctuary there won't eliminate the risk of his arrest by American authorities should he ever visit the U.S. Ayre insists that the American crackdown has nothing to do with his decision not to travel there. "I stopped going there months before all that happened," he says, his tone defensive. "I made the conscious decision to stop going to the U.S. because it's not an environment that's very supportive of our industry."
Perhaps. But Ayre also stopped going there right after David Carruthers was arrested in Texas. In fact, Bodog immediately postponed—and later cancelled—a high-profile marketing conference in Las Vegas that Ayre had been scheduled to host the same month.
As for Canada, Ayre rather tersely denies he's avoiding the country of his birth, saying he was back as recently as November. Industry observer Costigan suggests Ayre might be more cautious in future:
"Bodog has to be very high on the list of targeted companies [by the Department of Justice]. So you have to figure Calvin is not going to be stepping foot in the United States. And he's not going to be stepping foot in Canada." (emphasis added)
In either case, Bodog's corporate structure may not ultimately be as important in insulating Ayre from the troubles that have befallen other industry players as is his favourite bit of Bodoggery, the branding strategy. Because however simple the energy of his brand may ultimately be, Ayre's overall approach to selling those brand values is sophisticated.
The strategy arises directly from two challenges. The first is the low public profile the company is being forced to adopt in the United States. Advertising Bodog.com may not be illegal, but it would appear to be ill-advised, if only in the minds of the company's media partners. A plan to wrap Allegiant Air flights into Las Vegas with Bodog colours, for example, was cancelled by the airline in April of last year. By December, Bodog had pulled all of its U.S.-facing advertising. (-- pgs. 37-41) |
Link to this entry
http://www.pokerpulse.com/legal/viewtopic.php?p=257#257
Last edited by legal on Sat Aug 16, 2008 2:11 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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legal
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| Posted: Sat Aug 16, 2008 2:06 pm Post subject: |
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Forbes
Magazine Subscription
Feds Hound Bodog
By Janet Novack and William P. Barrett
July 30/08
| Quote: | The U.S. government recently seized $24 million from bank accounts linked to Bodog, the giant, illegal-under-U.S.-law Internet gaming operation founded by Canadian tycoon Calvin Ayre.
Federal filings make very clear that a serious criminal investigation of the Bodog enterprise is ongoing. 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.
Detailed in court filings in a Baltimore federal court, the Bodog-related seizures from such well-known institutions as Wachovia (nyse: WB - news - people ), Bank of America (nyse: BAC - news - people ), SunTrust Banks (nyse: STI - news - people ) and Regions Bank, a unit of Regions Financial (nyse: RF - news - people ), increase the possibility of criminal action against Ayre himself. There already has been published speculation in his native Canada that he is under secret indictment somewhere in the U.S. The U.S. attorney's office in Baltimore, which launched the two lawsuits to take the $24 million, did not respond to a request for comment.
The flamboyant Ayre--media reports often call him a "playboy"--is now believed to be in Antigua and Barbuda, a country in the eastern Caribbean. He has denied being on the lam. A request on Wednesday for comment from Ayre, sent through the Web site of his Antigua-based Calvin Ayre Foundation, was not immediately returned. Nor were call and e-mail messages sent to public relations contacts listed on Bodog's Web site.
In early 2006 Ayre rocketed to international prominence--and the cover of Forbes magazine' annual issue on the world's billionaires--for his stewardship from Costa Rica of Bodog Entertainment Group and his open flouting of authorities in the U.S., his major market. The story headline: Catch Me If You Can. The operation was said at the time to be handling $7.3 billion yearly in poker, casino and sports event wagers.
But since then, Ayre has been the subject of law-enforcement raids abroad and growing regulatory scrutiny, especially in the U.S. In late 2006 President Bush signed a law strengthening the prohibition on online gambling. Ayre fell off the Forbes worldwide billionaires list after just one year, amid a decline in his industry's fortunes. ...
Ayre has been trying to put legal distance between himself and the operation he founded in the 1990s. For years its business was run through Internet servers belonging to Mohawk Internet Technologies, located on the Kahnawake Reserve Indian reservation in Quebec, Canada.
In September 2007 Bodog said its North American operations would be licensed to Morris Mohawk Group, also located on the reservation and run by tribal chief Alwyn Morris. Three months ago, Ayre, now 47, said he had transferred ownership of Bodog itself to Morris Mohawk Group. "It's true; I'm packing it in," Ayre wrote on a Web site. ... (emphasis added)
According to Carrow's detailed sworn statements, the IRS's Criminal Investigation Division started looking at Bodog in 2003 and opened a formal probe in 2006. ...
Even before the advent of Bodog, Ayre carried considerable baggage. Close family members were convicted of drug trafficking. (Ayer himself was never charged.) In 1996 Ayre was banned for 20 years from the British Columbia securities industry for stock market offenses. By that time, he was already moving into online gaming. "One of the things that drives me is the excitement that I could fail," he told Forbes in 2006. "What better buzz can you get?" |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/legal/viewtopic.php?p=570#570 |
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