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Money seizures imperil Bodog empire
David Baines, Vancouver Sun
Published: 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.
Good news, or so we are supposed to believe, from Edmonton-based CV Technologies Inc.
Pediatrics, the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, has published the results of a company-sponsored clinical trial showing that its popular cold and flu remedy, COLD-fX, is safe for children.
Big deal. I am quite willing to believe that COLD-fX, which is derived from ginseng, is safe for children, but so are ground-up carrot tops.
That doesn't mean I'm going to buy ground-up carrot tops for my children. The real question is, does COLD-fX work?
When the study was registered with www.clinicaltrials.gov (the central registry for clinical trials), its stated primary objective was to measure the therapeutic effect of COLD-fX in children. A secondary objective was to measure its safety.
However, according to lead researcher Dr. Sunita Vohra, the research team subsequently received peer advice to measure safety first, and defer the question of efficacy to a future study. An amendment should have been made to the clinicaltrials.gov website, she conceded, but was not.
The trial involved 75 children divided into three groups: One group took a standard dose of COLD-fX, one took a low dose, and the other took a placebo. "No serious adverse events were reported," the researchers reported.
Deep in the report, there is a table showing that, when it came to relieving symptons, there was no statistical difference among all three groups. In other words, there was no evidence that COLD-fX had any therapeutic effect.
Vohra, however, reads nothing into this. She said the sample size was too small and wasn't intended to derive any statistically meaningful conclusion as to whether COLD-fX works, or doesn't work, in children. That will be dealt with in future clinical trials, which the company expects to conduct next fiscal year.
So what material evidence do we have that COLD-fX works? The company published two studies in 2005 that provide flimsy evidence that a daily regime of COLD-fX has some beneficial effect.
But most people take COLD-fX for "immediate relief" by consuming a large number of tablets -- as recommended on the label -- when they feel the onset of cold and flu symptons.
The effectiveness of this regime has never been supported by a formal clinical trial, and has never been approved by Health Canada.
The only trial to test this hypothesis is still in progress and scheduled for release next month. |
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发表于 2008-8-7 06:57
