Life Real Loud

by Bill Reynolds

I doubt Watson has much to worry about. Lefebvre showed me a screen shot of her on his computer earlier, a selfie she had emailed to him. When stretched to cover the entire screen, it evokes thoughts of seventeenth-century portraiture. The digital artwork might be titled “Beautiful Modest Woman from Salt Spring Island.” Lefebvre’s assessment: “She makes a picture look good.”

  Lefebvre bursts into the room, still perky seven hours into the day’s recordings and overdubs. “Sorry I left you, honey—had to take that call. It was Vince. They’re ready. It’s going to be the tenth, the sixth, or the third, whichever suits him.” That means next week or the week after, Lefebvre will plead guilty to money laundering and racketeering. Vince Marella, who works out of an office on Century Park East in L.A., has been discussing terms of the plea for months, and now they’re ready to deal. If Marella thinks Lefebvre ought to go ahead and plead guilty, maybe he should. Marella has represented senior corporate clients for three decades, according to his law firm’s website, and is “recognized as being one of the foremost white-collar criminal defense lawyers in the nation.”

  I ask Lefebvre about the deal Marella is cooking up. He says he can’t talk about it, but he certainly won’t be getting the book thrown at him—twenty years and everything he owns. Under Marella’s guidance, and with Lefebvre cooperating with the feds, it’ll probably be more like an admission of guilt, around forty million bucks in cash forked over to Uncle Sam, and maybe fifteen or sixteen months in jail—if he’s lucky. In the United States, a convict must serve eighty-five percent of the sentence before being paroled, so even in this scenario, Lefebvre is looking at a substantial stretch. The bewildering ordeal seems over—a relief, obviously. All the same, the possibility of hard time becomes less chimera and more looming fact of life.

  There is another possibility: Lefebvre pleading not guilty. He could argue that the U.S. has no jurisdiction, that he hasn’t been president of Neteller in some time, and that it’s like charging a former CEO of Exxon in connection with the Valdez oil spill.

  “It’s not that simple,” says Lefebvre.

  Meaning, when you’ve been arrested and charged with money laundering and racketeering, the DOJ is not playing touch football. The government begins with twenty years and everything you own. Then the agents assigned to your case ask—cue up that famous Al Kooper organ part—do you want to make a deal? If you do, maybe, just maybe, they might consider cutting you slack. If Lefebvre decided to plead not guilty—to not cooperate with the DOJ in its ongoing gambling investigation—the Americans would seek permission from the Government of Canada to freeze his assets. Not only would Lefebvre find it difficult to buy those groceries, he wouldn’t be able to scrounge up enough coin to pay a lawyer. The only recourse for Marella would be to appear before the judge and plead his case to unfreeze a small portion of the accused’s funds to initiate representation.

  Still, doing time? The guy who used to be big man on campus is going to the big house? After cooperating? There was a quote in the Globe and Mail after the January arrests, referring to Lefebvre and Lawrence: “These are good guys,” said the unnamed source, an associate of Lawrence. “This is a little scary—this is super extra-territorial.”

  • • •

  The day’s recording session sputters out. Now Lefebvre wants to meet his daughter, Emily Lefebvre, and her fiancé, Pádraig Ó’Cinnéide (Kennedy), at Nobu, which is a three-minute drive from Malibu 2. Emily, born in 1980, is the proud result of Lefebvre’s second marriage.

  Lefebvre has been married three times—four counting his common-law relationship with Jane Bergman (now McMullen). His first was to Janice Pridham, in the early seventies, before university (Lefebvre can’t remember the year). The relationship fell apart the year Lefebvre was elected president of the student union, 1978. His second marriage, to Katharine Armitage, a U of C nursing student, was of the shotgun variety. The union fell apart, but Lefebvre and Armitage remained devoted to raising their child. “Katharine and I, we tried,” he says, “but Emily turned out great.”

  The two parents lived near one another in Calgary’s Sunnyside neighborhood to share the parenting load more easily. Lefebvre entered a long-term relationship with fellow lawyer and business partner Bergman, which began in the mid-eighties and sputtered out around a dozen years later. Then, in 2003, Lefebvre became entranced with a fifty-seven-year-old Costa Rican woman named Cecilia Garro, his landlady. While setting up Neteller’s San José office, he fell into a serious courtship, which resulted in marriage. The union went bad almost immediately, leading Lefebvre to bolt for Malibu in the fall of 2004. Lefebvre remains on good terms with all of his exes, except for Cecilia, whom he has not seen since their marriage imploded.

  Emily and Pádraig live in Dublin. She’s a student at Trinity College, and he’s an IT guy. They’re back on North American soil to attend a wedding and see Emily’s relatives. Her dad tells me Emily has an appealing take on Paris Hilton: “She thinks she’s a big shit because she’s got sixteen million. What a chump!”

  “That’s Emily,” Lefebvre says. “She’s got her head screwed on right.”

  I know nothing of the world-famous Nobu. Neither did Hilary, until her kids shrieked when she told them where they’d be dining tonight. As we approach the entrance, Lefebvre says, “This place is popular around here, you might see celebrities and that sort of shit.”

  We have an 8:30 reservation, for which we arrive on time. We sit down and, once Lefebvre asks for the multi-course omakase menu, or chef’s choice, it begins. Our wisecracking server brings on the cascade of dish upon dish upon dish of ornately, exquisitely prepared sushi. After just over two hours, it halts. My favorite is the one shaped like a gigantic winged insect, which you are supposed to eat whole. Lefebvre demonstrates, and I obediently follow, chewing then swallowing the oversized locust. He says about one-third of the people he brings to Nobu tell him it’s the greatest restaurant they’ve ever been to; the rest say it’s fantastic. The food does indeed have its share of wild taste sensations, but now we’re stuffed.

  As the dessert plate is served, Emily and Pádraig return to the subject of celebrity, specifically Cindy Crawford and her Gerber baby food scion husband, Rande. They were sitting at the next table for the first hour or so. Hilary says what caught her eye at first was this extraordinarily good-looking man. Later, I look it up and find out, yes, it’s true, Rande Gerber used to be a model. Almost as an afterthought, Hilary says Crawford, at forty-one, is still beautiful.

  Our fast-talking waiter appears one last time: “Was everything all right, John?”

  “Except for it being too much food it was perfect,” Lefebvre replies, signing off. Under a couple grand—chicken feed. “Thank you.”

  We head back to the house. Lefebvre, Hilary, and I are in the Sierra, while Emily drives Pádraig home in her dad’s BMW Z8. She’s moseying along in the sleek sports car, below speed limit. Lefebvre smirks and says, “Guess it’s too bad Dad’s following her.”

  Once we’ve settled in the living room, Lefebvre pulls out his CD-Rs of the day’s rough mixes. I stare at the Bösendorfer gleaming across the room as we listen to the new tunes at high volume to see how they play outside the confines of the Village’s studio walls. Some seem a little muddy because they haven’t been mixed, but others already sound okay. Emily wears a look of disbelief as she hears Dad do his Dylan imitation on “Independence Day.”

  I sit back, listen, and let my thoughts drift. I remember my conversation with Lefebvre this morning about Neteller, his bust, and the possible consequences. He said, “Bill, you have to realize, everybody was doing it—the banks, the credit card companies, other monetary transaction companies—everybody was processing transactions involving offshore gambling sites.”

  Sure, everybody was doing it—maybe most everybody’s still doing it in some form or other. But it’s the Neteller guys who got nabbed, not the Visa guys.

  “Yes,”
said Lefebvre, “but think of it as a speed trap. A radar gun is set up. Visa speeds by … whoosh. MasterCard speeds by … whoosh. Chase Manhattan speeds by … whoosh. Western Union speeds by … whoosh. Neteller speeds by … zap! Everyone was speeding, but Neteller got caught.”

  So was it a case of the DOJ going after the little guy?

  “Maybe,” said Lefebvre, “but that doesn’t matter. The fact is I’m guilty.”

  In a DOJ press release dated July 10, 2007, the exact words of the FBI’s Garcia were: “Lefebvre pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to use the wires to transmit in interstate and foreign commerce bets and wagering information; to conduct illegal gambling businesses; to engage in international financial transactions for the purpose of promoting illegal gambling; and to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business. During the course of the plea allocution, Lefebvre admitted that, during the time he operated the Neteller Group, he learned that laws in the U.S. prohibited certain funds transfers for the purpose of promoting gambling, and as a result, he knew his conduct was wrong.” (Lefebvre’s partner Stephen Lawrence pleaded guilty in a similarly worded press release dated June 29, 2007.)

  Lefebvre’s sentencing is scheduled for November 1, 2007, although he says they’re all but certain the date will move to April 2008. (Ultimately, the sentencing date will go into limbo and remain there until October 25, 2011.) The FBI will milk Lawrence and Lefebvre for every morsel of information it can get and use them as lures to hook other online gambling executives.

  The DOJ has demanded that he be partially responsible for paying $100 million in restitution, which means, yes, Lefebvre will have to find that forty million. It has also recommended a jail sentence of up five years, although Lefebvre’s cooperation with U.S. attorneys and FBI agents will almost certainly shorten this length. The penalties will be decided upon down the road, but overall they’re not looking bad. “No, it’s not bad at all,” says Lefebvre. “I don’t have cancer. All those poor fuckers I met in jail, they’re looking at ten to twenty years and they’re not going to be rich when they get out.”

  For now, Lefebvre has met the DOJ’s other crucial condition: admit guilt. Yet “guilt” is such a relative term in this case. Gambling is ingrained in our culture. Many commentators point out that the concept of subprime loans—the 2008 world stock market crisis being caused by mass defaulting on subprime mortgages—was nothing more than a complex Ponzi scheme perpetrated by Wall Street traders. Texas Hold’em is a television game, wildly popular with the general public. Math whiz Johnathan Duhamel, from Boucherville, Quebec, became a national hero when he won the 2010 World Series of Poker. Now nerds can aspire to win fortunes at poker as well as the usual dreaming of becoming the next Kobe Bryant or Sidney Crosby. Las Vegas has successfully rebranded itself as a family destination. Websites aimed at young users offer free games that essentially teach kids early how to gauge odds—sort of priming the market pump. All levels of government enjoy healthy gambling profits, throwing a bit of the cash at the resultant societal ills as a sop.

  Lefebvre chooses to see his ordeal as nothing more than a traffic ticket, but he knows it’s a much heavier beef. The FBI has compromised his liberty, and in his legal mind he knows its stance is hypocritical. He also knows he must show contrition in order to receive mercy, so he gets out his frustration, and true feelings, in song. “Justice was a word that used to have sense / Now it’s just another barb in your fence / Land of the Free, incarcerate me,” he sings on “Mr. Bully Boy,” one of his new songs.

  Gambling is not the first activity labeled a vice by the law over which Lefebvre has confronted society’s hypocrisies. He got an education in North America’s war on drugs a couple of years before the Nixon administration declared illegal drugs Public Enemy Number One and the media created the term “War on Drugs.” That was the LSD bust in 1969 he promised to tell me about. And so for Lefebvre the correct posture is to remain philosophical about his current imbroglio: “Being busted when I was seventeen, doing time when I was eighteen, was a big part of what prepared me for this. I knew by the time I was nineteen that there wasn’t much difference between the guys who were in jail and the guys who were not in jail. There’s no big dividing line.”

  But there is a legal dividing line, and Lefebvre was identified as being on the wrong side of it. Maybe he did get screwed, but who knows? If this hadn’t happened, maybe he wouldn’t have gotten around to recording twenty-nine songs in a big-time studio with big-time musicians. However, the price to play was steep: the DOJ’s proposed forfeiture is the equivalent of the budget of a modest Hollywood flick. “Nothing but the best for my songs,” Lefebvre jokes. Oh, and being saddled with a guilty plea beside his name. Oh, and facing a lifetime of complications crossing the U.S. border. Oh, and doing time (again).

  But on the sunny side, Lefebvre has what he wants: he’s recording his first solo album, at age fifty-six. And so maybe it’s worth it for the guy who said publicly almost a decade ago, when he donated $1.2 million to the Faculty of Arts at the University of Calgary, “Art is a way for people to step up and express themselves as human beings; every time you do that, it makes you a better person.” If the DOJ hadn’t come a-knocking, maybe he never would have had the follow-through to test his mettle against some of the best musicians in the world.

  The song “Independence Day” ends and the Malibu living room is momentarily quiet. I worry about Lefebvre’s chances for freedom. I recall his lyric “I love the government / I hope they get one someday,” and then remember one of his many anecdotes:

  So I’m talking to these DOJ guys and they’re asking me why I quit Neteller, and they want me to say something like, “I’d been breaking the law and now I realize I have to stop.” But instead I’m telling them, “I worked hard, made a couple of bucks and now I want to get back to my life. My partner Steve, he’s different. You know, some guys just want to be Warren Buffett …”

  “Yeah,” says one of the FBI agents, “and some guys just want to be Jimmy Buffett.”

  • • •

  The best way to set up a story about Lefebvre, a friend tells me, is to compare two Canadians who, in parallel, got into trouble with U.S. authorities. One is a well-known, flamboyant, loquacious, upper-crust Toronto media mogul named Conrad Black, who hobnobbed with English royalty, idolized Napoleon Bonaparte, played war games with toy soldiers, and spent lavishly on his buxom columnist wife. The unflappable “Robber Baron” was taken down by jury trial in Chicago on July 13, 2007. Now he is on the prowl—as socialite, author/historian, and talk show co-host lobbing Nerf balls at guests—attempting to restore his good name with Toronto high society.

  The other is John Lefebvre, a not-so-well-known hippie rock ’n’ roller and internet entrepreneur from Calgary. He made a mega-fortune after the company he cofounded took its innovation public on the London Stock Exchange. While he purchased many baubles for himself, he also spread his money around to family, to friends, to his alma mater, and to charitable organizations, dedicating a healthy portion of his fortune to causes he thought worthy of people’s support and attention. And so while Conrad Black is the modern Robber Baron, Lefebvre—the flip side of this hit single—is the modern Robin Hood. I agree. That’s a good story, which ignores the fact that Black cheated his shareholders while Lefebvre crossed the DOJ.

  Then again, the story is also about not only Neteller but Lefebvre himself. He likes to talk in hippie language from the sixties (“Some cats are comin’ ’round later”). Sure, he can play the eloquent, hyper-enunciating lawyer, but he’ll quote Lennon when he’s not quoting his own lyrics. He thought dropping acid over forty years ago was his greatest formative experience—and still does. He believes in the ideals of his generation, which are currently being played out in the politics of global warming. His sharp, deductive mind questions everything around him, whether it’s his producer’s moves in the studio or the outmoded business practices of North American car
companies (reduce the number of models, he says, and they can still prosper—and they did).

  Lefebvre can be fiery. He’ll explode with indignation, machine-gunning the conversation with expletives, the most oft-used being “fuck,” “fucking,” “asshole,” “cocksucker,” and “cunt.” Sort of like George Carlin’s 1972 list, but not quite. This sounds like overkill on paper, but mostly it’s colorful coming from Lefebvre, if exhausting. Sometimes when he’s vocal about political peeves—the butchery of infibulations, for example—his one-way hectoring veers into offensive territory. I’ve seen him give women a tour of his massive resort property redevelopment on Salt Spring Island, be otherwise perfectly amiable and charming, and then insist that it’s not okay for men to go around slicing out clitorises. He means well, of course.

  Most of the time he worms inside your head with his insistence that the world should be freer, that people should be freer, that all human beings should be able to say and think what they want. This simple mantra is not without merit, and his energy in delivering it is contagious.

  Lefebvre would not be who he is without contradictions. He is impulsive and hedonistic, yet empathetic and conversational. He wants to save the earth with his money, yet he buys carbon points and flies around in a personal jet. He loves to throw around his money and make sure everyone has a good time, yet he’s the one who controls that good time. Like more famous men of his generation, he seems to embody that dual spirit of doing whatever he wants and saving the world simultaneously. Problem is, there is consumption and then there are limits, and we’re bumping on limits now. Lately, Lefebvre’s answer to the world’s problems is this: we need to go through a crisis and lose a few billion in order to make this place sustainable.

  A Catholic born and raised, Lefebvre has no time for religion, yet religious imagery pops up in his speech regularly. He’ll become consumed by an offbeat television show like John from Cincinnati, which is about an idiot savant Christ figure and a surfing family, and defend it even though it tanked (maybe it was the overdose of profanity). When it came to naming his first album, he betrayed two things: one, a lifelong infatuation with puns, and two, a deep interest in what the world has come to label “religion,” even as he denies it. “I admit the whole conceit of Psalngs,” he tells me. Psalms/Psalngs—get it? “I’ve told you all the songs are about love, light, and God, but I probably wouldn’t say that anymore. People get confused when they hear the word God. They think you mean something aside from the myth. To me, it’s a reference to that from which flows the miracle of love.”