US authorities have seized US$24m from bank accounts linked to Bodog Entertainment Group, the online gaming company conspicuous for its continued operation in the illegal US market.
Detailed in court filings in a Baltimore federal court, cited by Forbes, the Bodog-related seizures from the financial institutions - which include Wachovia, Bank of America, SunTrust Banks and Regions Bank - are thought to have increased the possibility of criminal action against the company’s founder, Calvin Ayre, who abruptly retired from the group earlier this year.
Canada-born Ayre, a self-professed billionaire playboy who notoriously featured on the front cover of Forbes magazine’s 2006 issue on the world’s richest people alongside the headline ‘Catch Me If You Can’, said last year that Bodog’s North America operations would be run by the Morris Mohawk Group, located on the Kahnawake Indian reservation in Quebec, Canada
Since then, he has been the subject of law-enforcement raids abroad and growing regulatory scrutiny. He is now believed to be in Antigua and Barbuda, and only travelling to countries that do not hold extradition treaties with the US. There is also speculation that he is under secret indictment somewhere in the country.
