Let's get a grip people

We have to start somewhere on this, so let's start here.

About four years ago, there was a bit on the forums and I think it emanated out of the old Bodog website, to the effect that Bodog (Calvin) had entered into some arrangement with BetEd, that some said was an ownership arrangement. It may have been in the nature of a bailout or something like that. BetEd was a small, possibly struggling, business at that time.

I do remember the theory was that Calvin's sister would be the one running it. Then nothing more was heard, one way or the other, about what happened. It was about the time of the Forbes article, in which Calvin ratted himself out, and put the major heat on all of online gambling,

I do not believe the Super Bonus was part of any long term plan. I also don't believe there would have been any knowledge on Calvin's or anyone's part that there was an ongoing police sting using a fake payment processor. Word got out on the 20th of the indictments being unsealed, and somebody must have come up with this plan then. It almost sounds like a plan to raise cash just to go into hiding and possibly fund lawyers for Wright and Parchomchuk.

We do know that these two lads disappeared for a long time, and then the news came from somewhere that they were flying to Baltimore to turn themselves in to the DOJ. Right about that time, the first of Calvin's Drop the Dime Via Website stories came out trying to finger Joe and Paul as owners to the DOJ, and as stiffs to the gambling community. So at least three weeks passed before the attack on Covers took place, when the very same argument could have been put forth by May 25th.

It appears that the possibility that Wright and Parchomchuk were going to talk, or needed a story to tell the DOJ, was the impetus for the attacks Calvin made on Covers. They had two purposes. One was obscuring the ownership of BetEd. The other was revenge for Bodog getting booted from Covers.Two birds with one stone sort of thing.

If it was necessary to obscure ownership, that inexorably leads me to the conclusion that the real ownership was something connected to Calvin, something he didn't want the DOJ finding out. It also means the three week disappearance of Wright and Parchomchuk probably had to do with getting with lawyers and getting the story straight. Once everybody had their lines written, then the two book their tickets to Baltimore, and Calvin's rat job on his website begins.

Somewhere up above, I pointed out that deposits from US customers to BetEd were a measly $2.5 million over the year before the bust, or about six grand a day. Peanuts, really. So I don't think the losses to players through the three day 3x bonus fraud would amount to that much, probably not even 50 grand. I do recognize, of course, to the individual players affected, the total doesn't matter, what they personally lost does.

All of this follows to the tee the approach Calvin and his fuckwitted minions took to Scott Lewis and 1st Technologies when they got Calvin for $60 million back in 2008, I think it was. Same thing. His "journalists" got busy with character assassination. Photoshopped cartoons of the targets were the norm. Most portrayed Lewis, an Oxford PHD and a guy whose toenail clippings were smarter than Calvin, as a gap toothed hillbilly. In one last gasp of madness, Calvin came out and challenged Lewis to an MMA fight to "settle it all". At the same time, he tried to get up Dana White, the MMA guy's nose. White just brushed him off as an insignificant flea, calling him a "criminal" to his face and before the world.

He had a nervous breakdown then. His idiotic blog disappeared with all the crap about Lewis and everything elses. He hasn't really showed up again until this.

Do I think he has the intelligence to have made up some long range plan like this? It could only have been a long range plan if he had agreed to cooperate with the DOJ after he would have been indicted himself when he had the $28 million seized in the sting when Bodog itself got busted and they had his name as owner of the processing companies. The disappearance of the case against the two Bodog front men a couple of months after the indictments came out kind of supports that theory, but what shoots it down is that Bodog continues to openly violate US law. The DOJ would never, never, make a deal like that.

Privately, to his friends, Calvin had no problem admitting he wasn't the brightest bulb. I have had journalists doing stories on him phone me and say "What is with this guy". One offered up the theory that he is a "hyper narcissist". He is fairly stupid, and appallingly stupid when he is under pressure and things are going wrong. He doesn't think things through. He looked like a lunatic in how he handled the patent theft thing. His fear of the DOJ has led to this absurd idea that he thinks he can avoid prosecution through this idiotic claim to be franchising out the brand to use in criminal operations of others.

This attack on Covers approaches that level of not fully thought through stupidity. Now, the view widely held in Forumville is that HE is the owner of BetEd. It's like rassling, where one guy is kicking the shit out of the other, and finally throws him into the ropes, waiting with a straight arm to drop the rebounding loser. Suddenly the loser does a forward flip and plants two boots in the loogan's face, he drops, and bang, bang bang, the target becomes the winner.

But, as we learn, it does seem that the return of Wright and Parchomchuk was the catalyst for Calvin getting shit scared again and getting this idiocy started. That tells me that there is something about the ownership of BetEd that he wants to put a smokescreen around. If he can finger an enemy in doing that, so much the better for him.

Not much of a plan. Now he's a pariah in online gambling, or more than he was before, and one with a big RAT tattoo on his forehead.

Brilliant management, brother Rabbitt. (With apologies to Joey the Lips Fagan in The Committments)