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Forbes
Billionaire cover boy Calvin Ayre arrested in Costa
Rica? Television producers witness "raid"
 Just
one day after announcing its list of this year's
billionaires, Forbes Magazine received news
late Friday night that the man appearing on its
cover, Calvin Ayre, had his sprawling Costa Rica
mansion under siege by local law enforcement agents.
Ayre is the newest
billionaire and one of a handful of online gambling
entrepreneurs appearing on this year's prestigious
listing. It is Forbes biggest selling issue of
the year. Mr. Ayre runs Bodog.com, a high
volume online casino and poker room.
A barrage of local
Costa Rica federales raided the sprawling home of
Calvin Ayre while filming for an upcoming big
network
reality show. The television cameras were
rolling at the time of the raid, which Ayre would
later deem to be "illegal".
This could turn out to be one of the greatest reality
television moments ever caught on film, far
surpassing that of any Real World street
brawls or even the Surreal Life episode where
Gary Coleman was placed in charge of running a
restaurant staffed by the likes of Vanilla Ice,
Tammy Fae Baker and Ron Jeremy.
Ayre and the
television network
were filming a Wild Card Poker TV series entitled
"Calvin Ayre
Wild Card Poker"
airing
April 15th at 11:00 PM for six weeks. The show is
hosted by Bodog.com Founder and CEO Calvin Ayre and
will have Celebrities, Poker Pros and Internet Poker
qualifiers all vying for $750,000 in prize money.
This will be the first Poker lifestyle show ever
produced and should create some ripples in the
industry. Gambling 911 was there on location
at the Bodog Compound this past Tuesday during the
show's kickoff reception.
Additional filming and
the actual poker tournament was taking place at the
local news 7 studios in San Jose, Costa Rica.
A portion of the studio was made to look like Calvin
Ayre's home.
Police arrived on
the scene with heavily fortified units due to
information provided that Ayre's home had a heavily
armed security force, among them a Desert Storm
sniper and former professional wrestler, Mad Max.
News stations reported
that Ayre had been running an "illegal" poker game
within his home.
A call to US
Justice officials by Gambling911.com sources within
the States went unanswered last Friday evening,
but by Saturday morning nobody from the DOJ seemed
aware of any investigation, according to these same
sources. Calvin Ayre is a Canadian.
According to the
special issue of Forbes Magazine,
Canadian playboy
Calvin Ayre went down to Costa Rica a decade ago and
began taking illegal bets over the Internet.
Now he’s worth $1 billion (see cover story). Making
a billion just isn’t what it used to be. In its
inaugural ranking of the world’s richest people 20
years ago FORBES uncovered some 140 billionaires.
Just three years ago we found 476. This year the
list is a record 793, up 102 from last year. They’re
worth a combined $2.6 trillion, up 18% since last
March. Their average net worth: $3.3 billion.
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Gambling911.com News
Wire
Originally published March 11, 2006 1:01 am ET
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