Calvin Ayre / Cole Turner
The thieving allegations by Mayan Sports escalated in after years after it was discovered that the Bodog founder and CEO, then using the alias Cole Turner, was really Calvin Ayre. This was hugely controversial since at the time, the sector wasn’t yet aware that he had been behind El Moro Finance Ltd. (BVI). The actual story came out afterwards that he had raised capital for Cyberoad as a”consultant”, it failed, and a firm he controlled acquired all the assets, at which time he started using an alias (Cole Turner).
This wasn’t the first questionable company dealing between Calvin Ayre.
Calvin AyreThe self-told story about his past is that he was born to Canadian pig and grain farmers in 1961. After college and a few failed business ventures, he sold everything he owned to raise $10,000 in 1994 to begin a software company that would eventually become Bodog. What is frequently omitted from the narrative is that his dad was detained in 1987 for smuggling 750 pounds of marijuana. While Calvin wasn’t charged or arrested, he was known by the judge for a co-conspirator that”undoubtedly played a part.” In a separate run in with the law, in 1991 he was civilly charged with insider trading, but settled for a $10,000 fine and was banned from the Vancouver Stock Exchange until 2016.
When it was found that Cole Turner was really Calvin Ayre (the owner of Bodog and eSportz), this made Mayan Sports and many Cyberoad investors mad. It’s reasonable to say that Calvin Ayre had no shortage of enemies in his early career. However, looking ahead to today, Bodog has always been an honest and reputable gambling site which has paid all winners. Mayan, on the other hand, was a rogue gaming site (D+ ranked currently). It’s difficult without all of the facts to implicate Calvin Ayre of considerably, but according to track records running a gaming site, Calvin Ayre’s reputation is spotless from the perspective of both Bodog account holders and their payments.
The Big Book Final
To get back on track with the timeline of Bovada history, as mentioned, the business that began Bodog, eSportz was powering The Large Book and sharing an office. Each company used the same payment and accounting company as well. The story of their falling out of Bodog entails a woman called Viktoria Zazoulina (known as Vika) who had immigrated from the Ukraine into Vancouver, BC, Canada in early 1990’s.
Vika took a position with Kazootek Technologies Ltd. at their beginning (ardently believed to have been another Calvin Ayre firm ) that did all the financial accounting for the ebanx payment system. Vika started as a junior accountant and had such a great (perceived) work ethic that her managers increased her cover and coated her schooling involving a CGA designation (Canada’s term for CPA). She eventually reached the cap of the business and hired her friend Tatiana Kostiouk (called Tanya).
With time, both Vika and Tanya became signing officers in a lot of the company’s Kazootek Technologies Ltd. (meaning they had access to all bank accounts). By this moment, Vika was a genuine immigration success story earning over $100,000 per year. However, on June 15th of 2001, life changed. This was the date on which Vika and Tanya signed up the first of many checks used to embezzle large sums of cash from clients, the majority of which believed them close friends. As they stole and got away with it for years, their confidence rose. They registered a new employee, Greg Tanner, to help start a competing firm, which used technology stolen from Kazootek and finance money from their clients.
According to an article (no longer online) we suspect was composed by Calvin Ayre, they soon dragged The Large Book into a plan to develop into a customer and began conspiring how to sneak the source code from eSportz. With an investigation already under way into the strange behaviour seen from Vika in recent months, alarm bells went off when she gave her two-week notice in mid-2003. Not allowing her to destroy evidence for the next two weeks, she was promptly escorted from the building, and her computers and office were locked down for forensic audit. The wake was that the filling of a suit, and Bodog finish its partnership with The Big Book. From this day forward, Bodog.com was the only brand powered with the eSportz computer software.