(Author's note: This story has been amended from its original published version.)
A new class action filed in Kentucky seeks damages from entities and persons that are or have been historically linked to the global Bodog family of online-gambling brands, citing losses on allegedly illegal services being offered to the state's residents. The lawsuit, filed last Tuesday by Kentucky resident Billi Jo Woods, seeks compensatory and punitive damages under Kentucky's Loss Recovery Act, the same antiquated law under which the state successfully wrested a $300 million settlement from Flutter Entertainment, the current owner of PokerStars.
Woods' complaint alleges that she lost thousands of dollars during 2023 gambling on the US-facing Bovada website, including the domains www.bovada.com, www.bovada.lv, and bodog.com, through which the online-gambling services were allegedly advertised. The complaint names four defendants: Canadian firm Morris Mohawk Gaming Group, MMGG founder and CEO Alwyn Morris, Bodog founder Calvin Ayre, and Harp Media BV, a Curacao-based entity that the lawsuit claims also has an ownership interest within the Bodog/Bovada grouping.
Woods is represented by two firms, Mehr Fairbanks Trial Lawyers, PLLC of Lexington, Kentucky, and Bursor & Fisher, PA of New York, New York. The action seeks an unspecified sum from the defendants, based on discovery of how much money the would-be class members have gambled on the sites. The action appears to target services offered through the Bovada brand, which the lawsuit implies remains linked to Bodog. PokerOrg makes no statement as to whether the lawsuit's claim of continuing links between Bodog and Bovada are accurate, but merely notes their existence within the Kentucky filing.
Though Woods claims to have gambled only on the Bovada sites, the lawsuit claims that Bodog (and Ayre) are still connected to the Bodog operation. "Bodog lists Bovada as one of the sites that operate within the 'Bodog Network',” the lawsuit asserts. "Bodog’s websites redirect users in Kentucky to 'try visiting our partners at bovada.lv.'" The alleged online evidence referencing "partners at bovada.lv" was not included in the initial complaint. (A Bodog representative has subsequently disputed Bodog's or Ayre's alleged links to Bovada in communications to PokerOrg, though there is no record of Ayre or Bodog responding directly to the Woods lawsuit as of November 30, 2023.)
The action asserts that any judgment is expected to be in excess of $5 million. If the action is certified, any Kentucky gambler who had wagered $5 or more on one of the Bovada or Bodog sites in the last five years would be eligible to join the class action.
Kentucky Loss Statute resurfaces in complaint
The action was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky. It invokes the same Loss Recovery Act -- also known as Kentucky Revised Statute § 372.010 -- under which Kentucky won its settlement from Flutter in 2021. Flutter had inherited the Kentucky matter after acquiring The Stars Group's financial responsibilities in a case that involved the original offering of services by PokerStars in Kentucky from 2006-2011.
The Kentucky-Flutter settlement resolved an existing $870 million judgment that had grown well over $1 billion with interest, as the two sides battled in Kentucky's court system for nearly a decade. Kentucky's Loss Recovery Act also calls for trebled damages, and the new class action seeks those trebled damages via jury trial.
The complaint asserts that Bovada, by name, is advertised as being legal online-gambling services but, at least in Kentucky, are not. "Bovada has evaded the laws of Kentucky and other states," the complaint states. "Bovada has advertised and presented itself to consumers in Kentucky as a legitimate online business. But this is false. In fact, Bovada is an illegal enterprise. Bovada's online presence and advertising provided an aura of legitimacy and legality to Plaintiff and class members."
The complaint also invokes a letter co-signed by 28 U.S. Congress members calling on Congress to crack down on unregulated offshore gambling sites. The letter was applauded by the American Gaming Association (AGA), which for years has called on the U.S. to initiate another "Black Friday"-style crackdown, especially targeting unregulated sports-betting sites.
No Bodog-created entity has ever obtained formal U.S. approval
Whether or not the defendants in the case choose to appear in a U.S. court to battle the charges is an open question. Unlike PokerStars, Bodog has never obtained any form of U.S. licensing or regulatory approval and has operated in an unregulated form -- as it pertains to the US market -- ever since it was founded by Ayre in 2000. Regarding Ayre, since the plaintiff's losses occurred on Bovada, Ayre is expected to argue that his ownership interest was jettisoned long ago, and that he should be dropped fron the case's list of defendants.
Subsequent to this story's initial publication, a Bodog spokesperson protested Ayre's and Bodog's inclusion in the lawsuit and mention in this story. Ayre himself was widely reported to have left Bodog's US-facing operations in 2007, as the entire online-gambling industry dealt with the not-entirely-understood impact of the US's passage of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) in 2006.
Later, the US-facing part of the Bodog operation was broken off from the rest of the business and reportedly sold to the Canada-based Morris Mohawk Gaming Group. It was under MMGG's official reign that the US-facing part of Bodog became Bovada, and later on, poker operations facing the US were transferred into a third entity, Ignition Casino.
However, Woods' lawsuit includes a de facto assertion that despite the announced sale of the US-facing Bodog operations to MMGG, Ayre somehow remains involved in that US-facing business, perhaps as a beneficial owner. The initial complaint offers no direct evidence of Ayre's continuing involvement, however.
On the flip side, the published announcements of the Bodog sale to MMGG were never any proof that Ayre no longer retained interest in any Bodog-created entity's continued US-facing operations. Such proof, one way or the other, could only be deduced from a thorough evaluation of the MMGG sale documents, and such documentation has never received public scrutiny.
Sadly, the online gambling world has already witnessed one faked sale designed to shield ownership. That purported sale involved another US-facing online platform, the Cereus Poker Network, to Tokwiro Enterprises in 2008. It is amid such history that any offshore site's ownership history is often questioned. In any event, Ayre's and Harp Media's inclusion among the listed defendants reflect the plaintiff's belief that Ayre and Harp Media remain involved, and it falls to those defendants to disprove that.
Ayre targeted in various US-based complaints for two decades
Ayre and various Bodog-connected entites have a long history of being targeted by the US in various ways, though this lawsuit may mark the first time any person or entity connected to Bodog in the past or present has been named in a civil, planned-class-action manner. That the lawsuit was filed in Kentucky is important as well, because the arguably unfair calculations of losses and damages used in the PokerStars case has become re-entrenched in modern-day Kentucky law, and the plaintiffs, if successful, would hope for a similar damages calculation.
As for Ayre, he remains a highly visible target despite his and Bodog's ownership disclaimers. He was famously the subject of a 2006 Forbes feature story, "Catch Me if You Can," that detailed Ayre's and Bodog's staunch defiance of the U.S.'s right to control international online commerce.
The extent to which the restructurings of Ayre's online empire reflected any attempt to shield that empire from the long reach of American authorities remains open to interpretation and opinion, though the timing of various moves, in the wake of the US's 2006 UIGEA passage and 2011 "Black Friday" crackdown, have always left those questions hanging and unanswered.
Bovada remained the US-facing front of what was once Bodog Poker for four years, into 2011, when the branding was changed again, this time to Ignition Casino. Throughout this period and well beyond, the Ignition, Bovada, and Bodog sites available in various jurisdictions around the world still used the separately-branded skins of the same software platform. That tacit software link likely adds to the allegation in the Kentucky case that Bovada, Ignition, and several Bodog platforms remain linked in other ways as well.
The US for many years also continued its personal pursuit of Ayre. The online-gambling magnate, originally from Canada, also has citizenship in Antigua and Barbuda and has residences around the globe. (Co-defendant Morris, of MMGG, is a resident of Quebec and MMGG is domiciled on the Kahnawake Reserve near Montreal.)
For a brief time in 2012, the U.S.'s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, a division within the US's Department of Homeland Security, even listed Ayre among its ten most wanted international criminals. Ayre had been indicted in a federal court in Maryland, along with four others, on charges of conducting an illegal gambling business and conspiring to commit money laundering.
ICE's depiction of the sharply-dressed Ayre amid mugshots of nine other people then appeared -- with all the others wanted for crimes such as human trafficking, drug distribution, and it was incongruous from the start. A recent contact from a Bodog representative depicted Ayre's inclusion in that ICE list as "[being] inappropriate and inconsistent with the individuals who are listed on the ICE website, those who are dangerous or pose a threat to United States national safety." The US also seized the Bodog.com domain, as it was within US authorities' reach, unlike Ayre himself. That paralleled the US's similar "Black Friday" tactics a year earlier, when it knocked US-facing poker sites Full Tilt, PokerStars, UB (UltimateBet), and Absolute Poker offline.
Ayre was indeed removed from the ICE list a few weeks or months later, amid widespread rumors that he and the US were negotiating a settlement, and that the listing of Ayre by ICE was a legal ploy to hasten such a deal. That settlement was indeed reached, but not until 2017, when Ayre pled guilty to a single misdemeanor count and paid a slap-on-the-wrist $100,000 fine. The US also gave the Bodog domain name back to Ayre as part of the settlement. The current Kentucky lawsuit appears to be the first time Ayre has been named in any US-based legal action since the 2012 indictment was resolved.
