Via “Europe’s foremost betting industry analyst” (or so he thinks he is), The Globe And Mail.
[...] He’s relaxed here, lounging in shorts and flip-flops, occasionally leaning over to his computer to check incoming e-mail, although he chooses his words with great caution, smiles infrequently and limits his eye contact. [...]
[...] The first would have to be the 1987 drug bust in which he was implicated. This is a matter of public record for anyone who bothers to dig up the Court of Queen’s Bench of New Brunswick record F/CR/4/88, a sentencing document prepared by the Honorable Justice David M. Dickson. (David Baines, a long-time investigative journalist at The Vancouver Sun, broke the story last year.) In September, 1987, police busted a smuggling operation involving the import of 750 pounds of marijuana to Canada from Jamaica. Four men were charged: Calvin Ayre’s father, Ken; William (Bill) Roberts (living common law with Calvin’s sister at the time); Bill’s elder brother Patrick Roberts, and a man named Frank Maddock. The plan was a daring one, although doomed. Patrick bought a plane and flew to New Jersey to have long-range fuel tanks installed. Unwittingly, he also took on-board a tracking device, as the fuel tank installers were actually American customs officials. Roberts then flew to the Bahamas, of which Justice Dickson wrote: “Patrick Roberts, I may say, was, it seems, through this period in Nassau, to have been in company if not all the time certainly a lot of the time with another gentleman who is the son of one of the present accused and undoubtedly played a part in this whole scheme or was part of the whole arrangement, because that third party there had contact with the three accused here and was making phone calls back and forth.” And later: “Certainly the operation of the other chap with Roberts in the Bahamas appears to have been an important one.” Police testimony during the trial identified the third party as Calvin Ayre. Still, Ayre wasn’t charged. But the incident did point him onward to another important narrative turn missing from the official bio.
In prison for his role in the smuggling operation, Patrick Roberts met Erich Brunnhuber, a legendary Vancouver Stock Exchange scamster, infamous on Howe Street for his role in promoting stock that crashed on the VSE’s 1984 Black Friday. Some time in 1990, after they were both released, Roberts introduced Brunnhuber to Ayre. Roberts, by this point, had been given power of attorney over the financial affairs of the elderly majority owner of Bicer Medical Systems, a company that made heart valves. Ayre, being a friend of Roberts’s and a recent MBA graduate (City University, Seattle), was installed as president of the company. Within months, Ayre and Roberts had a disagreement that led to them parting ways. Roberts says the falling-out related to Brunnhuber, whom Ayre had involved in Bicer affairs despite his stock fraud conviction. And according to B.C. Securities Commission documents, Ayre assumed full control of the company in September, 1990. The company crashed and burned in less than a year. Trading in Bicer shares was halted and subsequently suspended in July, 1991. Bicer was delisted in March, 1992. The commission later found that Ayre had made distributions of shares without a prospectus, that he’d acquired large blocks of Bicer shares personally without disclosing these acquisitions, and that he’d failed to file insider reports disclosing his trading of more than three million Bicer shares, over which he had “beneficial ownership of, or control or direction over.” Ayre was fined $10,000 and banned from the exchange for 20 years, specifically from “becoming or acting as a director or officer of any reporting issuer” or “engaging in any investor relations activities.” [...]
Shocking.
