How a Bookmaker and a Whiz Kid Took On a DDOS-based Online Extortion Attack

Facing an online extortion threat, bookmaker Mickey Richardson bet his Web-based business on a networking whiz from Sacramento who first beat back the bad guys, then helped the cops nab them.

Lured by its stability, BetCris located there in 1993. Richardson joined as a "utility man" in 1996. Back then, the business wasn't online, it was a call center. BetCris's call center once employed more than 500 operators at peak hours, but the number dwindled as the business moved online. Today, maybe 30 operators will man a call center at peak hours, or during an extortion crisis.

As the Internet took off, so did San Jose as an offshore gaming mecca, for several reasons. The government encouraged the industry to expand its economy. (BetCris supports an industry group to lobby local politicians.) Also, the people are educated, with an excellent work ethic, Richardson says. Costa Rica has a 96 percent literacy rate. More high-level employees at gaming companies are Costa Ricans, including all of BetCris's accounting staff and 90 percent of its managers.

The other reason gaming companies swarmed here is, of course, because it's not the United States, where gambling laws are difficult to negotiate. Today, hundreds of offshore gaming companies, most of them online ventures, operate from San Jose. In BetCris's seven-story headquarters alone, Richardson says, there are 10 such enterprises, two software companies and a telecom company—pretty much offering everything you need to get started in the online gambling business in one building. The competition is mostly friendly. Richardson says it's not unusual to bump into competitors at a restaurant and join them for dinner.

The valley that makes up the San Jose metropolitan area holds almost half the country's 4 million people. Richardson says the valley gets blistering hot, and downtown San Jose is "undesirable." But BetCris, and most of the gaming and tourism industries, are above all that, nestled in the higher elevations of the valley's surrounding mountains, where Richardson compares the weather—and the lifestyle—favorably to San Diego.

When Lyon arrived here, he felt a sense of pride for helping. He saw "this beautiful building with this top-notch data center," he recalls. "And I met all the people who work there, and I kept thinking, I protected all of this. Me and my keyboard helped all these people keep their jobs. It was so neat to see how good a thing it was that we did."

Richardson and Lyon bonded immediately. There was a party with professional-grade fireworks launched from Richardson's front lawn. They went to dinner, talked about life and the attacks. Lyon had developed antipathy to the extortionists; he wanted to nail them. He told Richardson and Lebumfacil he was going to start a business, a service whereby people could subscribe to his anti-DDoS attack infrastructure. Lyon recruited Lebumfacil to help him start DigiDefense. BetCris was his first customer. Richardson gave them office space to start.