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.

"We needed to lift that veil of secrecy. Unless you talk about it, it's only going to keep happening and get worse. We need to be able to talk about online extortion and not assume it's a onetime thing or it's only going to affect gambling sites. It's only going to continue."

Today: A Defense Business Grows

All the while, Lyon's business grew. A second data center opened in June 2004 in Vancouver, a third came online in July, near Miami.

In May 2004, Lyon changed his company's name to Prolexic, a name that derives from his childhood. In third grade, Lyon learned he had severe dyslexia. As a child, he remembers thinking of his dyslexia simply as something that meant he learned differently from other kids. In college, the philosophers he studied were men and women with learning disabilities. "Instead of a learning disability," Lyon says, "I've decided it's a learning ability." In other words, he's decided he's not dyslexic, he's prolexic.

Another data center went live in December, in London. Two more are planned, and he has two patents pending. In January, the company moved its headquarters to Hollywood, Fla. He has close to 100 customers, many gaming websites but also mainstream financial services companies. The average client, he says, spends "less than $50,000 a year," but some spend much more for custom security services. Recently, Lyon turned 27.

Lyon understands marketing too. He never misses a chance to boast about what he now calls his "solution." He made the BetCris story the online extortion anecdote that led many general news stories about the problem. Everyone involved in this saga continues to promote one another. Wilson at PureGig fawns over Lyon. (He's still a customer of the ISP.) Lyon praises PureGig on PureGig's homepage. Richardson invested in Lyon. Lyon praises Richardson and his ISP, which also happens to be one of Lyon's customers.

It all fits together so nicely for Lyon. His eerie ability to anticipate the extortionists' moves. The fact he could build something so quickly that could fight attacks that no one had seen before. The way he turned that around into a business that benefited all the major players involved in the extortion fight.

It's enough to make a reporter paranoid. What if Lyon knew the extortionists?

"Did Barrett rig the whole thing? That's a valid question," Lyon says. "It used to come up a lot. This is why we've been an open book with law enforcement. All I can say is, I'd have to make a zombie out of myself to pull that off. I was working pretty hard when all the extortion was going on." Plus, he points out, people were arrested.