But what Ayre did best was marketing. Instead of lying low and counting his dollars quietly, he plastered his face all over Bodog’s Web sites and tied the brand to his own lifestyle. Collaborating with his friend Christopher Costigan of Gambling911.com, a popular industry news site, he created a public alter ego, Cole Turner the CEO, and faked elaborate adventures that Bodog users could follow online. There was a 2003 party excursion to Cambodia pitched to the Web audience as an expedition gone awry, involving hookers, terrorists, opium smugglers, and, ultimately, Turner’s kidnapping. Ayre dressed hotel employees as gun-toting rebels and posted the photos. At least one concerned customer phoned to plead for the release of Bodog’s beloved faux CEO.

“I said, ‘Man, it’s kind of embarrassing, but I’ll do it,’ ” Costigan recalls. “I remember people asking if it’s really happening. I’m like, ‘Are you kidding me? You actually believe this stuff?’ ”

In 2004, Ayre outed Turner, then picked up the old boy’s fedora himself, flaunting a playboy lifestyle under his own name and modeling himself after his two idols, Hugh Hefner and Richard Branson — hiding nothing while exaggerating everything. “There is no personal in my life,” he told me.

To create some attention, Ayre begat the fictitious “Cole Turner” as the public face of Bodog. He convinced Christopher Costigan, owner of Gambling911, an online tabloid promoting Web gambling, to post stories of Turner, an Indiana Jones-like character. In 2003, for example, Ayre turned his vacation to Thailand into a Cole Turner Internet adventure. Using a digital camera, a machete, fake blood and a cast of taxi drivers and massage-parlor girls, Ayre spun the tale of Turner leading an expedition into Cambodia to fight a cell of Buddhist terrorists. Along the way Turner was captured by the Cambodian army, double-crossed by opium warlords in a lost ancient city and wounded in a knife duel while escaping the country. Ayre wrote the eight-story series on the plane back to Costa Rica. It was released during the college bowl season.

The series got noticed. Disgusted bookies at rival companies posted notes on Internet forums saying Turner was a terrible businessman because he was off on an adventure rather than at his desk during one of the busiest betting times of the year. One gambler called Bodog and said he wouldn’t place another bet until he knew if Turner was alive.

But the joke got old. After being quoted in a 2004 Cigar Aficionado magazine story as Cole Turner, Ayre got tired of explaining to reporters that Turner was just a marketing trick.