Volume No. 1 Issue No. 96 - Thursday March 09, 2007
For One Oboist, a New (and Unwanted) Record
 By Paul Farhi - The Washington Post
Meyers is a tall, talkative man whom friends fondly call "H" ("I don't even know my first name anymore," he says. "It's just 'H,' " for Herbert). He met a reporter at a Starbucks in Potomac Village and proceeded to talk -- and occasionally play his oboe -- while sitting in a courtyard adjacent to the coffee shop.
"It's a total misunderstanding more than anything," he says. "Everything I've been charged with, I have a legitimate defense." For example, because it takes weeks for a check to clear in Dominica, he says, he would cash checks given to him by Internet gamblers and then would forward this money to the operators of the offshore betting site. "I didn't think it was illegal to do that," he says. "Las Vegas casinos send checks into Maryland [to pay off winners] all the time. Banks transfer money all the time. Why can't I?"
He said Sports International was a way to supplement his musical career, which provided only intermittent compensation. The only reason he agreed to plead guilty to three of the original seven counts brought by a grand jury last year, he added, was to spare two friends and another relative, whom he won't identify, from prosecution.
Soon, Meyers was joined by his attorney, Barry Helfand, who called Meyers "a bon vivant" who has "classical music in his heart and soul" and noted his charitable activities. He also called his client "a Damon Runyon character," but reconsidered the description when he was reminded that Runyon most famously wrote about ne'er-do-wells and gamblers who were the role models for "Guys and Dolls."
While Helfand talked, Meyers serenaded him with "Happy Birthday" and later with the piping opening bars of Mozart's "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik."
Eventually, Meyers got around to saying that he regrets his actions and is willing to take responsibility for them. But he repeatedly insisted that he was unaware that he was violating any laws.
"I find this whole situation extremely outrageous," he said at one point.
Moreover, he suggested the government is hypocritical about Internet gambling. He pulled from his briefcase several copies of a monthly magazine published by Amtrak, a government-supported institution, and flipped to ads for offshore gambling sites. "This is the U.S. government, encouraging Americans to gamble over the Internet," he said.
Meyers argues that he's already paid a big price for his actions. To recoup profits that prosecutors claim he reaped from illegal gambling, Meyers agreed to sell his house and forfeit the profit to the government. Prosecutors are seeking $321,365 from the sale, but Meyers has disputed this figure, and is still negotiating a settlement. What's more, Helfand's legal fees are "well into six figures," Meyers said.
"I'm broke," he says. "Broker than broke. The government thinks I've stashed all this money in offshore accounts, but it's just not true." Marcia Murphy, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office, which is handling Meyers's prosecution, declined to comment.
As for the prospect of doing a long stretch in prison, Meyers seems oddly unmoved. The only thing he says he will really miss is playing the oboe, which he practices two to three hours a day.
"If I go to jail," says Meyers, who now lives in Leesburg, "my playing days are over. Itzhak Perlman once said: 'If I miss one day of practice, I know the difference. If I miss two days, my fellow musicians know. Three days, and the entire world knows.' "
After two hours of conversation, he insisted that a reporter listen to his Beethoven CD, which was recorded in St. Petersburg last fall. (Meyers had to get the court's permission to travel abroad for the performance.) He popped the recording into the console of his Cadillac Escalade and was quickly engrossed by the interplay of the strings, bassoon and oboe.
"Wait!" he commanded his listener. "Wait for this! A high F! Here it comes . . ." And as the notes climbed and reached, dancing higher and higher until they concluded with one last pure sound, Meyers smiled, and seemed very, very pleased.
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