When filling out your bracket, remember this poor guy.

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They were everywhere, 11 cops in full body armor, tearing apart his modest three-bedroom condo. And all John Bovery could do was watch.

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Bovery tried, once again, to explain. He was not a bookmaker. He was not hiding anything. He was a football pool operator who was so open about his business, and so convinced he was doing it legally, that he listed his home address in Parlin on the pool's website.

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This one, he told investigators and NJ Advance Media, was worth $837,000 in 2009. This one had 8,000 entries from around the globe -- men and women sending in $100 for a chance to win that huge pot.

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He made what he considers a suggestion on his website jrwinkle.com: That winners, if they were satisfied with the experience of playing in the pool, give him a "gift" amounting to 10 percent of the amount they collected. Some winners, Bovery said, refused to give anything, and others gave less than Bovery's suggestion. Most agreed to make some sort of donation. In its final year, he tweaked that request to ask that all players make a 10 percent gift of the entry fee.

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But here they were, descending upon him, he said, "like I was Al Capone" hours before the first game of the NFL season. Here they were, seizing his three accounts at Amboy Bank, only after his deposits from pool participants drove the balance to more than $846,000. Of that money, Bovery said, $722,000 belonged to pool players -- some entrants still hadn't paid -- and $124,000 was his life's savings.

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Bovery was charged with promoting gambling in the third degree and financial facilitation of criminal activity -- or money laundering -- in the first degree.

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If this is an important crime why haven't they busted another pool operator since? How exactly did Bovery launder money when he has a record of every penny and it was kept in a single bank?

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