The man who got busted for running an $800,000 NFL survivor pool settles into a booth at a Linden diner last week. John Bovery is in good spirits, because after a five-and-a-half-year legal battle, he is finally beginning to get his life back.

But his money? The prosecutors who raided his home and cleaned out his bank accounts are still fighting for every penny of that, even after caving on most of his demands to make his criminal case go away. That, Bovery said, makes it hard to celebrate.

"The Bovery friends and family were ready to break out the Cristal when we settled the criminal," he said over a stack of pancakes. "I'm not ready for that. I need the money to get my life straight."

I wrote about Bovery just over a year ago, and the story led to reader responses from across the country. I suspect the reason is simple: He, like millions of people in this country, liked to put a few bucks into sports pools. He ran a few of them out of his three-bedroom condo in Parlin, which is certainly not unlike a lot of people, either, in offices and bars from coast to coast.

Where he differed from most, of course, was the sheer size of his pool. What started with a few buddies from his Wall Street office had swelled to more than 8,000 entries, including prominent sports broadcasters, New Jersey state troopers, dozens of lawyers and -- according to Bovery -- the agents for Tiger Woods and other PGA Tour golfers.

He conducted it openly because, in his estimation, he had nothing to hide. He wasn't a bookie taking action on a single game. He was a pool operator, facilitating the game no differently than an employee who runs the March Madness pool at thousands of companies each year.

He would accept a gift, no more than 10 percent, from the winner at the end of each season. With the payouts reaching as high as $520,000 for a single winner in its final year, most were happy to do it.

Who were the victims of this enterprise? No one. The state of New Jersey, after all, wants badly to get its share of the illegal multi-billion gambling business in this country, and is currently fighting its own lengthy court room battle to do it. Even the NBA commissioner thinks that legal sports betting is an inevitability, one the professional leagues should embrace.

That didn't stop the Monmouth County Prosecutor's Office from raiding his home and accounts just before the start of the NFL season in 2010, jailing him for 25 nights on a money-laundering charge and stringing along his court case before finally reaching a settlement last month.

"This whole thing was a cluster---- from the beginning," his civil attorney Ralph Ferrara said. "It's always been about the money, and they've never admitted that it's still about the money."

The settlement speaks to how little Monmouth County cared about putting Bovery behind bars. He will walk into a probation office in New Brunswick on May 18 and pay a $155 fine, part of his plea agreement to a third-degree felony for "possession of gambling records."

Six months later, if he meets the terms of his PTI (pre-trial intervention), this crime will disappear from his record. And in a year? All records of his arrest, the day 11 cops in full body armor came bursting into his three-bedroom condo expecting to break up a large bookmaking operation only to find nothing of the sort, will disappear as well.

Christopher Gramiccioni, the acting Monmouth County prosecutor, said his office was pleased with the resolution. "Both parties felt it was a fair resolution or neither of them would have entered into it," he said. "The court agreed."

The civil case, however, still awaits a conclusion. Monmouth County civil judge Paul Escandon granted the prosecutors a summary judgment in June 2014 that canceled a trial, but made it abundantly clear he was not fond of the prosecutor's actions.

"Troubling as the reality often is, the judiciary is not always tasked with adjudicating a palatable and fair outcome," Escandon wrote in his opinion, stating that, while he finds what Bovery did to be illegal, he pointed to the thousands of other sports pools in the country and added, "This court would be remiss to ignore the web of contradictions, hypocrisy and opportunism this seizure presents."

An appeal on that decision was heard in September, with a ruling possible any time now. Ferrara, who once played in the survivor pool, is hoping the three-judge panels see what has been obvious to him all along: Even if you believe that Bovery did something wrong, what about the money from the thousands of players that was taken? What did they do?

"If I get this case in front of a jury," Ferrara said, "it will be the happiest day of my life."

Bovery isn't quite ready to smile yet. With the PTI deal in place he finally could get another job as a math teacher -- which, ironically, is at the Union County Juvenile Detention Center -- but he is still digging out of a massive financial hole from the long legal battle and inability to work.

So he waits for the appeals court to make its decision. It can either rule against Bovery, send the case back to the civil courts for a trial or decide itself what to do with the money that was seized.

Bovery said he has offered to settle the case for a small fraction of that money -- just $60,000 -- so he can begin the process of paying off his many debts. The prosecutors refused that offer, which probably shouldn't have surprised anyone.

It's always been about the money, after all, in what even Escandon called a "devious cash grab." Bovery has committed a crime that, according to Monmouth County, was dire enough to impose a $155 fine and slap him with an obscure charge that will disappear in six months.

The $846,000? They aren't going to give that back. But John Bovery isn't giving up the fight just yet.

Steve Politi may be reached at spoliti@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @StevePoliti. Find NJ.com on Facebook.