Matt Bowyer: The Bookie Behind Baseball’s Biggest Betting Scandal

[SPEAKER_05]: Today, on Misunderstood with Rachel Yucatau.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a number one retail commodity broken in the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a number one bookmaker in the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, PN came to my home and had some sources that knew that I was receiving wires from show Hayatani.
[SPEAKER_00]: Feds rated me on October 5th, 2023 at about 800 clients active.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every Monday, I would say I was moving $5 to $7 million throughout the country.
[SPEAKER_00]: When the outside of it was like, well, how do you get tired of jumping on a plane at G550 and flying to Vegas and having a butler and 10,000 square foot room and you know millions of dollars and I buy her whatever she wanted and she didn't care about that stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: She wanted to have her husband and her family.
[SPEAKER_00]: That day in October 5th was one of the best days of my life when the feds raided my home.
[SPEAKER_04]: Why?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because that was it a fork in the road.
[SPEAKER_05]: there is a chance this could be the biggest cover up in major the baseball history.
[SPEAKER_05]: There are names you hear in the news that become bigger than the human behind them.
[SPEAKER_05]: Matt Boyer is one of those names.
[SPEAKER_05]: He's been called the bookie at the center of the show he Otani scandal, the man who handled hundreds of millions in bets.
[SPEAKER_05]: The guy who's operations stretched from California to Costa Rica and pulled in celebrities athletes and an interpreter who shook Major League Baseball to its core.
[SPEAKER_05]: But behind the headlines is a man who on August 29th was sentenced to 12 months and a day in federal prison.
[SPEAKER_05]: A man who now counts down the days until October 10th, when he must walk into a prison cell and leave everything, and everyone behind for the next year of his life.
[SPEAKER_05]: He's been ordered to pay back $1.6 million, sit in counseling and serve out supervised release when he comes home.
[SPEAKER_05]: His empire has crumbled and yet,
[SPEAKER_05]: Matt flew here to Florida to sit down with me face-to-face in what will be one of his last interviews before surrender.
[SPEAKER_05]: And while he's spoken to media before, I want you to understand why this conversation is different.
[SPEAKER_05]: Because we're not just going to talk about what he did, we're going to talk about who he is.
[SPEAKER_05]: We'll go back to his childhood to the early rush of gambling to what drew him into a life where risk and reward blurred until it consumed him.
[SPEAKER_05]: We'll walk through the rise of his operation, the players involved, the infamous old Tony connection, and the moment when it all came crashing down.
[SPEAKER_05]: And then we'll talk about the fear, the accountability and the preparation of a man who is about to lose his freedom in order to begin again.
[SPEAKER_05]: This isn't just another retelling of a scandal.
[SPEAKER_05]: This is about what happens when the light's spade, when the noise of the headlines disappears, and when a man is forced to reckon with himself.
[SPEAKER_05]: Matt Boyer is here, and this is the conversation you haven't heard yet.
[SPEAKER_05]: Matt, thank you so much for joining me today on Misunderstood.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for having me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I appreciate it.
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm so happy.
[SPEAKER_05]: I got a chance to meet you a couple weeks ago, which was such an honor to meet you and your wife.
[SPEAKER_05]: I had a great time with you, and you've actually flown into Florida to do this episode.
[SPEAKER_05]: And I'm so excited.
[SPEAKER_05]: Since the time we've met, you've actually been sentenced.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's correct.
[SPEAKER_05]: I want to talk about that.
[SPEAKER_05]: I remember texting you.
[SPEAKER_05]: I think it was the morning you went in or the morning before because I was thinking about it a lot.
[SPEAKER_05]: I know you must have been awake very early thinking about it.
[SPEAKER_05]: Can you talk me through that morning?
[SPEAKER_05]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_05]: And what it was like in the courthouse?
[SPEAKER_00]: I slept two hours.
[SPEAKER_00]: I put it on my Instagram two hours in 30 minutes, which I don't even know how I did that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the anxiety was just mounting.
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, as a father of five, it's not about going to prison, I mean, that's a shitty thing to deal with anyway, but it's not being able to be a father and being a husband.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the realization of all of that is really like, it's weird.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's, I described to people, if you have to go to a tooth pole at the dentist, it's like, it's six weeks from now, it's no big deal.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then, you know, the day of, you're like, oh, now I got to deal with this, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's that times a thousand.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: the anxiety of like the unknown and just wanting to get it over with is really what gets people right situations and and the not knowing also of the sentencing itself like how long this could be so what what were you up for what was the worst that could have happened that day really 37 to 51 months okay my my max charges are 18 years but that's it's always unrealistic
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, because I have no charges, uh, from priors, I've never been arrested by life, and the fact is I, I did cooperate with the government in regards to pleading guilty immediately.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that, that alone helps you, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: If you don't make them spend money to fight, and they immediately give you some, I'm going to call grievance, um, and that helps you, and then also,
[SPEAKER_00]: There was a situation which we can get into, but the case involves casinos.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I tried to help them assist them the United States government that is with just being completely honest with them about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't want to disclose anything else in my phone, but as far as the casinos and the KYC rules and stuff that they were supposed to follow, I was very upfront and honest about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that assisted me and got me a better situation.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the government recommended 15 months to before I walked in.
[SPEAKER_05]: Right, I saw that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And my probation report came back at 41 months.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's always higher generally in these federal cases, because they don't really factor in all of the things I just discussed.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we kind of my attorney pretty much knew 15 months was kind of the worst case, even though I could have got three or four years.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because most judges, as long as you're not completely out of line
[SPEAKER_00]: And mitigate, they're going to give you roughly that range.
[SPEAKER_05]: And you didn't have any real victims, right?
[SPEAKER_05]: So, I mean, that must have played a big part in it.
[SPEAKER_00]: That did, and then I paid all of my restitution in full, which less than 1% of people in my case ever do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: 7% even pay restitution.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, what did you have to pay?
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a little over 1.6 million.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: 6 and change, which I paid two months in advance.
[SPEAKER_05]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: And also, I mean,
[SPEAKER_00]: Every format I could do to mitigate I did, I worked with a non-profit, I went to USC and spoke to kids who are graduating college or about to and work with them on just understanding.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would say not only addiction but just overcoming adversity and how do you handle situations and
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I've done things to show also community service, to show the judge and the prosecution that I've been reformed.
[SPEAKER_05]: Right.
[SPEAKER_05]: What were the actual charges?
[SPEAKER_00]: Ten years for money laundering, five years for a falsified tax return, and three years for bookmaking.
[SPEAKER_05]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_05]: And you pled guilty to all of those.
[SPEAKER_00]: Correct.
[SPEAKER_00]: Three counts.
[SPEAKER_05]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_05]: Let's pull back.
[SPEAKER_05]: I want to know how you got here, right?
[SPEAKER_05]: Or got there, where they were accusing you of these things.
[SPEAKER_05]: Right.
[SPEAKER_05]: Where were you born?
[SPEAKER_05]: Tell me about your childhood and how you got into this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ironically, I was born in Cyprus, California.
[SPEAKER_05]: OK.
[SPEAKER_00]: I lived basically by a golf course called the Navy Golf Course, or a gentleman named Tiger Woods played all the time.
[SPEAKER_03]: OK.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we think of her to them?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you've heard of him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't know if you're aware of this, but I used to play there, that's where I would actually see him as a kid, but we're the same age.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, so where I grew up was North Orange County, beautiful area.
[SPEAKER_00]: I lived a very, I would say, fantasy childhood for the first 12 years of my life.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then my dad, who was a Vietnam vet, who owned a couple of E as an entrepreneur, owned a couple of businesses, and he was a bail once owner.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh wow.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ironically.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, which is really funny considering what we're talking about.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then he owned air tools supply company.
[SPEAKER_00]: So because there was no internet then, he was required to stay home and answer the phone.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because yellow page ads, there's no other way to get into someone.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he developed a really bad drinking problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: the point already is drinking 40 beers a day.
[SPEAKER_00]: And my mom, over time, just got over that because it got worse and worse.
[SPEAKER_00]: So after like three or four rehabs, they split up.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so at 12 years old, I had my first taste of like reality where the rug gets pulled out.
[SPEAKER_05]: And you had to become the man of the family, isn't it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I was almost a therapist.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because my two older brothers were one was graduating high school one was in high school and they're doing their own thing Right, they didn't care.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, they cared, but you know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_05]: They're off with them Well, it affected them differently because their age was different one was getting out of the house, but you are still there and with your mom Correct.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and then I had a my little brother who was eight Didn't understand obviously, so I was kind of like the
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, there was times where my dad would call drunk in my mom and just hand the phone to me because she's tried and tried and he wasn't listening and then he wanted to come back.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that was kind of traumatic, I didn't realize until later in life.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what it made me do is watch my mom just become a complete hardworking hustler to keep us in that house.
[SPEAKER_00]: She was working three jobs, kidney dialysis, technician selling jaffra products, making cakes.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, anything she could to hustle the feed for boys.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because my dad was just like going up the deep end as far as chasing women and just drinking, you know, really was non-existent.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was tough because,
[SPEAKER_00]: My mom was just, like, fighting just to keep us going, you know.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I watched this and I decided to start hustling myself.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I developed as an Orange County paper boy and I started selling New Orange County Register and then I was hustling with baseball cards and then I started taking a little bit of bats here in there and started running a poker ring.
[SPEAKER_00]: So all these little things I was doing while my mom was at working and then I started making literally almost as much money as her, like, 16.
[SPEAKER_05]: Wow, okay so wait I want to hear about this running a poker ring as a teenager.
[SPEAKER_05]: How does that even work?
[SPEAKER_05]: So I wasn't with kids you're on age.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, they're mostly kids.
[SPEAKER_05]: And were are we talking about dollars they're playing with?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well like the amounts were like four or five hundred dollars which at a six and this is 1990 Let's see 95 or no.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sorry.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was 1991
[SPEAKER_05]: Well, that's a lot of money for kids at age now.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's even a lot now, but then it was even more.
[SPEAKER_05]: So what were they stealing it from their parents?
[SPEAKER_05]: Was there allowance?
[SPEAKER_00]: This is what happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: So as I kept building this little poker ring, the neighborhood kids would come by and give me baseball cards or any other items that they could because they didn't have cash.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I started building other items.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then one of the kids had a little IOU in his pocket.
[SPEAKER_00]: So his mom did his laundry and it said,
[SPEAKER_00]: And so then we had an intervention in my house with all the moms.
[SPEAKER_00]: No way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it was like four of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: My mom was not happy.
[SPEAKER_05]: Oh my god.
[SPEAKER_05]: So what happened?
[SPEAKER_05]: They were like, you need to stop or they're like, you need to get help.
[SPEAKER_00]: stop because I was winning and doing well and to be honest these kids were losing way more money than they could afford.
[SPEAKER_05]: So did parents see you as like just a bully that was taking kids money or did they see you as having a gambling problem like what was what were they trying to get out do you think?
[SPEAKER_00]: They were more concerned with what their kids were doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: They didn't tell me that's, but I think they respected that was running a business, but they definitely knew that I was out hustling most of the kids, because I was always finding ways to win and then.
[SPEAKER_00]: The baseball cards also was another way to hustle because I would go around the neighborhood and when I was delivering the paper, when I was young, I would say, oh, hey, let's say you're out front with your cards.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, hey, Bob, you got some baseball cards.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you want to do some trading?
[SPEAKER_00]: And then they, oh, sure, I go home and get the box of these crap cards or worth nothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'd say, I'll give you this entire box if you let me just go through your collection.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'll just take eight.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I go through the collection and get King Griffey Jr.
[SPEAKER_00]: and Mark McGuire, Rookiees,
[SPEAKER_00]: $10 or $12 and giving them a three-cent baseball card a bunch of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think this big box and obviously I have myself a nice collection of cards, which
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd up selling and buying a truck later at 16.
[SPEAKER_05]: No, what?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I never, because I didn't want to ask my money.
[SPEAKER_05]: Explain why baseball cards are so like, you can make so much money on them.
[SPEAKER_05]: And you can do this now.
[SPEAKER_05]: I mean, I've seen storefront in Manhattan that only sell baseball cards.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's shocking to me.
[SPEAKER_05]: I don't get it at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just the value of like, obviously, their rare items, the older ones.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the value of these cards just continue to go up.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just kind of like, no different than a Rolex.
[SPEAKER_00]: Got it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And of course, over time, they get ruined.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the value of those cards go down.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they're nice.
[SPEAKER_00]: They call mint condition ones become more valuable.
[SPEAKER_05]: Got it.
[SPEAKER_05]: And so, but are you saying that only a few companies made Derek Geter's card?
[SPEAKER_00]: Or what actually back then?
[SPEAKER_05]: OK.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then over time, more companies come in and try to create baseball cards and there's more of a flood of them and the value of those cards are less.
[SPEAKER_00]: But all the older ones,
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you can't reprint them.
[SPEAKER_02]: Got it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't go make a card from, like you said, they're G-Ders rookie card from, let's call it 1990, too.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't reproduce that.
[SPEAKER_05]: Right.
[SPEAKER_05]: I've never understood this collector item, things.
[SPEAKER_05]: Like I remember, do you remember one, beanie babies became a thing?
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_05]: And people were like, you can't cut the tag off, but it's going to be worth so much money.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And those dolls, too.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even just look at collector cars, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like a 1966 Chevy this, that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not a car guy while I'm a I'm a rules Royce guy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Who is it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Cars, you know, those, I, I'm not into, but I do see why the value of those.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't reproduce them.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't make them.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's got the, especially the ones that have like ultimate perfect leather from 19, but I get that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's kind of the similar thing.
[SPEAKER_05]: Got it.
[SPEAKER_05]: How did gambling make its way into your life then besides that, that became a real thing?
[SPEAKER_00]: I grew up going to the racetrack with my grandparents.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, my grandma grandpa loved to gamble.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, nothing crazy.
[SPEAKER_00]: We just go and have fun and and they were pretty well off.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we we would go to this nice restaurant at Los Alamedos race track, which is real close to Cyprus and we would get a nice restaurant and then we would gamble and they throw me like dollar trifectas or exact as so I just started learning it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then we'd also play money gamble for Yatsi.
[SPEAKER_05]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Family game.
[SPEAKER_00]: No mess around.
[SPEAKER_05]: I have it.
[SPEAKER_05]: I love it.
[SPEAKER_05]: I played that and boggle.
[SPEAKER_05]: Those were the things we played growing up.
[SPEAKER_00]: Probably didn't play for money.
[SPEAKER_00]: No.
[SPEAKER_00]: We were.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, you know, six, seven, eight, ten years old.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it was like in part of our family, you know, but it wasn't nothing crazy.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, to where I took it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was just I just enjoyed it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd love to add something to a game.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we're very competitive family.
[SPEAKER_00]: So my brothers and
[SPEAKER_00]: Sega Genesis or Nintendo, you know, and so with four boys in a household with basically a single mom, you can imagine what was going on.
[SPEAKER_05]: Right.
[SPEAKER_05]: Right.
[SPEAKER_05]: So did you, did you go to college?
[SPEAKER_05]: Did you study to be something?
[SPEAKER_00]: That chance.
[SPEAKER_05]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_05]: So what, when you were younger, who did you think you were going to become?
[SPEAKER_05]: What do you want to be?
[SPEAKER_00]: To be honest, I always thought it'd be a stock broker.
[SPEAKER_05]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Which.
[SPEAKER_00]: kind of became one, but in communities.
[SPEAKER_00]: And commodities.
[SPEAKER_00]: But my target of becoming a stock worker was derailed by having a baby and getting my ex pregnant or my ex-wife who we're now we have three beautiful girls together.
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh-huh.
[SPEAKER_00]: We got she got pregnant 18.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I was having a baby at 19 years old.
[SPEAKER_00]: So college was not an option.
[SPEAKER_05]: Oh wow.
[SPEAKER_05]: OK.
[SPEAKER_05]: So you were a dad.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was becoming a dad and I wasn't even
[SPEAKER_00]: really didn't even understand what I was going to do for myself alone raising a child.
[SPEAKER_05]: Right.
[SPEAKER_05]: And so you became a commodity strait or how did that come about?
[SPEAKER_05]: So when I was 18, can you just get like the training for that and go into it?
[SPEAKER_05]: You don't have to be a college graduate?
[SPEAKER_00]: No, you can, you can, yeah, you have to pass a series three example.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I'll fast forward when I was 18, we found out she was pregnant.
[SPEAKER_00]: We lived on our own in apartment in Huntington Beach, California and we were broke.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was working two jobs and all my ends meet, I would gamble away anyway.
[SPEAKER_00]: So.
[SPEAKER_05]: Okay, so by then you were all so you were gambling.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, small, but you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I mean gambling never left no matter what.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was either $50 or I was betting on something.
[SPEAKER_00]: Got it.
[SPEAKER_00]: My whole life until today, of course.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: But at that age, if I had $20 extra, I would gamble it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, just because I always felt like I could turn 20 into,
[SPEAKER_00]: 500 or whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: But at 18 when she got pregnant, I had to really grow up.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we decided to my mom lost the home that we lived in.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would say when I was probably just turning 18 maybe.
[SPEAKER_00]: So she moved into a mobile home park in Dana Point, California.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was very demoralizing for me because I was in vision mobile home parks is trailer trash.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what I mean, you are.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's how I envisioned it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So at 18, she moved
[SPEAKER_00]: And once she got pregnant, Monica did, I decided we have to figure this out.
[SPEAKER_00]: I need to get a real job.
[SPEAKER_00]: But to do that, we're going to have to move back on my mom.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're sleeping on the couch.
[SPEAKER_00]: And here I am with this $400 beater car.
[SPEAKER_00]: My girlfriend is pregnant.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't even have a job, really, and I had to figure it out quick.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I went to the local area that was opening a restaurant.
[SPEAKER_00]: I said, I'll just be a waiter.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because waiters at 18, they can make pretty decent money.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I walk in this restaurant, the GM's like, I can hire you, but as a bus boy, you have no waiting experience, I'm like a bus boy, I'm a sort of chips and salsa, because it was a Mexican restaurant.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's like, well, you can work your way up.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I said, all right, I'll take the jobs, I need a job.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I started making more money and tips than the waiters, because my personality just cares, mad at you.
[SPEAKER_00]: whatever they screwed up on or didn't provide, I would go do it, I didn't serve food.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in that, the reason I did that was number one, that's who I am anyway, but number two, I saw it's a very fluent area.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I saw like guys coming up with nice watches and attractive wives and then you could just feel there was money.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I was like, you know, this is what I want.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I built relationships in that three or four months to the point where people were coming in and asking to sit in my section.
[SPEAKER_00]: but I didn't have a section that was way.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the GM's like, okay, I'll promote you soon.
[SPEAKER_00]: And by the time you want to promote me, this couple kept coming in and they said, the wife actually told me.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's like, you know, you're really good.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why don't you come work for us?
[SPEAKER_00]: And I said, sure, I'll take it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't care what it is, I'll take the job.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they're like, well, no, no, you got to interview.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you don't even know what it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: Come see for yourself.
[SPEAKER_00]: So like, go to Marshalls and I get a cheap tie because I don't even have one.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I drive in my beater car to Irvine, California.
[SPEAKER_00]: amazing opportunity.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what I envisioned was, well, I didn't even know what is walking into, but what I saw was Wolf of Wall Street, but legal.
[SPEAKER_00]: Guys were just screaming and excitement, like, you know, had headsets on and I don't even know what they're doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't care.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I saw all these Ferrari's and Mercedes parked out front in this beautiful corporate building.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I walk in in the gentleman I met.
[SPEAKER_00]: His name was Mickey.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was 28 years old.
[SPEAKER_00]: They had
[SPEAKER_00]: everything you would want, a beautiful wife, all the jewelry, nice watches, he had a Ferrari and I knew he had lived in a nice house, you just knew, but he lived in like a crazy home in Bearground Ranch and he's 28 years old and I'm like, this is what I want, I always love money and I was always fascinated by it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the reason I want to be a stockbrokers because I love the movie Wall Street and I just love that environment.
[SPEAKER_00]: So here I am almost in that same path that I envisioned that I wanted.
[SPEAKER_00]: But he sits me down in the interview goes really bad.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's, I mean, there's a whole different person.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was, why didn't you go to college?
[SPEAKER_00]: Why did you not come to your girlfriend and you have a job?
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, he was belittling me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And after the interview, there's like no way I'm getting this job.
[SPEAKER_00]: But he called me back, came back for another interview,
[SPEAKER_00]: Throughout the interview, I basically started standing up for myself.
[SPEAKER_00]: I said, listen, there's nobody here that's going to work harder than me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I promise you that I have more grind grit determination anyone here.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you want to give me a job, great.
[SPEAKER_00]: If not, you can tell me what I didn't accomplish in my life.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he respected that and gave me the job.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the job was $200 a month, 60 hours a week is a male room boy.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm like, okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not the job I wanted, but it's a start, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So what I realized or what I didn't realize is that I was this personal assistant.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I had this mentor, this invaluable learning curve, sponging all this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I worked for him directly.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I just learned.
[SPEAKER_00]: I started studying at the series three exam on the side.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was first contacted the company.
[SPEAKER_00]: So every phone call that came in would be transferred to the broker.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I would be the one transferring it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I would just stay on the phone and hit mute
[SPEAKER_00]: So I just started getting all this education and long story short.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to fast forward at 20 years old.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got promoted to working for the top broker and then about a year later at 21, I went and opened a discount company for him, a brand new firm because he trusted me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I was making $700,000 a year at 21 years old.
[SPEAKER_03]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_00]: Which was amazing because I had this opportunity that arose.
[SPEAKER_00]: My parents home that they lost and my mom, it came up for sale.
[SPEAKER_00]: and it's 21 years old that I bought it.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're 540,000.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I moved back into my parents home.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was very weird because my dad's room had from cigarette smoke three packs a day.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was like brown.
[SPEAKER_00]: So literally the walls went from white to brown.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when I moved back into the house, obviously someone else purchased it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was a little different.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I painted the whole house and moved in.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have a two year old girl, a little baby girl now.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm 21, I have a Mercedes, and all these things and I'm just like, my life is going the right direction.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I move into this house and I have the perfect life in my opinion, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So of course, the problem is I love to gamble.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so my gambling addiction starts kind of getting bigger and bigger to the point where I'm like, you know, all these guy keep losing money to bookies.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not, I wasn't really good at sports betting.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I have all these guys in this office that make a lot of money.
[SPEAKER_00]: because I'm in this environment of woof a Wall Street, but I'm a family guy, so I don't do drugs, I've never done drugs, and I don't really drink a ton, but I love the gamble, but all these guys do all of this stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they do it to the max, gamble, they do hookers, they do cocaine, they do it all.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because that's not all of them, but a lot of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I saw an opportunity and I said, why don't I just take their bets?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm tired of losing myself, I can't win doing this, so let's just take their bets.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I started taking their bets.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're spending a lot of money and I was making a lot of money.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I started making very good money.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm like, this is a business here, you know?
[SPEAKER_00]: And then all of a sudden the internet comes along.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when the internet comes along, I see an opportunity to scale it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm one of the first bookmakers to go down to Costa Rica and set up a shop down there and actually scale the business.
[SPEAKER_05]: OK, wait.
[SPEAKER_05]: I want to slow down from a couple of questions.
[SPEAKER_05]: Spill back what happened with your mom and the mobile home.
[SPEAKER_00]: My mom, when I moved into my home, she met a man and he's amazing.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're still married to this day.
[SPEAKER_05]: Oh, I love that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're retired fire battalion chief and he swept her off her feed and she's live in the best life.
[SPEAKER_05]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_05]: Love hearing that.
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm curious why you picked your old house to buy when you could buy whatever you wanted.
[SPEAKER_05]: Do you think there's something psychological about that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it was like the, to this day was the fact that my mom lost it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know the feeling, because I have a very similar situation now.
[SPEAKER_00]: I live in a $5 million home and San Juan Capustrano, California, and I'm in a position where I have to try to maintain and keep my family in that house.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm like reliving my mom's situation, self-induced, but it's a tough situation, because I'm trying struggling right now to keep my kids in private school.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just got my daughter through Oregon.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like $300,000 in education, and
[SPEAKER_00]: all that stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I can't lose this house.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's it's more like if anything I want to buy a bigger house, you know, I don't want to go backwards.
[SPEAKER_05]: No, I understand.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that dog fight is actually happening now, but answer your question.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was pride.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wanted like.
[SPEAKER_00]: to kind of get that back.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I really live there probably a year, year and a half.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we moved our company from Irvine to Lisa Vio.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was too long to drive.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I lived there about a year and a half.
[SPEAKER_00]: I sold the house.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I took a small loss on it actually, but it was so much pride and just happiness of buying this house.
[SPEAKER_05]: And she must have been proud, too.
[SPEAKER_00]: She was.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was really, I mean, to be 21 buying a piece of property and have him Mercedes and all the guys in my neighborhood, I wanted to be back in my neighborhood, even though it wasn't, it was a little bit of a drive to work.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wanted them to kind of see what I have accomplished.
[SPEAKER_05]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was really proud of myself.
[SPEAKER_05]: I love that story.
[SPEAKER_05]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_05]: You were talking about taking bets.
[SPEAKER_05]: So, up into this time, you're gambling on your own.
[SPEAKER_05]: You see that other people are doing it and you're losing money.
[SPEAKER_05]: Were you using a bookie when you were placing bets because I want people that are listening to understand the whole process of placing a bet, how it works, who's involved, all that stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: from 16 to, let's call it 21, I was always betting with a, yeah, a bookie and our bookies, a legal job, a legal job, sorry, it sounded.
[SPEAKER_00]: They've become legal in some states.
[SPEAKER_00]: OK.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the reality is there's no legal bookies, because they're only now entities or corporations, like fan dual and draft games.
[SPEAKER_05]: OK.
[SPEAKER_00]: They will never allow, oh, I shouldn't say never.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't believe they will ever allow a regular Joe.
[SPEAKER_00]: me, you, or whoever to open a book making operation, they'll only give it to these conglomerate corporations because they control all of the license.
[SPEAKER_05]: God, and I've noticed that with some of those, even with draft kings or whoever it is, you can only certain states can participate in those, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, 38 states as of now.
[SPEAKER_05]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: California where I live.
[SPEAKER_00]: and it still is a no and probably will be for another two years.
[SPEAKER_05]: But like I live in Florida and I tried to place a bet for like a Kentucky Derby thing on some some site and they said I couldn't because I was in Florida.
[SPEAKER_05]: So it's Florida one of the ones you cannot place a bet at all or just with some certain companies.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't live here, so I'm not positive on the statement, but I'm pretty sure the Florida is still state you cannot sports bad.
[SPEAKER_05]: Got it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm almost sure it is, but of course there's casinos here, just like there are in California.
[SPEAKER_05]: So it's legal within the casino, but oh, not even.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like these, they're Indian reservations here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hard rock in the, is Indian in California, it's Pachanga, they're all Indian reservations.
[SPEAKER_00]: They can take, you know, block, black, check, et cetera, but no sports vets.
[SPEAKER_05]: Got it.
[SPEAKER_05]: Is that all Indian reservation, Casino?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_05]: Well, like you go to Mojigan Sun.
[SPEAKER_05]: Right, that there's like sports books.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can, Mojigan Sun is in Connecticut.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can gamble on sports there.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they can take sports with you.
[SPEAKER_05]: I see, I see.
[SPEAKER_00]: But here in Florida, it doesn't matter if it's Indian not.
[SPEAKER_05]: Got it.
[SPEAKER_05]: So first it's a state rule and then it's within the, you know, it's all.
[SPEAKER_05]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_05]: All right.
[SPEAKER_05]: So to place a bet, you have to use a conglomerate or a bookie legal legal into the yes, illegal would be a bookmaker that which what I was doing right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Where do you build a relationship with someone on the streets?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's all it.
[SPEAKER_00]: and you bet with their website as opposed to a fan duel or draftings.
[SPEAKER_05]: Got it.
[SPEAKER_05]: So your website would be competing essentially with.
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_05]: Those.
[SPEAKER_05]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_05]: And how do you on your within your website?
[SPEAKER_05]: How are you creating that to make the bet go through it?
[SPEAKER_05]: Like how does that actually work?
[SPEAKER_00]: So in Costa Rica or Carousel or Bahamas or Ruba, there's mostly Costa Rica.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a million different operations that facilitated all of that for a bookmaker in the United States and going back to when I was younger As I was telling you earlier, I was one of the first guys to go down to Costa Rica and establish that relationship so that I could actually scale my business But now it's everyone has them and they're everywhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's a million bookies in the United States.
[SPEAKER_00]: Illegal bookies.
[SPEAKER_00]: Truly there's a million
[SPEAKER_00]: And they're all using mostly Costa Rica and they facilitate their hub because it's legal there and as long as the money is not transacted in Costa Rica.
[SPEAKER_00]: and coastal, well, even if it is, they don't care, it's legal.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the bottom line, this is where it's illegal.
[SPEAKER_00]: If the money goes, you know, never, let's say it goes to Costa Rica.
[SPEAKER_00]: It comes back to the US, it's still illegal because it's in the US.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if it's in Costa Rica, like, there are legal bookmakers in Costa Rica that you could send money to, and it's legal because it's in Costa Rica.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if they ever set foot here in the US, they're going to have a problem.
[SPEAKER_05]: Okay, and also explain, do people need to know you personally to place the bat or like, someone like me could just find your website and place the bat that way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Does it work that way?
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: You will, great question.
[SPEAKER_00]: You will definitely need to know somebody.
[SPEAKER_00]: in my organization, to even get access to the website.
[SPEAKER_00]: The website is there, you could check it out, but you won't have a pen and password to log in.
[SPEAKER_05]: I see, but I see.
[SPEAKER_05]: OK, so now explain to me about the cash flow that's going in and out.
[SPEAKER_05]: Some bookies you have to pay up front or never.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nowadays more than before, I would say if you fast forward back 10 years ago, credit was just given much easier because the world was different.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was not involved when the mob was around.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, kind of at the tail end of my life, I dealt with some people in the mob, but it was like dissipating because of cameras and federal government and everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: So credit was given and people paid more.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nowadays, people are very keen to just say, no, thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not paying you in a nice, I'm gonna say, that's in a nice format and they just don't pay.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's more people that stiff now than ever in history of sports betting.
[SPEAKER_05]: And because it's illegal, you can't actually go after them unless you're like physically doing some harm and threats and this is how you see all in the movies that people are getting killed or threats against their family or whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: And look, makers don't do this hard to cut you out of a book, makers don't.
[SPEAKER_00]: smart bookmakers nowadays don't ever have violence or put their hands on people because they realize they're, are you going to end up in the same shoes I'm in or in worse or be they're going to ruin their business because you know the fans are going to get called.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they really just learn to let it go and now it's about vetting your customer better.
[SPEAKER_05]: Got it.
[SPEAKER_05]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_05]: But why, out like, how do you vet a customer?
[SPEAKER_05]: I mean, listen, if we're talking about a million dollars on a bet, I'm assuming you make them do a smaller bet beforehand.
[SPEAKER_05]: So, you know, they're good for it or you check their credit.
[SPEAKER_05]: I don't really know how that works.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, no, it's, it's kind of all of the above.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, the first thing I look at is who's referring me to business?
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know this as well as anyone.
[SPEAKER_00]: The circle of your friends are usually
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, if you're running in a circle of Jeff Bezos friends, like he's probably going to be one of his friends is probably not going to not pay you Right, they probably have the money right, but if you're taking wages from a guy who nothing wrong with this will you work at Taco Bell
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, he's probably going to be less likely to pay you a big balance.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you have that kind of credit that being said, it really comes down to the relationship of who's referring who, you know, and if that person is somebody who's always been honorable and, you know, we have a really good relationship.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would be more keen to give more credit to whoever he brings in.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Of course we're going to have a conversation.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Who is John?
[SPEAKER_00]: What's he do?
[SPEAKER_00]: And why do you, why are you referring them to me?
[SPEAKER_00]: Why does he in a bookie?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, why does he?
[SPEAKER_05]: It also makes the guy look bad if, you know, if I refer someone in this guy's distist you, that's humiliating to me too.
[SPEAKER_05]: So you want to keep those circles.
[SPEAKER_00]: 100% close and honest.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I'm going to call you and say, Rachel, you referred me Bob here, what's the deal with this guy?
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you know, I've only known him for two years, but he can grade and, you know, he's got to,
[SPEAKER_00]: eight gas stations or whatever you told me and I'm like, well, he's not paying me what's gone, but that vetting is so important.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's actually the most important thing because if I give credit to somebody and they beat me for money, which I just happen many times when I pay them, now the money's gone and if they lose then they don't pay me, I'm not getting that money back.
[SPEAKER_05]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_05]: That's why I would think that this is a very scary thing for you because if you are
[SPEAKER_05]: the bookmaker or whatever you call it.
[SPEAKER_05]: The guy holding the book.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's on you to come up with the money if you lose no matter what and you don't know a hundred percent of the time that you're going to get that money and it's like taking from Peter to PayPal and to make sure.
[SPEAKER_05]: Okay, so when you started it going back to where you said you were working with these guys and you saw an opportunity, did you offer them credit too or were they giving you money and
[SPEAKER_00]: These guys all, first of all, I worked with them.
[SPEAKER_00]: I knew what kind of money they made and I got relationships.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wasn't worried about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, if they didn't pay, we would completely make a fool of them and they're in the office.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that was easy.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's once I started going outside of that tree or the issue started rising, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because he's referring his buddy from college and, you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: He claims he's got money, but he really doesn't.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a lot of people in the world as you know that floss and act as if they do and they really don't.
[SPEAKER_05]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Especially in where I live in Orange County.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_05]: I would say the majority of people.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Act like they have something.
[SPEAKER_00]: I agree with that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's true.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you're hoping that you're getting customers that aren't that way, of course.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you have to minimize the damage when it is occurring by, like you said earlier, maybe I give a guy wants to bet 5,000 a game and maybe a 100,000
[SPEAKER_00]: but the referrals not strong.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'll say, hey, you can put up $50,000 and you can get that credit line or I'll let you bet $2000 a game and I'll give you $20,000 credit to start.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's do some transactions first.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's kind of get to know each other and I want you to see that I pay two.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't know me from Adam, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So what if I don't pay you?
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've come highly recommended, but
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me prove to you that I pay, and that's really an excuse to say, let me make sure you pay.
[SPEAKER_05]: Right, right.
[SPEAKER_05]: OK, so just so that people understand the level of what you are doing.
[SPEAKER_05]: Can you tell me, how many people were working for you?
[SPEAKER_05]: What kind of sports you guys were betting on?
[SPEAKER_05]: And on any given day, are you watching everything from soccer, baseball, basketball, whatever, and you're dealing with hundreds of people and bets, or how are you managing all this in your head?
[SPEAKER_00]: When the feds rated me on October 5th, 2023,
[SPEAKER_05]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had probably 1,200, but only 800 were actively betting.
[SPEAKER_00]: The other 400 probably owed me quite a bit of money and they were on pause.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: To be honest.
[SPEAKER_00]: But they would come back if I was still in the business.
[SPEAKER_00]: That being said, every Monday, I would say I was moving five to seven million dollars throughout the country.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I had 48 agents throughout the country that worked under me.
[SPEAKER_00]: To explain what an agent is.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's someone who doesn't want to take the exposure or the risk that I was.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's pretend that you, or she live in Florida, you're about to be married.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe he gambles, maybe he has 10 friends to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: You would contact me and say, hey, I want to make some money out of these guys that look at the gambling anyway.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll set up all 10 of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd set up 10 accounts for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: You'd give them all 10 passwords.
[SPEAKER_00]: They would gamble through my site.
[SPEAKER_00]: You would collect or pay them with the money.
[SPEAKER_00]: If they won, I would send you the money, you would pay them.
[SPEAKER_00]: If they lost, let's just say for argument 60 to $100,000 a week.
[SPEAKER_00]: You would give me my piece, which anywhere from 50, you would keep 50 to 10% depending on how much work you did.
[SPEAKER_03]: Sure, sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's just pretend for argument, say you got 40%, you would obviously send me 60,000.
[SPEAKER_00]: You would keep 40,000 bucks for that week, and you would everybody would pay you.
[SPEAKER_05]: Okay, so it wasn't that you were necessarily going all over the country looking for people to work for you.
[SPEAKER_05]: It was that eventually you would find people that said, hey, I can bring in this kind of business.
[SPEAKER_05]: I don't want to be the big man, but I will be your intermediary or whatever.
[SPEAKER_05]: Okay, I see.
[SPEAKER_05]: Now, can they get in trouble for that?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_05]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_05]: And has anyone gotten in trouble for that?
[SPEAKER_05]: Were they all disappeared?
[SPEAKER_05]: No, I mean, in your situation.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, not one person.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wouldn't give up at one person.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of my agents too.
[SPEAKER_05]: Right.
[SPEAKER_05]: But how are they making a living now?
[SPEAKER_00]: Honestly, I think a few of them got scared and shut it down.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would say majority of them just went right to the next book, you know, literally bookmaker.
[SPEAKER_05]: Oh, wow.
[SPEAKER_05]: Instead of calling me, they just went to John down the street and... Does that make you resentful that there are so many other bookmakers that didn't get in trouble?
[SPEAKER_05]: Or don't get in trouble?
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, I want to answer this honestly.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not a victim and I definitely...
[SPEAKER_00]: accountable for my actions, but it's frustrating to see some people that are still out there making tons of money doing what I was doing, and you know, I'm no longer able to do so.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: If I was able to, if it allowed me to have a license, then I would be happy to do this business and give the government their peace and just do exactly what draft King's in Fandler we're doing, but it's
[SPEAKER_05]: So, but now explain that, too, for people that are listening.
[SPEAKER_05]: How could you do this in a legal way?
[SPEAKER_05]: Like, draft Kings is owned by not one person.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a, I think it's a publicly traded company, but yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, to get that license, you're going to have to be some conglomerate and you're going to have to know some congressman or this or that.
[SPEAKER_05]: Right.
[SPEAKER_05]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_05]: So, it's just not as easy as anybody thinks it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a good example.
[SPEAKER_00]: are there's marijuana allowed here in Florida?
[SPEAKER_05]: I don't smell good, I think so, yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so they only give so many licenses.
[SPEAKER_05]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Same thing in California.
[SPEAKER_00]: And to get a license is very difficult.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's usually, I don't want to say how people get license, but I believe it has to do with a little bit of money under the table and this and that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I believe that that's sadly how this all works.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean,
[SPEAKER_00]: Fandle and draftings, I'm not saying they went and slipped somebody money, but it's clearly they have relationships and you and I are never, I don't want to say never, probably unlikely ever we're going to be able to get a gaming license to be a sportsman.
[SPEAKER_05]: But I mean, it's not like you could go translate this and become the CEO of draft Kings.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I could have.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's why I don't like to play victim.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have that opportunity just like whoever their CEO is.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I don't want to act like I couldn't have, but I think it would have been very difficult.
[SPEAKER_05]: Right.
[SPEAKER_05]: And he's probably prevented from gambling.
[SPEAKER_05]: I would think.
[SPEAKER_00]: I bet you, I bet you he's not, but I bet you he doesn't.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Assumption.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_05]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_05]: All right, so now let's get into back into your story, and again, as we talked before, I know that you've talked all about the war stories and all that kind of stuff, but just in a, you know, tell me how much you were making in a week, losing, and how much you are actually clearing for yourself, other people that were coming to you, you can name names, not name names, but like what kind of money was, you know, being changed, hands.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the business I was moving like I said five to seven million dollars a week, but some weeks I would lose two million.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then the next week I might lose two more million and then I'll have the following week I'll win four.
[SPEAKER_05]: But when you say lose two million, did that mean out of all the bets you would be behind two million and that would have to come out of your pocket because too many people won.
[SPEAKER_00]: Correct.
[SPEAKER_05]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_05]: But so not your personal betting.
[SPEAKER_00]: No.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's different.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a whole different conversation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: but my actual business-wise over time would never lose.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it was unbeatable the way I ran it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's just so hard to win sports betting anyway.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would say truly less than 1% over time, ever beat sports betting.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I mean as a profession.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are people that have runs when one whole season or six weeks in a row, that happens.
[SPEAKER_00]: But over time is really difficult because every bet you make,
[SPEAKER_00]: So just to break that down for someone who doesn't understand it, if you've got a hundred dollars on a football game, or a basketball game, you have to risk a hundred and ten dollars.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you lose the game, you lose a hundred and ten, if you win, you only win a hundred dollars, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So over time, after all these bets, that ten percent each you alive.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because if you go five and five, you pick five winners, five losers, you obviously just lost the juice five times.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's so difficult to overcome that over time.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why most people lose.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: For my personal betting, I was a wild animal.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I would be on a plane with $2 million every few weeks flying all over the country with my wife and kid.
[SPEAKER_00]: And all my kids, sometimes in my nanny.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, that was a whole, that was bananas.
[SPEAKER_05]: So to do all this though, do you have to actually know sports really well or people are just betting based on their gut?
[SPEAKER_05]: I mean, how are people?
[SPEAKER_00]: How are people?
[SPEAKER_00]: You need to know sports.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you don't have to.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you could run this business and not.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I just don't know anyone that ever has done that like I.
[SPEAKER_05]: Right, but you hear all these guys that sitting around talking about how much they know about sports from their couch or even from TV, right, but then, you know, if you go back to Mike Tyson and that whole fight and how everybody talked about that fight for months leading into it and then how people still didn't know how to bet because of the age gap and because of the health that was going on with Mike Tyson and so I'm just curious like for that bet.
[SPEAKER_05]: For example, were you getting more people to come in on one side versus the other or was it split down the middle?
[SPEAKER_05]: How did you feel about it?
[SPEAKER_00]: To be honest with you, the more you know about sports, I think the less chance you have a winning.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because the people who actually make money betting sports are MIT nerds that don't even know the game don't understand it.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're having algorithm and robots simulated in the game a hundred money money ball or whatever that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's it's literally like a Harvard grad kid that
[SPEAKER_00]: When I say similarly to game, I mean to the point where a person who watches sports and enjoy sports would never waste their time doing that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, that's not fun for them.
[SPEAKER_00]: They'd rather say, oh, Josh Allen's about quarterback, and I'll tell you why, and they know a lot about sports, but there's a reason why the spread is there.
[SPEAKER_00]: You still got to cover the spread.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then over time, again, the juicer, the vig is going to eat them alive.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Truth be told, I know more about sports than 99% of people, just eight million games, but I still can't beat it.
[SPEAKER_05]: Right.
[SPEAKER_05]: Right.
[SPEAKER_05]: And it's funny that you say that because I took part in the college basketball group, whatever it was.
[SPEAKER_05]: Contest for my fiance's company.
[SPEAKER_05]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_05]: So we're talking like 35, 40 people and I came in number two.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_05]: I had never watched college basketball in my entire life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Was this for the March madness?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, and so by the way, it was so much fun because of course all of a sudden I was went like most of the time I was winning until the last day or whatever, and I just thought I knew everything about sports all of a sudden, you know, but I picked based on the colors or if I liked whatever city they or their mascot, I don't know, I don't know, it didn't matter it worked.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it worked.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's my point.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you don't want sports all the time, you know, and you're not, you don't even know how to play.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or you need a player's probably.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: And these guys watch it every damn game every which way and they can't figure it out.
[SPEAKER_05]: But I get admitted it was fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's exhilarating.
[SPEAKER_00]: The dopamine rush and I imagine putting a million dollars on a football game or whatever basketball game.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's exhilarating.
[SPEAKER_00]: It truly is.
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: I hate to say this but it's it's like I've never done ecstasy but I think for me I would describe it as like the best sex of your life or the best ecstasy you've ever had.
[SPEAKER_00]: heroin even, you know, I've never done heroin, but I've hear about these people have done this and they're the high they feel The dopamine rush at least I can speak for for myself from gambling.
[SPEAKER_05]: I get that Now, I want to ask you about is there any level of responsibility in what you do if you see that one of your clients is an athlete Let's say and you see that they're betting on their own sport.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I'm assuming that's illegal For them to do I can honestly tell you that I've never seen or new of
[SPEAKER_00]: uh, athlete betting on their own particular sport through me.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've seen many athletes that were betting on other sports and definitely were, you know, gambling, but never like fixing rigging games.
[SPEAKER_00]: I for sure would want to be part of that for two reasons.
[SPEAKER_00]: One, I appreciate integrity of the game.
[SPEAKER_00]: Number two, that's going to get me in trouble.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I knew that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I mean big trouble because they're going to make an impact.
[SPEAKER_00]: If there's a bookmaker, that's allowing
[SPEAKER_00]: It's gonna be a big problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: That person's gonna, I got a year and a day.
[SPEAKER_00]: I guarantee you I would've got a lot worse if I was in on something like that.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_05]: Okay, before you met E.P.
[SPEAKER_05]: So don't hear pronounce the name.
[SPEAKER_05]: E.P.
[SPEAKER_05]: Sorry.
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm gonna mispronounce that 10 times tonight today.
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm sorry.
[SPEAKER_05]: Okay, E.P.
[SPEAKER_05]: Before you met him, what was life like?
[SPEAKER_05]: What was a business like?
[SPEAKER_05]: Were you doing super well?
[SPEAKER_05]: Did you have all the clients who needed?
[SPEAKER_05]: You had no issues?
[SPEAKER_00]: I was doing very, very well, but, of course, another $16 million didn't hurt my situation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: But, yeah, my business was flourishing dramatically.
[SPEAKER_00]: If I never met E. Pay, to be honest, I think I'd still be a bookmaker and I think my life would be financially great.
[SPEAKER_00]: But, that day in October, fifth was one of the best days of my life when the feds rated my own.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because that was at a fork in the road, even with my personal relationship with my wife,
[SPEAKER_00]: We have the best marriage ever, but she was getting a little run down from the gambling and how much it was overtaking me, because I'm going to, I think you're a very similar person and I'm very all in.
[SPEAKER_00]: And to the point where my head is down and I just, I almost lose sight of other things.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I wasn't as present as a husband, as a father, that should be.
[SPEAKER_00]: It kind of ran its course.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, we're talking like 20 years of high-high stress gambling and putting yourself in very interesting situations, part of my book describes pistol and who needs that?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a father of five.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I toned all of that down.
[SPEAKER_00]: The minute I met my wife, I stopped anything that was kind of gray area.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wasn't a gray area business, but I'm at like, shake, I wouldn't go knock on someone's door anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't do any of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But she was getting really tired of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and it was funny because when the outside of it was like, well, how do you get tired of jumping on a plane and G550 and flying to Vegas and having a butler and 10,000 square foot room and, you know, millions of dollars and I buy her whatever she wanted and she didn't care about that stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, she wanted to have her husband and her family.
[SPEAKER_05]: Right.
[SPEAKER_05]: Let the core, I think, I mean, from the little I know you guys.
[SPEAKER_05]: You guys are family people, though.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_05]: Very much so.
[SPEAKER_05]: And some more along the line, she got a little bit involved in this.
[SPEAKER_05]: Can you talk, can you explain to people because it was kind of genius that, you know, now that she's traveling with you and doing all this stuff that she would become part of it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: She, my wife actually enjoyed gambling, and she is a very intelligent woman.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the things that attracted me to her aside from the aesthetically the way she looks, which is amazing, but internally, she's like even better person and her brain is, I mean, she graduated USC.
[SPEAKER_00]: She speaks three languages.
[SPEAKER_00]: She studied abroad in Spain.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's traveled.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there's so many things about her that I could go on and on and what I realized is that she started asking me business questions about my business as I got to know her more and more and she got more.
[SPEAKER_00]: and throw all of them in my life.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was impressed with the questions because there were questions like another bookmaker would ask me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Got it.
[SPEAKER_00]: She would have a better sense, you know, women are in my opinion sharper than men.
[SPEAKER_00]: So she would have a better sense of when a guy was gonna stiff me before I would.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I read people very well.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there would always be like a guy that would, because I'm a salesperson, sometimes weird or the easiest to be sold, she would sniff that one out.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was like a two or three guy as she'd be like,
[SPEAKER_00]: And I feel good about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I'd be good, no, no, no, no, he's cool, he's great.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's this and that and then stiff or problem.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I'd be like, wow, she just has that sense, you know, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So in this process of building our relationship, I started realizing, like, I'm making all these hosts all this money.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every trip I was going, I was gambling so high, the host would make like $30,000.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I said, you know what, why don't I pitch the casinos?
[SPEAKER_00]: allow my wife to be a licensed host because we have a group of gamblers too.
[SPEAKER_00]: All of my customers gamble my sports better and they go to Vegas or wherever.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if my wife can facilitate that and get them calms et cetera, she can make a living on the side.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: She was already building her clothing brand, but why not?
[SPEAKER_05]: So is that a normal thing or were you creating a job that didn't exist?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's never happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no gambler that I know that has ever
[SPEAKER_00]: had their wife become their host.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then, you know, here's the great part of us.
[SPEAKER_05]: Or so an independent casino host, that means she could have...
[SPEAKER_05]: been one at any casino, not just at one.
[SPEAKER_05]: That's what was different about it.
[SPEAKER_05]: And she could travel with you guys.
[SPEAKER_05]: And as opposed to you, just going to the Venetian.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, OK.
[SPEAKER_00]: We were able to negotiate deals with throughout the country.
[SPEAKER_05]: Did she have to give a portion of her proceeds or whatever to a casino house there to work under their umbrella or anything?
[SPEAKER_05]: So it doesn't work.
[SPEAKER_00]: The only part that was difficult was if I was already established at a certain casino, they wouldn't pay her because I already was going there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I see.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we didn't get licensed at some casinos, like seizures, or actually she got licensed in seizures, of Pilots of Venetian, because I had host there, I've been going there for years, so they're like, we're not going to pay her when we're already paying our employee to handle you.
[SPEAKER_05]: Got it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there were some logistics, but.
[SPEAKER_05]: But is there a negative to it that I know when you go to certain casinos, they comp you everything they send a jet for you, they give you the biggest villa, because she wasn't associated with that hotel, did they take any of that away?
[SPEAKER_00]: Basically, they're gonna have to provide that to get my business anyway.
[SPEAKER_05]: Got it.
[SPEAKER_05]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_05]: And so that was the draw.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we would negotiate, basically, I was going to resort to a world, for example, was new to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've never been there.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was easy to make her, you know, license wrapped through them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I would be a brand new customer to them.
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that part was easy.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just when you go to some of these other ones that maybe I've been to, but it was been three years.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then you can negotiate, listen, he hasn't been there in three years.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you want to back,
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll be the host and so you know go shit stuff like that, but the key for the reason why this was so good is number one she was making up to $30,000 just on me alone for trip and then of course our entourage I was bringing in 15 players as well and so she getting paid on all their play and then we were negotiating my deals so you know there's no better negotiation when you can do it yourself.
[SPEAKER_00]: Usually it's you call the host you tell
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not talking about rooms and that's all, I get that anyway.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm talking about promo chips, discounts, you know, I would negotiate a 20% discount amount of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's huge.
[SPEAKER_00]: You go lose $2 million.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're going to $400,000 back?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's big.
[SPEAKER_00]: Also getting $100,000 in chips, walking in the door.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would get my wife a $25,000 gift card to Crystal Shops.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that's a purse or whatever, you know, it's nice to get these little additional things that you would never get without having that, you know, being able to negotiate it.
[SPEAKER_05]: what potentially could she be on the hook for.
[SPEAKER_05]: I mean, they haven't come after her yet, or they've taken away her license.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, she's definitely been her license is gone.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: She basically, in the Nevada Gaming Control Board, who handles that, is possibly coming after for civil fines, because they're saying that she allowed
[SPEAKER_00]: her husband, to gamble, knowing he was an illegal bookmaker.
[SPEAKER_05]: Got it.
[SPEAKER_05]: Which is why I asked that question previously, the if there's a morality clause to knowing who you're dealing with.
[SPEAKER_05]: So I see no your customer.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And apparently she was supposed to know this rule, but that's really the compliance job of the casino.
[SPEAKER_00]: Got it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Which is why we are just like up at arms.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm already dealing with my situation.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm accountable for my action.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to present a paid by
[SPEAKER_00]: But my wife is not a compliance person.
[SPEAKER_00]: Her job is to bring in guests, compliance this compliance.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're baffled by the fact that she all of a sudden.
[SPEAKER_00]: And by the way, I want to paraphrase this, she was supposed to be ran through a course by the casinos, which never occurred.
[SPEAKER_00]: So how could she even know these rules when she never even
[SPEAKER_00]: was thought the rules are trained on the rules she is supposed to know, so to speak.
[SPEAKER_05]: Right.
[SPEAKER_05]: So if we're talking about no thy customer, how come the casinos themselves aren't in trouble?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, they kind of are.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why my case is still ongoing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Got it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I've I've advanced my sentencing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I've chosen to move on and it's costing me time because of it.
[SPEAKER_05]: But oh, but case is not closed.
[SPEAKER_00]: No.
[SPEAKER_05]: Oh, okay, tell me why.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because know your customer rule was not being followed.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the federal government is currently going to use the word arguing because I don't know where it's going to go with resort's world casino and they are both negotiating.
[SPEAKER_00]: I believe a settlement.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I can't speak on this behalf because they don't tell me and I ask, but I pretty much know that that's what's
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't know what's going to happen if it's going to be zero fine or if it's going to get dropped, if it's going to be 50 million.
[SPEAKER_05]: But your your piece is out of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_05]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_05]: So that's going to be between the government and the hotels or the casinos or whatever.
[SPEAKER_05]: Correct.
[SPEAKER_05]: And is it just resource world or is it kind of now it's coming down on a lot of casinos that there's got to be plenty of people like you and why are they not looking into that?
[SPEAKER_00]: So the win paid $130 million about a year and a half ago, that's the biggest find ever.
[SPEAKER_00]: Relating to what though to to this situation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Too money laundering, allowing a guest.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so it's very similar.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: MGM Raj court paid like seven and a half million.
[SPEAKER_00]: about recently and then resource world did pay $10.5 million to Nevada Gaming Control Board, which is separate.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what the one that's possibly going after Nicole.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the government situation is still outstanding, so I do believe there's going to be a fine there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of these other casinos, I think, skated by because you do need evidence and you need to
[SPEAKER_00]: et cetera.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I don't know if other casinos will pop up with problems, but as of now, resort world, I believe will be the key to this case and what's worth going.
[SPEAKER_05]: OK, so let's get into now how it all came crashing down.
[SPEAKER_05]: And it seems like when you met E-PAY that this became the turning point, because what it got too flashy, because the money coming back and forth was more than you had before, how did you get found out?
[SPEAKER_00]: Truth is, everyone thinks that because of the name show here, Tony, okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not even why I got in trouble.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's back to what we just discussed.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the casinos.
[SPEAKER_02]: Got it.
[SPEAKER_00]: They came to me because of the casinos and then E-page just happened to unfold because as you know, when you uncover something that's when you find out a little bit more to the story and they had no idea how big my business really was.
[SPEAKER_00]: Got it.
[SPEAKER_05]: meaning did they did they think you were coming in as you as an individual just being flashy and spending this kind of money there and you had your wife Okay, so explained they knew I was a book maker.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, they they being the federal government the casinos.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's be real But I was rated in 2014.
[SPEAKER_00]: I signed an abandonment form.
[SPEAKER_00]: They took some money Everybody went on their own way So I don't hurt people.
[SPEAKER_00]: I knew pay taxes.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think they were just were like, yeah, he's not a big enough target
[SPEAKER_00]: But I became a target, and this is all my assumption, by the way, but pretty close to accurate.
[SPEAKER_00]: They became a target once they went after the casinos, and they saw that I lost $13 million through their casinos, which was large amount of money.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then clearly, they knew that I was at legal bookmakers.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you're going to get a casino on a charge of not falling KYC, here's a perfect candidate for that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I believe that's what led them to my driveway with 29 agents, as I put my son in my wife's duet wagon.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: That morning, but that as far as E.P.
[SPEAKER_00]: and show Hayo Tani situation, that didn't even come out until later, and that came out because ESPN came to my home and had some sources that knew that I was receiving wires from show Hayo Tani.
[SPEAKER_05]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: So then we had to tell the federal government.
[SPEAKER_05]: So, so you had to come clean about that because you knew that you were about to be on the news about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's correct.
[SPEAKER_05]: Got it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: because I didn't want to, as I told you earlier, I didn't want to talk about anyone in my phone.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm in an agreement that I would discuss the casinos, and I didn't want to give up any of my agents.
[SPEAKER_00]: I truly want to.
[SPEAKER_00]: For your clients or whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I don't want nobody to get in trouble.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's my business.
[SPEAKER_00]: I deserve to fall in the sword.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, why would anyone else have to fall with me?
[SPEAKER_05]: Right, this became a big story because of Otani's name.
[SPEAKER_05]: And that's why it became mainstream.
[SPEAKER_05]: It's not just a sports story, it was bigger than that.
[SPEAKER_05]: And I think, too, you know, and you know how this bravo verse, bravo universe works that these people sometimes are bigger to the average person than the biggest star.
[SPEAKER_05]: So what I recall is that a couple,
[SPEAKER_05]: year ago, a couple months ago, whenever it was, there were some episodes that had to do with Jen and Ryan, and, you know, I guess it was Tam Rock kept saying in a drunken state something around the, you know, along the lines of the FBI, have rated you, are gonna rate you.
[SPEAKER_05]: And it was like, all this weird questioning for boating stuff and no one really knew what it meant.
[SPEAKER_05]: And then you saw that he was cleared or not really part of it.
[SPEAKER_05]: And I don't know if they talk about it on the show or not because I don't really watch that.
[SPEAKER_05]: And I don't think they've harked on it that much.
[SPEAKER_05]: But it was a little bit of a storyline.
[SPEAKER_05]: So he's not part of this.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, he's never been part of my business.
[SPEAKER_00]: What the reality in the truth is he did receive some wire transfers for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: because I was debanked.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wasn't allowed to receive wires.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I didn't have a bank account.
[SPEAKER_05]: Oh, okay.
[SPEAKER_05]: So you needed him as a bank?
[SPEAKER_00]: He was a friend of mine.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he was best man of my wedding.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I needed to throw a wire transfer to somebody because I needed to receive a wire.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I asked him where you take a wire.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he did as a friend.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what turned out is we started going to resort world together because he gambled with me.
[SPEAKER_01]: OK.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I started losing a lot of money.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then he had a credit line at resort world
[SPEAKER_00]: And my wife was a host, so we were allowed to give more credit.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I was like, hey Ryan, let's bump up your credit line.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we bumped up his credit line and then guess what?
[SPEAKER_00]: I lost.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the only way to pay that credit line was to send a wire to his bank account to pay the casino.
[SPEAKER_01]: Got it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I had the worst run of my life gambling.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been gambling for 20 years.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've never lost this kind of money.
[SPEAKER_00]: I lost $13 million.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it just kept adding up and I just kept losing.
[SPEAKER_00]: So all this money from show Hayat Tony was being wired in.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just kept losing it because you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: Obviously, Tamara.
[SPEAKER_05]: And when you say that, sorry, just so we all follow, you're getting money and then you're losing money, but you're losing it because you're gambling it for others, or this was the personal loss you were talking about.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, got it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And some of it I would use to hedge my business a little bit.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like if a person bets 500,000 dollars in a football game and I liked that football game, meaning I thought it was gonna win, I might bet it at the resort's work as you know.
[SPEAKER_02]: Got it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's kind of a little bit of a hedge, but it doesn't matter because the government
[SPEAKER_00]: That being said, yeah, Ryan received a bunch of wires.
[SPEAKER_00]: And of course, had nothing to do with my business.
[SPEAKER_00]: But Tamara was alluding that he did.
[SPEAKER_00]: And because he wasn't saying anything, because his attorney told him not to.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_05]: And she didn't know the facts.
[SPEAKER_05]: How could she, which is fine.
[SPEAKER_05]: I mean, she probably thought she was on just something.
[SPEAKER_05]: And you can see how he was part of the story, but not part of the story.
[SPEAKER_05]: So I get it.
[SPEAKER_00]: OK.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I get that whether smoke there's fire.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there was smoke, but there wasn't really fire, because he was definitely not part of my organization.
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, all the stuff, but he did receive some wire transfers and that that is accurate.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, but he has no part of my business.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's never been a bookie.
[SPEAKER_05]: He's never, he really doesn't even do that affect your friendship.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, did.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, because,
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, anytime you're in a federal indictment and you're having the government sit, you know, have a cool and ask a P.O.P.O.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's very interesting.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And everyone's nervous and everyone's scared and everyone doesn't know what to do and who to talk to and can you call them, can you not?
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, it's created a little tension between us but we're friends, it's not like we don't like each other.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just, we were really, really close.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then Ryan Handel stress a lot different than I do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Clearly, I've been under the
[SPEAKER_00]: the guy in my whole life really since I've been 12, as far as stress levels.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think I handle it very well.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think he's graded handling stress and these, well, most people aren't in these situations.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he's reacted a little bit more of a taken back.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I've been more, as you notice, in front of the charge.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I've just been addressing the truth from day one.
[SPEAKER_00]: My attorneys think I'm nuts.
[SPEAKER_00]: My attorney hated what I was doing, by the way.
[SPEAKER_05]: really.
[SPEAKER_05]: So you know, it's it is really interesting.
[SPEAKER_05]: I you somewhat remind me of Rod Blegoya Vitch.
[SPEAKER_05]: And I don't know if you remember his story, but he did the apprentice when he was up, you know, before he went into prison and he was waiting to see what was going to happen to him.
[SPEAKER_05]: He was very vocal.
[SPEAKER_05]: and people really questioned his, you know, the way he was handling it, his attorneys were like, you have to shut up.
[SPEAKER_05]: And he wouldn't.
[SPEAKER_05]: And he became such a big figure then he went away.
[SPEAKER_05]: And but this was for 14 years and Trump ended up partying him after seven.
[SPEAKER_05]: I got to interview him after that and fascinating guy, by the way, and deserves to be
[SPEAKER_05]: you know in front of the camera a politician have a book story whatever because that's his personality and it's similar to you in the way that listen he wanted to take responsibility for the things he did he was very much you know still saying these things I didn't do the things I did do right these things I did do and then by the way
[SPEAKER_05]: When you're playing a game and everyone is doing this illegal thing or this thing you shouldn't be doing, you can't compete with them unless you are doing that illegal thing.
[SPEAKER_05]: So he's like, this is what I had to do to be a politician, essentially.
[SPEAKER_05]: So it was a very interesting way for him to handle it.
[SPEAKER_05]: But I see that for you, you are someone who wanted to take responsibility, you wanted to get it over with, get that initial pain over with so that you can move on.
[SPEAKER_05]: And I want to get into what you want to do later and what you're going to do, but I just want to finish the conversation about Otani, because his translator, eBay, is now in jail, and it got what five years.
[SPEAKER_05]: Fifty-seven months.
[SPEAKER_05]: OK.
[SPEAKER_05]: And, you know, how do you feel about that?
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel terrible.
[SPEAKER_00]: Listen, I love money.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love to make money.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love business.
[SPEAKER_00]: Try to get a customer to come bet with me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, first of all, they came to me anyway, but I've never had a customer where I wanted to clean them dry.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or, of course, I wanted to make money off of every customer I've had, but it's never been about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've always tried to let them gamble and be entertained and afford it.
[SPEAKER_00]: yeah well if they lose all their money they can't be a customer anymore so you as well and then also you know at the end of the day i had so many customers i was making so much money at one guy you know being himself up in her you know affecting his wife and kids that doesn't make me feel good right i am human you know i like money but i'm human so for ebay i didn't know it was ever going to lead to this i mean people ask me well how do you let this
[SPEAKER_00]: Translator do this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I thought I was showing it to any betting whether I didn't know I didn't care right there.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was no they didn't show any Distray they were and tell the end I had no idea that's even going on But I feel terrible that is gambling addiction put this man in prison for 57 months and lost one of the best jobs You could ever have yeah, maybe he didn't make he only made a quarter million dollars will only stole out of money But
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, he would endorsements that all the things his future were so bright and being part of the Dodgers won the World Series, he didn't get to enjoy that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now he's in prison and he's known as a thief.
[SPEAKER_05]: So can we talk about that?
[SPEAKER_05]: Because I don't think I definitely don't understand it.
[SPEAKER_05]: And so I think a lot of people don't understand it.
[SPEAKER_05]: This is a guy who's making a quarter of a million dollars a year as an interpreter, right?
[SPEAKER_05]: Um, did he come into the picture with Otani like they knew each other from way back when or not really um, but he they were really they were like best friends.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: I will tell you that.
[SPEAKER_05]: I guess they had to be because Otani doesn't speak English.
[SPEAKER_05]: Is that true?
[SPEAKER_05]: By the way, who doesn't speak English?
[SPEAKER_00]: He does.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know how well he does, but he understands it from what I've been.
[SPEAKER_05]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: He doesn't I don't think he's fluent, but I understand it.
[SPEAKER_05]: Okay, so a guy like that How does he get in with the big-time people like you and we're talking about?
[SPEAKER_05]: No, that customer how when he's spending this money you as you just said You obviously thought it was them together gambling because he would never have that kind of money.
[SPEAKER_05]: That kind of money
[SPEAKER_05]: And you didn't question it, and it is what it is.
[SPEAKER_05]: But where, so he goes to prison because he was stealing.
[SPEAKER_05]: Correct.
[SPEAKER_05]: How does that happen?
[SPEAKER_05]: How does no one around this guy, Otani, protect his money and say, what, where are all these millions going every week?
[SPEAKER_00]: it's it's still a question that I answer honestly and I'm going to say it again and everyone still doesn't even believe me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know the exact facts because only showhieltoni and e-pave missahara know exactly what occurred but what I do know is
[SPEAKER_00]: They never got baseball, they being that account.
[SPEAKER_00]: I do know that E-Payman's a hard was the only person I ever spoke to.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I do know that he sent all the wires from showy, it's bank account.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I also know that there was a report that when this whole broke, that has not been put out that Tisha Thompson spoke to E-Pay for 90 minutes on the phone because she was the one that came to my home.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that
[SPEAKER_00]: interview, I'm going to call it, which was on a phone, he said, show here, Tony sent the first wire transfer, and knew of, at least the first wire.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know the details of beyond that, but that I do know, because- Well, was the amount of the first wire?
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh, first one was 300,000.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: But does that mean that,
[SPEAKER_00]: maybe he told his friend, hey, I'll help you out a little bit if you'll bad that you're, you know, it's right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_05]: I'll front you that whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: I do know this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Show Hayatani has been known to never gamble ever.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, and you don't just gamble $40 million all of a sudden, you're either a gambler or not.
[SPEAKER_05]: Well, was this the first time he came into that much money?
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't even know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you know, first time he was making like serious money made, but the real serious money came later anyway.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: But keep in mind, the money that was sent,
[SPEAKER_00]: He had to like wait to send me wire transfers and it was because the bank account he had access to was the angels paychecks.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's wanting to pay for the angels.
[SPEAKER_00]: The endorsement account bank account he didn't have access to.
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's where the real money was.
[SPEAKER_00]: I see.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was making much more endorsement.
[SPEAKER_00]: So.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think show hey really I really believe this I don't think he really looked at it Yeah, I know that sounds wild.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't see how someone didn't look at it for 1780 months If it happened in a week or two that'd be different yeah, I do believe and this is my belief I do believe that he was aware and helped his friend a little bit.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think he gambled But I think the the Dodgers came in and said look man Let's just make this easy.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, let's make this really couldn't you know clean cotton dry
[SPEAKER_00]: you had no knowledge in it's that simple.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's my opinion.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to accuse anybody of anything because I think show here Tony is the most amazing baseball player to ever walk the face to the planet.
[SPEAKER_05]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't think he did anything wrong.
[SPEAKER_05]: Right.
[SPEAKER_05]: I totally see what you're saying.
[SPEAKER_05]: There is a chance this could be the biggest cover up in major baseball history.
[SPEAKER_05]: and we could find something out way later in the future and it could have been something as simple as you're right at the beginning like he's admitting to that at the first wire he gambled it shotani or outtani but but
[SPEAKER_05]: Maybe that's what gave eBay the idea to continue doing it without him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Plausible.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't argue with you because I don't have any fact.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just know it was a gambler.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't like go throughout your whole life and not be known to gambles.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Start gambling at that level.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I've been gambling since I was 12 or even earlier.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I've always loved to gambling everyone around me knows it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the people that like I know that don't gamble, they don't even have an urge to gamble.
[SPEAKER_00]: They don't even want they don't even like it.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're not going to just go crazy amounts of money on soccer games.
[SPEAKER_05]: Right.
[SPEAKER_05]: So that's what I want to talk about next.
[SPEAKER_05]: So because now in a couple of weeks from now, you are going to be turning yourself into prison gambling as an addiction and you've had to stop doing it, how are you handling that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Have you?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, the fact that I go to prison if I do it is an easy deterrent.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I'm going to prison, but my charges will be not only quicker, but more.
[SPEAKER_05]: What do you get your fix on now?
[SPEAKER_00]: My wife.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: And my business.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_05]: They always say people change their addictions into a sexual addiction.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I've had that prior.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: My wife is stunning.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's true.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's her.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So and she'll tell you that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like Mr. Groper on her.
[SPEAKER_00]: She gets, she's like calm down.
[SPEAKER_00]: But truth be told, that's what makes our relationship even better.
[SPEAKER_00]: The the reality is I'm just dove into my brand my new business.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, good.
[SPEAKER_00]: What I'm building and almost to the point where even that's become Because I'm all in full throttle guy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everything I've ever done.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why I've been number one at everything I've done I mean as the number one retail commodity broken the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a number one book maker in the world I was or just kind of your register sales or paper boy.
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't matter what I do I do it 130,000%.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah So what are you going to be the number one thing at when you get out?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to build this massive brand where I'm selling books, motivational speaking, and eventually I have a, I'm going to call it a community that basically follows me and I inspire and motivate people and change their lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is the first time in my life that I've ever done something where,
[SPEAKER_00]: both people are winning.
[SPEAKER_00]: I went in the person that I'm selling to wins.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the first time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whereas before it's always been commodities, I win, they got to lose.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I'm trying to make the money, but I know they're going to lose because they just all lost money and bookmaking was the same thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I need these people to lose for for me to
[SPEAKER_00]: make a living.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now it's like I can change someone's life.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can give them motivational things from stuff that I've endured that's tough and poor decisions I made and they can maybe not make that poor decision or more importantly maybe they're afraid to take some risk.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can push them to take risk educated smart risk or enable them to lose some weight or make them change the way they treat their life or whatever because I'm not perfect.
[SPEAKER_00]: but I definitely have a lot of experience and I've been very successful.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I have a lot to give and this is the first time that I could give and actually I'm finding a way where I know I can make money doing it.
[SPEAKER_05]: What's the biggest fear?
[SPEAKER_05]: Enlist them.
[SPEAKER_05]: I know the biggest fear has got to be leaving your wife and leaving your kids.
[SPEAKER_05]: So that is clear that that would be a fear.
[SPEAKER_05]: But like being in prison, what is the fear?
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I just don't want something that happened to Escalate to where I get more time.
[SPEAKER_05]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know?
[SPEAKER_05]: Which, by the way, people talk about happening all the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, because I'm going to, at all cost, defend myself.
[SPEAKER_05]: Mm-hmm.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no way I'm going to let another human being, you know, harm me physically, because I want to allow that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: That being said, what if someone antagonizes me?
[SPEAKER_00]: I have a big ego.
[SPEAKER_00]: I definitely don't handle disrespect very well.
[SPEAKER_00]: Think out it will be in a position where I just have to check myself and tell them, you know, remind myself, it's not worth it, it's not worth it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: You gotta put your in just walk away or whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I will diffuse every situation I can, but if someone starts putting their hands on me, I'm going to...
[SPEAKER_00]: either hurt them or I'm going to get hurt.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some are going to get hurt.
[SPEAKER_05]: Do you know where you're going?
[SPEAKER_00]: Longpock.
[SPEAKER_05]: OK.
[SPEAKER_05]: What do you know about it?
[SPEAKER_05]: Like, what's the living situation going to be like?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not pretty.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's bugs.
[SPEAKER_05]: OK.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I can show you a picture.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have people that are sending me pictures from Longpock that's been currently.
[SPEAKER_05]: Oh, no way.
[SPEAKER_05]: Do you have some automatic friends?
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, I'm pretty popular as you are.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, they're just people that.
[SPEAKER_05]: They're so excited that you're coming.
[SPEAKER_00]: I actually think some of them are.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's amazing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_05]: And probably some people that are resentful.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, of course.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, they're going to embrace people.
[SPEAKER_00]: There would be some people that won't embrace me, but they're really not embracing me.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, their motives are going to be sure.
[SPEAKER_05]: I have a friend who said, God, I'm on a good side because when you're not, he's a terrible friend, uh, enemy to have.
[SPEAKER_05]: But Michael Lohan, are you familiar with him?
[SPEAKER_05]: He is in prison right now.
[SPEAKER_05]: He gets out in a month, but he's been there for now.
[SPEAKER_05]: I want to say something like five or six months.
[SPEAKER_05]: I speak to him all the time, calls three times a week.
[SPEAKER_05]: And he is in a prison that sounds very similar to what you're going to.
[SPEAKER_00]: The state is the end.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right here on beach.
[SPEAKER_05]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_05]: Uh, he seems like he's having the time of his life.
[SPEAKER_05]: I'll tell you about it.
[SPEAKER_05]: I've got to get him on the phone with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's in a camp, right?
[SPEAKER_05]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_05]: I mean, I don't know if it's called the camp or not, but similar.
[SPEAKER_05]: They have bunks.
[SPEAKER_05]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_05]: He runs a department.
[SPEAKER_05]: I forget what he does for his job.
[SPEAKER_05]: I think he helps with intake.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_05]: So he said.
[SPEAKER_05]: He said that the thing that really he loves, he gets to meet every new person that comes in.
[SPEAKER_05]: So he starts that kind of relationship right off the bat.
[SPEAKER_05]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_05]: He loves that people look up to him and know that he has a platform that when they get out they think he can help him What are you know what I'm so for him and he's been in prison a couple times He has not had a terrible experience and I love getting on the phone with him because I'm always like Did you get beat up?
[SPEAKER_05]: Do you have a boyfriend like yeah?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like what's happening?
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, and he's like what are you talking about but he has a great story and he's working on a million things and
[SPEAKER_05]: So it hasn't slowed him down, and I'm sure you've done all that research to know what you're gonna be doing when you're in there.
[SPEAKER_05]: So will you be writing another book?
[SPEAKER_05]: Will you be like, what's the plan?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so I'm currently, I'm here for a reason, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: People who think I'm bananas because I'm not at home just winding like a baby or more importantly, I'm trying to spend as much family times I can, but I have to also work and I gotta build my brand.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the next, you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: 23 days before I check in is work and balance of that, but in that process I'm going to film a lot of stuff so it my content will continue on my social media.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the meantime, when I'm in prison and I'll journal every day, of course I'll work out.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's something I'll do all the time, but I'll write another book and I'll use that downtime to really reset and just come back.
[SPEAKER_00]: and come back as a better human.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'll build why I'm in there.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll do everything I can.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't have internet access, so to speak, but there are some tablets and things you can use that I will use to communicate with, you know, people on the outside.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I will just use every minute I can to rebuild and come out and ready to go.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's just what I've been doing to be honest the last two years.
[SPEAKER_05]: Right, of course.
[SPEAKER_05]: And it gives you a whole other chapter of your story.
[SPEAKER_05]: And not only that, I had a fascinating woman on
[SPEAKER_05]: came out and she runs one of the biggest literary agencies because she found a love for writing while she was there but then she found a love for ghost writing and so she's heard all these amazing stories in prison and would and she writes for these people now that she's out it's not like prison or she's writing for it but she's made the opera bookless like three times whatever that book thing as the opera does and
[SPEAKER_05]: She did something with the Dalai Lama, so she, I mean, it's totally revamped her life, but hearing those stories and connecting with people in prison, you know, I think that can be fearful for people, but sometimes it goes the other way and you hear stories that you just learn from and you want to help tell those stories as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I think life we all have, everybody has a story, everybody has a story.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some are a little bit more wild than others, I think yours and mine have the average stories.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you learn from that adversity and you learn to take the opportunities that you get in these down times and actually elevate it, you can really do some big things because in that adversity or in those rough moments is when you really forge who you would become.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a part I talk about this sculpture, and I'm creating that sculpture of myself now.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like a statue, I'm chipping at, and that's the ending of my book.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that sculpture, truly, over the last two years, I've been chipping hard at it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the man I'm becoming now is better than the first 48 years of my life.
[SPEAKER_05]: Just a lot of amazing, I love that.
[SPEAKER_05]: Tell people where they can get your book, recalibrate, it's amazing.
[SPEAKER_05]: I was reading it as I was coming out to see you, finish it in Panama.
[SPEAKER_05]: I mean, it's a book that everyone does need to read.
[SPEAKER_05]: And it's available now on Amazon and anywhere you can get your book.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, my website, Matthewboy.com.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I've had a time to get it in Barnes and Noble and all that stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll work on that while I'm in prison.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's hard, self-pubblersed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nobody owns my life rights, my documentary that's being filmed now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everything I've done is I've controlled it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's a reason for that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I do see a movie, a feature film coming, and that's the plan.
[SPEAKER_00]: But my book is just a business card.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the way I look at it.
[SPEAKER_05]: If somebody plays you in a movie, who would you want to play?
[SPEAKER_00]: My wife would choose Channing Tatum.
[SPEAKER_05]: Oh, yeah, me too.
[SPEAKER_05]: She's not wrong, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So actually, he's been in conversation with my entertainment attorneys.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I would pick Tom Hardy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, because I think he represents me very well.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Kind of an alpha male guy.
[SPEAKER_00]: At least for what I've seen.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I don't know him personally.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would choose him.
[SPEAKER_05]: I want to talk about the idea of restitution one more time for people to understand.
[SPEAKER_05]: You paid 1.6 back.
[SPEAKER_05]: How what does that mean to the other, what does that mean to your bank account?
[SPEAKER_05]: I mean, you were bringing so much money in.
[SPEAKER_00]: What does it means that it hurts?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, well, it's squealing.
[SPEAKER_05]: But people are assuming from hearing your story that you were making, you know, whatever was millions of dollars a week, or a million a week, whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was making probably a million, million, a five a month.
[SPEAKER_00]: I might have to turn for 2023.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I filed, I made $14.5 million.
[SPEAKER_00]: OK.
[SPEAKER_00]: That being said, I lost $13 million in the casino.
[SPEAKER_03]: OK.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we all know that all the money you make,
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I actually paid millions of dollars in taxes.
[SPEAKER_00]: People think I just didn't pay taxes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Got it.
[SPEAKER_00]: My tax charge in 2022, what I'm in trouble for, is a falsified tax return.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not tax evasion.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, got it.
[SPEAKER_00]: A falsified tax return means I put a wrong amount down.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the reason for that is I lost $4 million in the casino that year.
[SPEAKER_00]: But they wouldn't let me, the IRS didn't allow me to offset.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I filed as a professional gambler and I offset it.
[SPEAKER_00]: that was a legal charge.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I want to be clear that it wasn't like I was flipping off the government saying I'm not paying.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean that's why I own properties and we own things, you know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, but to answer your question, yeah, a lot of the money that I've made, I've spent I've lived like a rock star.
[SPEAKER_05]: Well, that's what I was going to say.
[SPEAKER_05]: And a lot of people don't understand that they're like, if the so much money was coming in, why doesn't he have millions stashed away, but a lot of it was spent on a nice lifestyle.
[SPEAKER_05]: And some, I'm assuming you have property, you have cars, you have two issues, you have all these sort of bills.
[SPEAKER_05]: I've children.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, five children.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we, we definitely were living a very exotic life, you know, I kind of knew that this day could come.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I didn't want to be honest, I didn't want everything just to clean out, and I didn't have any experiences or memories.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, the one thing I can do is they can take all my money, but they can't take away my memories.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a fact.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_05]: But so what are you guys going to be doing as a side hustle while you're in prison to keep money in your bank account?
[SPEAKER_05]: Or is there like enough there that like just holds you?
[SPEAKER_05]: I know your wife has a clothing line.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's amazing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Coco on the go.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's expanding.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's in
[SPEAKER_00]: all the montage as she's in, you know, all the, there's spas over across the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: So her business is doing, it's thriving, it's doing very well.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we also disembezzments, and I still work, I, even though I can't work from prison, I run a marketing for car dealerships.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there'll still be money coming in, and we'll be fine, you know, I've already covered our mortgage for a year in advance.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I've really tried to make sure that they could be very comfortable, and remain calm until I get out.
[SPEAKER_00]: That money's going to run dry.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to have to get right to work when I get out.
[SPEAKER_05]: Right.
[SPEAKER_05]: With those speaking engagement.
[SPEAKER_05]: And all that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Which I'm doing in next week.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_05]: I can't wait to hear all that goes.
[SPEAKER_05]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_05]: The last question I've asked you, obviously, because of our show, what would you say is the most misunderstood thing about gambling, being a bookmaker, that kind of situation?
[SPEAKER_00]: About being a bookmaker, I think people don't realize it's a business.
[SPEAKER_00]: I ran a
[SPEAKER_00]: I was a CEO of a very large corporation.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was just illegal.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's not baseball bats and dark alleys of being people up, it's not, it's a business.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the misconception is basically, oh, you know, that's taboo and you could get hurt and it's violent.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that happens, but it happens in any business, really.
[SPEAKER_00]: But in particular, this is really not, the gambling world today is not what it was 20, 30 years ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I would say the biggest misconception of me personally is that I am not the guy that the media portrays.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not this predator that goes out and gets business just to feed the lifestyle and all that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, yes, I love nice things.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think you do too.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everybody does when they can have it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I'm a father first.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a husband.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm very, when I look in the mirror, I'm very proud of who I am, despite what I'm dealing with.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm stronger right now going into prison at 50 years old than I ever had been in my life.
[SPEAKER_00]: that's amazing.
[SPEAKER_05]: I wish you the best of luck.
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm going to keep in touch with you with your wife and make sure that, you know, you are doing well.
[SPEAKER_05]: And I got to tell you though, I'm not scared for you because I know this is actually probably the best thing that could have happened for you because it's going to make you stronger and make you be able to have a complete new second act of life where you're doing something different and probably just a successful.
[SPEAKER_05]: So,
[SPEAKER_00]: It's absolutely correct.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wish you the last one.
[SPEAKER_05]: Thank you so much for listening to Ms.
[SPEAKER_05]: Understood.
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm your host, Rachel, you could tell.
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[SPEAKER_05]: Understood with Rachel, you could tell.
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[SPEAKER_05]: That's spelled m-is-s-s-understood.
[SPEAKER_05]: Thank you so much and I'll see you next time.