1
00:00:11,720 --> 00:00:14,320
Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, and welcome to life is a gamble. My

2
00:00:14,439 --> 00:00:18,359
name is Richard Munchkin and my guest today is John Rogers.

3
00:00:19,120 --> 00:00:24,960
John is an old school bookmaker who started out a

4
00:00:25,000 --> 00:00:28,480
few miles from Steubenville, Ohio, where he actually had a

5
00:00:28,640 --> 00:00:35,439
storefront sports book and lived through the transition of the

6
00:00:35,479 --> 00:00:39,600
old days of carbon paper and using a paper and

7
00:00:39,640 --> 00:00:43,399
pencil to record people's bets to moving offshore and taking

8
00:00:43,439 --> 00:00:47,799
bets over the phone to the Internet age, and like

9
00:00:47,920 --> 00:00:51,560
anybody in that business, he's got an amazing story to tell.

10
00:00:52,159 --> 00:00:55,679
So let's get right into it. John Rogers, Welcome to

11
00:00:55,880 --> 00:00:56,759
life as a gamble.

12
00:00:57,479 --> 00:00:58,479
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me.

13
00:00:59,479 --> 00:01:04,480
Speaker 1: So I want to really go back to the very beginning,

14
00:01:05,680 --> 00:01:08,640
and that is when did you for where did you

15
00:01:08,680 --> 00:01:13,239
grow up? And when did you first start gambling? Do

16
00:01:13,280 --> 00:01:15,879
you remember the first bet you ever made on anything?

17
00:01:16,040 --> 00:01:21,439
Speaker 2: Oh? My, I growed up in Toronto, Ohio, about nine

18
00:01:21,519 --> 00:01:25,879
miles up from Steuvenville. Stuphenville is a pretty famous town

19
00:01:26,000 --> 00:01:28,719
for a lot of these gamblers come out, and casino

20
00:01:29,040 --> 00:01:34,760
employees and bosses and Jimmy the Greek Dean Martin. So

21
00:01:34,840 --> 00:01:38,560
there was gambling all around. And my first adventure was

22
00:01:38,599 --> 00:01:42,760
I was in sixth grade Catholic School. The monsignor asked

23
00:01:42,760 --> 00:01:47,879
me if I wanted to go to the racetrack with him. Well, yeah,

24
00:01:48,640 --> 00:01:51,480
by the way, he was the only good one out there.

25
00:01:52,040 --> 00:01:55,599
I'll tell you you know, I could have been at

26
00:01:55,640 --> 00:01:58,599
made a fortune right now if he would have molested me.

27
00:01:58,719 --> 00:02:03,840
But you went in busch. Maybe I wasn't his type.

28
00:02:03,879 --> 00:02:06,359
But he was a great guy, very great. So we

29
00:02:06,359 --> 00:02:08,680
go to the racetrack. He gives me a couple of dollars,

30
00:02:09,560 --> 00:02:12,159
I make a few bets. We have a good time.

31
00:02:13,280 --> 00:02:17,080
And when I was in sixth grade, everybody was talking

32
00:02:17,120 --> 00:02:20,319
about baseball, so I said, well, you know, guys want

33
00:02:20,319 --> 00:02:23,479
to bet it, and so all the games were even

34
00:02:23,800 --> 00:02:26,000
you could. All you have to do is pick a

35
00:02:26,039 --> 00:02:31,879
winner twenty five dollars, just straight bets, and it was

36
00:02:31,879 --> 00:02:36,400
pretty successful. I won about seven dollars off of the

37
00:02:36,439 --> 00:02:38,120
fellas in a couple of weeks, and I had it

38
00:02:38,159 --> 00:02:40,800
in a library book. And I didn show up for

39
00:02:40,840 --> 00:02:44,120
school one day and they turned in my library book

40
00:02:44,120 --> 00:02:46,919
and found that seven dollars and they wanted to investigate

41
00:02:46,919 --> 00:02:49,360
where I got that money it was from. So they

42
00:02:49,439 --> 00:02:52,639
brought me in the office and asked me, and I

43
00:02:52,800 --> 00:02:56,240
told him I was, you know, taking baseball games from

44
00:02:56,319 --> 00:03:02,039
the the other students, So that didn't go either. Well,

45
00:03:02,080 --> 00:03:04,800
they wanted me to bring my mother and dad in,

46
00:03:04,960 --> 00:03:08,039
and I said, my mother works at Duck School. We

47
00:03:08,120 --> 00:03:11,080
don't have to bother my dad. So they said, yeah,

48
00:03:11,120 --> 00:03:16,560
you do. So the nuns were worse than the FBI

49
00:03:16,919 --> 00:03:21,080
because they made me donate the money to church. And

50
00:03:21,120 --> 00:03:23,479
I had a Duck walk up and down the hall

51
00:03:24,080 --> 00:03:26,840
after she beat my knuckles with a ruler.

52
00:03:27,120 --> 00:03:31,400
Speaker 1: So, now, wait a minute, where was your edge if

53
00:03:31,439 --> 00:03:33,199
you just had to pick one side of the other

54
00:03:33,240 --> 00:03:34,159
of a baseball game.

55
00:03:34,639 --> 00:03:37,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, but there's six graders. I mean, what do they

56
00:03:37,080 --> 00:03:38,520
know what?

57
00:03:39,520 --> 00:03:43,319
Speaker 1: But still if you have no juice, like right.

58
00:03:44,240 --> 00:03:47,560
Speaker 2: Yeah, an ap would have did pretty good there. But

59
00:03:47,639 --> 00:03:50,080
you know, yeah, these were sixth graders.

60
00:03:53,120 --> 00:03:58,120
Speaker 1: So so you ended up as an adult becoming a

61
00:03:58,159 --> 00:04:00,759
book maker and actually a book maker.

62
00:04:01,000 --> 00:04:03,360
Speaker 2: Yeah, I went right into high school. I booked in

63
00:04:03,439 --> 00:04:07,159
high school. I booked parlays only, parlays only in high school.

64
00:04:07,800 --> 00:04:11,120
Got the sheets. I was a freshman. I was booking

65
00:04:11,159 --> 00:04:14,719
everybody in the school, and I was probably you know,

66
00:04:15,639 --> 00:04:18,519
probably three four hundred dollars a week, you know, five

67
00:04:18,639 --> 00:04:19,800
ten dollars right.

68
00:04:20,759 --> 00:04:21,120
Speaker 1: Wow.

69
00:04:21,480 --> 00:04:24,240
Speaker 2: So there was this pool room that I used to

70
00:04:24,279 --> 00:04:28,959
shoot pool on the seventh and eighth grade, and the

71
00:04:29,079 --> 00:04:33,839
lady booked numbers in parlays too. So I was a

72
00:04:33,920 --> 00:04:38,079
sophomore and I come home. My mother's crying on a couch.

73
00:04:38,240 --> 00:04:41,279
I said, you know what's wrong? She said. The lady

74
00:04:41,279 --> 00:04:45,839
from the poolroom called said, you're stealing her business. My mother,

75
00:04:45,959 --> 00:04:49,319
don't stop me. They will and I go, well, Mom,

76
00:04:49,399 --> 00:04:51,839
I'll take care of this. Don't worry about it. So

77
00:04:52,879 --> 00:04:57,040
I took care of it, and I got up early

78
00:04:57,040 --> 00:04:58,839
in the morning and went down and I threw a

79
00:04:58,839 --> 00:05:02,000
book right through her window. And then I went at

80
00:05:02,079 --> 00:05:05,160
lunch time and play some daily numbers. I said, don't

81
00:05:05,160 --> 00:05:07,959
ever call my mother again. And that was the last

82
00:05:08,360 --> 00:05:12,959
I heard of her. So I continued through high school,

83
00:05:13,040 --> 00:05:16,800
and I was It was odd because when I was

84
00:05:16,839 --> 00:05:21,800
in high school, I wasn't allowed to have a paper

85
00:05:21,959 --> 00:05:26,600
and a pen, and I knew that I wasn't going

86
00:05:26,639 --> 00:05:29,279
to go to college. And I had a bunch of

87
00:05:29,319 --> 00:05:33,480
study halls because I need only couple classes to graduate,

88
00:05:33,839 --> 00:05:35,680
and they didn't want me with paper and pen in

89
00:05:35,720 --> 00:05:38,120
there because they knew what I was up to. So

90
00:05:39,079 --> 00:05:41,600
when I graduated, and one kid had wrote in my

91
00:05:41,720 --> 00:05:45,800
yearbook that I was the only one that ever said

92
00:05:45,839 --> 00:05:48,279
what they were going to do and did I said,

93
00:05:48,279 --> 00:05:51,079
I was going to be a bookmaker. So I opened

94
00:05:51,160 --> 00:05:54,920
up right out of high school and have walked in

95
00:05:55,040 --> 00:05:59,000
places and they're not unusual in this area where you

96
00:05:59,000 --> 00:06:03,319
can walk in and put a bet down. We had

97
00:06:03,360 --> 00:06:04,240
the boards up.

98
00:06:05,120 --> 00:06:09,279
Speaker 1: That's that's amazing. So that I mean, so I guess

99
00:06:09,279 --> 00:06:12,399
Steubenville was just a wide open town as far as gambling,

100
00:06:12,439 --> 00:06:14,040
if you were allowed to have a walk in.

101
00:06:14,959 --> 00:06:15,160
Speaker 2: Yeah.

102
00:06:15,319 --> 00:06:17,720
Speaker 1: So just like a storefront, Yeah.

103
00:06:17,600 --> 00:06:21,120
Speaker 2: That was we had hats. The hats were like fifty

104
00:06:21,199 --> 00:06:23,399
some dollars. That way, nobody would buy. I mean, we

105
00:06:23,439 --> 00:06:29,759
didn't have to replenish our inventory. So and then we

106
00:06:29,800 --> 00:06:34,279
got into booking daily numbers, you know the numbers, you know,

107
00:06:34,399 --> 00:06:38,120
and I think in the like seventy eight, they started

108
00:06:38,160 --> 00:06:41,720
with the Ohio number. The Pennsylvania numbers started first in

109
00:06:41,839 --> 00:06:45,120
the West Virginia, and we used to take all three

110
00:06:45,160 --> 00:06:47,399
states because we're right on the river. So it was

111
00:06:47,480 --> 00:06:51,600
called POW Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia. So you'd come

112
00:06:51,680 --> 00:06:55,959
in play POW all three states. You know, they're fifty

113
00:06:56,000 --> 00:06:58,959
cents buy a dime or something like that, you know,

114
00:06:59,240 --> 00:07:02,480
and the ladies really like that. We paid, you know,

115
00:07:02,560 --> 00:07:08,519
when the places were paying five to one, five hundred

116
00:07:08,519 --> 00:07:11,560
to one, we were paid six hundred to one. So

117
00:07:12,160 --> 00:07:13,959
we got a lot of business in the Numbers and

118
00:07:14,079 --> 00:07:17,600
numbers was big. Everybody had dream books and numbers, and

119
00:07:18,639 --> 00:07:21,279
you know they had them all. We had an old

120
00:07:21,319 --> 00:07:26,120
butcher in there. We called him the psychic prognosticator because

121
00:07:27,680 --> 00:07:31,639
he Everybody used to ask the butcher but for a number,

122
00:07:31,920 --> 00:07:34,279
you know, and he was to give numbers and sometimes

123
00:07:34,319 --> 00:07:37,160
they would hit. So after he retired from them, I

124
00:07:37,199 --> 00:07:39,319
had him working in my place and he brought in

125
00:07:39,399 --> 00:07:44,519
all the women customers. It was beautiful. What so one

126
00:07:44,600 --> 00:07:49,279
day he uh, I asked him, I said, Adam, give

127
00:07:49,319 --> 00:07:52,160
me a give me a number. And he's seen the

128
00:07:52,240 --> 00:07:55,399
layoff sheet. We used to lay off anything over twenty dollars.

129
00:07:55,439 --> 00:07:57,800
So I write twenty dollars and he tells me seven

130
00:07:57,959 --> 00:08:02,240
four eight. I write it on. He sees that, and

131
00:08:03,600 --> 00:08:05,879
that night I get a call right after the numbers

132
00:08:05,879 --> 00:08:08,279
are drawn, and he said, you better take care of me,

133
00:08:08,399 --> 00:08:10,240
You better take care of me. I said, what's what's

134
00:08:10,360 --> 00:08:13,759
what's up? Man, what's up? Seven four eight? Hit right

135
00:08:13,800 --> 00:08:16,920
on the button. I said, that's great. You know, I

136
00:08:17,040 --> 00:08:20,199
went like twelve thousand dollars. It was fantastic. I go

137
00:08:20,319 --> 00:08:22,639
down and threw all the tickets for the next day

138
00:08:22,680 --> 00:08:25,600
down there. He gave it to everybody in town. I

139
00:08:25,639 --> 00:08:28,800
had to pay out like fifty thousand dollars, and he

140
00:08:28,879 --> 00:08:34,200
still wanted me to give him a tip. The psychic prognosticated, Wow.

141
00:08:34,840 --> 00:08:40,440
This lasted till Super Bowl nineteen ninety where I was

142
00:08:40,480 --> 00:08:43,799
having a party at my house up the shop. We

143
00:08:43,799 --> 00:08:46,000
were open till the Super Bowl opens. Next scene.

144
00:08:46,360 --> 00:08:49,679
Speaker 1: Wait, let me stop you just a second. So I

145
00:08:49,720 --> 00:08:52,879
would have thought when the state lotteries came in that

146
00:08:52,879 --> 00:08:56,919
that would have really bit into the numbers business. But

147
00:08:56,919 --> 00:08:58,679
but no, it was still going strong.

148
00:08:59,279 --> 00:09:03,679
Speaker 2: It was. It went better because it was when they

149
00:09:03,759 --> 00:09:07,600
the states started throwing it. They started putting them on TV,

150
00:09:08,440 --> 00:09:12,080
and before it was a stock number, and then on

151
00:09:12,120 --> 00:09:15,159
the weekends it was a race number, if you're familiar

152
00:09:15,240 --> 00:09:18,080
with that. So they would use the last number of

153
00:09:18,200 --> 00:09:22,960
the advances, decline and unchanges, and that's how they would

154
00:09:22,960 --> 00:09:26,679
come up with the daily number, daily stock number. And

155
00:09:26,799 --> 00:09:31,799
once it started having drawings at seven and seven thirty,

156
00:09:32,639 --> 00:09:35,320
you know, and the states were having and it was big.

157
00:09:35,679 --> 00:09:38,960
The States are paying five hundred to one. You bet

158
00:09:38,960 --> 00:09:42,639
a dollar, you went five hundred. We were paying six

159
00:09:42,759 --> 00:09:46,519
hundred to one, bet a dollar and six hundred. And

160
00:09:46,559 --> 00:09:49,000
then we had a deal for them on Mondays if

161
00:09:49,039 --> 00:09:52,600
you come in and they didn't have Sunday numbers there.

162
00:09:52,639 --> 00:09:55,639
So if you come in on Monday and played your

163
00:09:55,720 --> 00:09:58,600
numbers for all week and paid for all week, you

164
00:09:58,919 --> 00:10:02,399
pay for five days, get the six day free. So

165
00:10:03,320 --> 00:10:07,159
that was huge. People like deals, people like sales. You know,

166
00:10:07,279 --> 00:10:14,559
they sure sure about themselves. So the number numbers was very,

167
00:10:14,960 --> 00:10:18,399
very big business. And still you know, you're holding thirty

168
00:10:18,679 --> 00:10:20,639
forty percent on the number.

169
00:10:20,840 --> 00:10:24,159
Speaker 1: So yeah, it was that a bigger business for you

170
00:10:24,320 --> 00:10:27,879
than the sports betting or or how did that break down?

171
00:10:29,120 --> 00:10:32,559
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was probably even because a lot of the

172
00:10:32,759 --> 00:10:36,159
customers that played the numbers would come into the front

173
00:10:36,440 --> 00:10:40,120
and you'd have to walk into the back to see

174
00:10:40,159 --> 00:10:45,159
the board and all the the uh, the the games

175
00:10:45,159 --> 00:10:47,679
that were on the board, and then in the back

176
00:10:47,759 --> 00:10:50,799
room we had pogram machine where you could play pogram machines.

177
00:10:51,399 --> 00:10:55,919
Speaker 1: So we it was just a wow, a license to

178
00:10:55,960 --> 00:10:56,600
print money.

179
00:10:56,720 --> 00:10:58,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was pretty good. It was. It was pretty good.

180
00:10:59,600 --> 00:11:02,559
You know, even when I was away. The guys who

181
00:11:02,600 --> 00:11:04,799
were running the place, you know, they always got the

182
00:11:04,840 --> 00:11:08,440
first count. And even when I was away, I made money.

183
00:11:11,759 --> 00:11:15,720
Speaker 1: So now I grew up outside Chicago, and I used

184
00:11:15,720 --> 00:11:18,480
to play poker with a couple of pretty large book

185
00:11:18,519 --> 00:11:23,399
makers and they had to sort of kick money off

186
00:11:23,600 --> 00:11:27,720
to the outfit guys. Was that a problem in Steubenville?

187
00:11:28,600 --> 00:11:32,159
Speaker 2: Uh? Well, you know it was Toronto. Now Steubenville was

188
00:11:32,200 --> 00:11:36,320
a different, different animal. Okay, Stutville was nine miles down there.

189
00:11:36,840 --> 00:11:39,720
They had their bookies and there was a lot of

190
00:11:41,399 --> 00:11:44,000
paying off that went on down there. But I didn't

191
00:11:44,039 --> 00:11:49,840
participate in that. I had I had someone looking out for.

192
00:11:49,879 --> 00:11:51,360
Speaker 1: Me for.

193
00:11:53,240 --> 00:11:55,360
Speaker 2: You know, because of my my you know, my mother

194
00:11:55,399 --> 00:11:58,399
grew up in Steubenville. And the guy took a liking

195
00:11:58,480 --> 00:11:59,960
to me, and he would let me know what was

196
00:12:00,120 --> 00:12:02,080
going on, you know, if somebody was going to try

197
00:12:02,120 --> 00:12:06,799
to rob us, or somebody was asking questions about us.

198
00:12:07,639 --> 00:12:11,840
But you know, no, we didn't. We didn't pay any policemen.

199
00:12:12,360 --> 00:12:13,879
You know, they had a job to do.

200
00:12:14,000 --> 00:12:18,000
Speaker 1: And yeah, did you ever get robbed?

201
00:12:19,000 --> 00:12:22,480
Speaker 2: H No, these guys in jail were going to rob us,

202
00:12:22,679 --> 00:12:27,399
and he the guy from the his name was Phil

203
00:12:27,519 --> 00:12:32,159
from the coin store Filmatucci from Steubenville, called me up,

204
00:12:32,960 --> 00:12:35,720
told me come down, and he goes, they're talking about,

205
00:12:36,039 --> 00:12:40,960
you know, robbing you and you're you park in the back.

206
00:12:41,320 --> 00:12:44,799
He goes, before it gets dark, move your car around

207
00:12:44,840 --> 00:12:47,200
the front. They got they have they don't have the

208
00:12:47,240 --> 00:12:50,879
balls to rob you from the front. So because we

209
00:12:50,879 --> 00:12:54,919
were right on the streets, you know. Yeah, so then

210
00:12:55,480 --> 00:12:58,799
you know, we talked to the guys that were thinking

211
00:12:58,840 --> 00:13:02,399
about it and they just their minds. So we never

212
00:13:02,480 --> 00:13:03,960
had any problems like that.

213
00:13:04,759 --> 00:13:08,559
Speaker 1: Oh that's good. So anyway you were saying Super Bowl

214
00:13:08,639 --> 00:13:09,879
nineteen ninety.

215
00:13:10,240 --> 00:13:14,759
Speaker 2: Super Bowl nineteen ninety, everything's calm. But we were always

216
00:13:15,480 --> 00:13:19,960
you know, knew that they liked to raid on Super Bowls, right,

217
00:13:20,840 --> 00:13:25,360
So everybody had come in. We had a timestamp on

218
00:13:25,440 --> 00:13:30,440
these tickets, so everybody had come in. We just took

219
00:13:30,480 --> 00:13:32,759
the tickets and we would run them through the shredder.

220
00:13:33,159 --> 00:13:36,360
Now nobody knew that we were doing that. We didn't

221
00:13:36,399 --> 00:13:38,240
have the tickets. We didn't want to have any tickets

222
00:13:38,279 --> 00:13:41,320
on us, and we had the janitor in there and

223
00:13:42,480 --> 00:13:46,120
we told him to if anything happens, we were feeling this.

224
00:13:46,279 --> 00:13:48,720
He had a suit jacket because he always went to

225
00:13:48,799 --> 00:13:52,480
church and if anything happened, just walk out the door

226
00:13:52,559 --> 00:13:54,799
and I'll see it tomorrow. And we were putting the

227
00:13:54,840 --> 00:13:59,639
money in this suit jacket. Well, the FBI had to

228
00:13:59,639 --> 00:14:03,879
place but and they knew the plan. But the only

229
00:14:03,919 --> 00:14:07,320
thing they didn't know what the janitor look like in

230
00:14:07,360 --> 00:14:09,600
a suit. They knew what he looked like, you know,

231
00:14:09,679 --> 00:14:13,720
wearing a baseball hat everywhere, baseball hats and everything. And

232
00:14:13,799 --> 00:14:17,679
when they raided us up there a couple hours before

233
00:14:17,720 --> 00:14:22,840
the Super Bowl, George, his IQ is like maybe seventy

234
00:14:22,919 --> 00:14:25,879
or whatever. But he had a good heart. He walks

235
00:14:26,000 --> 00:14:29,320
right out the door like he's supposed to. So I'm

236
00:14:29,360 --> 00:14:34,720
at home by now, and there is Chevrolet's all through

237
00:14:34,840 --> 00:14:41,960
my yard about twelve fifteen cars, and my garage door's open.

238
00:14:42,159 --> 00:14:45,440
Now I hear a knock on my door, you know.

239
00:14:45,480 --> 00:14:47,759
He walked in the garage, knocked on my door, opened up,

240
00:14:47,799 --> 00:14:52,120
and it's George. He said, Boss, we got rated up

241
00:14:52,159 --> 00:14:57,240
town that I figured that George. Who brought you here?

242
00:14:57,360 --> 00:15:01,039
He said, Keith. I said, well, get he's car and

243
00:15:01,080 --> 00:15:04,360
I'll see you tomorrow. Now, the FBI was up upstairs

244
00:15:04,399 --> 00:15:08,759
searching through the house. Jesus, and there is no cell

245
00:15:08,799 --> 00:15:11,879
phones at the time. FBI didn't happen in the nineties,

246
00:15:11,919 --> 00:15:14,799
and my house phone rings and they want to talk

247
00:15:14,879 --> 00:15:18,039
to the agent and charge the people uptown. They said, hey,

248
00:15:18,080 --> 00:15:22,000
we missed George. He must have walked out the door.

249
00:15:22,120 --> 00:15:25,279
We didn't recognize him. Did he show up there? The

250
00:15:25,360 --> 00:15:30,279
guy goes, no, we haven't seen him. So they got

251
00:15:30,399 --> 00:15:35,559
zero tickets. They got zero money. And you know, they

252
00:15:35,720 --> 00:15:39,679
just come in and did the search and seizure and

253
00:15:39,720 --> 00:15:42,399
you know, and they had they had to come down

254
00:15:42,440 --> 00:15:44,279
and ask me, can you ask your mother to sit

255
00:15:44,360 --> 00:15:46,600
on the back porch while we searched the house. She's

256
00:15:46,639 --> 00:15:50,919
given us a hard time, So that's the tie in

257
00:15:51,000 --> 00:15:52,840
in her. You know, he's giving them a hard time.

258
00:15:52,879 --> 00:15:54,919
You take my son, you're gonna have to take me

259
00:15:55,120 --> 00:15:57,440
with you. I said, come on, I just relaxed, let

260
00:15:57,480 --> 00:16:00,159
them do their job and we could get all with

261
00:16:00,200 --> 00:16:05,000
our parties. But the funny story was my niece was

262
00:16:05,120 --> 00:16:08,159
like three years old. She went to the hospital and

263
00:16:08,200 --> 00:16:11,399
her father went to YEO, he's a pretty smart, wise guy.

264
00:16:12,240 --> 00:16:15,159
And I used to say to her hospital and I'd

265
00:16:15,200 --> 00:16:18,519
make her cry. So she was about three years old,

266
00:16:18,639 --> 00:16:21,559
and her dad told her, say FBI to him. This

267
00:16:21,639 --> 00:16:24,639
is prior to the bus, Say FBI to him. That

268
00:16:24,679 --> 00:16:26,919
will make him cry. And I'd act like I cry,

269
00:16:27,799 --> 00:16:30,559
Say FBI raids the house. They got hats on FBI.

270
00:16:30,679 --> 00:16:33,279
She's three years old. I'm sure she can't figure out.

271
00:16:33,840 --> 00:16:37,799
She run around moring FBI, FBI and goes, how does

272
00:16:37,840 --> 00:16:47,799
she know? So that that set me back. We had

273
00:16:47,799 --> 00:16:49,240
to shut down for a while.

274
00:16:51,799 --> 00:16:55,279
Speaker 1: And so if they didn't find any tickets or any money,

275
00:16:55,399 --> 00:16:58,679
then did they end up not charging you with anything. No.

276
00:16:58,919 --> 00:17:02,120
Speaker 2: They had seven one hundred and fifty hours of recording,

277
00:17:03,759 --> 00:17:07,480
so they were dealing with I have quite a bit

278
00:17:07,519 --> 00:17:11,359
of money, so they thought that I was selling drugs,

279
00:17:11,400 --> 00:17:15,119
and seven hundred and fifty hours of tate there was

280
00:17:15,279 --> 00:17:19,200
drugs weren't mentioned one time. So I was probably a

281
00:17:19,200 --> 00:17:23,759
bigger better than I was a bookmaker then, so and

282
00:17:23,960 --> 00:17:26,759
everybody got busted in the area, and I was like,

283
00:17:27,039 --> 00:17:29,640
if they had a chart, I would be at the

284
00:17:29,680 --> 00:17:32,400
top of the list because I was calling these guys,

285
00:17:33,160 --> 00:17:36,119
you know, and betting and they were laying off to me.

286
00:17:36,400 --> 00:17:40,799
So that was that they got guys from Pittsburgh, Youngstown

287
00:17:40,880 --> 00:17:45,880
and East Liverpool across the river weird and ironically nobody

288
00:17:45,880 --> 00:17:52,680
in Steubenville. So uh that that that that went on,

289
00:17:53,759 --> 00:17:55,839
and so I was going to fight the case. The

290
00:17:55,880 --> 00:17:59,920
worst I could have got with the I think the

291
00:18:00,480 --> 00:18:04,920
you know, the sentence in guidelines was twelve months and

292
00:18:05,119 --> 00:18:08,039
Molnsville or somewhere wouldn't have been too bad. So I said,

293
00:18:08,839 --> 00:18:10,240
now I'm going to fight it. I want to see

294
00:18:10,279 --> 00:18:15,759
this process how it goes. So I'm not giving up,

295
00:18:16,640 --> 00:18:19,160
not giving up. But I had a problem. I had

296
00:18:19,279 --> 00:18:22,480
seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars in CDs in the

297
00:18:22,559 --> 00:18:26,599
bank because I was claiming my income and I'm trying

298
00:18:26,599 --> 00:18:28,160
to figure out how am I going to get this

299
00:18:28,359 --> 00:18:32,359
cash out of there without them, you know, taking it,

300
00:18:32,400 --> 00:18:36,319
because they eventually were going to come up and seize

301
00:18:36,400 --> 00:18:39,200
that money. They just needed to go through some evidence

302
00:18:39,279 --> 00:18:42,680
or whatever. So I get go to the bank, I said,

303
00:18:42,680 --> 00:18:45,000
I'm want to cash his CD in early and I said,

304
00:18:45,000 --> 00:18:51,759
I want five five fifty thousand dollars cashiers checks. They said, okay,

305
00:18:52,599 --> 00:18:54,599
I fly to Vegas. I go down and put them

306
00:18:54,640 --> 00:18:58,440
up in five different hotels and each morning I go out,

307
00:18:58,559 --> 00:19:02,119
I take a five thousand dollars. I'd play a little bit,

308
00:19:02,279 --> 00:19:06,880
probably half or forty five minutes. Cash out, get the cash,

309
00:19:07,000 --> 00:19:09,279
go up to the window. They say, you have any markers.

310
00:19:09,319 --> 00:19:12,039
I go, I got a cash deposit. They give me

311
00:19:12,079 --> 00:19:15,200
the money. Then I put it in a place out

312
00:19:15,200 --> 00:19:17,359
there called the vault. You ever hear of the vault?

313
00:19:17,559 --> 00:19:20,119
Speaker 1: Oh? Yeah, yeah, that place got ropped.

314
00:19:21,039 --> 00:19:23,599
Speaker 2: Well, thank god I was out of there by.

315
00:19:23,480 --> 00:19:24,720
Speaker 1: This, yeah yeah.

316
00:19:25,799 --> 00:19:27,839
Speaker 2: And then I went back home. I got the other

317
00:19:28,000 --> 00:19:31,000
five hundred thousand. I did the same thing. And at

318
00:19:31,039 --> 00:19:33,319
the time it was great because they would say what

319
00:19:33,319 --> 00:19:34,960
can I do for you? What can I do for you?

320
00:19:35,000 --> 00:19:37,960
I said, can you pay for my first class airfare?

321
00:19:38,759 --> 00:19:41,400
And I flew out their coat. So I would get

322
00:19:41,440 --> 00:19:45,400
buy a first class air ticket and they would pay

323
00:19:45,440 --> 00:19:47,759
me reimburse me for it, you know, one way on

324
00:19:47,759 --> 00:19:50,440
the way home. And I would do that to two

325
00:19:50,519 --> 00:19:54,000
or three hotel. Then they got smart and they start

326
00:19:54,119 --> 00:19:57,920
stamping them tickets that they were paid by the Tropicana

327
00:19:58,039 --> 00:20:01,640
or paid by Mirage, and I could only could use

328
00:20:01,640 --> 00:20:05,519
them one time. Right then you could just catch them in,

329
00:20:06,279 --> 00:20:09,240
you know, get your money back. So that was a

330
00:20:09,240 --> 00:20:10,200
pretty good gig.

331
00:20:10,440 --> 00:20:14,640
Speaker 1: So really smart that you paid the tax, you know,

332
00:20:14,759 --> 00:20:17,039
so many guys don't want to pay the taxes. But

333
00:20:17,799 --> 00:20:21,039
you know, you could have really good screwed if you

334
00:20:21,079 --> 00:20:22,279
hadn't paid your taxes.

335
00:20:22,839 --> 00:20:25,720
Speaker 2: Right, you have to pay. You have to pay, and

336
00:20:25,799 --> 00:20:29,119
let them figure out if you paid it off. You know, yeah,

337
00:20:29,160 --> 00:20:32,039
if you pay Zebra, it's easy to figure out.

338
00:20:32,519 --> 00:20:33,720
Speaker 1: Yeah.

339
00:20:33,759 --> 00:20:38,440
Speaker 2: So I loafed around Vegas from ninety and ninety three,

340
00:20:38,519 --> 00:20:42,440
were making bets out there and just trying to figure

341
00:20:42,440 --> 00:20:44,240
out what I was going to do get this case

342
00:20:44,319 --> 00:20:47,079
behind me, and they kept delaying it. They won't. They

343
00:20:47,079 --> 00:20:49,319
didn't charge me. They didn't charge me. They wanted me

344
00:20:49,400 --> 00:20:52,160
to give up. And they called in a bunch of

345
00:20:53,079 --> 00:20:57,400
people from my hometown and half of them, or more

346
00:20:57,400 --> 00:20:59,480
than half of them, come to me. Said they're calling me,

347
00:20:59,559 --> 00:21:02,200
and what's and I tell them And I said, tell

348
00:21:02,240 --> 00:21:06,200
them the truth, what you know that I did. Don't

349
00:21:06,200 --> 00:21:08,480
tell them what you heard I did, because you know

350
00:21:08,680 --> 00:21:12,039
Nut's here said you could tell them the truth, but

351
00:21:12,279 --> 00:21:15,079
because you know I was not going to corrupt justice,

352
00:21:15,599 --> 00:21:17,759
and you know, give them an easy charge on me.

353
00:21:18,880 --> 00:21:22,519
So they went in there and the FBI even told

354
00:21:22,519 --> 00:21:25,359
my attorney he said he told these guys just to

355
00:21:25,400 --> 00:21:28,599
tell the truth. You know, I was a bookmaker. That

356
00:21:28,720 --> 00:21:31,400
was it. I mean was going there at eight o'clock

357
00:21:31,400 --> 00:21:33,640
in the morning leaving at seven o'clock at night. I mean,

358
00:21:33,680 --> 00:21:35,160
what do they think I was doing in there?

359
00:21:35,640 --> 00:21:35,960
Speaker 1: Right?

360
00:21:37,240 --> 00:21:41,039
Speaker 2: So that went on and kept lingering on. Tonight one

361
00:21:41,039 --> 00:21:43,319
of my old customers said, Hey, we have this thing.

362
00:21:44,200 --> 00:21:46,279
I got this thing in Antigua where they're going to

363
00:21:46,359 --> 00:21:50,519
give us ninety nine years tax free. We can you

364
00:21:50,599 --> 00:21:54,680
could book customers from the United States, but you can't

365
00:21:54,720 --> 00:21:59,279
book any local. And I said, how did this come about?

366
00:21:59,319 --> 00:22:04,559
He goes and eighteen ninety two your Way treaty within

367
00:22:04,599 --> 00:22:08,359
the United States. They had took away their sugar cane

368
00:22:08,400 --> 00:22:11,799
down there for something in Antigua, and they give them entertainment,

369
00:22:12,200 --> 00:22:17,720
and listed on an entertainment was gaming. So that made him.

370
00:22:18,359 --> 00:22:21,079
That made it so they could open up a new industry.

371
00:22:21,319 --> 00:22:26,240
So the company was already down there. The guy from

372
00:22:26,319 --> 00:22:30,519
Las Vegas, Kenny White, had a relative down there and

373
00:22:31,200 --> 00:22:35,200
he knew this guy that bet with me. So Kenny

374
00:22:35,200 --> 00:22:39,519
White and them guys opened this business in July of

375
00:22:40,440 --> 00:22:43,279
July thirteenth. I was just looking at the license nineteen

376
00:22:43,400 --> 00:22:47,119
ninety three, and they were working it pretty good. But

377
00:22:47,240 --> 00:22:50,519
the phone bill were like it was like a dollar

378
00:22:50,680 --> 00:22:54,880
US dollar a minute, so you couldn't beat the phone bill.

379
00:22:55,640 --> 00:22:58,319
And so by the end of the year, Kenny, they

380
00:22:58,359 --> 00:23:01,880
had enough. And this guy asked me if I wanted

381
00:23:01,880 --> 00:23:03,720
to go down there and look at it, because I

382
00:23:03,799 --> 00:23:07,319
wasn't working. I went down there and looked at it.

383
00:23:07,440 --> 00:23:10,559
The roads were horrible, there was no air conditioning. The

384
00:23:10,599 --> 00:23:14,039
bugs were everywhere. And I said to my friend, I said,

385
00:23:14,160 --> 00:23:18,000
I'm going home and heat like always interrupted me said

386
00:23:18,000 --> 00:23:19,440
I don't blame me. I said, I'm going home and

387
00:23:19,480 --> 00:23:20,960
get my stuff. I'm moving here.

388
00:23:23,000 --> 00:23:25,160
Speaker 1: How are you going to beat the how are you

389
00:23:25,160 --> 00:23:26,920
going to beat the price of the phones?

390
00:23:27,440 --> 00:23:31,079
Speaker 2: Well, they come up with the local company come up

391
00:23:31,119 --> 00:23:35,480
with that you could use cable and wireless. You know,

392
00:23:35,559 --> 00:23:40,480
it's international company. And they were putting a trunk through

393
00:23:40,799 --> 00:23:44,559
you know or something, and the rates really had changed.

394
00:23:44,960 --> 00:23:49,359
They changed the law and I started taking over. We

395
00:23:49,440 --> 00:23:52,480
started making money. Then they they informed me we had

396
00:23:52,480 --> 00:23:54,680
a ninety thousand dollars bill we had to make up.

397
00:23:54,920 --> 00:23:58,720
So I was in for it. We went there and

398
00:23:58,799 --> 00:24:01,039
it was all paper and and then you know the

399
00:24:01,079 --> 00:24:04,720
old days where you you uh writing down on a

400
00:24:04,720 --> 00:24:08,359
piece of paper, split the paper and night. You know,

401
00:24:08,519 --> 00:24:11,160
you have a stack of papers like this. One guy's

402
00:24:11,200 --> 00:24:14,759
grading the yellow copy, you're grading the white copy, and

403
00:24:14,799 --> 00:24:17,160
then you're coming up with figures. It was a lot

404
00:24:17,200 --> 00:24:18,160
of work back then.

405
00:24:18,759 --> 00:24:25,519
Speaker 1: You know, you really lived through this amazing transition in

406
00:24:25,599 --> 00:24:29,599
the whole field of sports betting. Oh, I mean from

407
00:24:29,640 --> 00:24:33,920
being on the phone, pencil and paper, you know, carbon copies,

408
00:24:34,039 --> 00:24:39,799
all of that two you know, the the internet days.

409
00:24:40,039 --> 00:24:45,039
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we it ramped ups. We did that until

410
00:24:45,240 --> 00:24:48,720
you know, most of these companies were hired hundreds of

411
00:24:48,799 --> 00:24:54,240
an employee. We ours at the carib was one hundred

412
00:24:54,279 --> 00:24:58,799
dollars minimum bet because we we wanted to grow up,

413
00:24:58,960 --> 00:25:02,160
not out, and so we didn't want to hunt our

414
00:25:02,200 --> 00:25:04,519
employees taking the phone. The phone bill was still a

415
00:25:04,559 --> 00:25:08,599
little bit expensive. And so the beginning of ninety seven,

416
00:25:09,160 --> 00:25:12,319
in the ninety sixty years, something about this internet. In

417
00:25:12,440 --> 00:25:14,960
ninety seven, at the end of it, this company come

418
00:25:15,000 --> 00:25:17,920
to me and had a program, and we put the

419
00:25:17,960 --> 00:25:23,799
program in and it was working good, but it would

420
00:25:23,799 --> 00:25:28,759
only take one hundred and fifty bets at the same time.

421
00:25:29,559 --> 00:25:32,279
So that's not going to work for us because we

422
00:25:32,400 --> 00:25:36,279
need a lot more than that. So we ended up

423
00:25:36,880 --> 00:25:39,319
a guy was working down there for a company that

424
00:25:39,400 --> 00:25:42,839
had disputed over money. He come to us, wanted to

425
00:25:42,839 --> 00:25:47,119
build us a program. I said, this is too new

426
00:25:48,079 --> 00:25:50,839
of you leaving this company. I don't want them to

427
00:25:50,880 --> 00:25:53,920
say that I stole you from them. Come back in

428
00:25:53,960 --> 00:25:56,440
a month if you're not doing anything. And he come

429
00:25:56,480 --> 00:25:59,119
back in about a month he said, I got this

430
00:25:59,200 --> 00:26:03,920
program right, and it was our own proprietary software. We

431
00:26:03,960 --> 00:26:07,319
could make changes on the fly, and off we went.

432
00:26:08,240 --> 00:26:11,200
We had everything on there. We had daily numbers from

433
00:26:11,200 --> 00:26:16,119
all the states. We put horse racing on there. We

434
00:26:16,200 --> 00:26:18,559
had you could bet the doal Jones whether it was

435
00:26:18,599 --> 00:26:19,559
going up and down.

436
00:26:20,559 --> 00:26:24,200
Speaker 1: Oh wow, we had these. And your company was called

437
00:26:24,279 --> 00:26:27,240
carib Right, carib Sports, rib Sports.

438
00:26:27,359 --> 00:26:32,119
Speaker 2: Yes. So we had all these unique things on our site,

439
00:26:32,160 --> 00:26:34,559
these squares that they talk about. You know, you start

440
00:26:34,599 --> 00:26:37,680
without like a one hundred blocks and you fill them

441
00:26:37,759 --> 00:26:41,039
in and you know, if the score is eight to six,

442
00:26:41,319 --> 00:26:44,960
you you know, you do that. Them things sold like crazy.

443
00:26:45,000 --> 00:26:47,000
It was like a ten percent hold on them things.

444
00:26:47,039 --> 00:26:52,599
And they we were selling fifty sixty of them every week,

445
00:26:53,480 --> 00:26:58,000
you know, I mean probably more. But I went down

446
00:26:58,039 --> 00:27:01,440
there not knowing anything about these guys how they worked.

447
00:27:01,480 --> 00:27:07,960
I'm not a intellectual mathematician, you know, like these guys

448
00:27:07,960 --> 00:27:10,640
are setting the lines. But the only thing I had

449
00:27:10,759 --> 00:27:15,359
was a good grass of the obvious. So when when

450
00:27:15,400 --> 00:27:17,160
they would come in, a guy would come in and

451
00:27:17,160 --> 00:27:20,160
bet something, we would move it. And the next guy

452
00:27:20,279 --> 00:27:23,160
come in and we would give him the number, you know,

453
00:27:23,720 --> 00:27:25,799
move from four to four and a half. He wouldn't

454
00:27:26,119 --> 00:27:28,079
bet it. So I had to figure, well, I must

455
00:27:28,160 --> 00:27:31,839
have something here. He don't want to bet it. Then

456
00:27:31,880 --> 00:27:36,079
if I move it from you know, too far, guy

457
00:27:36,160 --> 00:27:38,880
might bet it back. Then you know, I just move

458
00:27:38,920 --> 00:27:42,559
it back. So after a while we figured out if

459
00:27:42,599 --> 00:27:45,200
we give them a dime on the side and the

460
00:27:45,279 --> 00:27:48,880
nickel on a total, you know, there's still one to

461
00:27:48,960 --> 00:27:52,839
bet because they know they're going to get paid. So

462
00:27:53,880 --> 00:27:58,240
we probably every year we would probably lose a half

463
00:27:58,240 --> 00:28:02,119
a million dollars to the wise guys diamond and nickel.

464
00:28:02,839 --> 00:28:06,880
But our line was strong and we would beat everybody else.

465
00:28:07,680 --> 00:28:10,079
Speaker 1: And you'll take the information and try to go bet

466
00:28:10,160 --> 00:28:11,200
at other places.

467
00:28:11,839 --> 00:28:16,119
Speaker 2: No, no, because you know the same thing. You know,

468
00:28:17,920 --> 00:28:21,200
people were down there. You know, more and more groups

469
00:28:21,240 --> 00:28:25,480
are coming to Antigua. Right, So when we started advertising,

470
00:28:25,559 --> 00:28:28,960
we were Antigua and you could play do this legally,

471
00:28:29,720 --> 00:28:32,680
more people were coming and I'll say for every ten

472
00:28:32,759 --> 00:28:35,920
that got down there, three or four must have got

473
00:28:35,920 --> 00:28:40,519
in business. And maybe out of the four, one made it.

474
00:28:40,599 --> 00:28:43,920
Because there was guys down there just ripping and tearing

475
00:28:43,960 --> 00:28:47,000
people off, you know, saying them they could get them this,

476
00:28:47,279 --> 00:28:51,599
they get this, they got this connection, that connection never

477
00:28:51,680 --> 00:28:57,079
get anything going. Most of them used the depositive money

478
00:28:57,119 --> 00:29:01,079
of customers instead of having their their own money, and

479
00:29:01,119 --> 00:29:05,720
when they would, you know, burn through the money, they

480
00:29:05,720 --> 00:29:09,319
didn't have any money to pay the customers. But Crib

481
00:29:09,359 --> 00:29:13,240
we always did one thing. We kept two million dollars

482
00:29:13,400 --> 00:29:18,759
over on hand, over the deposit money, so we always

483
00:29:18,799 --> 00:29:25,359
had it. So when later on in two thousand and three,

484
00:29:25,839 --> 00:29:29,240
when the Justice Department got me, they did.

485
00:29:29,119 --> 00:29:32,640
Speaker 1: It for what wait, was this the nineteen ninety case

486
00:29:32,680 --> 00:29:33,480
finally or.

487
00:29:33,599 --> 00:29:37,359
Speaker 2: No, the nineteen ninety case was over in ninety seven.

488
00:29:38,200 --> 00:29:43,200
They failed to charge me because they had an agent

489
00:29:43,880 --> 00:29:50,359
that approached me and he once, I'm have a lawyer,

490
00:29:50,359 --> 00:29:53,000
he's not allowed to talk to me. We were at

491
00:29:53,039 --> 00:29:57,119
our country club. We were matched up on the on

492
00:29:57,160 --> 00:30:03,079
a team in an event. He was trying to intimidate me.

493
00:30:03,119 --> 00:30:06,079
A deer laying across the field. He pulled his pistol

494
00:30:06,160 --> 00:30:08,400
out and shot at it. I'm sure he just shot

495
00:30:08,519 --> 00:30:12,119
over it, said to try to intimidate me. We went

496
00:30:12,160 --> 00:30:15,559
in there inside, and he would say, you should just

497
00:30:15,640 --> 00:30:19,039
give up and move on with your life. Just get

498
00:30:19,079 --> 00:30:21,799
this behind you and move off. Then he started telling

499
00:30:21,839 --> 00:30:24,759
me how they did the whole investigation. And he was drinking,

500
00:30:24,839 --> 00:30:27,880
and I was ordering drinks and ordering him drinks, and

501
00:30:27,920 --> 00:30:30,200
it's going on and on and on, and I am

502
00:30:30,359 --> 00:30:33,079
just getting all the information I ever want to get

503
00:30:33,079 --> 00:30:36,960
out of this guy. He's the case agent. So we

504
00:30:37,079 --> 00:30:41,200
get to the end and I said to him, I

505
00:30:41,319 --> 00:30:43,440
was done. Ready to guy, He said, my attorney told

506
00:30:43,519 --> 00:30:47,640
me the FBI gets eighty five percent of their information

507
00:30:47,720 --> 00:30:52,720
off innocent conversations like this. You guys are trained. And

508
00:30:52,759 --> 00:30:56,440
he looked at me and said, who trained you. I said, look,

509
00:30:56,480 --> 00:30:59,160
this conversation's over. You're trying to make me feel good

510
00:30:59,160 --> 00:31:02,559
about myself. I'm out of here. And he looked at

511
00:31:02,559 --> 00:31:05,000
me and he said, if you ever say this conversation

512
00:31:05,200 --> 00:31:07,920
took place, I'll be on a witness sand and call

513
00:31:08,000 --> 00:31:11,799
you a fucking liar. And who are they gonna believe

514
00:31:11,880 --> 00:31:15,400
a bookie or an FBI agent well, one of my

515
00:31:15,519 --> 00:31:17,400
friends was to the right of him. I looked at

516
00:31:17,440 --> 00:31:19,480
him and made sure he heard that. And then this

517
00:31:19,599 --> 00:31:22,039
acquaintance was to the left. I looked at him. He

518
00:31:22,160 --> 00:31:24,519
kind of nodded that he heard it. I got up

519
00:31:24,559 --> 00:31:28,079
to the left. So my lawyer always gets his office

520
00:31:28,119 --> 00:31:30,319
like nine o'clock and I never would call until nine

521
00:31:30,319 --> 00:31:33,480
p thirty. He gets things in wrange. I said, FBI

522
00:31:33,559 --> 00:31:36,920
approached me last night. He goes, no, he didn't. I said, yes,

523
00:31:37,000 --> 00:31:41,279
he did. And here's what happened. So he calls the

524
00:31:41,759 --> 00:31:45,119
agent's boss up in Columbus, Ohio, and he said, your

525
00:31:45,160 --> 00:31:48,519
agent approached my guy. He said, no, he didn't. He said,

526
00:31:48,559 --> 00:31:51,240
you better check with your agent. Then he gets a

527
00:31:51,279 --> 00:31:55,359
call from that guy's boss in Cincinnati and he goes,

528
00:31:55,680 --> 00:31:58,680
what do I hear about this agent approaching your client?

529
00:31:58,880 --> 00:32:01,480
And he told him and then their case just went

530
00:32:01,519 --> 00:32:04,319
all away. They gave me all my stuff back after

531
00:32:04,359 --> 00:32:08,039
seven years, brought my car back. They had they had

532
00:32:08,079 --> 00:32:11,799
seized my house, took the siegure off my house. So

533
00:32:12,559 --> 00:32:15,680
I was one to know there. And yeah, I still

534
00:32:15,720 --> 00:32:18,319
was living in the house because they were trying to

535
00:32:18,319 --> 00:32:22,279
go through forfeiture proceedings and they needed me to be

536
00:32:22,359 --> 00:32:28,200
guilty to do that. So they returned everything. And by

537
00:32:28,240 --> 00:32:31,960
that time I was I was an Antigua and everything

538
00:32:32,119 --> 00:32:36,559
was going good. Our program was up and running. Uh

539
00:32:37,079 --> 00:32:39,839
you know, there's all kinds of books opening up everywhere.

540
00:32:39,880 --> 00:32:43,400
This is ninety nine or whatever. You know. The two

541
00:32:43,400 --> 00:32:48,920
thousand we put credit cards on on online where you

542
00:32:48,960 --> 00:32:52,480
could use your credit card before I remember, we were

543
00:32:52,559 --> 00:32:54,960
running them. You have to get you give us your

544
00:32:55,000 --> 00:32:58,000
credit card number. We would run it by hand, and

545
00:32:58,079 --> 00:33:01,200
one year we did a half a million dollar in

546
00:33:01,279 --> 00:33:03,880
credit card running by hand. The first month we put

547
00:33:03,920 --> 00:33:06,440
our credit cards online, we did a half a million

548
00:33:06,519 --> 00:33:11,759
dollars on that. Wow. So the automated system, it was

549
00:33:11,839 --> 00:33:15,920
really great. Then we put a casino link on there,

550
00:33:16,000 --> 00:33:19,440
so we had a people could transfer money play casinos.

551
00:33:20,000 --> 00:33:22,839
It was just the wild wild West, I'll tell you.

552
00:33:23,079 --> 00:33:26,880
Speaker 1: Oh I remember, Yeah, I was there on the player's side.

553
00:33:26,920 --> 00:33:30,920
And initially you had to deal with Western Union trying

554
00:33:30,920 --> 00:33:36,400
to send money that way. But then eventually PayPal came in, and.

555
00:33:37,839 --> 00:33:42,079
Speaker 2: Yeah, we had money Gram and money Gram we had

556
00:33:42,079 --> 00:33:45,480
it for a while till someone got jealous and found

557
00:33:45,480 --> 00:33:48,319
out about it and called money Gram and we got

558
00:33:48,359 --> 00:33:50,440
cut off. But the checks would just print up in

559
00:33:50,519 --> 00:33:52,839
the office. I'd be sitting there in the printer would

560
00:33:52,839 --> 00:33:55,920
ting that like ten fifteen checks would come off and

561
00:33:55,960 --> 00:33:57,440
we would just put them in the bank. It was

562
00:33:57,480 --> 00:33:58,759
the greatest thing you ever seen.

563
00:33:59,160 --> 00:33:59,440
Speaker 1: Wow.

564
00:34:00,079 --> 00:34:04,160
Speaker 2: So we were taken at that time because we took

565
00:34:04,319 --> 00:34:07,920
daily numbers, squares and all these small bets. You know,

566
00:34:08,000 --> 00:34:11,440
we were probably it was like a big cement mixer.

567
00:34:11,559 --> 00:34:15,119
We were probably about a seventy five dollars average bet,

568
00:34:15,400 --> 00:34:19,079
and we were taken between one hundred and fifty thousand

569
00:34:19,119 --> 00:34:22,440
and two hundred thousand bets a week.

570
00:34:23,159 --> 00:34:27,559
Speaker 1: So so its two hundred thousand bets, not two hundred thousand.

571
00:34:27,320 --> 00:34:32,800
Speaker 2: Dollars, No, two hundred thousand bets, wow, about seventy five

572
00:34:33,079 --> 00:34:37,480
an off season, you know, football and basketball, baseball season

573
00:34:37,639 --> 00:34:42,360
was probably down to fifty two dollars average bet. But

574
00:34:42,960 --> 00:34:45,280
it was we used to It used to cost us

575
00:34:45,280 --> 00:34:47,639
a dollar ninety to take a bet on the phone.

576
00:34:48,239 --> 00:34:51,719
It was costing us about three cents on the internet

577
00:34:51,760 --> 00:34:57,039
per bet. Yeah, though it was. It was fantastic. Everything

578
00:34:57,199 --> 00:35:02,199
was coming up, everything was running good. And then nine

579
00:35:02,199 --> 00:35:07,400
to eleven happened. Nine to eleven happened, and then they

580
00:35:07,840 --> 00:35:14,280
passed a terrorist bill, and they formed the RSCID and

581
00:35:14,400 --> 00:35:18,760
giving them a bunch of money to investigate internet crimes.

582
00:35:18,800 --> 00:35:23,239
And you know, I think Tommy Chong got he went

583
00:35:23,280 --> 00:35:25,679
to jail for the bongs things. That was the same

584
00:35:27,039 --> 00:35:33,480
Pittsburgh office that was investigating me. And on June third,

585
00:35:33,599 --> 00:35:38,320
two thousand and three, that's when I got raided. I

586
00:35:39,159 --> 00:35:46,400
was up in my office in Toronto. And because it's

587
00:35:46,800 --> 00:35:50,920
you know, they can only raid a place like offshore

588
00:35:51,079 --> 00:35:55,239
if it's illegal, illegal in both countries. But it was

589
00:35:55,360 --> 00:35:58,000
legal in Antiga. And by this time we had an

590
00:35:58,039 --> 00:36:00,880
office in Belize too, so it was there. So all

591
00:36:00,920 --> 00:36:05,800
they could do is get me. So they come flying

592
00:36:05,880 --> 00:36:08,320
in and get me. And I was paying my taxes again,

593
00:36:08,440 --> 00:36:11,960
even though the only thing they left in my office

594
00:36:12,159 --> 00:36:15,760
was my quarterly payments. I was paying about one hundred

595
00:36:15,760 --> 00:36:18,840
and twenty five thousand or two hundred and fifty thousand

596
00:36:18,920 --> 00:36:22,280
a quarter in taxes, so that's the only thing they

597
00:36:22,360 --> 00:36:26,159
left in my office. So they get everything. I go

598
00:36:26,280 --> 00:36:30,599
home and I tell my wife, well, they raided my

599
00:36:30,719 --> 00:36:33,400
house too. At the same time, she knew exactly what

600
00:36:33,559 --> 00:36:39,480
to do. We never talked about it. After we got

601
00:36:39,519 --> 00:36:43,800
like forty phone calls in the morning over the weekend

602
00:36:43,880 --> 00:36:46,320
that were hang ups, and we were out of town.

603
00:36:47,159 --> 00:36:50,480
Eight o'clock in the morning, my phone rangs and I

604
00:36:50,599 --> 00:36:54,000
pick it up and they hang up. I just looked

605
00:36:54,000 --> 00:36:57,440
at my wife and she looked at me, and I said,

606
00:36:57,440 --> 00:36:59,639
I have to go to my office to pick up

607
00:36:59,679 --> 00:37:03,599
my phone. And I was taking my kids to school,

608
00:37:03,679 --> 00:37:07,599
so i'd go over. And as I drive into my

609
00:37:07,679 --> 00:37:11,440
office is about two hundred and fifty yards away, car

610
00:37:11,480 --> 00:37:14,639
comes flying around me, blocks me off. Everybody's jumping on

611
00:37:14,760 --> 00:37:19,719
the cars. They're screaming, putting their hats on. I opened

612
00:37:19,719 --> 00:37:21,840
the door of my truck and he's trying to rip

613
00:37:21,920 --> 00:37:24,559
my door off and he's yelling, where's the guns? Where's

614
00:37:24,599 --> 00:37:28,280
the guns? I said, you got them? I said, I

615
00:37:28,400 --> 00:37:35,239
use pencils. So he shows me the warrant. Obviously they

616
00:37:35,239 --> 00:37:37,679
were in my office before because he was asking me

617
00:37:37,719 --> 00:37:40,119
the culmination is safe, and no one even knew was

618
00:37:40,119 --> 00:37:44,000
in there. And I go over to the phone. I

619
00:37:44,039 --> 00:37:48,719
call my lawyer's office and the secretary says, is this John.

620
00:37:48,880 --> 00:37:51,679
I go, yeah, she goes, your wife just called we're

621
00:37:51,719 --> 00:37:57,159
sending somebody up. So that was pretty good. So I

622
00:37:57,239 --> 00:38:00,400
go home and I told her I I said they

623
00:38:00,440 --> 00:38:02,760
got it all. My wife be cause what do you mean.

624
00:38:02,840 --> 00:38:05,719
I said, they got it all today? She says, I

625
00:38:05,719 --> 00:38:07,519
don't know what you're talking about. I said, we had

626
00:38:07,599 --> 00:38:10,360
seven and a half million dollars this morning. Now I

627
00:38:10,400 --> 00:38:13,719
think they got it all. She goes, I'm driving a

628
00:38:13,800 --> 00:38:16,159
car with no air conditioning and we got seven and

629
00:38:16,199 --> 00:38:21,639
a half million dollars. I said, yeah, saving for a

630
00:38:21,719 --> 00:38:27,400
rainy days pouring right now. So I go up to

631
00:38:27,400 --> 00:38:29,400
the bank. I got a bank account. I'm in the

632
00:38:29,440 --> 00:38:32,920
bank account. They they got this package. It was my

633
00:38:33,079 --> 00:38:36,599
drop dead package, so if I die, my wife would

634
00:38:36,639 --> 00:38:39,679
know where everything was. But they had heard me tell

635
00:38:39,719 --> 00:38:42,480
my dad where it was because they had my office

636
00:38:42,519 --> 00:38:45,920
miked up. So they get that, and I got three

637
00:38:45,960 --> 00:38:49,360
depositive boxes, and they're trying to figure out the round

638
00:38:49,440 --> 00:38:53,880
robin and what belongs to watch right what bank? So

639
00:38:53,960 --> 00:38:56,000
I'm up in the bank trying to withdraw money and

640
00:38:56,039 --> 00:38:59,159
they won't only give me seven thousand cash. And I

641
00:38:59,280 --> 00:39:02,280
was building a house at the time, so I ended

642
00:39:02,320 --> 00:39:05,800
up getting one hundred and fifty out for my lawyer,

643
00:39:06,760 --> 00:39:09,559
two hundred and fifty thousand for the house. And I

644
00:39:09,639 --> 00:39:12,920
look over, they're in the safe. They're drilling my deposit box.

645
00:39:13,159 --> 00:39:17,360
Oh jeez. So in the deposit box, the three they

646
00:39:17,400 --> 00:39:20,239
finally got them all. I had like a million and

647
00:39:20,320 --> 00:39:23,639
a half in cash and three hundred and sixty gold coins,

648
00:39:23,719 --> 00:39:28,679
and I had one silver bar that was in my office.

649
00:39:28,920 --> 00:39:31,599
They in my warehouse, they called it, and they made

650
00:39:31,599 --> 00:39:35,360
the biggest deal about that. I had a one hundred

651
00:39:35,400 --> 00:39:39,679
ounce bullion in there. Silver bars in his warehouse. You

652
00:39:39,719 --> 00:39:45,440
know it was it was one bar. So the next day, ironically,

653
00:39:45,519 --> 00:39:48,079
I come back to my office and I looked at

654
00:39:48,119 --> 00:39:50,960
the door. Someone tried to break in. Now this is

655
00:39:51,079 --> 00:39:55,400
after the raid. I said, these criminals are pretty I'm

656
00:39:55,440 --> 00:39:57,599
trying to break in my office after ray, What did

657
00:39:57,599 --> 00:40:01,480
they think that cops left something there? So here's the

658
00:40:01,519 --> 00:40:05,280
whole process again. We're going through the whole process. And

659
00:40:06,440 --> 00:40:11,760
we find out later because of Antigua filed a wto

660
00:40:12,880 --> 00:40:17,119
grievance against the United States because they were hampering their

661
00:40:17,159 --> 00:40:21,519
banking system and stuff because Antiga was growing with all

662
00:40:21,519 --> 00:40:25,440
these sports books. Right, So Antigua fouled a grievance again

663
00:40:25,480 --> 00:40:29,559
the United States that hey, we're doing this. You know

664
00:40:30,159 --> 00:40:33,039
you told us, you showed us how to set this up.

665
00:40:33,199 --> 00:40:35,639
You send representatives down there how to set this up.

666
00:40:35,719 --> 00:40:39,360
You even give us some Indian regulations on how they

667
00:40:39,400 --> 00:40:42,840
were handling gambling, and now you want to stop us

668
00:40:43,519 --> 00:40:46,440
because they really didn't understand how big the Internet was

669
00:40:46,519 --> 00:40:50,480
going to get when they did disagreement in ninety two. Right, yeah,

670
00:40:50,880 --> 00:40:54,840
they said, oh fuck, you know this internet could be big.

671
00:40:55,880 --> 00:41:03,519
So to retally, they start hunting down the operators in

672
00:41:03,840 --> 00:41:07,440
u Antigue. And that's when I think J Cohen got

673
00:41:07,519 --> 00:41:15,159
in the mix w sex and they were J Cohen

674
00:41:15,280 --> 00:41:18,360
did something different than me. He transmitted a bet. He

675
00:41:18,559 --> 00:41:20,840
was on the phone and took a bet from an agent. Right.

676
00:41:21,880 --> 00:41:24,760
I never transmitted any bet. They tried to get me

677
00:41:24,840 --> 00:41:29,400
on the phone, you know, before every everybody was changing

678
00:41:29,519 --> 00:41:34,960
their names. That's when I changed mind to I talked

679
00:41:34,960 --> 00:41:37,599
to this guy one time. He sent down two hundred

680
00:41:37,599 --> 00:41:41,880
and fifty dollars and he bet twenty five dollars bets. Now,

681
00:41:42,719 --> 00:41:44,679
when somebody in office said he wants to talk to

682
00:41:44,800 --> 00:41:47,320
the boss, he wants to send fifty thousand downs. So

683
00:41:47,400 --> 00:41:50,559
I know it's an agent, right. So he gets back

684
00:41:50,639 --> 00:41:52,599
and he wants to know my name and everything, and

685
00:41:52,679 --> 00:41:57,559
I tell my name's William. So a couple of days later,

686
00:41:57,719 --> 00:41:59,920
the phone rings and they I think it's somebody from

687
00:42:00,079 --> 00:42:02,199
my hometown. I pick up the phone. This is this

688
00:42:02,360 --> 00:42:04,480
is John. The guy goes, I thought your name was William.

689
00:42:04,559 --> 00:42:07,480
I said, John's my middle name, William Jay. Then I

690
00:42:07,599 --> 00:42:11,559
throwed out Caesar because in Las Vegas there was a

691
00:42:11,599 --> 00:42:13,960
guy called Montana Mel. We used to hang out a

692
00:42:14,079 --> 00:42:17,360
team may Day's place up there, Little Caesars, and he

693
00:42:17,559 --> 00:42:22,400
used to call me big sees there. Montana Mel was

694
00:42:22,440 --> 00:42:25,920
a legend out there. So I go, that's how William J.

695
00:42:26,159 --> 00:42:30,039
Caesar was created. So I went with that the rest

696
00:42:30,119 --> 00:42:36,639
of the time. But they they tried everything, and their

697
00:42:36,800 --> 00:42:42,760
last thing that they tried on us was my guy

698
00:42:42,920 --> 00:42:43,679
was in Belize.

699
00:42:43,760 --> 00:42:44,679
Speaker 1: He goes to the.

700
00:42:44,920 --> 00:42:48,920
Speaker 2: FedEx place down there and they asked him what's in

701
00:42:49,039 --> 00:42:53,440
this package because you have to put on your set

702
00:42:53,480 --> 00:42:55,760
it out package is like if it was a check

703
00:42:55,840 --> 00:43:00,320
we put documents or whatever. And it wasn't uh, nothing

704
00:43:00,400 --> 00:43:02,440
was rude on it. He said, I didn't bring that

705
00:43:02,679 --> 00:43:06,599
down there. They said, well, it comes from mailbox, etc.

706
00:43:07,719 --> 00:43:10,360
And it was a big package. And he called me

707
00:43:10,480 --> 00:43:12,360
up and he said there's a package of fed X.

708
00:43:12,440 --> 00:43:16,440
I said, get our attorney. Have the police. There have

709
00:43:16,599 --> 00:43:20,679
the FedEx investigators get him there, and I watched a

710
00:43:20,800 --> 00:43:24,800
videotape opening this box up. So they go all down

711
00:43:24,880 --> 00:43:27,800
there and they videotape opened up the box in between

712
00:43:27,920 --> 00:43:33,920
two card drives. There's a kilo of cocaine. Wow, it

713
00:43:34,119 --> 00:43:36,800
was going to a laundry matt in New York City.

714
00:43:37,559 --> 00:43:41,039
So they go, we have the tapes from mailbox, et cetera.

715
00:43:41,559 --> 00:43:44,199
We know what the guy looks like. We know that

716
00:43:44,280 --> 00:43:47,679
he got to go onto a plane the Miami and

717
00:43:47,880 --> 00:43:52,639
we're gonna have him picked up there. Good good. No

718
00:43:52,800 --> 00:43:56,559
more information was ever given to us. That went dead.

719
00:43:56,639 --> 00:43:58,880
It was like a dead end. No one said anything.

720
00:43:59,079 --> 00:44:03,840
So if that package makes it to the airport and

721
00:44:04,000 --> 00:44:07,559
a dog smell it, or because there's it's not determined

722
00:44:07,599 --> 00:44:10,400
what's in the box, and they open it up, then

723
00:44:10,480 --> 00:44:12,679
they would have the right to come and dismantle our

724
00:44:12,760 --> 00:44:16,119
office down there, close our servers down, take everything down,

725
00:44:16,239 --> 00:44:20,840
because obviously selling drugs in both countries is illegal, right,

726
00:44:21,920 --> 00:44:25,800
So they played that dirty trick on us. They did

727
00:44:25,880 --> 00:44:30,719
some other tricks. They used the Patriot Act to freeze

728
00:44:31,800 --> 00:44:38,360
the corresponding banks money in Belize in New Orleans and

729
00:44:38,639 --> 00:44:42,199
the government of Belize had to let them know it

730
00:44:42,360 --> 00:44:45,719
was okay to take our money. They would give them

731
00:44:45,920 --> 00:44:49,840
our money, cribs money, if they would let the rest

732
00:44:49,880 --> 00:44:52,760
of the US dollars flow through, because that would shut

733
00:44:53,000 --> 00:44:58,440
Belize's economy down, you know. Sure, So that's what they did.

734
00:44:59,480 --> 00:45:01,480
We went the court down there. We won the fight

735
00:45:01,599 --> 00:45:06,920
in the court down there, but the US used the

736
00:45:07,440 --> 00:45:12,679
Terrorist Act on us. We were domestic terrorists to seize

737
00:45:12,719 --> 00:45:16,440
our money in New Orleans. Now the word gets out

738
00:45:16,480 --> 00:45:20,400
on the internet fast, and so everybody starts taking withdraws.

739
00:45:21,159 --> 00:45:23,360
This is where our you know, or where we had

740
00:45:23,400 --> 00:45:27,800
two million over our deposit money. So obviously we had

741
00:45:27,840 --> 00:45:30,159
plenty of money to pay anybody that wanted to withdraw.

742
00:45:30,880 --> 00:45:32,679
And they would ask me about I'd get on the

743
00:45:32,760 --> 00:45:34,920
phone and I said, listen, if you this is just

744
00:45:35,039 --> 00:45:37,079
going to keep you up at night, take your money

745
00:45:37,159 --> 00:45:40,679
out and when you think, you know, you get your money,

746
00:45:40,960 --> 00:45:44,639
you could send it back here and and we'll move on.

747
00:45:45,239 --> 00:45:48,360
But they that's what a lot of people did. Some

748
00:45:48,519 --> 00:45:51,800
people left their money there who could have never had

749
00:45:51,840 --> 00:45:58,159
a problem paying. Wow, it worked out good, and we

750
00:45:58,400 --> 00:46:01,760
give our the players. You know, it's a reason to

751
00:46:01,840 --> 00:46:04,320
come back to the site. Every day, you know, like

752
00:46:04,519 --> 00:46:09,400
on you know, Tuesday, you could lay a dollar two

753
00:46:09,800 --> 00:46:13,840
on the NFL up to five hundred dollars. On Wednesday,

754
00:46:13,960 --> 00:46:16,400
we would pick ten or fifteen people and give them

755
00:46:16,400 --> 00:46:17,719
two hundred and fifty dollars.

756
00:46:18,519 --> 00:46:18,679
Speaker 1: You know.

757
00:46:19,320 --> 00:46:23,079
Speaker 2: On Friday, you could lay a dollar five from midnight

758
00:46:23,199 --> 00:46:26,440
to you know, eight o'clock in the morning on college football.

759
00:46:26,599 --> 00:46:30,639
So people come back to the site. Our rettention rate

760
00:46:30,719 --> 00:46:35,280
on customers down there was unbelievable. We had some that

761
00:46:36,280 --> 00:46:40,440
day one. Customers were still there when I left. So

762
00:46:41,239 --> 00:46:43,480
I'm fighting the case, trying to get my money back.

763
00:46:43,519 --> 00:46:49,920
Here comes October thirteenth, two thousand and six. And prior

764
00:46:50,039 --> 00:46:52,960
to this, there was a company in England, Sporting bet,

765
00:46:53,800 --> 00:46:57,639
that were going to make us an offer, and it

766
00:46:57,800 --> 00:47:02,159
was probably for about fifty million dollars. Wow. And so

767
00:47:02,360 --> 00:47:09,960
here comes October thirteenth, two thousand and six, and they

768
00:47:10,039 --> 00:47:16,199
had stuffed They failed to pass against this. They failed

769
00:47:16,239 --> 00:47:20,559
to pass an HR bill nine times on its own.

770
00:47:21,199 --> 00:47:25,039
They stopped this in this port security bill, and at

771
00:47:25,039 --> 00:47:27,880
eleven o'clock on the night I was watching c SPAN

772
00:47:28,760 --> 00:47:32,920
and they passed. It was on a twenty fifth hundred

773
00:47:33,000 --> 00:47:37,360
page of this document, which no one ever read that

774
00:47:37,599 --> 00:47:40,599
made it, you know, aiding in a betting, traveling, using

775
00:47:40,719 --> 00:47:44,639
a banking system everything. That's what finished it for me

776
00:47:45,800 --> 00:47:49,360
if I wanted to if I continue, my attorney said

777
00:47:49,400 --> 00:47:54,000
that they would probably charge me with ongoing criminal enterprise.

778
00:47:54,480 --> 00:47:57,559
I'd have no chance to get my money back. So

779
00:47:58,920 --> 00:48:02,280
I end up quitting and I turned it over to

780
00:48:02,400 --> 00:48:06,639
the employees I didn't want. There was employees in Antigua

781
00:48:06,760 --> 00:48:10,199
and Belize, and we even had an office, a legitimate

782
00:48:10,559 --> 00:48:14,760
office in London, so we just turned it over to them.

783
00:48:15,480 --> 00:48:20,079
I didn't want to all lose their jobs. And you know,

784
00:48:20,239 --> 00:48:24,679
we left them with the deposit money and you know,

785
00:48:25,599 --> 00:48:29,920
with no one holding the steering wheel. A couple of years,

786
00:48:30,239 --> 00:48:32,119
they made in like three more years and that was

787
00:48:32,159 --> 00:48:35,559
the end of it. All the money was gone. I

788
00:48:35,639 --> 00:48:38,679
think they must they probably stuffed a couple of customers.

789
00:48:38,840 --> 00:48:43,440
But I was out in October thirteenth, two thousand and six. Yeah,

790
00:48:44,360 --> 00:48:46,519
and it was perfect for me because my kids were

791
00:48:46,599 --> 00:48:50,039
nine years old. You know, I could come home spend

792
00:48:50,119 --> 00:48:52,559
all the time with them. I wanted, you know, I

793
00:48:52,719 --> 00:48:56,239
just had to get my get through this case. And

794
00:48:56,400 --> 00:49:00,280
it was the same thing their first offer was had

795
00:49:00,400 --> 00:49:03,199
to take all my money and give me twenty five years.

796
00:49:03,320 --> 00:49:07,320
They said, I laundered dollars. I go, who wants to

797
00:49:07,440 --> 00:49:14,039
feed me for twenty five years? So then they come

798
00:49:14,159 --> 00:49:16,679
up they're going fifty percent of the money. And we

799
00:49:16,840 --> 00:49:21,440
told him, I said, Johnny fift away from settling this case.

800
00:49:22,400 --> 00:49:26,920
Then they try to pull that Bruce Cuttler thing, like

801
00:49:27,039 --> 00:49:29,519
did John god to get my lawyer off the case.

802
00:49:30,400 --> 00:49:32,360
And they told him that he was gonna charge him

803
00:49:32,480 --> 00:49:35,000
for you know, I try to set up a trust

804
00:49:35,079 --> 00:49:37,920
one time and I transferred the money through him. They

805
00:49:37,960 --> 00:49:41,440
said he laundered the money and he wouldn't back off.

806
00:49:41,639 --> 00:49:45,280
He was great. But the thing that I knew from

807
00:49:45,360 --> 00:49:49,039
the beginning, when you're fighting with the US government, you

808
00:49:49,480 --> 00:49:53,119
hire a courtroom atturn. If you hire a guy that's

809
00:49:53,280 --> 00:49:57,599
known for making deals, they don't take it serious. They

810
00:49:57,679 --> 00:49:59,960
know that they don't have to work. They're gonna make

811
00:50:00,079 --> 00:50:03,360
good deal. And he went all away. We had some

812
00:50:03,519 --> 00:50:07,480
tough days, went all the way to two thousand and twelve.

813
00:50:08,519 --> 00:50:13,519
August twelve, twenty twelve, they said, by this time there

814
00:50:13,639 --> 00:50:16,199
was eight million dollars there and the interest rate. You know,

815
00:50:16,320 --> 00:50:18,360
you went through the two thousand and eight period where

816
00:50:19,119 --> 00:50:21,760
the banks could have been charging you for keeping their money,

817
00:50:22,320 --> 00:50:24,679
and some of the money was froze. The cash they

818
00:50:24,800 --> 00:50:30,119
had it had growed to eight million dollars. So they said,

819
00:50:30,159 --> 00:50:34,119
we'll give you seven point five million dollars back, and

820
00:50:35,119 --> 00:50:37,119
the money that you have in England you could bring

821
00:50:37,199 --> 00:50:44,400
it back here with no taxable implicate implications. And they

822
00:50:44,559 --> 00:50:47,599
just wanted to show that they got five hundred thousand

823
00:50:47,679 --> 00:50:50,840
from me, and they won, right like they won won

824
00:50:50,960 --> 00:50:54,840
the case because they they were dead. The treaty said

825
00:50:55,840 --> 00:51:01,320
in that treaty that these companies could run these businesses,

826
00:51:02,000 --> 00:51:07,400
but they were using the term saying, well, we're not

827
00:51:07,599 --> 00:51:11,679
after the company, we're after an individual, so we could

828
00:51:11,719 --> 00:51:13,159
go after this individual.

829
00:51:13,920 --> 00:51:14,079
Speaker 1: You know.

830
00:51:14,880 --> 00:51:17,719
Speaker 2: They were trying to go outside the spirit of the agreement,

831
00:51:17,880 --> 00:51:20,880
you know. So they didn't even want that to get

832
00:51:20,960 --> 00:51:25,159
out about the treaty because all the rest of their

833
00:51:25,280 --> 00:51:29,199
cases would fall apart against everybody else if anybody wanted

834
00:51:29,199 --> 00:51:32,719
to go the whole nine yards, right, and so we

835
00:51:33,480 --> 00:51:36,360
went the whole way. We beat them. We give them

836
00:51:36,440 --> 00:51:39,119
the half a million dollars. My lawyer said, listen, we

837
00:51:39,159 --> 00:51:41,000
could fight for two more years and get it all,

838
00:51:42,079 --> 00:51:44,679
or get this behind us and then when they wrote

839
00:51:44,760 --> 00:51:47,480
up the agreement, they wrote it up as a deal

840
00:51:48,199 --> 00:51:52,679
instead of a fourth fiture forfeiture. So it took it

841
00:51:52,760 --> 00:51:55,559
to my tax attorney gave me something that's called supper

842
00:51:55,679 --> 00:52:01,480
monthal authority, where his advice was, you could write this

843
00:52:01,719 --> 00:52:04,079
off because this is a business expense and if you

844
00:52:04,159 --> 00:52:06,800
were never in this business, you wouldn't have this expense.

845
00:52:07,639 --> 00:52:11,320
And the supplemental authority says, if they come back and

846
00:52:11,400 --> 00:52:16,960
they they they say they don't allow this deduction, then

847
00:52:17,000 --> 00:52:20,559
they can only charge you interest, no penalty for not

848
00:52:20,719 --> 00:52:25,800
paying so and the thing. So it worked out. I went,

849
00:52:25,960 --> 00:52:29,039
I cleared that statue of limitations and it worked out good.

850
00:52:29,199 --> 00:52:32,440
I wrote off all my attorney's fees. I wrote off

851
00:52:32,480 --> 00:52:36,119
to half a million dollars here and I'm living happily

852
00:52:36,239 --> 00:52:36,719
ever after.

853
00:52:37,239 --> 00:52:39,840
Speaker 1: Yeah, got to spend time with your kids. Had a

854
00:52:39,920 --> 00:52:41,880
hell of a ride all those years.

855
00:52:42,760 --> 00:52:45,559
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I had a nice ride. And you know,

856
00:52:45,679 --> 00:52:52,599
my son went to his graduate at Columbia and as

857
00:52:52,679 --> 00:52:55,199
a creative writing and he wrote a book about Brazil

858
00:52:55,320 --> 00:52:58,559
because they were They grew up half the time in Brazil.

859
00:52:58,679 --> 00:53:03,280
My wife's Brazilian. We live in Copa Cabana, three or

860
00:53:03,320 --> 00:53:07,239
four months a year and he wrote a book about Brazil.

861
00:53:07,320 --> 00:53:12,000
And his next book he wrote was it's called Humpty Dumpty,

862
00:53:12,440 --> 00:53:16,480
and it's about the local book maker. There's a part

863
00:53:16,559 --> 00:53:19,320
in there it's about our town and the local bookmaker.

864
00:53:19,400 --> 00:53:22,280
But his name spelled different. J O h N R

865
00:53:22,280 --> 00:53:25,719
O d g E r S. You know that's not you, dad.

866
00:53:26,079 --> 00:53:29,239
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, the book's not out.

867
00:53:29,480 --> 00:53:32,880
Speaker 2: The book's not out, but I'll bet it is out

868
00:53:32,920 --> 00:53:35,199
because the first book had a lot in it about

869
00:53:35,760 --> 00:53:41,039
our lives in Brazil too, so yeah, it should be interesting.

870
00:53:41,360 --> 00:53:44,320
Speaker 1: So well, John, I want to thank you for doing this.

871
00:53:44,440 --> 00:53:49,400
It's an amazing story. So I really appreciate you taking

872
00:53:49,440 --> 00:53:50,400
the time with me today.

873
00:53:51,400 --> 00:53:53,599
Speaker 2: I hope I didn't go on too long, you know,

874
00:53:53,840 --> 00:53:57,519
and I get to you know, this is the fire

875
00:53:57,599 --> 00:54:02,039
in my belly about the government. I told my attorney

876
00:54:02,039 --> 00:54:04,239
I was going to write a book one day. I

877
00:54:04,360 --> 00:54:07,679
had to say, I'm same guy for forty years, right,

878
00:54:08,760 --> 00:54:10,599
I was going to write a book one day and

879
00:54:10,880 --> 00:54:12,639
how to live a life of crime and never be

880
00:54:12,840 --> 00:54:16,559
charged with what. He come back and he said, you're

881
00:54:16,559 --> 00:54:18,679
going to need a new attorney for that. Yeah.

882
00:54:20,760 --> 00:54:23,440
Speaker 1: Well that's it for this episode. And I want to

883
00:54:23,480 --> 00:54:28,440
thank John Rogers again for his amazing story. As always,

884
00:54:28,599 --> 00:54:32,440
you can reach me at Life is a Gamblepod at

885
00:54:32,559 --> 00:54:35,920
gmail dot com, or you can find me on Twitter

886
00:54:36,159 --> 00:54:40,559
at RWM twenty one. Until next time, everybody,