The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #2107 - Billy Walters

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00:00:04.000 The Joe Rogan Experience.

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00:00:12.000 What's happening, Billy?

00:00:13.000 Good to see you.

00:00:14.000 It's good seeing you, Joe.

00:00:15.000 It's good being here.

00:00:16.000 Thank you.

00:00:16.000 So you know George Knapp.

00:00:18.000 That's crazy.

00:00:18.000 I do know George.

00:00:19.000 Did you get involved in the whole UFO thing with him?

00:00:22.000 Not really.

00:00:23.000 I knew George, got introduced to him, you know, the way he pays the bills.

00:00:29.000 He covers the news in Las Vegas and does a lot of feature stories.

00:00:34.000 That's how I met George, and we've become good friends over the years.

00:00:37.000 I have a tremendous amount of respect for George and the work he does.

00:00:40.000 He's a great man.

00:00:41.000 Yeah.

00:00:42.000 Real good guy, too.

00:00:43.000 Did he cover your story?

00:00:45.000 George has covered a lot of stories involving me over the years.

00:00:48.000 I've been to Las Vegas.

00:00:50.000 I moved there permanently in 1982, and since I've been there, I've been involved in a lot of different things, indictments.

00:00:58.000 I've done quite a bit of business there.

00:01:01.000 The biggest business mistakes I probably made, I did some business there with, I did some public-private partnerships with local government, and I didn't make any money.

00:01:12.000 As a matter of fact, I lost quite a bit of money, but I got quite a bit of notoriety that I wasn't looking for.

00:01:19.000 I got involved in a world that I didn't totally understand until I got into it.

00:01:24.000 I got into it for business and found myself wrapped up in a political world, and that wasn't good.

00:01:30.000 They think gambling is a dirty business.

00:01:32.000 The political world, that's the real dirty business, right?

00:01:35.000 Yeah, I would agree with that.

00:01:37.000 I've met a lot of people over the years in that world and have a lot of respect for some, and of course, I withhold my thoughts and comments about others.

00:01:48.000 That's a game that you don't want to bet on, right?

00:01:51.000 That is a rigged game.

00:01:53.000 Yeah, that's a pretty tough game.

00:01:54.000 That one there, that was pretty much over before you got involved, I think.

00:01:59.000 Most cases.

00:02:00.000 So, I've been paying attention to your story, and it's pretty wild, man.

00:02:04.000 You essentially started gambling in a pool hall when you were about six years old.

00:02:08.000 That's right, yeah.

00:02:10.000 That's a very young age to get the bug.

00:02:13.000 Yeah, well, it's kind of interesting how I got there.

00:02:16.000 You know, my father passed away when I was a year and a half old and my mother left to find work.

00:02:22.000 I was born and raised in a small rural town in central Kentucky, a little town called Mumfordville.

00:02:27.000 And I was lucky.

00:02:31.000 I had two sisters who were older than me.

00:02:36.000 My grandmother on my father's side took my oldest sister.

00:02:39.000 My aunt on my father's side took my other sister.

00:02:42.000 And my mother, my grandmother on my mother's side took me to raise me.

00:02:48.000 And luckily for me, I could have had four parents.

00:02:51.000 I couldn't have had a better role model than her. 0.97

00:02:53.000 She worked two jobs. 1.00

00:02:56.000 She was an extremely proud lady.

00:02:57.000 She wouldn't have taken any assistance from anyone if her life depended on it.

00:03:02.000 And so I learned a lot of things from her early on in life that have been extremely important to me and have kind of carried me through to where I'm at today.

00:03:11.000 And she worked these two jobs. 0.93

00:03:14.000 I mean, the first places, Jill, I ever went when I left my home were a Baptist church, you know, Sunday school on Sunday morning, you know, church afterwards, training union on Sunday night, prayer meeting on Wednesday night.

00:03:27.000 And I went to a Christian youth organization On Sunday night called the Royal Ambassadors.

00:03:32.000 But when I was around four, my grandmother, she had these two jobs. 0.99

00:03:36.000 And she had to have someone to keep an eye on me while my Uncle Harry had a pool room. 0.93

00:03:41.000 So she started dropping me off at the pool room when I was four years old.

00:03:45.000 And my Uncle Harry, he went to the back pool table.

00:03:49.000 He put up a couple old wooden Coca-Cola cases, handed me a pool stick, and he went back to work.

00:03:55.000 And I actually started banging pool balls when I was four.

00:03:59.000 And by the time I'm six, I'm racking balls in Uncle Harry's pool room and playing penny nine ball.

00:04:06.000 So my life when I was six, I'm in church five times a week, and I'm in my Uncle Harry's pool room, and I just began the first grade.

00:04:18.000 So that was my life.

00:04:20.000 Wow.

00:04:21.000 Yeah.

00:04:21.000 And then you went on from that to be arguably one of the most successful gamblers ever.

00:04:29.000 I did, and I have.

00:04:32.000 Excuse me.

00:04:35.000 There's been a lot of ups and downs.

00:04:40.000 I've got a lot of knots on my head in between.

00:04:42.000 I'm sure.

00:04:49.000 Someone asked me how I became so good at gambling.

00:04:52.000 I told them I became good at it by losing.

00:04:58.000 I think my life, Joe, when you look back on it, the thing that has sustained me has been perseverance.

00:05:05.000 You know, I learned from my grandmother at a very early age, you know, you don't quit.

00:05:09.000 You know, if you make a commitment to anything, you keep it.

00:05:12.000 Come, you know, come hell or high water.

00:05:14.000 And so when I look back on my life and I look back through where I began in gambling and, you know, where I'm at with it today, I literally almost can't believe that sometimes I didn't quit.

00:05:31.000 And I tried to figure out, okay, why didn't I quit?

00:05:34.000 Well, the bottom line is I loved it.

00:05:36.000 I had a passion for it.

00:05:37.000 It was something that I really enjoyed doing.

00:05:39.000 I don't think there's any question in my mind.

00:05:41.000 At one time, I was addicted to it.

00:05:44.000 And then, of course, I was determined to be successful at it.

00:05:48.000 And fortunately, I was.

00:05:51.000 And am.

00:05:52.000 So talk me through, how does it start?

00:05:54.000 So you're a little kid.

00:05:55.000 You're playing penny nine ball.

00:05:57.000 And then how does it go on to big million-dollar sports betting?

00:06:03.000 Well, I started off playing penny nine ball, and by the time I was nine or ten, I'm playing, you know, five dollar nine ball.

00:06:13.000 And as I got older and I made more money, the amount of money I was gambling for increased because I had more money to gamble with.

00:06:21.000 And as I became proficient at it, became good at it, it's like anything that you're investing in, if you're confident and basically certain that you're going to be successful,

00:06:39.000 you want to win as much as you can.

00:06:43.000 And as my bankroll got bigger, as the amount of money that I had to bet with became bigger, I could beat all the local guys.

00:07:07.000 Like a solid shortstop?

00:07:09.000 Yeah, like a solid shortstop.

00:07:11.000 I couldn't beat a good player.

00:07:12.000 I played Allen Hopkins once.

00:07:14.000 Oh, no kidding.

00:07:15.000 He robbed me, and I played Steve Maserick once, and he robbed me, too.

00:07:20.000 I couldn't beat players of that caliber, but I could beat players that, you know, local guys.

00:07:25.000 I was a solid shortstop.

00:07:27.000 That's a very good description, Joe.

00:07:29.000 I used to play a lot of pool.

00:07:30.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:07:31.000 When I lived in New York, I was playing eight hours a day.

00:07:33.000 Oh, okay.

00:07:34.000 Yeah.

00:07:35.000 We probably know a few guys.

00:07:36.000 I'm sure.

00:07:37.000 I know Alan Hopkins.

00:07:38.000 Yeah.

00:07:38.000 And I met Steve Miserach once.

00:07:40.000 Yeah.

00:07:40.000 I played in a tournament with him in West End Billiards in New Jersey.

00:07:43.000 Yeah.

00:07:43.000 Elizabeth, New Jersey in like 1990. Yeah.

00:07:46.000 I used to go to Johnson City.

00:07:47.000 That was probably a little before your time.

00:07:49.000 Oh, I've heard of Johnson City.

00:07:51.000 That must have been amazing.

00:07:52.000 It was amazing.

00:07:53.000 And of course, you know, over the years, Ronnie Allen, I'm sure you know Ronnie Allen.

00:08:02.000 We probably know some of the same people, but I'm sure I was never as good a player as you.

00:08:08.000 I quit playing pool when I was like 15, 16 years old.

00:08:12.000 And then you got into heavy sports betting.

00:08:15.000 What was, like, the first thing you really got into where you, like, had to do research?

00:08:19.000 Because I know the way you would study, like, a team when you're placing bets, very meticulous.

00:08:24.000 You're looking for injuries.

00:08:26.000 You're looking for every possible advantage.

00:08:29.000 You essentially had an algorithm before there was algorithms.

00:08:32.000 Well, actually, I got associated with a guy who had an algorithm, and I was handicapped in sports, and I was doing it with a pencil and piece of paper as well.

00:08:43.000 Everyone else was at that time except one guy.

00:08:46.000 And I met this guy indirectly through others in the late 70s and became more directly involved with him in 1982 when I moved to Las Vegas.

00:08:56.000 And then by the mid-80s, he and I were sole partners.

00:09:00.000 The other people involved initially were all gone except he and I. Then I realized, Joe, during that period of time that he was going to eventually lose his edge.

00:09:10.000 And I recruited six other guys that had similar backgrounds to his.

00:09:16.000 And they did their analysis independent of what he was doing.

00:09:24.000 The only person they talked to was me.

00:09:26.000 And they provided me with their information.

00:09:29.000 I knew their strengths.

00:09:31.000 I knew their weaknesses.

00:09:32.000 And I would take a look at seven different pieces of information and then decide what I was going to do.

00:09:38.000 And then over the years, like anything else, I got a little bit better at what I did.

00:09:44.000 And luckily, you know, I've worked, Joe, over the years with probably a minimum of 50 handicappers. 0.95

00:09:55.000 Every one of them have basically gotten to the point to where they couldn't win.

00:10:00.000 You know, in order to win handicapping, you have to come up with new ideas, and you have to come up with new ideas that are relevant That means something, because the people making line are getting smarter, the competition's getting smarter, so whatever edge you start off with,

00:10:17.000 that's going to erode.

00:10:19.000 Other people are going to catch on, okay?

00:10:22.000 Well, over the years, and when I was in my heyday, I was spending six to eight million dollars in research and development.

00:10:29.000 Really?

00:10:30.000 Oh yeah.

00:10:30.000 Every year?

00:10:31.000 Every year, yeah.

00:10:32.000 And now I probably spend at least a million now.

00:10:36.000 And as an example, football season is over.

00:10:39.000 We're already working on next season, the day the season is over.

00:10:42.000 We're doing simulations.

00:10:43.000 We're running lots of different things to go back and see if we can find something that would have made a difference in the game or will make a difference in the game going forward as far as the prediction is concerned.

00:10:56.000 That's relevant, that we can quantify, that makes sense.

00:10:59.000 And if we can, then that, you know, our information, it will strengthen our information and allow us, allow me to continue to be able to bet on sports.

00:11:08.000 I only bet on sports, Joe, today.

00:11:11.000 I love it.

00:11:12.000 If I didn't, I didn't have the passion for it.

00:11:14.000 I couldn't do it.

00:11:15.000 But I still win, and I have an advantage.

00:11:18.000 And if I get to the point that I don't have that advantage, I'll quit.

00:11:22.000 Okay?

00:11:23.000 But I still have the advantage.

00:11:24.000 But in order to maintain that advantage, I continually have to be able to recognize, find things that make a material difference or that quantify a difference with the outcome of a game to stay ahead of the herd,

00:11:41.000 so to speak.

00:11:42.000 Because you got really smart people making a line.

00:11:44.000 You got other really smart people betting.

00:11:47.000 Okay, I'm the guy, I don't bet on Monday or Tuesday or Sunday night when the line's soft.

00:11:53.000 I'm the guy, I bet on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

00:11:57.000 Why do I bet on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday?

00:11:59.000 Because that's when you can bet the most money.

00:12:02.000 Early in the week, you can only make small bets.

00:12:04.000 I'm not interested in making smaller bets today.

00:12:06.000 Why do they have it set up like that?

00:12:08.000 Just in case something happens, someone's injured?

00:12:10.000 Well, no.

00:12:13.000 When the line originally comes out, say on Sunday night or Monday morning, and all sports are different.

00:12:19.000 Some sports are more vulnerable than others.

00:12:22.000 The NFL is the least vulnerable sport of all.

00:12:25.000 It's the toughest of all to beat in the world.

00:12:27.000 As a matter of fact, most of the guys that gamble for a living or call themselves professional handicappers, they don't bet the NFL because it's just too tough to beat.

00:12:37.000 Okay, if that line comes out on Sunday or Monday or whenever it comes out, that's your best chance of finding something there where that odds maker missed something.

00:12:45.000 Okay, but by Tuesday, that's gone.

00:12:49.000 Okay, now different sports, you know, college football, a non-Power 5 conference team, you know, you may find more of an advantage with that early on or even later on because In the colleges,

00:13:06.000 you know, they're making a line on, you know, 130 games, and it's much more difficult for them to make the line on 130 games.

00:13:15.000 You know, you've got personnel that changes every year.

00:13:18.000 I mean, it's just more difficult for them to do that.

00:13:20.000 And then on top of that, the Power 5 teams, you know, like Texas is an example.

00:13:27.000 There's not much about Texas that everybody doesn't know.

00:13:30.000 But when you're looking at Louisiana Tech or you're looking at one of these other teams, say a non-Power 5 team, Okay, the guy who's actually doing the handicapping may have an advantage over the guy making the line because there may be things pertaining to that particular team that it's not in the USA today.

00:13:45.000 It's not on ESPN sports.

00:13:48.000 I mean, there could be a little advantages.

00:13:51.000 Back to what you were talking about, why do they have the limits cheaper?

00:13:55.000 It's because the line's more vulnerable.

00:13:57.000 I would say by, you know, Tuesday with the NFL, by Tuesday, Wednesday with the college football, power five or non-power five, all those numbers are solid.

00:14:09.000 Years ago, Joe, the guys that I actually feel like were smarter bookmakers than the bookmakers today, as soon as they felt like the line was solid, they would take a full-limit bet.

00:14:23.000 Because if you're a bookmaker, stop and think about it.

00:14:26.000 What you're trying to do, you're trying to write as many bets on one side as you are on the other side.

00:14:32.000 So, as an example, once you feel like your number's solid, if you take a bet on a Wednesday or a Thursday and that game doesn't start until Sunday, you can move your line.

00:14:41.000 You've got four or five days to get action back on the other side.

00:14:46.000 Some of the bookmakers today, and frankly, I don't understand the rationale at all because it really doesn't make any sense, a lot of them wait until the day before the game or the day of the game before they'll take a full-limit bet.

00:15:00.000 Which makes no sense, because what happens if they wait till the day of the game or the day before the game and they take a full-limit bet, they have a small amount of time to get action back the other way.

00:15:13.000 I mean, if you're a bookmaker, what is bookmaking?

00:15:16.000 It's taking bets both ways and you're trying to earn the vigorous.

00:15:19.000 Okay, you're really not trying to gamble.

00:15:22.000 You know, there's going to be times you're going to be lopsided on one game, but what you're, you know, The ideal thing for a bookmaker is to have as many pets on one side as he does the other, and the volume equal out.

00:15:36.000 And you earn the juice, and basically you've got no risk, or very little risk.

00:15:40.000 Okay, so I can't answer your question as to why some people today wait until later on.

00:15:47.000 I mean, I think in their minds they may think, well, maybe the line's more solid or something.

00:15:51.000 That's the only way I could...

00:15:52.000 But at the end of the day, the line by...

00:15:55.000 Thursday is solid as a rock.

00:15:58.000 And I think if I were a bookmaker, and I have been a bookmaker, as soon as I feel like the line's solid on whatever the sport is, I want to take as many bets as I can take as early as I can take them to move my line to draw action back on the other side.

00:16:13.000 But you've got people out there today that some, not all, The guys that I think are smart, are smarter bookmakers, they start taking, you know, full limit bets on Thursday because that gives them Sunday night,

00:16:30.000 Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.

00:16:31.000 Now they feel like the line is solid, and it is solid.

00:16:35.000 But if they take a bet on a Thursday, they've got Friday, they've got Saturday, they've got Sunday to get action back on the other side.

00:16:42.000 But you have different strategies from different guys.

00:16:45.000 You've got a lot of guys out there today, Joe, that are booking.

00:16:48.000 They really don't know anything about booking.

00:16:50.000 They're great at creating databases.

00:16:52.000 They're great at creating...

00:16:54.000 You know, generating customer accounts and what have you, but they really don't understand the art of bookmaking.

00:16:59.000 And, you know, they've got these preconceived opinions that, you know, what most of them do, they'll go hire someone who They'll be their bookmaker and they'll look at that guy's – they'll look at his background or his bio and he'll have – he would have worked at some place in Las Vegas at some hotel and he'll have a title of XYZ or whatever it is and they don't really know anything

00:17:29.000 about bookmaking.

00:17:30.000 This guy looks like the real deal.

00:17:32.000 He's been interviewed and you read the things written about him and you would think he knows what he's doing.

00:17:38.000 So they hire the guy.

00:17:39.000 They put him in that position.

00:17:40.000 And a lot of those guys don't know anything about booking.

00:17:43.000 They really don't.

00:17:44.000 And what they do know is they know that they don't know a lot about booking, okay?

00:17:51.000 And so as a result, what they do, instead of trying to promote and create action, they're trying to—a lot of the things that they do, in my opinion, it keeps action down,

00:18:07.000 so to speak.

00:18:10.000 Now, there's exceptions to the rule.

00:18:12.000 You know, you've got a sportsbook in Las Vegas called Circa.

00:18:15.000 They're open to anyone and everyone that comes in the door.

00:18:18.000 I don't care who you are.

00:18:20.000 And they have room limits.

00:18:22.000 They give everyone the same room limits, and they're generous limits.

00:18:24.000 I mean, on the NFL, you can bet $50,000 a game.

00:18:27.000 On college football, you can bet up to $50,000 a game.

00:18:31.000 Sometimes they take $20,000, sometimes they take $30,000.

00:18:34.000 But they're smart.

00:18:35.000 These guys know how to book.

00:18:39.000 Anyone can open the counter.

00:18:41.000 I have an counter myself.

00:18:43.000 If they take a bet from me, they move the line.

00:18:45.000 And they're going to force somebody back on the other side of that bet.

00:18:49.000 But they know how to book.

00:18:50.000 There's guys there.

00:18:51.000 Nick Bogdanovich has been in the business for a long, long time and others.

00:18:55.000 They understand the art of bookmaking.

00:18:59.000 You've got others in Las Vegas and you've got others in other parts of the world that really understand bookmaking.

00:19:05.000 I mean, you've got some guys offshore that understand it extremely well.

00:19:14.000 It seems like such a complicated and stress-filled life.

00:19:19.000 And when you're telling me things like you're spending millions of dollars every year on research, before the internet, what kind of research are you getting?

00:19:29.000 Like, how are you getting research on NFL teams or boxers or anything, whatever you're gambling on?

00:19:35.000 Well, prior to the internet, they're...

00:19:40.000 Some of the information today that you can get off your smartphone was golden.

00:19:46.000 I mean, I used to have a crew of guys when I first moved to Las Vegas in 82. We would send them out to the airport and we had relationships with the various airlines and we would be able to get the newspapers that came off of all the planes that flew into Las Vegas.

00:20:02.000 And they were filled with local sports stories that were, you know, written by that local sports writer.

00:20:09.000 And we'd bring them back, and we had readers who read those stories.

00:20:13.000 And anything that they read in one of those stories that they felt like was material to that particular game, it would be passed along to the handicapper.

00:20:23.000 And today, you know, you can read a thousand newspapers online and get that same information.

00:20:29.000 Or you could...

00:20:31.000 We have a program that we've written now that we have like 140 beat writers in the NFL that we cover.

00:20:41.000 Anything that that beat writer writes or anything that comes out on Twitter or social media You know, the program we have, it will scrape it, and we have that immediately.

00:20:54.000 We know, so if there's a story there and there's anything in that story that we feel like that is going to have any real meaning toward the game, you know, we're able to take that.

00:21:03.000 A lot of time, you know, the time involved with it is everything, too, because eventually that story's going to come out everywhere.

00:21:10.000 But back when you're talking about prior to the Internet, Joe, way, way back, it's kind of crazy, but I used to have a Zenith Trans-Oceanic Radio.

00:21:25.000 I would sit and listen to pre-game shows and post-game shows, but the other thing I used to do is I would call a lot of the cities, and I had people in all these cities, and I would have someone to put the phone up to the radio, and I would listen to the pre-game show,

00:21:41.000 and I would listen to the post-game show.

00:21:43.000 Yeah, and you're able to learn a lot from that.

00:21:46.000 And today, you know, information is a lot more accessible than it was then.

00:21:55.000 So you would send people to the airport.

00:21:56.000 They would find these local papers.

00:21:58.000 And you would scour these papers and go through these articles.

00:22:01.000 And what specifically are you looking for?

00:22:03.000 Hard hits?

00:22:04.000 Injuries?

00:22:04.000 How someone's doing?

00:22:06.000 Exceptional plays?

00:22:08.000 Someone who's really coming up?

00:22:09.000 What would you be looking for?

00:22:11.000 Well, you're looking for injuries and you're looking for game plans.

00:22:14.000 And as an example, if a coach says, look, we're going to slow this thing down.

00:22:20.000 We're going to start running a ball.

00:22:24.000 First thing, the total's not going to be as much.

00:22:28.000 If he slows this thing down and he starts running the ball, they're not going to get as many plays.

00:22:34.000 And there's probably a pretty high possibility that the total is going to come down some on this game.

00:22:41.000 They talk about players.

00:22:43.000 They talk about injuries, especially the quarterback.

00:22:47.000 If you're talking about the quarterback and you've got a quarterback who's playing injured, how that's going to affect his performance is really important.

00:22:56.000 And they're always kind of playing injured.

00:22:58.000 Always playing injured, as you talked about in the book I wrote.

00:23:02.000 You know, there's 1,400 players in the NFL. There's about 600 of them that have a value.

00:23:08.000 And we have a value assigned to each and every one of those individual players.

00:23:12.000 But as you've noted, a lot of them, almost every one of them are playing with some type of an injury once the season begins.

00:23:19.000 Okay, then, okay, who's playing?

00:23:23.000 Again, we listen, and we follow Dr. David Chow quite a bit, and we think he does an excellent job.

00:23:30.000 He's on Sirius on the NFL Network, and he talks about the key players on a weekly basis, and from an injury perspective, how he feels like that's going to affect their performance.

00:23:44.000 There are many more players that Dr. Chow doesn't cover that we cover that are playing injured.

00:23:50.000 And again, we do a lot of reading.

00:23:52.000 We've got 140 beat writers we cover.

00:23:55.000 I have a guy on my team.

00:23:57.000 He's a qualitative guy.

00:23:59.000 He's not a computer guy, right?

00:24:00.000 He probably knows more about the NFL as far as a qualitative guy is concerned, I believe, than any man alive.

00:24:07.000 What do you mean by that, a qualitative guy?

00:24:09.000 Well, okay.

00:24:11.000 The 1,400 players, he knows who they are.

00:24:13.000 He knows their positions.

00:24:19.000 He knows what the value of those players are, as far as we're concerned.

00:24:22.000 He knows how to adjust their value based upon their injury.

00:24:28.000 And after we get the medical information, we'll figure out how we feel like their performance is going to be affected against that particular opponent that week.

00:24:37.000 And then we, if a player's worth a point and a half, we may downgrade him, he's only worth three quarters of a point, or he may be worth a point.

00:24:45.000 If a guy's out, okay, well we got a backup.

00:24:48.000 We know the value of the guy's out, what's a backup worth?

00:24:51.000 Okay, backup could be worth zero, he could be worth, you know, half a point, and he's replacing a guy that's a point and a half guy, so we have to downgrade the power of him by a point that week.

00:25:02.000 And the other thing, this qualitative guy, he watches every NFL game.

00:25:07.000 He grades every play.

00:25:09.000 Okay, how many times have you watched a football game and you'll see the score, it wasn't indicative at all of what the score should have been.

00:25:18.000 So let's say, you know, receiver's going down the field and he didn't have anybody within 20 yards of him.

00:25:25.000 And he gets thrown a perfect pass and he just drops it.

00:25:29.000 Okay.

00:25:30.000 Well, he was unlucky.

00:25:32.000 He should have had that pass.

00:25:33.000 On the other hand, let's say he's going down the field and we had a pass like that in the playoffs when San Francisco was playing Detroit.

00:25:42.000 They threw a ball and it hit a helmet, ricocheted, and ended up in a real long completion and a touchdown.

00:25:50.000 Well, that was lucky.

00:25:52.000 Okay, so when we look at the box score, we look at the yardage, we take that off.

00:25:57.000 Okay?

00:25:59.000 You know, there's plays that happen in the NFL when you look at box scores, as far as we're concerned, they're misleading.

00:26:07.000 Okay, when you look at the total amount of yards, everybody kind of looks at the same thing.

00:26:12.000 You look at the time position. 0.99

00:26:14.000 So you have to go over each individual play and deduct all the lucky shit. 0.98

00:26:19.000 Yeah, and then we have player participation. 0.98

00:26:21.000 We know who played in every play.

00:26:23.000 God, you've got to keep up on all this.

00:26:26.000 So to give you an example, Joe, Pittsburgh.

00:26:31.000 T.J. Watt's out.

00:26:33.000 He isn't playing.

00:26:34.000 Well, if you look at Pittsburgh's performance with him in the lineup and him out of the lineup, it's unbelievable that one guy could have much effect on a team.

00:26:45.000 So if you're looking at offensive performance against Pittsburgh with T.J. Watt out, You know, you're not looking at what Pittsburgh's defense really is, so you've got to make an adjustment when you look at that,

00:27:02.000 and you've got to put that into your power rating.

00:27:04.000 When I wrote the book, it took me six months.

00:27:10.000 To do this one section, we wrote what we call the masterclass, okay?

00:27:14.000 And I wrote what we call betting strategy.

00:27:17.000 I wrote that for the 99,9% of the people who bet sports.

00:27:22.000 And we got a lot of new sports bettors today that have no chance.

00:27:26.000 I wrote that for them, okay?

00:27:28.000 And I put the basics in there.

00:27:29.000 I put basic betting strategy in there, which that's probably as important to them or more important to handicapping is.

00:27:35.000 I put all the charts in there that tells them exactly what each half point is worth.

00:27:40.000 I put charts in there that tells them exactly how a money line compares to a point spread.

00:27:46.000 Line on the game's two.

00:27:48.000 Here's a money line equivalent.

00:27:49.000 If you can get a better deal, take it.

00:27:51.000 If you can't, take the other.

00:27:53.000 Okay?

00:27:53.000 I put stuff in there, basic stuff, because none of that stuff is out there.

00:27:57.000 Now, guys don't have any idea, if they're buying a half a point, what the fair price is to pay.

00:28:02.000 And all these points, they have a different value.

00:28:05.000 As an example, if you're buying a game on or off of three, say from two and a half to three in the NFL or three and a half to three, that's worth 22 additional cents.

00:28:16.000 It's not worth 23, but it's worth 22. If you can do it for 20, buy it.

00:28:21.000 21, buy it.

00:28:22.000 If you feel like it's going to be a low-scoring game and you can buy it for 22, whatever, buy it.

00:28:31.000 But if it's 23, you're better off taking a 2.5.

00:28:34.000 But people don't know that, Joe.

00:28:36.000 Okay, what's the value of 2?

00:28:37.000 Well, the value of 2 is much less than it is 3. The value of 2 is only worth 6 cents, where 3 is worth 23. The different numbers have different values.

00:28:46.000 So I put those charts in there for the guy that I pointed out to.

00:28:50.000 I also put another section in there.

00:28:54.000 We'll call it kind of the advanced section.

00:28:57.000 And that section, I tried to write in such a manner to where I felt like, you know, people could understand it.

00:29:06.000 And that's the guy or the lady who wants to become a serious handicapper. 1.00

00:29:12.000 And I explained in there exactly, 100%, Joe, exactly how I do everything, okay?

00:29:19.000 This book was written at the end of the NFL season, not this year, but last year.

00:29:24.000 It came out in August.

00:29:26.000 Everything that I know about sports betting and handicapping is in that book.

00:29:31.000 I would not have sold that information 10 years ago for $20 million, and I never had any intention of ever writing this book and putting that in there.

00:29:41.000 But I'm 77. It's my legacy.

00:29:45.000 I see all these new people that are betting sports, and they're doing it in states now where it's legal.

00:29:52.000 I'm proud of that.

00:29:53.000 I'm glad that sports has come around to that, but also I still have—there's a lot of things I'm apprehensive about also.

00:30:03.000 But anyway, so I wrote this.

00:30:05.000 That was one of the reasons I wrote the book.

00:30:07.000 But in those two sections, if you want to be Billy Walters and you want to be a handicapper, and I don't care what sport it is, I use the NFL as a model.

00:30:16.000 But this model is the same model for every sport, whether it be you're betting on golf or you're betting on NASCAR or you're betting on soccer or baseball.

00:30:26.000 It's the same principle.

00:30:27.000 That's the way they all work.

00:30:29.000 So I put that in there, and then for people who are betting any type of sport, but especially the NFL or college football, I put all those charts in there to explain to people.

00:30:41.000 Because right now, I don't care what site you go up on, Joe, a lot of these new places...

00:30:47.000 The reason they're making the money they're making is if you were to poll sports bettors out there today, everyone thinks making a bet on a sporting event, you're laying 11 to 10. That's the premise that we've all been taught, that you're laying 11 to win 10. A lot of these bets today—and matter of fact,

00:31:07.000 almost all—well, not a lot of them, all of them—these, we'll call them, you know, the teasers, the parlays, those bets, some of those bets, a guy's laying $1.50 and he doesn't even know it because there's no requirement to disclose the odds you're laying,

00:31:26.000 so they're not going to tell you.

00:31:27.000 But like these in-game parlays, and you're doing these 3 and 14 parlays, and you're doing these teasers, a lot of these places are charging you $1.50 to $1.

00:31:36.000 You got no chance of winning.

00:31:38.000 You got zero chance of winning.

00:31:40.000 I couldn't win.

00:31:41.000 I wouldn't even think about playing them.

00:31:43.000 But the average person who's playing them, they don't know that.

00:31:47.000 So, because right now, there's no requirement to disclose that to the customer.

00:31:53.000 And we all want about a small amount of money, want a large amount of money, right, Joe?

00:31:58.000 Yeah.

00:31:58.000 Okay, well, you got a lot of people out there, they're making these bets, and they're laying $1.40, $1.50, and they don't know it.

00:32:06.000 When you look at these publicly traded companies, you know, it's right out there in the public.

00:32:10.000 You know, when they report their earnings, they're You know, they're doing very well, but they all refer to these parlays and teasers.

00:32:19.000 That's where they're making the majority of their money.

00:32:22.000 They're not making the majority of their money on straight bets where people are at 11 to 10. They're making it on these proposition bets.

00:32:28.000 Well, what I'm getting from you is that...

00:32:31.000 To be a successful sports gambler requires an insane amount of dedication and research and understanding.

00:32:39.000 You've got to be on it all the time.

00:32:41.000 And most people are just not that sophisticated when it comes to these things.

00:32:45.000 If they're betting using an app or something like that, betting online, they're just doing it for fun.

00:32:50.000 They think they can win.

00:32:51.000 They've got a feeling.

00:32:52.000 They want to bet their team.

00:32:53.000 They want to make the game more exciting.

00:32:55.000 And so those people are basically very...

00:33:02.000 They're very under-researched.

00:33:04.000 They don't have the full grasp of understanding of the complexities of sports gambling.

00:33:10.000 Because it's a lot more complex than I ever thought.

00:33:12.000 When I was going over your stuff, I was like, oh my goodness.

00:33:14.000 This involves so much time.

00:33:17.000 So much time.

00:33:18.000 This is not a simple thing as like, oh, I follow sports.

00:33:21.000 I think Kansas City's going to win.

00:33:23.000 It's complicated.

00:33:25.000 Very, very complicated.

00:33:27.000 And to win at a level that you won at over your career and the numbers, what is the biggest bet you ever placed?

00:33:34.000 I bet $4.5 million on New Orleans to beat the Indianapolis Colts in the Super Bowl.

00:33:40.000 That was the biggest bet I ever placed.

00:33:42.000 Did you win?

00:33:43.000 I did.

00:33:44.000 I won it.

00:33:44.000 I got lucky and I won it.

00:33:45.000 You got lucky on that one?

00:33:46.000 Well, yeah, I mean, any time you win, I mean, I feel like I'm lucky.

00:33:50.000 I mean, Joe, the world's made up of a lot of different kind of people, as we both know.

00:33:57.000 But no, I feel like any time I win a bet, I got lucky.

00:34:00.000 I mean, because there's, you know, I won a bet.

00:34:04.000 And the reason I had such a big bet is...

00:34:08.000 What I do, Joe, is I make a line on the game myself.

00:34:11.000 My prediction of what I feel like the differential should be.

00:34:14.000 Independent of what the experts do.

00:34:15.000 Completely independent.

00:34:17.000 I don't even look at their line when I make my line.

00:34:19.000 Really?

00:34:19.000 No.

00:34:20.000 That's high-level shit. 1.00

00:34:21.000 Well, that's all they... 1.00

00:34:22.000 I'm doing the same thing they're doing.

00:34:24.000 Right.

00:34:25.000 I mean, it...

00:34:25.000 Believe me, the principles that I'm following and making my line are the same principles that the handicapper is making.

00:34:32.000 Joe, it's kind of like making a cake, you know?

00:34:34.000 One guy might put a little bit more flour in than the other guy does, and so that's how we end up with different lines, different numbers.

00:34:43.000 I make a line on each and every outcome of the sports that I'm involved in.

00:34:48.000 And you betting this on the individual players, their overall career, what age they are, how they've been playing this season, who the coach is, all the different factors, whether or not there's in-player disputes, in-between players.

00:35:04.000 There's a lot of things to take into consideration.

00:35:07.000 Yeah.

00:35:07.000 Again, I put it all in the book, and you're right.

00:35:10.000 There's a lot of different factors that go into that.

00:35:13.000 Some more important than others, but there's a lot of factors.

00:35:16.000 And what happens is the larger the differential between the number they make and, in my opinion, the larger bet I make.

00:35:25.000 There has to be a minimum of a certain amount of...

00:35:30.000 Of separation or I won't make a bet.

00:35:33.000 But the larger the difference is between my opinion and their opinion, the larger bet I make.

00:35:39.000 So I'll just give you a rough example.

00:35:41.000 Let's say the NFL. And let's say I would have to have a minimum of, say, a point and a half differential from the line I make.

00:35:51.000 A point and a half, two points.

00:35:54.000 Well, I would bet one unit, okay?

00:35:57.000 That would be the smallest bet I would make.

00:36:13.000 Well, the New Orleans game you asked me about, which I couldn't believe, was a Super Bowl game.

00:36:23.000 And this type of year, we never get this kind of differential.

00:36:27.000 But I had like a seven-point differential between the line I made and the line they made.

00:36:32.000 They made Indianapolis seven, and I thought the game should be pick'em.

00:36:36.000 And when I saw the line, I couldn't believe it.

00:36:40.000 I went back, I said, well, maybe you haven't made a mistake here.

00:36:42.000 Went back, redid it, redid it, and I'll pick'em.

00:36:45.000 So that's how I ended up with such a large bet.

00:36:47.000 When you go through something like that, how much time are we talking?

00:36:50.000 Like if you're placing a $4 million bet on a Super Bowl game, how much time are you researching?

00:36:56.000 Well, but that time of the year, I mean, all of our research is done.

00:36:59.000 I mean, it's this last game here.

00:37:02.000 Okay, the only changes you're going to make from the last games that these two teams played during the Super Bowl is, okay, are there any players injured that didn't, which you have to account for?

00:37:14.000 And, you know, clearly, if they're playing on a different surface or something maybe than, you know, than the teams normally do.

00:37:22.000 It's very small.

00:37:23.000 I mean, the second the game's over, we can have the line on the next game within six hours.

00:37:30.000 It's not a problem or less.

00:37:32.000 I mean, unless it involves, you know, some injury or something that, you know, may take us until we get some more clarity on that.

00:37:38.000 But I'm going to know real close to where I'm at Frankly, as soon as the game's over almost, more than an hour or two.

00:37:45.000 Now, there's been some times over the years where referees, specifically in basketball games, have been caught doing things, you know, calling penalties, trying to swing the game in favor of another team, and they get caught for it and busted.

00:38:02.000 How much do you think that goes on today?

00:38:05.000 Like, how much do you think, like, referees are bought off or maybe perhaps they're betting themselves?

00:38:11.000 I don't think that exists at all, Joe.

00:38:13.000 Really?

00:38:13.000 And if it does, it's very, very small.

00:38:15.000 But it has been, right?

00:38:16.000 Things have happened in the past, but you know who uncovered each and every one of those?

00:38:21.000 Gamblers.

00:38:22.000 People betting sports and bookmakers, they're the ones that made law enforcement aware of these things.

00:38:28.000 Because at the end of the day, whether you're a casino or whether you're a bettor, the integrity of sports is the most important thing in the world to you.

00:38:35.000 A good thing about what's going on today, there's probably more transparency in betting today than there ever has been.

00:38:43.000 All of the legalized gambling that's taking place, they have everyone's account information.

00:38:49.000 They know everything you're doing.

00:38:51.000 And the other thing about betting on sports, Joe, unlike, say, Wall Street, it is a small market, much, much smaller market than Wall Street.

00:38:59.000 So if you go out and you make a sizable bet in sports, The line's going to move, and it's impossible to hide it, okay?

00:39:10.000 Now, there's people such as myself, and I'm not the only one.

00:39:14.000 There's a lot of people in the sports business.

00:39:16.000 If they see a line on a game move half a point, a punt, or whatever, they know who calls that line to move 99% of the time, okay?

00:39:26.000 I'll give you an example.

00:39:27.000 The Arizona State situation that came up years ago.

00:39:30.000 I don't know if you remember that one or not.

00:39:32.000 It was their basketball team and they were fixing games.

00:39:36.000 And then what happened, there was a bunch of guys that came to Las Vegas and they bet on one of these games.

00:39:44.000 The line moved six or seven points.

00:39:46.000 I bet on the other side of it because, you know, of the line I make.

00:39:51.000 And, of course, I had no idea that, you know, they were shaving points.

00:39:55.000 And I lost the bet.

00:39:56.000 Well, they came back to town a little bit later and they brought six, seven guys and they were going to all the different sportsbooks and they were betting and the line moved six or seven points again.

00:40:07.000 Lines on games don't move six or seven points.

00:40:09.000 Well, the second time I didn't bet because – and sure enough, they won the game by like 20 again.

00:40:16.000 They came back the third time, and by now I'm taping the games.

00:40:19.000 I'm looking at the games.

00:40:20.000 They came back the third time, and they did the same thing.

00:40:23.000 Well, I called Steve Ducharme, who was the head of Game and Control for the Game and Control Board.

00:40:33.000 He was the law enforcement part of Game and Control.

00:40:37.000 And told him what was going on.

00:40:39.000 And they dispatched some agents.

00:40:43.000 They tried to get these people to talk to them.

00:40:46.000 They left Las Vegas, went back to Arizona.

00:40:48.000 And then later on, I think one of them got kind of caught up in a drug deal.

00:40:52.000 And then it came out they were fixing games.

00:40:56.000 And there were a couple of players that were intentionally thrown off.

00:41:00.000 And they were fixing games.

00:41:02.000 And that's how that scandal came out.

00:41:05.000 So it was exposed by gamblers.

00:41:07.000 Oh, it's by gamblers.

00:41:08.000 And how did you know it wasn't just luck?

00:41:11.000 Well, I mean, Joe, look, this would be like tracking an elephant in the snow.

00:41:15.000 I mean, you got guys who no one's ever laid eyes on, and they come to Las Vegas, and they bet on a game, and they move at six or seven points.

00:41:25.000 You know, if you're a handicapper, you know anything at all about betting sports.

00:41:29.000 If the line moves, you know...

00:41:35.000 And you're laying a second or third point.

00:41:39.000 You know, you better have a really strong opinion because they move this line for one reason.

00:41:47.000 It's to make it a lot less appealing to the person betting on that team.

00:41:52.000 So when somebody comes to town and they move a line six or seven points, no better in the world is going to do that.

00:41:58.000 And in order to do that, they went to every sportsbook in town, and they just, you know, they laid, you know, six, six and a half, seven, seven and a half, eight, eight and a half, nine, nine and a half, ten.

00:42:08.000 Okay, well...

00:42:10.000 Because they were new to betting, okay?

00:42:12.000 They knew they had an edge because of what they were doing, but they didn't know anything about betting.

00:42:16.000 As a result, you know, they created something that was easy for anyone to see.

00:42:21.000 I saw it again the first time.

00:42:23.000 I didn't know the exact, you know, I didn't know exactly who was doing it.

00:42:31.000 And I bet on the other side, of course, I lost my money.

00:42:33.000 And, of course, I came back the second time.

00:42:35.000 I'd seen these things before, and I didn't bet.

00:42:39.000 And then, of course, you know, we taped the game.

00:42:41.000 We looked at it.

00:42:42.000 It was pretty easy to see who was doing what they were doing.

00:42:44.000 They came back the third time, did the same thing.

00:42:46.000 Frankly, you know, to give you the...

00:42:48.000 I mean, these guys were trying to break in jails, what they were trying to do.

00:42:51.000 Anybody...

00:42:52.000 I mean, they were. 1.00

00:42:53.000 Anybody would do what they were doing was just stupid. 1.00

00:42:56.000 I mean, anyone could see what they were doing. 0.99

00:42:58.000 The only thing that surprised me, it took three games for someone to finally turn them in.

00:43:02.000 And sportsbooks, I don't think they ever turned them in.

00:43:05.000 I mean, I called the charm myself because, again, anything that involves the integrity of sports, they're affecting my business.

00:43:12.000 If people get to where they don't trust betting on sports, then the limits are going to go down, and it's going to reduce my ability to be able to bet on sports.

00:43:20.000 The other one, you know, with the referee, the NFL referee.

00:43:24.000 Gamers knew about that eight months before he got busted by law enforcement.

00:43:29.000 People quit betting on the games.

00:43:31.000 Well, sure, I mean, it wasn't like...

00:43:34.000 They just suspected that the calls were bad.

00:43:36.000 Well, no, what happened?

00:43:37.000 Anytime again, Joe, because the market's so small.

00:43:41.000 Okay, think about the New York Stock Exchange, or think about Apple stock.

00:43:46.000 You could buy...

00:43:49.000 $500 million worth of Apple stock, and the price on Apple stock would barely move.

00:43:58.000 On an NBA basketball game, if you were to bet $250,000 on an NFL basketball game, it would probably move a point and a half, two points.

00:44:13.000 So, and again, the people taking the bet, people such as myself and others, if a line moves on a game and it moves like that and, okay, I want to know who bet on that game.

00:44:24.000 If it's another handicapper or there's an injury out or there's something there that makes sense as to why that game moved, then okay, I understand it.

00:44:31.000 But if there's some mysterious person that's betting a lot of money on a game that hasn't been doing this for a period of time, and then I'm looking at the outcome of a game that doesn't make sense, or if I tape it and I see something that's out of the ordinary about the way the game's being officiated or some player's performance,

00:44:49.000 This stuff is easy, Joe, to see.

00:44:53.000 And you're not dealing with exactly – you're not dealing here with master criminals.

00:44:57.000 You're dealing with people that frankly aren't very smart and – I mean they aren't very smart to be doing what they're doing and the way they go about it they're even – I don't know if you remember the thing years ago with Hot Rod Williams.

00:45:10.000 I mean there's – the ones – Trevor Burrus What was that thing?

00:45:13.000 Well, it was an NBA thing also.

00:45:16.000 But all the ones, if you go back and you look at the last five sports deals, whatever they were, small or big, every one of them were uncovered like that.

00:45:29.000 I did an interview one time on 60 Minutes in 2011, and I was asked at the end of the interview Which I had the most confidence in, betting on sports or investing in stocks?

00:45:42.000 And my answer was, I have a lot more confidence in betting on sports for the reason I pointed out.

00:45:49.000 It's a much smaller market, but as far as things being on the up and up, I have a lot more confidence in that, and I have way more confidence in that than I do the other.

00:45:59.000 Well, obviously you know it well.

00:46:01.000 Well, I not only know it well, but also if I didn't know it well, I know how small the market is.

00:46:06.000 I know how transparent the market is.

00:46:09.000 And if someone goes in to try to bet on sports and you're trying to fix a game, it's going to be so obvious.

00:46:17.000 It's so easy to detect and it's so easy to, and today it's even easier.

00:46:22.000 And the good thing about legalized sports betting is it's so transparent.

00:46:26.000 Everybody who has an account, you know, you take all of these young players that haven't, you know, they haven't been, I'll call it schooled correctly.

00:46:35.000 They haven't been, you know, whether it be their teams or whomever, they haven't explained to them, you know, the repercussions about betting on sports if they're a professional athlete.

00:46:44.000 You know, we've had some here recently that You know, basically, these guys are kids, Joe.

00:46:48.000 They're kids.

00:46:48.000 They don't know any better.

00:46:50.000 And someone should have sat down with them and explained to them the ramifications of what they were doing.

00:46:56.000 Maybe they did, maybe they didn't.

00:46:57.000 But we've had a few of them out there now.

00:46:59.000 But, you know, you've seen how quickly they catch them because it's all transparent.

00:47:03.000 They go in and make these bets.

00:47:04.000 It doesn't take them any time at all to figure out who they are, if they're a football player or whatever they're doing.

00:47:09.000 And it's been brought to the public's attention.

00:47:12.000 If it's that easy to catch them, somebody out there making large bets on something, moving the line substantially, and you don't know who this person is, and you're looking at it, and they do this more than one time or two times, and you're seeing an outcome of a game that doesn't make sense,

00:47:29.000 it isn't going to take long to figure this out.

00:47:33.000 Now when you get to a situation like a guy like Pete Rose, that was a fascinating situation because this was at the time where gambling was illegal, unless you're in Vegas.

00:47:46.000 And you find out he might be betting on the team that he's coaching, and he might also be betting against his team.

00:47:56.000 I've never heard anyone ever say that Pete Rose bet against his team.

00:48:00.000 I'm not saying it didn't happen, but I've never heard that allegation.

00:48:03.000 I know he was accused of it, right?

00:48:05.000 You don't think so?

00:48:07.000 No, I don't think so.

00:48:08.000 I thought someone was saying...

00:48:09.000 John Dowd, I think, actually investigated this for baseball.

00:48:16.000 So he was always betting for his team?

00:48:17.000 I think he did bet on his team, but I don't think he ever bet against his team.

00:48:20.000 I'm not sure I've never heard that.

00:48:21.000 What was the problem with him betting against his team, or betting for his team, rather?

00:48:25.000 That seems like that just would be a guy who has confidence in his team.

00:48:29.000 Well, personally, I don't see a problem with it, but the people who are running baseball, or whatever the sport is, I haven't thought it really out, probably.

00:48:42.000 If I were on their side of it, and really thought through all of the different Pluses and minuses.

00:48:50.000 I may have a different opinion right off the shoulder.

00:48:52.000 I really don't see a problem him betting on his team or anyone betting on their team, although others do.

00:49:00.000 And I'm trying to think of a good reason as to why...

00:49:07.000 It would be a problem him betting him on his team.

00:49:09.000 I really haven't thought about that closely.

00:49:11.000 Was he ever accused?

00:49:12.000 I don't think.

00:49:13.000 I mean, I'm looking at the ESPN outside the line story.

00:49:16.000 They obtained documents.

00:49:17.000 There's no evidence that Rose was a player manager in 86 bet against his team.

00:49:21.000 No.

00:49:21.000 They show a vivid snapshot on how extensive his betting life was and all the bets he did make.

00:49:27.000 So it could have been just unfair accusations designed to taint his reputation even further?

00:49:33.000 No, no.

00:49:33.000 I think he did bet on his team.

00:49:35.000 No, against.

00:49:35.000 Yeah.

00:49:36.000 If anyone accused him of betting against his team, I think they're wrong because I never heard that.

00:49:41.000 And I don't even think on the report that Mr. Dowd issued on behalf of Major League Baseball, I don't think there was ever any allegations in there that he bet on his team.

00:49:53.000 But it seems kind of crazy, right?

00:49:54.000 Wasn't he removed from the Hall of Fame?

00:49:57.000 Well, he never was in the Hall of Fame, but his consideration, he's never been voted in the Hall of Fame for that reason.

00:50:04.000 In 2022, he's bringing up a point where there's a manager or a player on the Rockies that signed an endorsement deal with Maxim Bett, and he said, like, if what he did was happening now, no one would ever think anything of it.

00:50:18.000 Right.

00:50:18.000 Yeah.

00:50:19.000 Well, I don't know about that either because there was a young college player who's now, I think, a pro who's betting on his team.

00:50:27.000 And I don't think the NFL or—I don't think—first of all, I don't think they want you betting on sports, period.

00:50:39.000 But even betting on your own team, I don't think they want you to bet on your own team.

00:50:45.000 Are you aware of the UFC betting scandal?

00:50:48.000 No, sir, I'm not.

00:50:49.000 So the UFC, there didn't used to be rules in terms of, like, I could bet if I wanted to.

00:50:55.000 Anybody could bet on fights.

00:50:57.000 And what was going on was there was one trainer, and the allegations were that this trainer was involved in an online betting group.

00:51:11.000 Mm-hmm.

00:51:14.000 Mm-hmm.

00:51:24.000 Then they find out that this guy had been doing this for quite a while, or allegedly had been doing this for quite a while, and so then they pass this law now or pass a rule with the UFC that no one can gamble.

00:51:36.000 But I would imagine that fighting is probably the most difficult thing to get right in terms of to figure out a line.

00:51:46.000 Did you do any gambling on boxing or MMA fights?

00:51:50.000 I haven't done any gambling on MMA fights.

00:51:53.000 I had fighters, but in the past I had three boxers in Las Vegas.

00:51:58.000 And we trained at Johnny Taco's gym.

00:52:01.000 Okay.

00:52:02.000 Great gym.

00:52:03.000 And one of my best friends in the world, Billy Baxter, he had fighters at the same time.

00:52:08.000 He had better fighters than I did record-wise.

00:52:10.000 He had Roger Mayweather who became...

00:52:13.000 Black Mamba.

00:52:14.000 Yeah, that's exactly right.

00:52:15.000 And Jesse Reed was our trainer.

00:52:18.000 Making prices on boxing, I didn't think was difficult at all.

00:52:24.000 MMA, you know, back to kind of what you were talking about there, again, well, the NFL, you know, you're talking about transparency.

00:52:33.000 I mean, if a player is injured, they have to report that.

00:52:37.000 The team does, the league does, so the public knows that.

00:52:42.000 And, you know, they have regular reporting requirements.

00:52:45.000 And then, like before the NFL games, every Sunday, an hour and a half before the games, they have to come out with a final report.

00:52:53.000 So, you know, for whatever reason, in boxing, I know when I had fighters that there wasn't a requirement to disclose that.

00:53:06.000 Famously, Manny Pacquiao was injured going into the Floyd Mayweather fight.

00:53:09.000 Yes, that's what I heard.

00:53:10.000 And a lot of people were furious about that because a lot of money exchanged hands during that fight.

00:53:14.000 Yes, it did.

00:53:15.000 Yes, it did.

00:53:16.000 So, again, not knowing as much as I would like to know before I make a comment on something, my only thinking is that You know a lot more about MMA fighting than I'll ever know,

00:53:34.000 you and my friend Kevin Aole.

00:53:39.000 Would it make any sense to make that a requirement to disclose injuries?

00:53:45.000 It would.

00:53:46.000 Yeah, if you're dealing with gambling, it would.

00:53:48.000 Unfortunately, though, then you'd give your fighter, the other fighter, the opponent, a massive advantage.

00:53:54.000 If you know this guy's got a knee injury, you're going to target that knee.

00:53:57.000 If you know this guy's got a hand injury, you're going to know he can't punch.

00:54:01.000 Right.

00:54:02.000 Yeah.

00:54:02.000 There's certain things that would change every aspect of your strategy for a fight if you found out that a fighter was injured.

00:54:09.000 Especially if there's something that would prevent them from grappling, you would know they probably didn't do any grappling in camp, and so you'd go with a grappling-heavy strategy.

00:54:17.000 Just grab ahold of them quickly.

00:54:19.000 Really force them to wrestle.

00:54:20.000 If you know he's got a blown-out knee and he can't really adjust on the feet or shoot for takedowns or even defend them well, you would definitely change things.

00:54:29.000 And fighters hide injuries all the time.

00:54:32.000 I mean, Dreckus Duplessis, when he won against Robert Whittaker, he had a broken foot.

00:54:37.000 And, you know, he beat one of the top guys in the world with a broken foot.

00:54:41.000 And that's kind of crazy that fighters do that, but that's the type of human being you're dealing with.

00:54:46.000 And they can win that way.

00:54:47.000 Like, it doesn't necessarily...

00:54:49.000 Just because you know that a guy's injured doesn't mean that this guy's going to lose.

00:54:52.000 There's certain guys that They find a way to win no matter what right and I would imagine that that what I would would the thing that would give me pause is scoring Judges scoring is horrible.

00:55:07.000 It's the worst part of the sport.

00:55:09.000 It's so bad. 0.99

00:55:10.000 It's so bad that maybe 10 to 20 percent of fights you'll have one car that's so off You're like, what the fuck was that guy watching? 0.99

00:55:25.000 It happens all the time. 0.98

00:55:26.000 As commentators, we're just scratching our head.

00:55:28.000 Like, how did he give it to the other guy?

00:55:31.000 In what world?

00:55:32.000 And I will go back and watch it again and see if I'm being biased.

00:55:36.000 I'll watch it with the sound off.

00:55:38.000 I'll just analyze all the positions and all the things that's happening and damage done and control the octagon and pushing the pace.

00:55:44.000 I'll look at the volume.

00:55:45.000 I'll look at the amount of strikes landed.

00:55:47.000 And then I'll be like, how? 0.98

00:55:49.000 How the fuck did that guy see it for the other person? 0.98

00:55:51.000 It doesn't make any sense. 0.99

00:55:52.000 And I always wonder if someone's on the take.

00:55:54.000 I always wonder.

00:55:56.000 Because I know that there was a case in Vegas where there was a woman who had given out very questionable decisions, like multiple questionable decisions.

00:56:04.000 And the last one was so egregious that she kind of just went away.

00:56:08.000 But I've always wondered if those people were on the take. 0.98

00:56:11.000 Because Don King famously was a sneaky dude and did a lot of very, you know, very under-the-radar shit that was probably not good. 0.88

00:56:22.000 And I would think that if you have a fighter and that fighter's working for you, You would definitely have relationships, at the very least, with these judges. 0.90

00:56:32.000 So they would be more inclined to score for you.

00:56:35.000 Maybe you take them on a vacation.

00:56:37.000 Maybe you take them to dinner.

00:56:40.000 Maybe you do whatever you can do to get inside their good graces.

00:56:43.000 And then if it's like, eh, this guy or this guy, I'm going to go with this guy because I like Don King.

00:56:48.000 Or, you know, Bob Arum, he does me well, so I'm going to lean towards that guy.

00:56:53.000 That would be a real issue with me if I was gambling, particularly on boxing.

00:56:59.000 Back when I got in, I was betting on boxing before I had fighters, but after I had— When you say you had fighters, what do you mean by that?

00:57:06.000 I had three fighters.

00:57:07.000 So you had contracts with them?

00:57:08.000 Oh, yeah.

00:57:09.000 And what is the contract involved?

00:57:11.000 Well, I was our manager.

00:57:14.000 Oh, okay.

00:57:14.000 Yeah, and actually three young men I brought up from Louisville.

00:57:20.000 And that was a connection.

00:57:22.000 My wife and I are both from Kentucky originally.

00:57:24.000 And Billy, I love boxing.

00:57:27.000 I've always loved fighting.

00:57:29.000 You know, I used to go to all the fights with the Silver Slipper, the, you know...

00:57:36.000 We, you know, it's, you know, just, I enjoyed it a lot.

00:57:41.000 So you're going to the smaller regional cards.

00:57:43.000 Oh yeah, Las Vegas.

00:57:44.000 I mean, you know, I remember at the Hacienda, which is the Mandalay Bay today, that's where the ESPN televised fights, that's where they began in Las Vegas.

00:57:56.000 And I remember I had a fighter.

00:57:58.000 He was a really good fighter.

00:57:59.000 He'd won the National Golden Clubs like five, six times as an amateur fighter.

00:58:03.000 He'd beat Aaron Pryor.

00:58:05.000 His name was Terry Silver.

00:58:07.000 And he was a lightweight and a really, really good amateur.

00:58:12.000 And I remember in order to get his first fight on television there, we had to agree to, with Bruce Trampler and Bob Arum, we had to agree to multiple contracts if he won the fight.

00:58:27.000 That's the only way to get him on the card.

00:58:29.000 That sounds like a Bob Arum move.

00:58:30.000 Yeah, but back to what you're talking about those days in the 80s.

00:58:34.000 I mean, you had Duke Durham.

00:58:36.000 Well, Duke Durham, who was Don King's guy in Las Vegas.

00:58:40.000 And then, of course, you had Don and you had Bruce Trapler that was Bob Arum's guy.

00:58:47.000 And, you know, I mean, you look at the various...

00:58:54.000 Organizations that did the ratings are the fighters.

00:58:57.000 And you look at some of the fighters, I mean, if they were signed with the right guy, I mean, they'd be ranked in the, you know, in the top ten.

00:59:05.000 And a lot of them couldn't bust a grape.

00:59:08.000 And then you'd have guys that didn't, that weren't signed or hadn't agreed to those contracts and they couldn't get rated, they couldn't get a fight.

00:59:16.000 So you're right.

00:59:17.000 There was a tremendous amount of politics in it, and that's the primary reason I got out of it.

00:59:24.000 But I still love boxing.

00:59:25.000 I love fighting.

00:59:26.000 I don't understand MMA nearly as well as you do.

00:59:30.000 I can help you out.

00:59:31.000 I'm sure you could.

00:59:33.000 Like I said, I have a friend, Kevin Aole.

00:59:35.000 I think you probably know Kevin.

00:59:35.000 Yeah, I know Kevin very well.

00:59:37.000 He's a good friend.

00:59:37.000 Good guy.

00:59:38.000 Yeah, he is a good guy.

00:59:39.000 He's been covering MMA forever.

00:59:41.000 Yes, he has.

00:59:42.000 And so I'm going to make it my business to learn more about MMA. It's complicated.

00:59:48.000 Yeah, I'm sure it is.

00:59:50.000 But a guy like you that knows as much as you know about sports, you could get into it.

00:59:53.000 I'm sure I'd enjoy it.

00:59:55.000 It's a complicated thing to watch and pick fights.

01:00:00.000 It's a complicated thing to gamble on, because I think you have to have an understanding of a person's physical ability, independent of watching them in fights.

01:00:12.000 You have to be able to assess, like I can look at a fighter, like a guy like Ilya Toporia, who just won the world title against Volkanovski, when I would watch him fight and train, even though he was against lesser competition than Volkanovski, I was seeing the speed of his strikes,

01:00:30.000 the accuracy, the defense, how good the defense was, his durability.

01:00:35.000 I was seeing this advantage.

01:00:36.000 I was like, man, even though this guy is an underdog, he's fighting the most dominant featherweight of all time, this guy's got some big advantages.

01:00:45.000 He's just got big advantages that I see as a fighter, as a person who knows how to fight, and I'm watching the way he moves, I'm like, he moves better.

01:00:52.000 He's more precise.

01:00:53.000 He's more accurate.

01:00:55.000 It's complicated.

01:00:57.000 And then you have to take into account, you know, how many times the guy's been fighting that year, how banged up he is.

01:01:03.000 Because just like quarterbacks on football days, you're going to fight injured.

01:01:07.000 Everybody fights injured.

01:01:08.000 There's always something.

01:01:09.000 There's always a neck thing or a back thing or a hand thing.

01:01:12.000 No fighter fights 100%.

01:01:14.000 Very, very, very rarely, I should say.

01:01:17.000 But, again, the thing that drives me the most crazy is the decisions.

01:01:23.000 Because if I was a gambler and I laid a big bet on Ilya Teporia and for some reason it went five rounds and they give it to Volkanovski and it's a terrible decision, there's not a more robbed feeling in the world.

01:01:36.000 That's a dirty feeling because it's so subjective as opposed to scoring.

01:01:40.000 If you're watching a basketball game, If the Lakers score more, they win.

01:01:47.000 It's real simple.

01:01:48.000 The ball goes in the net more, you win.

01:01:51.000 With fighting, you've got three people.

01:01:54.000 Some of them don't know how to fight at all.

01:01:58.000 And they're the ones who are deciding who wins and who doesn't win fights.

01:02:03.000 Back in the 80s, we had a lot of those controversial decisions in boxing.

01:02:08.000 That's another reason that I got out of boxing.

01:02:13.000 Yeah, there's some bad ones even in the 2000s.

01:02:15.000 Manny Pacquiao and Tim Bradley. 0.99

01:02:17.000 That was one where it was like, what the fuck? 0.99

01:02:18.000 And I think that lady that I was talking about was involved in that one as well. 0.99

01:02:21.000 There's been quite a few of them.

01:02:23.000 And when someone is an incredibly popular fighter, like a Canelo Alvarez or someone like that, where there's so much money invested in this fighter, and there's so much money potentially in future matchups, that if they lose...

01:02:35.000 Boy, that could switch the amount of money you make by an extraordinary amount.

01:02:41.000 But if they get away with a robbery, just a little bit of a robbery, over six months, a year, two years, people forget.

01:02:50.000 They forget.

01:02:51.000 Well, you've got to factor that into your handicapping.

01:02:53.000 Yeah.

01:02:53.000 You have to factor in possible robberies.

01:02:57.000 Or them getting the best of it, right.

01:02:58.000 Yeah, that's crazy.

01:02:59.000 You have to factor that in.

01:03:02.000 So when you were gambling on boxing, what's the biggest bet that you ever made on a fight?

01:03:07.000 I never made any real large bets on fights.

01:03:09.000 What's a not large bet for you, though?

01:03:11.000 When Hagler fought Sugar Ray at Caesars, I think I bet about $200,000 in that fight.

01:03:17.000 Who'd you bet on?

01:03:17.000 I bet on Sugar Ray.

01:03:19.000 Did you really?

01:03:19.000 I think you got lucky.

01:03:20.000 I did get lucky.

01:03:21.000 I think Hagler won that fight.

01:03:24.000 My man Billy Baxter, he likes Sugar Ray quite a bit.

01:03:27.000 And there was a guy named Herbie Hoops at that time that was a pretty sharp guy.

01:03:32.000 Anyway, but...

01:03:33.000 You know, the Hagler one is a weird one.

01:03:35.000 It was a weird one.

01:03:35.000 Because he loses that fight and then goes and becomes a superstar in Italy.

01:03:40.000 Yeah.

01:03:40.000 Where's the mob from, Billy?

01:03:42.000 Where's the mob from?

01:03:45.000 I mean, if I had to guess...

01:03:47.000 And when I watched that fight, it's almost like Hagler wasn't trying to take him out.

01:03:52.000 It was almost, man, I wish he was alive today.

01:03:55.000 And he's one of my all-time favorite fighters, I have to say.

01:03:57.000 I grew up in Boston.

01:03:59.000 He was a tough man.

01:04:01.000 He embodied discipline.

01:04:03.000 Yes, he did.

01:04:03.000 He was the man.

01:04:05.000 And he was probably, before Terrence Crawford, one of the best switch hitters that's ever played in the game, or ever fought.

01:04:10.000 He was incredible.

01:04:11.000 He was so good at being able to switch.

01:04:13.000 Southpaw, Orthodox, he fought equally well from both sides. 0.97

01:04:16.000 And he confused the shit out of people because of that. 0.95

01:04:19.000 That's a great skill. 0.90

01:04:21.000 That's something Terence Crawford does so well.

01:04:23.000 Such a good skill.

01:04:24.000 The ability to switch sides.

01:04:26.000 It's just so baffling.

01:04:28.000 And if you've ever sparred before, if you're used to sparring Orthodox people, and then you sparred at Southpaw, your whole brain has to do all these extra calculations.

01:04:35.000 And if you're not accustomed to sparring, Just sparring with Southpaws. 0.99

01:04:39.000 Forget about fighting them.

01:04:40.000 It screws everything up in your head.

01:04:42.000 You have to readjust.

01:04:44.000 Unless you've gone through a whole camp with Southpaws. 1.00

01:04:46.000 That's one thing that people are very reluctant to do.

01:04:49.000 Like, say, if a fighter is scheduled to fight an Orthodox fighter, and then two weeks out, that guy gets injured, and then another guy steps in to take his place, you find out this guy's a Southpaw. 0.98

01:04:58.000 Like, oh shit. 0.99

01:05:00.000 Like, it's such a different strategy. 0.99

01:05:02.000 Everything changes with your movement.

01:05:04.000 You know, you don't want to lead into the power hand.

01:05:06.000 So instead of circling to the left, now you're circling to the right.

01:05:09.000 Like, there's a lot going on.

01:05:11.000 Well, the same thing goes with the southpaw quarterbacks.

01:05:14.000 I would imagine.

01:05:15.000 Oh, yeah.

01:05:16.000 Big difference.

01:05:17.000 Oh, yeah.

01:05:17.000 Ball's coming from a totally different angle.

01:05:19.000 Yeah.

01:05:20.000 And the tendencies are different, too.

01:05:22.000 There's something else.

01:05:23.000 I'm not a left-handed person, but I have a theory about left-handed people.

01:05:27.000 I think they just get better at things quicker.

01:05:30.000 I think there's something about left-handed people.

01:05:32.000 They see the way everybody's doing everything backwards, and so they have to see the way they do it and then do it their way, and I think there's some sort of an advantage in that.

01:05:40.000 Okay, well, I hadn't thought that one out yet, but...

01:05:43.000 Some of the best pool players are left-handed.

01:05:45.000 Yeah.

01:05:45.000 There's a lot of, like, killer left-handed pool players.

01:05:48.000 There's a lot of killer left-handed fighters.

01:05:50.000 Yes.

01:05:50.000 I know a lot of people that are left-handed.

01:05:52.000 They just seem to have...

01:05:53.000 There's, like, an extra thing that they have that Orthodox people don't have. 1.00

01:05:57.000 I hadn't thought about that one, but...

01:05:58.000 You don't take that into consideration?

01:06:00.000 I hadn't, but I hadn't, but I'm going to go take a look at it.

01:06:03.000 So what was the biggest fight bet that you ever put on?

01:06:06.000 Probably that one.

01:06:07.000 How much was that?

01:06:08.000 The one that meant the most to me.

01:06:10.000 How much was the Hagler fight?

01:06:11.000 A couple hundred grand, probably.

01:06:13.000 But the one that absolutely meant the most to me is...

01:06:18.000 Terry Silver, this kid, I told you, got the fight at, we were at the Hacienda, which is now Mandalay Bay, and it was a six-round fight.

01:06:28.000 It was his first six-rounder, and he's fighting some kid out of L.A. You know Jimmy Montoya?

01:06:34.000 No.

01:06:35.000 Jimmy Montoya has been training fighters in L.A. for a zillion years, and he's stable.

01:06:42.000 Back in those days, he had like 120 fighters, okay?

01:06:46.000 And he would bring guys over, whether it be the Silver Slipper or the Show Boat or the Hacienda, and a lot of his fighters were on the card.

01:06:55.000 And he brought over this Hispanic kid, and this kid's fighting Terry, and you looked at the guy's record, and I think he was like maybe won three, lost two, and he had a draw.

01:07:08.000 And I'm thinking, well, this guy's got like zero chance.

01:07:14.000 So this is back when I'm drinking some, too.

01:07:16.000 So we go to the fight, my wife Susan and I, and Billy's working a spit bucket.

01:07:21.000 And the fight starts, and I'm betting everybody I can bet in the crowd.

01:07:25.000 I'm laying 5-1, 10-1, 20-1 up.

01:07:28.000 I think I'm just stealing, you know.

01:07:29.000 I mean, I think Terry's probably going to knock him out in the first round.

01:07:34.000 Well, Terry had gotten him a girlfriend in the meantime, and so he goes out there, and first round, he probably hit this guy 80 times.

01:07:44.000 The guy never laid a glove on him.

01:07:45.000 Terry Silver had a really, really good left jab, as good as any you've ever seen in your life.

01:07:51.000 But he didn't have a lot of power.

01:07:53.000 In the amateur ranks, like I said, he won like five national golden gloves.

01:07:57.000 But when he turned pro, he really didn't have a real good punch.

01:08:02.000 So he came out in the second round, and he drops his gloves, and he's showing off.

01:08:07.000 And this kid hit him, and when he hit him, His mouthpiece went out.

01:08:14.000 And then he's got the wailing on his head.

01:08:16.000 And I'm thinking, I'm watching this, I can't believe it. 0.81

01:08:19.000 And he, you know, he kind of knocked him silly, so to speak.

01:08:23.000 Well, Terry's, you know, but he's had enough fights.

01:08:26.000 He probably had as an amateur probably 50, 60 fights.

01:08:30.000 So he got out of the round, so they come out in the third round, and he still isn't shaking it completely off, and the guy goes wailing on him again.

01:08:37.000 And now, you know, he's bleeding, and he's got a gash over one eye, blood's coming out of his mouth.

01:08:45.000 So the fourth round comes out.

01:08:47.000 He's still just wearing him out.

01:08:49.000 My wife, Susan, said, look, you've got to stop this fight.

01:08:52.000 So I run down to Billy.

01:08:53.000 I said, Billy, I said, stop the fight.

01:08:57.000 And I said, by the way, I need to borrow $50,000.

01:09:01.000 He looked up at me and he said, let's let him go a little longer.

01:09:10.000 So Terry gets out of the round.

01:09:13.000 He comes out in the fifth round, and the fight completely turns around.

01:09:16.000 And he starts wearing this other guy's head out.

01:09:23.000 And he wins the fifth round.

01:09:24.000 I mean, it's not even close.

01:09:25.000 So they come out for the sixth round.

01:09:27.000 And this was only a six-round fight, Joe, but it was one of the best fights I've ever seen in my life.

01:09:32.000 And, I mean, they stood toe-to-toe in the sixth round, and they fought, and bell rings.

01:09:39.000 Well, I got a draw.

01:09:42.000 But it was one of the best fights I've ever seen.

01:09:44.000 It was a six-round fight, and I got a draw.

01:09:47.000 And the reason I got a draw is I had a kid who was a real classy fighter.

01:09:51.000 And I got to tell you the ending of this story.

01:09:55.000 I'm in prison.

01:09:56.000 I'm in Pensacola.

01:09:57.000 And I get letters.

01:09:59.000 And I got a letter.

01:10:01.000 And I hadn't seen Terry Silver since then.

01:10:04.000 When I gave up the fighters, I gave Terry to somebody.

01:10:07.000 I gave Tyrone Moore to Billy.

01:10:09.000 And I gave Dana Rosten to Billy.

01:10:11.000 I'm in prison.

01:10:12.000 Fast forward 2018-19.

01:10:16.000 I wish I'd have brought the letter.

01:10:17.000 I'll send you a copy of the letter.

01:10:19.000 And a letter from Terry Silver.

01:10:22.000 And he said, Billy, I remember he was talking about the fight, and he said, I remember you tried to stop the fight.

01:10:33.000 He said, I could not lose that fight for you and Miss Susan.

01:10:38.000 And he went on to talk about, you know, that and talked about our relationship.

01:10:43.000 And anyway, he sent me this letter.

01:10:45.000 And I mean, I don't know, 40 years later, I get this letter in prison from this kid.

01:10:49.000 And it's all about that night, that fight at the Hacienda, and how he wasn't going to lose that fight.

01:10:55.000 And he wasn't going to allow him to lose that fight because of Susan and me.

01:11:01.000 And it was touching.

01:11:03.000 Wow.

01:11:04.000 Dodge that bullet, huh?

01:11:07.000 Yeah, well, Billy would have stopped the fight, but the problem was, I said, I need to borrow $50,000.

01:11:13.000 He said, he hesitated, he said, let's let him go a little longer.

01:11:18.000 That's hilarious.

01:11:20.000 That's hilarious.

01:11:23.000 Wow.

01:11:23.000 So what did you wind up going to jail for?

01:11:26.000 I went to jail for insider trading.

01:11:30.000 See, Joe, publicly people know I've been on sports and they know I'm pretty good at that.

01:11:38.000 But I do a lot of other things, Joe.

01:11:41.000 Since the late 80s, you know, I've owned golf courses.

01:11:45.000 I had seven golf courses in Las Vegas, which...

01:11:48.000 You know, I built from scratch four of them and the other three, but I've owned and operated golf courses since the late 80s.

01:11:54.000 I've had golf courses in Chicago, New Mexico, Arizona, but I had seven in Las Vegas.

01:12:01.000 You know, when I got out of school, I went into the automobile business.

01:12:04.000 I was in it 16 years.

01:12:06.000 I got out.

01:12:07.000 But I'm in the automobile business too, so I had 22 car dealerships at one time.

01:12:13.000 So I had the golf courses, car dealerships, bet on sports, but I also invest in stocks.

01:12:22.000 I invest my own money, not someone else's money.

01:12:24.000 And, you know, actually I probably have a bigger presence with that than I do betting sports because it's a bigger market.

01:12:30.000 You can bet more.

01:12:32.000 Well, I bought a stock.

01:12:33.000 I'd owned it for 10 years.

01:12:35.000 And I'd gotten involved.

01:12:40.000 There was an SEC investigation.

01:12:42.000 The initial investigation was into myself and Carl Icahn.

01:12:46.000 And it involved a stock trade that I did with that that he'd owned stock in.

01:12:50.000 And that investigation went three and a half years.

01:12:52.000 It went nowhere because there was nothing there.

01:12:55.000 There was no wrongdoing at all.

01:12:56.000 And then...

01:12:58.000 And then there was a stock that I'd owned for 10 years, a stock called Dean Foods.

01:13:02.000 And they'd been involved in a material transaction they'd spun off a part of their company.

01:13:07.000 And I owned a large amount of this stock.

01:13:09.000 And the SEC was looking at anyone who bought and sold stock around a certain period of time, and I was one of those people.

01:13:18.000 And it was at the end of the other investigation, and because of my notoriety, who I was, I'd been indicted six times before, and I'd gone to court and beat them five times.

01:13:32.000 That started in 1983. So you were already a marked man.

01:13:39.000 Well, yeah.

01:13:39.000 What had you been indicted for?

01:13:42.000 I'd been indicted for betting on sports.

01:13:44.000 Joe, stop and try to get your head around this one.

01:13:48.000 In 1990, in Las Vegas, Nevada, the gaming capital of the world, the FBI took myself and my wife out of our home, and handcuffs and my wife, they had leg irons on her, and we were arrested and we were charged with being part of a criminal conspiracy.

01:14:09.000 Conspiring to bet on sports.

01:14:12.000 Bet on sports.

01:14:14.000 Now, here we are in 2024. Betting on sports is legal in the majority of the United States.

01:14:21.000 In 2023, in Las Vegas at the Circle Hotel, I was an inducted into the Sports Gamblers Hall of Fame for betting on sports.

01:14:32.000 But in 1990, in Las Vegas, Nevada, I was indicted, along with my wife, in charge with betting on sports.

01:14:42.000 So, yeah, I'd gone to court a number of times.

01:14:46.000 I'd beat them a number of times.

01:14:47.000 Every one of the indictments were centered around my sports betting.

01:14:51.000 That's what they were centered around, nothing more than less.

01:14:55.000 You know, I was a sports bettor.

01:14:57.000 So was sports betting illegal?

01:14:58.000 What were the laws?

01:14:59.000 Absolutely it wasn't illegal.

01:15:00.000 No?

01:15:01.000 No, not illegal at all.

01:15:02.000 I was charged with being part of a criminal conspiracy, conspiring to bet on sports. 0.84

01:15:09.000 Betting people in other states was ridiculous.

01:15:12.000 I went to court, my wife and I. We were exonerated.

01:15:15.000 So was it because it was legal in Vegas but not legal in other states?

01:15:19.000 They tried to make it that way.

01:15:20.000 But when we went to court and the facts came out, we were exonerated on all the charges.

01:15:25.000 There was one charge.

01:15:26.000 The vote was 11 to 1 to acquit us.

01:15:28.000 And come to find out that one guy who voted against us hadn't told the truth in his interview to be on the jury.

01:15:35.000 He was a former police officer.

01:15:37.000 So anyway, they chose not to indict us.

01:15:39.000 They dropped the case.

01:15:40.000 It was over with.

01:15:41.000 But we exonerated all the charges except the one charge, and they were voted 11-1 to acquit us on that.

01:15:47.000 And then I was indicted three times after that for the same thing, batting on sports.

01:15:52.000 It was thrown out of court every time.

01:15:54.000 And then, so anyway, but what happens, what I realized through all of this, Joe, is the higher profile you have, the bigger target you become.

01:16:06.000 Especially if you're someone who's beat them a number of times over a period of years, there becomes a vendetta.

01:16:12.000 You're the guy that everybody wants to bring down.

01:16:15.000 And then I'm involved in New York originally with a guy with Carl Icahn, one of the most successful investors in the history of the world, and that investigation went nowhere because there was nothing there.

01:16:28.000 And then this issue came up with Dean Foods, and bottom line was there was a lot of motivation to get me, to indict me, and that's exactly what happened.

01:16:39.000 The four people, there were five people involved in my case, Three prosecutors, a supervisor and the former U.S. attorney.

01:16:47.000 Four of them, as soon as my case was over within a matter of months, held press conferences and their claim to fame was they had sent me to prison.

01:16:55.000 Three of them have gone into private practice today.

01:16:59.000 Their sole business is they represent people with white collar crimes in the Southern District of New York.

01:17:04.000 They bring them back over with the people that they worked with for years and they cut deals.

01:17:09.000 The fourth one ran for the U.S. Congress in New York.

01:17:13.000 He's now a United States congressman.

01:17:15.000 And the guy who was a former U.S. attorney, he is now working for a law firm representing people with white collar crimes.

01:17:23.000 So they went from what they were doing to these very high paying jobs making a lot of money.

01:17:31.000 The other fellow is now in politics.

01:17:33.000 He's a congressman from New York.

01:17:36.000 So there's a lot of motivation for people on that side to send high-profile people to prison.

01:17:42.000 That's kind of how they get to the next rung of the letter, so to speak.

01:17:46.000 You know, the reason I wrote this book, Joe, is I started—I began to write this book in 2003 with a guy in Las Vegas.

01:17:57.000 His name was Jack Sheehan.

01:17:58.000 Good friend, good writer, good guy.

01:18:01.000 And we worked on it for a while, and I decided I'm not writing any book.

01:18:04.000 Okay.

01:18:05.000 Well, fast forward 2017. I walked into federal prison in Pensacola, Florida when I was 71 years old with a five-year sentence, which could have easily been a life sentence.

01:18:21.000 And while I was in prison, my daughter committed suicide.

01:18:26.000 So I had to write this book.

01:18:28.000 I had to write it for a number of reasons.

01:18:31.000 I wanted to share my childhood that you and I went over a little bit.

01:18:37.000 I want to help people because, you know, I don't care who you are or what part you're at in your life.

01:18:43.000 We all have issues that we're dealing with.

01:18:45.000 So I wanted to share my childhood and then I wanted to share You know, the addictions that I had when I was younger.

01:18:52.000 I had an issue with alcohol.

01:18:55.000 I got addicted to betting sports.

01:18:57.000 And then later on in my life, as I became more mature and I was able to overcome those things, you know, I got in business.

01:19:07.000 I've been successful with that.

01:19:10.000 And, you know, I've become a fairly successful sports bettor.

01:19:18.000 And then I went to prison, which I had to share that experience because when I went into prison, there was only one positive thing that came out of that, Joe.

01:19:27.000 I mentored around two dozen men.

01:19:30.000 And some of these men have been in prison 20, 25 years.

01:19:34.000 And it really opened my eyes.

01:19:37.000 You know, every time there was a visitation where I was at in prison, I had someone who visited me.

01:19:43.000 Sixty percent of the people in prison never get a visit.

01:19:46.000 But these men that I mentored, not a one of them wanted to go back to prison.

01:19:52.000 But I spent a lot of one-on-one time with them and the closer they would get to release, you know, the more apprehensive they became.

01:20:01.000 I mean tough guys, you know, I mean tough guys, you know, ripped guys, had been in prison 20-25 years, they would become very emotional.

01:20:10.000 They didn't want to go back to prison but they knew they were probably going to come back to prison because they had no way to earn a living.

01:20:17.000 The only thing they learned in prison was how to become a better criminal.

01:20:21.000 And yeah, they were going to get out.

01:20:23.000 While they were in the halfway house, they were going to get a job someplace, making minimum wage.

01:20:27.000 But as soon as that was over, they had to do something to feed their families.

01:20:31.000 And they, you know, they had no job skill set.

01:20:35.000 So when I got out of prison, I knew I had to try to do something about that, okay?

01:20:40.000 And so I got involved with Harry Reid when I originally got out of prison, former senator from Nevada, former majority leader.

01:20:50.000 And I got involved with Harry because clearly Democrats are in power and I wanted to put vocational schools in the federal prisons.

01:20:59.000 And I was willing to put up some of my money initially to get it started.

01:21:03.000 And unfortunately, Senator Reid passed away before we were able to get anything done.

01:21:09.000 Well, a former sheriff in Las Vegas, Bill Young, he told me, he said, Bill, he said, the best reentry program in the United States, it's in Las Vegas.

01:21:20.000 He said, it's called Hope for Prisoners.

01:21:22.000 I said, I never heard of it.

01:21:23.000 He said, well, I want you to meet this guy that runs it.

01:21:26.000 So there's a guy who runs it, his name is John Ponder, who's been in prison himself twice.

01:21:32.000 He started his program in 2012, Joe.

01:21:36.000 The recidivism rate is only 5%.

01:21:40.000 So, you know, being a leery guy, being a gambler, you know, there's a lot of people looking for your money these days.

01:21:45.000 We all know that.

01:21:48.000 But I met with John Ponder and became really impressed with him.

01:21:55.000 But the more I learned about him and the program and what he's done, I got superly impressed.

01:22:01.000 And so my wife and I got more involved.

01:22:04.000 We made some financial assistance available, and they were able to add to some of the things they were doing as far as, you know, teaching and stuff.

01:22:14.000 This is an 18-month program these people are in, by the way.

01:22:18.000 And the first thing they do, almost every one of these people have an issue with drugs.

01:22:21.000 First thing they do is get them off of drugs.

01:22:25.000 Second thing they do, they get them right with their families.

01:22:27.000 You got to be right with your family.

01:22:29.000 And that's the reason this program works so good.

01:22:32.000 And every month, we have a graduation there.

01:22:36.000 The graduation, Joe, was held at Metropolitan Police Headquarters in downtown Las Vegas.

01:22:43.000 There's usually 50 to 75 police officers there.

01:22:48.000 Come to find out there's 200 police officers in Las Vegas Metro that are mentoring these people now.

01:22:54.000 A typical graduation, you've got the mayor there, you've got the district attorney there, you've got a judge there, you've got the head of corrections for Nevada, sometimes the governor's there if he's in town.

01:23:05.000 And usually you got about a thousand people there, friends, and you got a lot of mentors in the Las Vegas area that come.

01:23:12.000 They come up and they receive their diplomas.

01:23:15.000 And the second that's over, there's a job fair and they all have jobs before they leave.

01:23:19.000 And then in these graduations, they'll invariably always have someone who's been out of the program for a year or two years or five years.

01:23:26.000 They'll come up and speak and they'll talk about their life and how it changed their life.

01:23:34.000 The current governor we have, he was a former sheriff that was involved in this program.

01:23:39.000 His name is Joe Lombardo.

01:23:42.000 And so Joe recognized how important it is for these people to have a job skill set when they come out of prison also.

01:23:50.000 So we spoke to him and the head of corrections in Nevada, and we now are putting vocational schools in Nevada prisons.

01:24:01.000 And they're going to be able to get certified to be an electrician, a plumber, air-conditioned repair truck driver, And when we decided to do this, of course it takes money, there's another family in Las Vegas, the Ingolstadt family,

01:24:18.000 and so they agreed to put up two million dollars.

01:24:20.000 Susan and I agreed to put up two million, and the state agreed to put up a million.

01:24:25.000 So the night they made this announcement, I was asked to come and speak.

01:24:30.000 And I got there, and there was another speaker, her name was Alice Johnson.

01:24:34.000 Do you know Alice Johnson?

01:24:35.000 No.

01:24:36.000 Alice Johnson is the lady that I was imprisoned at the time, but President Trump pardoned her, and he pardoned her because her case got brought to his attention by Kim Kardashian.

01:24:48.000 And so Alice Johnson got up and spoke, and I was blown away with her, and I was blown away with her speech.

01:24:57.000 I think she was from Mississippi, I think, or Louisiana, one of the two.

01:25:03.000 And she'd gone to prison for being, quote, a drug mule. 1.00

01:25:07.000 And if I understood her correctly, and I think I did, I think her role as a drug mule was she was conveying messages between the guy selling drugs and the guy supplying drugs, and she was strictly on the phone conveying messages.

01:25:20.000 Never touched a drug, never sold a drug.

01:25:22.000 First time offense, they gave her life in prison with no parole.

01:25:26.000 First time offense.

01:25:27.000 So she was in prison, I think, about 22 years and had become a model person in prison.

01:25:35.000 I think she'd become a minister.

01:25:37.000 And she got pardoned.

01:25:39.000 But that went into either all or most of the prisons in the United States that night.

01:25:48.000 So we followed it up.

01:25:49.000 We went out to Indian Springs State Prison in Nevada.

01:25:54.000 And we walked in the gymnasium.

01:25:56.000 I was there with John Ponder and myself.

01:25:58.000 And there's, I don't know, 500, 600, 800 inmates there.

01:26:03.000 And when we originally walked in, we started talking to them.

01:26:07.000 You could kind of see, you know, they were kind of disinterested.

01:26:11.000 Some were listening, but most weren't.

01:26:13.000 But when John got up and he got to talking about what we were going to do, you could see they started to get more interested.

01:26:18.000 And when I got up there, you know, I said, well, you guys are probably trying to figure out what this old graded dude here is to talk to you about today.

01:26:26.000 So I kind of explained to them while I was there what my background was, the fact that I'd been in prison, and what we were going to do with the vocational schools.

01:26:35.000 Well, Joe, when you got finished, you could hear a pin drop.

01:26:39.000 And we started doing Q&A. And it seems like the questions went on forever.

01:26:46.000 Finally, the correctional officer said, you know, they have to get back.

01:26:49.000 And we had to end the Q&A. But now we have vocational schools in Nevada prisons.

01:26:57.000 And it's just, to me, it's not only those men that I remembered that I mentored.

01:27:04.000 Okay, when they go home, a lot of them have families, you know, they got four or five children.

01:27:11.000 Okay, so those children, if that father goes home and he has a job as an electrician, a plumber, air conditioning, repairer, Their father is no longer a criminal.

01:27:23.000 Their father is an electrician.

01:27:26.000 He's a plumber.

01:27:26.000 And I think there's a much greater chance that that child will follow in those footsteps than possibly that of crime, a life of crime.

01:27:35.000 So anyway, long story.

01:27:37.000 That's a beautiful thing to be proud of.

01:27:39.000 Well, I am proud of it.

01:27:40.000 But there were a number of reasons I wrote this book.

01:27:43.000 I mean, you know, I see the...

01:27:45.000 So-called, whatever number you pick out, the 50 million new people that have been in sports.

01:27:50.000 And I see the way that sports is being marketed, the way it's being pitched to these people.

01:27:56.000 And I can see, you know, it's almost a sense that a large, large part of them are going to become addicted, okay?

01:28:05.000 If I had been pitched on sports the way they're being pitched on sports today with a phone, I mean, I got addicted without it.

01:28:10.000 I can only imagine what it would have been with it.

01:28:13.000 And then on top of it, there's no law whatsoever now that they have to disclose anything.

01:28:19.000 So people are making bets on sports.

01:28:22.000 They have no idea what the odds are they're laying or getting or anything else.

01:28:25.000 There's no disclosure whatsoever.

01:28:27.000 And then on top of that, you know, They don't even understand the basics of sports betting, so I wanted to put that in the book.

01:28:37.000 By the way, Joe, you didn't ask me this.

01:28:40.000 100% of any money that comes out of this book goes to charity.

01:28:43.000 It goes to Opportunity Village in Las Vegas, which is an organization that works with intellectually challenged people.

01:28:49.000 It goes to Hope for Prisoners, and it goes to an organization in Louisville, Kentucky called Cedar Lake Lodge, which works with intellectually challenged people.

01:28:58.000 That's beautiful.

01:28:59.000 Yeah.

01:29:00.000 That's really great that you're doing that, man.

01:29:02.000 It really is.

01:29:03.000 This case that they got you on insider trading, what was the allegation?

01:29:08.000 What did they say that you had done?

01:29:09.000 Well, they said that a guy who was on the board at the time had passed me along non-public information.

01:29:16.000 And I had taken that non-public information, and I had used it to trade on the stock, take advantage, unfair advantage, illegal advantage, and made money.

01:29:28.000 And that was the allegation, and that's what I was convicted of when I went to prison.

01:29:33.000 Now, you know, I could give you the background and the details of it, Joe, and I think even Even the life you lived, I think you would find it fairly interesting.

01:29:48.000 I owned this stock for 10 years, and this fellow who was on a board of directors, his name was Tom Davis.

01:29:56.000 I recently met this guy in Dallas, Texas in like 2000. And I was trying to raise money.

01:30:03.000 I was trying to buy American Golf and National Golf properties.

01:30:07.000 He was running Donaldson, Lufkin, and Jennerette in Dallas at the time, which was an investment bank.

01:30:14.000 And I went there to try to raise the money to buy these entities.

01:30:18.000 I didn't raise any money through him, but I hit it off with him.

01:30:22.000 I liked the guy a lot.

01:30:23.000 He played golf.

01:30:26.000 We knew some other people.

01:30:27.000 He had a home in La Jolla at the time.

01:30:30.000 So we became friends.

01:30:33.000 In 2002, Donald Lufkin and Janet Rett got sold out and he started his own private investment firm.

01:30:41.000 And then, you know, he would call us on deals in Las Vegas and we invested in some of the deals he called us on, some of the deals we didn't invest in.

01:30:51.000 This guy was a very prominent guy in Dallas.

01:30:53.000 He owned part of the Dallas Stars.

01:30:55.000 He owned part of the Texas Rangers.

01:30:57.000 He was a member of Preston Trail Country Club.

01:31:01.000 When he was in La Jolla, I played golf with him.

01:31:04.000 I played a member guest with him one time at La Jolla Country Club.

01:31:07.000 I had a lot of respect for this guy.

01:31:09.000 And every time I was ever around this guy, he was the most buttoned-up guy that you could ever imagine.

01:31:15.000 And I didn't realize it at the time, and I don't think most people around him realized it, but I think he ended up with a real issue with alcohol.

01:31:26.000 And he came out in court and it looked like he ended up with some sort of an uncontrollable issue, I think, with women, too.

01:31:36.000 And I think he lost all of his money gambling.

01:31:39.000 And then what happened after he lost all of his money gambling, he was on the board of directors of a charity in Dallas, and he'd actually embezzled some money from them to pay some of his gambling debts.

01:31:52.000 Clearly, I was totally unaware of any of this.

01:31:55.000 I don't think anyone in Texas even knew about it, especially, you know, the people at Dean Foods.

01:32:03.000 Well, what happened is Dean Foods, when I got involved with it early on, they were made up of like three different divisions.

01:32:13.000 They had just a, we'll call it a regular milk division, which was the majority of their business, the majority of their revenue.

01:32:21.000 Then they had an organic division called White Wave, and then they had another division that primarily sold products to institutions, say like McDonald's and long shelf type products.

01:32:33.000 Well, during the years, people quit drinking a lot less milk.

01:32:38.000 We'll call it fluid milk.

01:32:40.000 And as a result, the fluid milk business was in decline.

01:32:45.000 The organic business was growing leaps and bounds, you know, soy milk, oat milk, different types of those types of different milks.

01:32:57.000 Well, the stock traded at a depressed price because the majority of their revenue came from fluid milk, just regular old milk.

01:33:07.000 But the other parts of their business, they were growing substantially.

01:33:12.000 And that was really the play with the stock.

01:33:17.000 The federal government, they set the price of raw milk every month.

01:33:21.000 That's publicized.

01:33:22.000 So that's what the farmer gets for his milk when he sells it to someone who's in the milk business.

01:33:31.000 So I bought in this stock, and I realized pretty quick that I thought it was like J&J. I thought it was something that didn't have a lot of volatility to it.

01:33:39.000 Well, I realized there was a lot more volatility to it than I realized because the price of milk...

01:33:43.000 The price of petroleum products because Dean Foods had a huge fleet of trucks for transportation that were all running on diesel fuel.

01:33:56.000 And then the cartons were made out of oil.

01:33:58.000 And there were a lot of things that had a material influence on how they were going to do as a company.

01:34:06.000 Well, in 2010, Dean Foods came out and publicly announced that they were looking at spinning off White Wave, the organic division.

01:34:16.000 They hired a company to come in and do an assessment and came back and said, well, the time wasn't right for them to do it, but it was something they would certainly consider in the future if they felt like it was in the best interest of the company.

01:34:29.000 In 2000, I sold all of my stock.

01:34:33.000 In 2011, at the very end of 2011, I bought 58,900 shares of that stock from J.P. Morgan.

01:34:44.000 And the only reason I bought this stock, and for me it was a very, very small amount of stock, a very small investment.

01:34:51.000 The only reason I bought the stock was J.P. Morgan was their lead bank.

01:34:56.000 And I knew if I ever tried to talk to that analyst about Dean Foods and he wasn't available, he was in a blackout period, maybe there was something going on, you know.

01:35:06.000 Because I knew they were going to spin this company off eventually, and not only did I know it, everyone else knew it.

01:35:11.000 It wasn't a matter of if, it was just a matter of when.

01:35:14.000 So you fast forward to May of 12, that month Deutsche Bank had come out with a report, and they had predicted that White Wave was going to be spun off.

01:35:26.000 Well, they had an earnings report that month in May, and I had put a limited order in to buy the stock.

01:35:32.000 Do you know what a limited order is?

01:35:33.000 No.

01:35:34.000 Well, it's like making an offer on a house, okay?

01:35:39.000 A limited order on stock, let's say the stock's trading at $10.

01:35:42.000 You call your broker up and you say, okay, Joe, I want to buy so many shares of Dean Foods stock, but I'm not paying any more than $10.

01:35:51.000 If it goes past 10, I don't want any.

01:35:53.000 But anything you can buy for 10 or less, I want to buy this number of shares of stock.

01:35:58.000 So I put a limited order in that day to buy that stock, and I didn't get it bought.

01:36:03.000 I got half the stock bought because the price had gone up.

01:36:07.000 Well, the next day they reported earnings and they also announced that they were back considering to spend off White Wave stock.

01:36:14.000 Stock went up about $1.20.

01:36:17.000 I bought another 750,000 shares of stock and paid the additional $1.20.

01:36:21.000 I didn't sell a share.

01:36:23.000 That was in May.

01:36:25.000 In June, I didn't buy any stock.

01:36:30.000 In July, there was a severe drought in the United States.

01:36:34.000 Corn prices went through the ceiling, and when corn prices went up, the price of milk's going to go up because the farmer's got to feed his milk with corn, right?

01:36:46.000 Or corn.

01:36:47.000 And then on top of that, what happened when the corn prices went way up, the bean food stock price went way down.

01:36:57.000 And I had a loss on the stock at that time of, I had a paper loss of, I don't know, three, four, five million dollars.

01:37:04.000 Well, when he did that, I went back in and I bought another, say, a million and a half shares of the stock.

01:37:10.000 Which was consistent with what I've done with every stock I've ever owned almost.

01:37:14.000 If I buy a stock, price goes down, I'm going to buy more of that stock to average a price out, especially if I feel like the stock is really undervalued.

01:37:22.000 And the only reason Dean Food's stock had gone down was because of this drought and the corn prices had gone up.

01:37:27.000 Both of those things were temporary.

01:37:29.000 Droughts don't last forever, and I knew as soon as the drought normalized itself, the stock would go back up regardless.

01:37:36.000 But on top of that, Dean Foods had announced that they were considering spending off white wave stock.

01:37:41.000 This was the second time publicly that they had done this.

01:37:45.000 Okay, because in 2010, they did it, they did a study.

01:37:49.000 Now this is 2012. So in August, when they reported earnings, they confirmed, we're going to spend off White Wave stock.

01:37:57.000 Stock goes up about $4.50 a share.

01:37:59.000 I didn't sell a share, Joe.

01:38:01.000 I bought another million shares.

01:38:03.000 I paid an additional $4.50 a share.

01:38:07.000 From that August until the following February of the next year, every time Dean Food's stock would go down, I would buy more of it.

01:38:16.000 Okay?

01:38:17.000 So now we get to February of 2013, and I own 5,300,000 shares of the stock.

01:38:27.000 Well, I wanted to buy a home in Palm Desert, so I bought a home at a place called Bighorn Country Club.

01:38:33.000 I sold a million shares of the stock to pay for the house, and I kept 4,300,000 shares.

01:38:40.000 Two weeks later, Dean Foods reported earnings, and the earnings were bad.

01:38:43.000 The stock went down $2.

01:38:46.000 That was one of the charges of insider trading they charged me with, Joe.

01:38:50.000 They said that I had prior knowledge that the earnings were going to be bad.

01:38:54.000 I avoided a $2 million loss on a million shares of stock that I sold.

01:38:59.000 But I lost $8.6 million on the stock I kept.

01:39:02.000 So does that make sense to you?

01:39:04.000 If you're trading on insider trading, I would only sold a million shares of it?

01:39:07.000 I mean, why wouldn't I sell it all, you know?

01:39:09.000 That was one of the charges.

01:39:10.000 But anyway, fast forward— How did they try to prove that you had insider information?

01:39:15.000 Well, I'm going to get around to that.

01:39:17.000 I'm a slow storyteller.

01:39:18.000 No worries.

01:39:19.000 I like it.

01:39:19.000 But I'm thorough.

01:39:21.000 I had 31 months to think about this in prison, Joe.

01:39:24.000 So anyway, fast forward to the following August, which was a year after they had announced publicly they were going to do this.

01:39:33.000 I kept my 4,300,000 shares and then the following August when they finally spun it off is when I sold the balance of my stock.

01:39:41.000 So they did the investigation and what happens, any time there's a material transaction with a publicly traded company, the SEC, they'll send out a list of people who've bought or sold significant amounts of stock to the boards of directors and they'll ask them, do you know this person?

01:39:57.000 And when he did, Mr. Davis, he identified me, and rightfully so, who I was, what our relationship was.

01:40:05.000 So the SEC, they were doing their investigation.

01:40:11.000 And after the case in New York with Mr. Alcott and I went away, there was nothing there, this Dean Foods thing came up.

01:40:20.000 I didn't realize it at the time, but Tom Davis had gotten involved in some pretty bad things.

01:40:31.000 So the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, they leaked two stories.

01:40:38.000 And all the details in the book about the leaked stories, 100% of it.

01:40:43.000 And when they leaked these stories, in one of the stories they put Tom Davis' name in the book.

01:40:49.000 So Tom Davis and his lawyer, a guy named Milsheimer, they contact the SEC and they say, look, we want to come and give a voluntary interview.

01:40:58.000 So they go up, they give a voluntary interview, and they say, look, they denied emphatically that they'd ever given me any inside information, told them under no circumstances had they ever given me any inside information.

01:41:13.000 Well, the SEC but more importantly the FBI continued to investigate Tom Davis.

01:41:20.000 They learned that he had embezzled this money from a better women's charity in Dallas.

01:41:25.000 They learned that he had a fraudulent tax return filed because what happened when he took this money out of this charity, When he put the money back in the charity, it creates an entry.

01:41:37.000 You know, a withdrawal and an entry.

01:41:39.000 Well, the guy who normally filed the taxes for the charity had told him, we're going to have to show this withdrawal and this entry.

01:41:46.000 He said, oh, no, no, you can't do that.

01:41:49.000 Because he didn't want other people on the board of directors to know what he had done.

01:41:54.000 So he gets someone else to file a return, which is fraudulent.

01:41:57.000 He doesn't disclose this.

01:42:00.000 And then come to find out, he had given insider information to someone else in Dallas, another man there.

01:42:08.000 So they continued to investigate him, and I think after he and his lawyer learned that they had him for embezzlement, they had him for tax fraud, and they believed they had him for insider trading,

01:42:24.000 this other man there that he had actually given insider information to, Two years after he'd given his interview, he decided that he did want to make a deal.

01:42:34.000 So his lawyer had represented Mark Cuban in his case in Dallas where Mark Cuban had an SEC case.

01:42:42.000 In that case, his lawyer had hired a lawyer out of New York, a guy named Chris Clark.

01:42:47.000 And Chris Clark was the lawyer that recently represented President Biden and had to withdraw from the case.

01:42:55.000 I'm sorry, he didn't represent President Biden.

01:42:57.000 I'll take that back.

01:42:58.000 He represented President Biden's son.

01:43:01.000 But he had to withdraw himself from the case for some reason sometime back.

01:43:05.000 That's the same Chris Clark.

01:43:07.000 Well, anyway, Milsheimer had called us Chris Clark and said, look, you know, we gave an interview two years ago, but evidently things have changed.

01:43:16.000 They felt like they were under a threat of him getting some major jail time because he embezzled the money, he filed a fraudulent tax return, and he had given us other guys that information.

01:43:28.000 So Chris Clark, there's another young lawyer who had just joined their firm, and this young lawyer was named Tom, his name was Naftalis, and he, I think Benjamin Naftalis, and he had just worked at the Southern District in New York,

01:43:46.000 and he'd been gone for a short period of time, and he'd actually worked in, I think worked with the same prosecutors investigating this case.

01:43:54.000 So, Tom Davis and Milsheimer, they end up retaining Chris Clark and this Benjamin Naphtalus to represent them.

01:44:02.000 So they go up there and decide they're going to make a deal with the government.

01:44:06.000 In return, the government, they're not going to, you know, they're not going to push for him to spend any time in prison.

01:44:16.000 So he, do you know what a proffer is?

01:44:21.000 No.

01:44:22.000 Okay.

01:44:22.000 I didn't know what one was either until this case came up.

01:44:25.000 What a proffer is, Joe, if you meet with prosecutors or you meet with the FBI and you decide you're going to tell them something about someone else, that's called a proffer.

01:44:38.000 You're going to tell them everything you know.

01:44:40.000 It has to be truthful.

01:44:42.000 And the reason for a proffer is once you tell them, then they'll decide, okay, this is what we're willing to do for you.

01:44:51.000 Well, Davis went to have these proper sessions with the FBI and the prosecutors pertaining to me.

01:45:05.000 You were going to have a proper session and you were going to tell someone about someone else.

01:45:10.000 How many proper sessions do you think it would take for you to tell someone that story?

01:45:15.000 And let's say the proper sessions lasted two hours each, two and a half hours each.

01:45:18.000 How long do you think it would tell for you to explain to someone, you know, how long do you think it may take?

01:45:26.000 I don't know.

01:45:26.000 It took him 29 of them.

01:45:28.000 He had 29 proper sessions, Joe.

01:45:31.000 60 hours.

01:45:33.000 To get his story straight about supposedly how he gave me inside information.

01:45:40.000 And in court he said, I never asked him for inside information one time, he quote, voluntarily gave it to me, inside information, as if I would know what he was giving me was inside information.

01:45:57.000 And in court he testified he didn't think he was going to do one day in jail.

01:46:01.000 The bottom line was embezzling from maturity, filing a fraudulent tax return, giving another man inside information.

01:46:09.000 All those things he wasn't going to do one day in jail for any of them.

01:46:13.000 And he was their only witness against me, Joe.

01:46:18.000 Now, my lawyers caught him and A minimum of 25 lives.

01:46:25.000 I mean, he came out in court, I think on one business trip, he called 22 escort services.

01:46:32.000 Yeah, I mean, the guy...

01:46:34.000 He was off the rails.

01:46:36.000 No, the guy that I described to you that I met in 2000, 2002, The guy that used to own part of the Dallas Stars and the Texas Rangers, and the guy that was this—I mean, he'd gone from that to this.

01:46:49.000 With drugs involved?

01:46:50.000 I don't know.

01:46:51.000 A lot of alcohol was involved.

01:46:52.000 I don't know that.

01:46:54.000 But to give you an idea how wacky this guy was, he pleads guilty to a bunch of felonies.

01:47:00.000 It wouldn't make no difference.

01:47:00.000 He had pled guilty to 100 of them because they told him he was convinced he wasn't going to do a day in jail.

01:47:05.000 And they were going after you.

01:47:06.000 Oh, yeah, yeah.

01:47:07.000 And so anyway, after he does this, to give you an idea how wacky this guy was, after he does this, he comes to Las Vegas and he throws a party at the Wynn Hotel celebrating his deal he's cut with the government.

01:47:18.000 He lost another $50,000 in their gambling.

01:47:20.000 That's how whacked out this guy was.

01:47:22.000 So anyway, so that was their only witness against me, Joe.

01:47:25.000 They had no other witnesses against me.

01:47:27.000 They had 60 days of wiretaps on me.

01:47:30.000 How many of you think they played in court?

01:47:32.000 Zero.

01:47:33.000 Zero.

01:47:34.000 That's right.

01:47:35.000 The lead FBI agent in the case who was in charge of the entire squad of the White Collar Crime Investigation Unit in New York, his name was David Chavez.

01:47:47.000 When these stories were leaked in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, Our lawyers filed a complaint with the court accusing the FBI and the Southern District of leaking this information to the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

01:48:04.000 They came back and denied it, said this never happened, said we were on a fishing expedition.

01:48:09.000 That's what Preet Bharara said, we were on a fishing expedition.

01:48:13.000 But the judge, to their surprise, I think he said something like, well, these quotes are almost identical to the ones that were made at the grand jury.

01:48:21.000 See, he orders an evidentiary hearing, which completely shocked them because normally the judges are just a rubber stamp for them up there and they just take their word.

01:48:32.000 You know, we didn't have anything to do with this.

01:48:34.000 There's no point in having a hearing.

01:48:35.000 Well, this judge, he did.

01:48:36.000 He said, well, we need to have an evidentiary hearing.

01:48:41.000 So, a couple days before the hearing, they sent a letter over to the judge.

01:48:46.000 It's a letter, they call it in camera.

01:48:49.000 What that means is it's a private letter that no one else can see.

01:48:53.000 My lawyers never got a copy of it, but they sent this letter over to this judge.

01:48:58.000 They said, Judge, you know what, we did do this.

01:49:02.000 David Chavez, the head of the white-collar crime unit for the FBI in New York, he's the one who did it.

01:49:10.000 Yeah, there were five other FBI agents who were aware of it, who were in the meetings with him, but they really didn't have anything to do with it.

01:49:15.000 It was just him.

01:49:16.000 But he did it, and we want to fess up.

01:49:21.000 But we want you to keep this totally private.

01:49:23.000 We don't want anyone to know anything about this.

01:49:25.000 It'll hurt our reputation, and we recommend that you hold him in contempt of court.

01:49:31.000 Well, our lawyers had found out that there was a letter, but they found out we weren't—they weren't telling us what was in it.

01:49:38.000 So, you know, my lawyers were—you know, they got—they filed a bunch of motions for this judge to make this letter public.

01:49:48.000 Well, finally the judge did make the letter public and copy the letters in my book.

01:49:55.000 There were approximately 2,000 emails, Joe.

01:49:58.000 They turned over five or six is what they turned over.

01:50:02.000 Those public emails are in my book, too.

01:50:04.000 But I'm going to give you an example of what those emails contain.

01:50:10.000 There's a guy who is a journalist for the New York Times.

01:50:13.000 He's still there.

01:50:14.000 His name is Protus.

01:50:15.000 And his name is Ben Protus.

01:50:17.000 And if you look up all the stories he does, it's pretty easy to see.

01:50:21.000 You know, he writes stories predominantly about cases that involve the Southern District in New York.

01:50:29.000 Well, in the one email that they turned over involving Ben Protus, Ben Protus had written a story about our case, and he was forced to do a redaction, a correction.

01:50:41.000 And when he was forced to do the correction, he was upset about this because the story had been given to him by this guy, David Chavez.

01:50:49.000 So he calls this Chavez up and he said, look, he said, the story you gave me, I had to do this redaction, and he's complaining to the guy.

01:50:58.000 The guy says, look, you're on my radar screen now, and so is the New York Times.

01:51:03.000 It's an FBI agent threatening this guy.

01:51:06.000 So this guy Protus, he calls up this guy Zobel, who's the number two in the U.S. Attorney's Office.

01:51:10.000 He's right under Preet Bharara.

01:51:12.000 And he tells him the whole story.

01:51:14.000 He said, you know, I did a story.

01:51:16.000 I had to go in and do a correction.

01:51:18.000 He said, I called this FBI agent, and he threatened me.

01:51:21.000 He threatened me, and he threatened the New York Times.

01:51:23.000 This guy, Zobel, he sends an email out to the rest of the people in the U.S. Attorney's Office, or a number of people in the U.S. Attorney's Office, and he tells them.

01:51:33.000 He recants exactly what happened.

01:51:36.000 This guy, Protus, calls him up.

01:51:39.000 That email's in the book, too.

01:51:44.000 There were five of those emails.

01:51:46.000 There was another email in there where they identify a lady who writes for the Wall Street Journal. 0.82

01:51:51.000 Her name is Susan Pulliam.

01:51:53.000 She's still there.

01:51:54.000 She still writes for them.

01:51:55.000 If you look at stuff she writes, it's very similar to Ben Protus.

01:51:59.000 They're all counter-government kind of stories.

01:52:02.000 Chavez says he has a relationship with her.

01:52:06.000 The bottom line was, you know, like my case, if she were to call you up and interview you, things that she learned about people he was investigating, she would pass it along to him too.

01:52:21.000 That's one of the emails they turned over.

01:52:23.000 That's in my book also.

01:52:25.000 So what happened is when these two stories got leaked in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times within seconds of each other, Tom Davis' name wasn't in the first one.

01:52:38.000 My name was in there.

01:52:39.000 Phil Mickelson's name was in there.

01:52:40.000 Carl Icahn's name was in there.

01:52:42.000 But they continued to leak the stories in there.

01:52:44.000 And then finally they got Davis' name in there, which when his name came in there, he gets Milsheimer, goes and denies it two years later after they found out all these other things.

01:52:52.000 He decides he will be a witness for them.

01:52:56.000 In return, he doesn't think he's going to do a day in jail.

01:52:59.000 And he hires this lawyer up there who had worked with them for eight years, the prosecutors.

01:53:05.000 It still takes him 29 meetings for him to get his story straight.

01:53:08.000 So I go to court.

01:53:09.000 He's the only witness against me.

01:53:12.000 They don't play one wiretap.

01:53:15.000 But when a jury went back, Joe – by the way, the FBI agent, Chavez, was suspended from the FBI. The judge in our case referred his case to the Office of Public Integrity in Washington, D.C. And he recommended he be charged with two felonies,

01:53:33.000 criminal contempt and obstruction of justice.

01:53:36.000 Do you know what happened to Mr. Chavez?

01:53:38.000 He was allowed to retire, Joe, with pay, and he's never been prosecuted for anything.

01:53:47.000 So when the jury went back and they convicted me, They didn't know that there were 60 days of war attacks.

01:53:54.000 They didn't know that the lead FBI agent for three and a half years who had been doing this case had been thrown out of the FBI and had been described by the judge doing their case.

01:54:07.000 He said he should be charged with two fellows.

01:54:08.000 They didn't know any of that.

01:54:10.000 Now, in retrospect, like I said, I had 31 months to think about this.

01:54:16.000 Our case went on for a little over three weeks.

01:54:20.000 We're in the winter in New York.

01:54:23.000 Weather's really bad.

01:54:25.000 You know, they stopped the trial 15, 20 times.

01:54:28.000 The jury, they were sleeping, and one guy snored so loud.

01:54:31.000 The judge stopped the trial.

01:54:33.000 So they'd already completely lost interest.

01:54:35.000 And the case is about insider trading.

01:54:38.000 I mean, a lot of people don't understand stock trading, Joe.

01:54:43.000 And, you know, they got cross-sided up there with the lawyer showing them graphs and all these type things.

01:54:49.000 And the one guy on the jury had said, he said the next week he was going to have to leave.

01:54:55.000 He couldn't stay on the jury any longer.

01:54:57.000 He was going to go on a trip.

01:54:58.000 So after the prosecution that wrapped their case up, I had to make a decision whether I was going to testify or not.

01:55:05.000 My lawyer said, look, nobody can believe this guy, Tom Davis.

01:55:09.000 And he said, there's no way they can convict you if they can't believe Tom Davis.

01:55:14.000 And we had 23 witnesses prepared to testify.

01:55:19.000 And we talked about it, and the lawyer said, it's strictly your decision.

01:55:23.000 We're just telling you, we don't think that there's any way they can convict you if you don't testify.

01:55:32.000 So we ended up putting five witnesses on.

01:55:34.000 We put on three stockbrokers that I did business with, a controller from our company, and a pilot who had flown me.

01:55:43.000 And he was on there for one reason.

01:55:46.000 There was an allegation I was in Texas at a certain time and I wasn't, and we proved I wasn't.

01:55:52.000 Anyway, we rested our case.

01:55:55.000 Big mistake.

01:55:56.000 I should have testified.

01:55:57.000 We should have put the other people on regardless of whether the jury was bored or whether they wasn't or whether the guy was going to leave or whether he wasn't.

01:56:05.000 And the other thing that It was another reason that I got convicted, and I'll go to my grave believing this.

01:56:13.000 Phil Mickelson was supposed to come and testify.

01:56:17.000 He told me he would.

01:56:19.000 Phil Mickelson got involved in this case.

01:56:22.000 It was really another screwy deal.

01:56:25.000 And I wrote about it in a book, and I only wrote about it in a book because there was no way to tell the story unless I explained my relationship with him.

01:56:32.000 But he bought stock of this company, too.

01:56:34.000 And when the SEC attempted to interview him, he took the Fifth Amendment.

01:56:40.000 And when I learned he took the Fifth Amendment, I said, what in the hell are you doing?

01:56:44.000 Just tell the truth.

01:56:45.000 I didn't realize it, but he was involved in another investigation, a money laundering investigation, That had been going on for a year that had nothing to do with me and he was afraid to testify with the SEC because he was concerned they would ask him questions about this money laundering case.

01:57:02.000 Now he had already given interviews to the FBI and he'd emphatically denied that I'd ever given him any inside information.

01:57:08.000 How do I know that?

01:57:09.000 I got a copy of the interviews.

01:57:12.000 That's another thing, Joe.

01:57:13.000 If someone does an interview with the FBI and they tell them something that ends up getting you in trouble or you end up getting indicted for that, you never get to see any of that as part of discovery.

01:57:28.000 But if you tell them something that basically proves a guy's innocent, you get indicted.

01:57:34.000 They have to give you a copy of that.

01:57:36.000 It's called Brady material.

01:57:37.000 Well, I got a copy of the interviews.

01:57:38.000 I know exactly what he told the FBI. And the same thing he told me he told them.

01:57:44.000 And, well, the prosecutors weren't about to call him because they knew what he was going to say.

01:57:50.000 He told me he would come and testify.

01:57:52.000 In the 11th hour, he changes his mind.

01:57:55.000 His lawyers told him not to come and testify.

01:57:58.000 Well, these stories that got leaked in the paper early on with him, myself, and Carl Icahn, everybody in the world that read these stories about Phil Mickelson, myself, etc.

01:58:10.000 Everybody read that Phil Mickelson had given a million bucks back he made in a stock trade.

01:58:14.000 Well, if you don't know anything about this case and you see someone who's being investigated for insider trading, two people, you see one guy give a million dollars back, there's only two conclusions you can come to.

01:58:28.000 Either he's innocent, he gave a million bucks back, or he bought his way out, one of the two.

01:58:33.000 But regardless, it makes the other guy look guilty as hell, the guy who supposedly gave him insider information, because why in the hell would a guy give a million dollars back on a stock trade if he didn't do something wrong or he wasn't buying his way out?

01:58:45.000 That's what the average guy thinks, right?

01:58:46.000 That's what I would think.

01:58:48.000 Well, what they didn't realize was he gave this money back, this money laundering case that he was involved in.

01:58:54.000 He miraculously gets dropped out of that.

01:58:57.000 The guy that he wired the money to went to federal prison, too.

01:59:02.000 Yeah.

01:59:02.000 So all that's in the book.

01:59:04.000 That's the reason I had to write the book, Joe.

01:59:06.000 I mean, the only reason he's in my book, he's in two chapters of 28. I couldn't have written a book and told this story without writing my relationship in there with him.

01:59:18.000 Well, I think.

01:59:41.000 So that's the component, you know, about myself and him and about the Southern District, about my indictment.

01:59:49.000 And the only way I could have told a story is write a book.

01:59:54.000 Arm and Kattan, when I decided to write this book, I have a fellow who works with me, advises me on a lot of things.

02:00:03.000 A guy who's got a lot of expertise in these areas.

02:00:05.000 His name is Glenn Bunting.

02:00:08.000 And Glenn recommended Armand Gattayan to me.

02:00:12.000 And Armand worked with 60 Minutes for eight years.

02:00:16.000 He was a correspondent there.

02:00:18.000 He was with CBS Sports, I think, for like 12 years.

02:00:21.000 He's a highly, highly well-known, extremely respected journalist.

02:00:26.000 He'd done 12 books.

02:00:27.000 He won 12 Emmy Awards.

02:00:28.000 He did the book on Tiger Woods.

02:00:31.000 So I wanted Armin involved in this because I had to tell this story about my prosecution, about the Southern District of New York.

02:00:41.000 I had to tell the story about the involvement of the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal.

02:00:46.000 But I had to have someone who could write that story who was a former investigative reporter, and Armin is one of the absolute best in the world, but someone who no one would question their credibility.

02:00:59.000 And Armin and Glenn Bunning and our team did a magnificent job in helping me tell that part of the story.

02:01:06.000 You know, the rest of the book, you know, is pretty much, it's in my words.

02:01:10.000 I mean, you know, I wrote the vast majority of the other.

02:01:13.000 But I work with a lot of great people in the book.

02:01:17.000 I work, again, Armand Catan.

02:01:19.000 I can't say enough good things about Armand.

02:01:21.000 But Armand, in explaining this story along with Glenn Bunting of the Southern District, you'd have to understand Glenn Bunting's background too.

02:01:29.000 Here are two people Who worked at the highest levels of journalism, but they've also worked with the government and prosecutors.

02:01:36.000 I mean, they worked and they know this business inside and out.

02:01:40.000 And you could ask either one of them.

02:01:46.000 Frankly, they were in disbelief of what the facts were until they confirmed what the facts were.

02:01:52.000 And Armand, I think if I'm quoting Armand correctly, said, I've never seen anything like this.

02:01:57.000 It sounds so dirty.

02:01:58.000 Yeah.

02:01:59.000 Well, it was.

02:02:00.000 What is that like, giving up 31 months of your life or something so gross?

02:02:05.000 Well, Joe, 31 months of your life when you're 71 years old, which very easily could have been a life sentence.

02:02:14.000 Yeah.

02:02:15.000 It was rough.

02:02:16.000 I mean, I left my wife at the time.

02:02:18.000 We've been married.

02:02:19.000 This is our 48th year of marriage.

02:02:21.000 But, you know, I left her, said goodbye, and I walked into a federal prison.

02:02:27.000 And I was like...

02:02:29.000 You didn't know if you were ever getting out.

02:02:31.000 I didn't know I was ever getting out because, again, my age. 0.99

02:02:35.000 Also, it's fucking dangerous. 0.98

02:02:36.000 Yeah, it is dangerous. 0.98

02:02:38.000 And I was in what they...

02:02:39.000 This is another misnomer, Joe.

02:02:41.000 You know, and this is one of the biggest misnomers there is, and this is the reason I love you and I love your show, because you get a chance here to tell your story. 0.99

02:02:50.000 You know, we're not in sound bites, and we're not, you know, it's not some BS orchestrated story out there, you know.

02:03:00.000 I went to Pensacola Prison, and I hired a prison consultant.

02:03:05.000 I was looking for someplace I could go to that my wife could commute to reasonably. 1.00

02:03:12.000 And while I was in prison, she was in Kentucky the majority of the time, so it wasn't a bad commute for her.

02:03:20.000 But they also had a program there.

02:03:23.000 It's called RDAP. If you've had issues with alcohol in the past and you qualify for this program, you go through it and you get a year from your Senate.

02:03:30.000 So I thought I could possibly qualify for that.

02:03:33.000 Well, I go there and there had been a story written about this prison like in 2008. I think it was written by either Barbara Walters or someone like Barbara.

02:03:41.000 And they described this prison as like a country club.

02:03:45.000 And it had swimming pools and the people could play golf.

02:03:49.000 Anyway, I'm going to tell you the place that I went to, okay?

02:03:52.000 I don't know what it was like in 2008, but I can tell you what it was like in 2017 on October the 10th when I walked in there.

02:03:59.000 I was in a dorm.

02:04:01.000 I was in a building.

02:04:02.000 It was built in 1960. And this building, this is where naval airmen used to be housed.

02:04:16.000 I was in a room 18 by 22 with nine other prisoners on bunk beds.

02:04:21.000 They had black mold all over the walls.

02:04:24.000 There was no heat whatsoever in this building.

02:04:27.000 I'm in Pensacola, Florida.

02:04:28.000 I'm not in Miami.

02:04:30.000 I'm in a concrete block building.

02:04:32.000 It's got chillers that run 24-7.

02:04:34.000 So in the winter there, I mean, you can't imagine how cold you would get in there.

02:04:40.000 There's 200 men on this floor.

02:04:44.000 We had a restroom on each side of the entrance.

02:04:50.000 But you got 10 men in an 18 by 22 room, and you got black mold all over the walls, and you got no heat.

02:04:58.000 The food in this place was just horrible.

02:05:02.000 There were prisoners who came down who had been in multiple levels of federal prisons.

02:05:07.000 Every one of them said it was the worst food they had ever seen in any place.

02:05:11.000 Medical care there was, it was pitiful.

02:05:15.000 One of the doctors, his nickname was Dr. Death.

02:05:18.000 I mean, there was a guy there that they diagnosed with hemorrhoids and he died of colon cancer.

02:05:28.000 I could tell you another story.

02:05:29.000 It's funny, but it's not funny, to give you an idea how bad the medical care was.

02:05:33.000 There was a guy went in and he had a place on his face.

02:05:37.000 They told him, come back, they were going to take it off.

02:05:40.000 It's like in February.

02:05:42.000 Guy goes back in, this doctor's death, takes a big thing off the other side of his face, the wrong side.

02:05:54.000 He gets up, and the guy, he wishes him Merry Christmas on the way out.

02:05:58.000 Now, we're in the middle of February.

02:06:00.000 The guy put a big hole in the complete wrong side of his face, left the other face.

02:06:04.000 That was one of the doctors that was there.

02:06:07.000 So I got the flu when I first went in there, and I'm really sick.

02:06:12.000 I mean, really, really sick.

02:06:14.000 And I got so sick, I've been in bed like three or four days.

02:06:18.000 Well, I went down immediately to try to get something for the flu.

02:06:22.000 They told me to drink more water and to take aspirin.

02:06:24.000 And I could get the aspirin out of the commissary.

02:06:27.000 Two days later, I go down.

02:06:28.000 I'm starting to have problems with my lungs.

02:06:30.000 I got chewed out for coming back down again.

02:06:33.000 They gave me nothing.

02:06:34.000 Luckily for me, there were some guys that were inside the prison that gave me some things that could help me.

02:06:39.000 Hadn't been for that, I'm not sure.

02:06:41.000 I don't know what the outcome of that would have been.

02:06:44.000 It could have been bad because I was bedridden for six, seven days.

02:06:48.000 And I saw that on multiple occasions.

02:06:50.000 So the good thing about the place was there were no bars.

02:06:54.000 You could walk around it, you know, at certain times with total freedom.

02:06:59.000 There was a track.

02:07:00.000 They had a place you could do weights.

02:07:02.000 The visitation there was great until COVID came along.

02:07:07.000 And so you had plenty of opportunities to have visits.

02:07:12.000 There weren't bars.

02:07:14.000 You had a track.

02:07:16.000 That was all good.

02:07:19.000 But I can tell you, the medical care there, the food, and the conditions themselves were horrible.

02:07:24.000 I mean, they were horrible.

02:07:26.000 And the people who came down from low and medium security prisons, they said they were much better in the prisons they came from than they were there, those conditions were.

02:07:35.000 So that's the reason, along with the fact, you know, when I got out, I had to do something about this.

02:07:41.000 I mean, it was just...

02:07:43.000 But that's a story that isn't being told.

02:07:45.000 It's like...

02:07:46.000 I saw some guy the other day who got sentenced to Pensacola, and I saw the story that some lazy journalist just rewrote something they read that somebody else put in there two or three or four years ago that isn't accurate, and they described this place as being some kind of country club.

02:08:02.000 You think it's a country club, partner?

02:08:03.000 You go on down there and check in.

02:08:04.000 And you go over there and get you some of those boots that you're forced to wear that are seconds that are made in China. 0.97

02:08:10.000 I got a pair of boots when I got there.

02:08:12.000 The second day, I had lost a toenail.

02:08:15.000 Luckily for me, at the time, there was a doctor there, and I went and saw this doctor, and he gave me some shoes that had softer soles.

02:08:22.000 From what I understand, they've eliminated those today.

02:08:25.000 You have to wear the boots that they give you there now.

02:08:26.000 They're steel-toed boots.

02:08:28.000 And they're not even good ones.

02:08:30.000 Like I say, the majority of them don't even fit the people.

02:08:32.000 How do I know that?

02:08:33.000 I worked in the laundry myself.

02:08:35.000 And I was the one over there issuing that stuff.

02:08:38.000 And then I went to the head of the place and I said, look, these things are horrible.

02:08:42.000 People are coming back.

02:08:42.000 Their feet are bleeding and everything else.

02:08:44.000 Finally, they changed them out and they got some that did fit better.

02:08:48.000 But I mean, it's just, anyway, it is what it is.

02:08:51.000 But look, prison isn't supposed to be, it's supposed to be a punishment to a certain degree.

02:08:56.000 And it's supposed to be a detriment.

02:08:58.000 And there's no question about that.

02:08:59.000 And you're not supposed to go to some country club.

02:09:01.000 But you should be able to go to some place where you don't have to sleep next to black mold. 0.84

02:09:07.000 And if you do have a medical issue, you know, and you truly do have the flu, and it's diagnosed by the flu by them, that you get something to treat the flu.

02:09:16.000 Just the fact that you gave up 31 months of your life, the fact you had to go to that place, and that now you know all the actual details of the case, you know all the stuff that was withheld, that's got to be a tough pill to swallow.

02:09:29.000 I mean, that would make me very bitter.

02:09:31.000 Joe, when I got out of federal prison, to give you an idea, I was still under home confinement.

02:09:38.000 I filed a federal lawsuit in New York.

02:09:41.000 I sued the former head of the FBI. I sued Preet Bharara, the former U.S. Attorney.

02:09:47.000 I sued David Chavez.

02:09:50.000 I sued Daniel Goleman, who's now the congressman up there.

02:09:54.000 And I sued, or five of them I sued.

02:09:57.000 Oh, Zobel, the guy who was the second in command up there at the U.S. Attorney's Office.

02:10:02.000 I'm going to give you an idea.

02:10:04.000 I filed a federal lawsuit up there, and the lawsuit speaks for themselves, and I laid out the allegations of all the things that these people did from my perspective.

02:10:13.000 Do you know that not one media organization in New York even reported the lawsuit?

02:10:18.000 New York Times, New York Post, The New Yorker, not one of those news organizations even reported the fact that I had filed a suit against these people we're talking about.

02:10:29.000 That's what bothers me.

02:10:31.000 Forget about...

02:10:32.000 I mean, if somebody files...

02:10:36.000 I don't care what the suit is or what the allegations are.

02:10:39.000 I mean...

02:10:42.000 It's news.

02:10:43.000 It's news.

02:10:44.000 Yeah.

02:10:46.000 I filed this suit.

02:10:47.000 It's in federal court for eight months.

02:10:50.000 Their only answer was the statute of limitations ran out.

02:10:53.000 After eight months, the judge threw it out.

02:10:55.000 I would have had to file this federal lawsuit while I was in federal prison under federal custody in order for me to file it within the time of the statute of limitations.

02:11:05.000 But the fact that it didn't even get reported that I filed this suit and made these allegations, that's what puts a chill in me.

02:11:13.000 How can that happen?

02:11:15.000 Because it's dirty.

02:11:16.000 They all have relationships.

02:11:20.000 How did those lawsuits, all the lawsuits that you filed, how did they pan out?

02:11:25.000 Well, the one I filed against them got threw out because of the Statue of Invitations that ran out.

02:11:29.000 And that was really the only suit that I filed.

02:11:33.000 It was the only suit I could file.

02:11:36.000 So there's no recourse?

02:11:37.000 No, there's no recourse.

02:11:38.000 No.

02:11:39.000 Which is unbelievable.

02:11:40.000 Yeah.

02:11:41.000 Well, another thing, Joe, after I was convicted, once you're convicted in the federal system, there's a department, I forget what the name of it is, but they work for the courts.

02:11:54.000 You go and meet, and this lady's name was Rebecca Dawson.

02:11:56.000 I won't forget her name.

02:11:58.000 You go up, you spend a day, they interview you, they get all your background, and they go back, check your background out extensively, and then they turn that over to the judge with a recommendation, their recommendation.

02:12:14.000 Okay, after they had interviewed me, they had thoroughly investigated my background.

02:12:19.000 The recommendation to the judge was to give me a year and a day and a $10 million fine.

02:12:24.000 The judge gave me five years and I paid in fines and restitution $45 million.

02:12:34.000 On top of that, Joe, I was ordered to pay another $9 million for Tom Davis's legal fees, the guy who testified against me.

02:12:44.000 Dean Foods, for some unexplainable reason, first part of it I understand, the second part I don't understand at all.

02:12:53.000 When he originally got his attorney, They were paying his legal fees because he was on a board of directors.

02:13:03.000 That part I understand.

02:13:04.000 Okay, but after he decided to become a government witness and he pled guilty to a bunch of things and one of them was, you know, passed on insider information, they continued to pay his legal fees even after that.

02:13:19.000 So his legal fees were like $9 million.

02:13:22.000 So they got a law firm, came forward, filed the thing, and the judge ordered me and Tom Davis to reimburse Dean Foods for $9 million.

02:13:32.000 Because this guy, he's not going to give me any money.

02:13:35.000 I paid the entire $9 million, right?

02:13:39.000 So the Supreme Court comes along later on and they rule that a portion of those fees they weren't entitled to.

02:13:46.000 So they have to refund me the portion of those fees.

02:13:51.000 What do you think happened there?

02:13:53.000 Dean Foose goes bankrupt.

02:13:54.000 I got stiff on them too.

02:13:55.000 I never got a neck on my mother's back. 0.97

02:14:00.000 I'm glad you can laugh.

02:14:02.000 Well, Joe, you know, you got two choices of this.

02:14:05.000 I wanted to tell a story.

02:14:08.000 You know, look, I'm not the only guy who's been through something similar to this.

02:14:11.000 A lot of people go through this, they get out of prison, they say, look, man, you know, I just want it over with.

02:14:17.000 You know, I don't want to have a reoccurring problem with so-and-so and so-and-so.

02:14:22.000 Who wants to piss off powerful people?

02:14:25.000 Okay.

02:14:28.000 I'm not cut out of that cloth by now.

02:14:33.000 I actually did this more for other people than I did for myself.

02:14:36.000 There's so many people out there, Joe, that don't have the resources.

02:14:39.000 They don't have the resiliency that I do.

02:14:44.000 They don't have the support that I do.

02:14:47.000 And this is going on today, partner, and this is going to continue to go on.

02:14:52.000 Until the people who make the laws do something about this, okay?

02:14:57.000 Look, the vast, vast majority of the people in law enforcement are great people, and I agree with that too.

02:15:04.000 The problem that you've got there, and I see this over and over, is there are some bad ones.

02:15:11.000 Like any profession, you have some bad ones, okay?

02:15:14.000 The problem I see there is when they don't—the bad ones they have, the good ones turn a blind eye to it.

02:15:21.000 They don't do anything about it.

02:15:22.000 Because they don't want trouble.

02:15:23.000 Yeah.

02:15:24.000 And I'll give you an example.

02:15:26.000 In my case, the guy that worked with this guy, Chavez— He blew the whistle on him because of what he was doing.

02:15:34.000 Prior to me being indicted or anything else, we learned this through our discovery.

02:15:39.000 The guy blew the whistle on him inside the FBI. That guy got transferred to some other part of the United States when they promoted Chavez.

02:15:50.000 Dirty.

02:15:52.000 But again, I get it.

02:15:54.000 I mean, I've had people who are very close to me when I decided to write this book and when I decided to sue those people in New York.

02:16:01.000 And, you know, aren't you worried about this?

02:16:05.000 Aren't you worried?

02:16:06.000 I said, look, I'm not worried about nothing.

02:16:08.000 You know, at the end of the day, I can't live my life like that.

02:16:11.000 I mean, look, I'm not doing anything illegal.

02:16:14.000 I'm not doing anything unethical.

02:16:16.000 You know, but does that mean that someone can't target me for something?

02:16:20.000 Oh, they can target me for it.

02:16:22.000 I mean, again, that's the other problem.

02:16:27.000 I mean, so this guy Chavez, right?

02:16:32.000 Okay.

02:16:33.000 They allow him to retire.

02:16:34.000 He gets paid.

02:16:35.000 He doesn't get prosecuted.

02:16:37.000 Okay, what can I do with Chavez?

02:16:41.000 I can't do anything with Chavez.

02:16:42.000 I can't sue him.

02:16:43.000 I can't do anything.

02:16:45.000 That's crazy.

02:16:46.000 That is crazy.

02:16:47.000 It really is crazy.

02:16:48.000 Wow, that's crazy.

02:16:48.000 You know, I've worked with Josh Dubin, who used to be a part of the Innocence Project, and now he's doing some things on his own, and it's all about releasing people from jail that have been unjustly prosecuted.

02:17:06.000 And you hear about these cases.

02:17:08.000 All the time, partner.

02:17:09.000 It's insane.

02:17:10.000 It's insane. 0.92

02:17:11.000 It's so dirty.

02:17:13.000 The publisher that did my book, Simon& Schuster, the editor there, we were talking one day, and we were talking about the book, and the book's done very, very well, and we're proud of that.

02:17:27.000 But the book is, everybody would kind of think, well, the book's written about this guy as a professional handicapper.

02:17:33.000 People want to know about that.

02:17:34.000 They want to know about his interest in life there.

02:17:36.000 Well, what's actually come back, I think, I think the popularity of the book is more tied to the human interest side of it than anything else.

02:17:47.000 And a guy went on to say, he said, Billy, you know what the perfect story is?

02:17:50.000 I said, no.

02:17:52.000 He said, well, the perfect story is when a story is out there, there's complete silence.

02:17:57.000 He said, in your case, your story involves the FBI, it involves the New York Times, it involves the Wall Street Journal, it involves Phil Mickelson.

02:18:08.000 There's not one of these people who refuted one word you said in this book.

02:18:12.000 I hadn't thought about that.

02:18:14.000 And they haven't because it's all factual, it's all true, and there's no grounds to refute anything I said in the book.

02:18:22.000 Is that the most corrupt thing that you've ever...

02:18:25.000 I mean, you're a guy who's been involved in gambling your whole life, which people think of as a very shady business, dangerous.

02:18:33.000 You're involved with all sorts of unscrupulous characters.

02:18:37.000 Is that the most dirty thing you've ever been involved with?

02:18:40.000 Not even close.

02:18:41.000 No?

02:18:42.000 Yeah.

02:18:43.000 It's not even remotely close.

02:18:44.000 Yes, it is.

02:18:45.000 Yeah.

02:18:46.000 Wow.

02:18:47.000 Yeah, undoubtedly.

02:18:49.000 Undoubtedly.

02:18:50.000 Which is crazy because you guys, you've had your life threatened.

02:18:54.000 I read that you were in a trunk of a car at one point in time.

02:18:58.000 What was all that about?

02:19:01.000 It was the early 80s, Joe, before I moved to Las Vegas.

02:19:05.000 I had a nightclub in Louisville.

02:19:07.000 It was called Butch Cassidy's.

02:19:09.000 It was a country music joint.

02:19:10.000 You had to fight your way in, fight your way out.

02:19:16.000 And anyway, it was the day after the Super Bowl, and everybody I owed, I paid.

02:19:21.000 And of course, most people that owed me, they hadn't come by yet.

02:19:25.000 But we had some popular band there, and I forgot what the door charge was, five bucks, ten bucks, whatever it was.

02:19:32.000 And I had a pocket full of money.

02:19:33.000 It looked like a lot of money, but it was like four thousand bucks, but it looked like forty.

02:19:38.000 So I leave the joint, it's like 4 o'clock in the morning, and I drive home, and I'm living in a condo, and I pull up in front of the condo, I didn't have a garage.

02:19:47.000 And I pull up in front of the condo, and I got out of the car, and all at once, two guys with a ski mask on, they jumped out, they were hidden down below the next car.

02:19:58.000 One of them had a double-barrel shotgun, the other one had a.45.

02:20:02.000 They stuck a shotgun next to my ribs, a.45 next to my head.

02:20:08.000 And they robbed me.

02:20:09.000 And the guy's got the shotgun.

02:20:14.000 The old shotgun's jumping up and down.

02:20:15.000 I said, man, just calm down here.

02:20:17.000 I said, everything's cool here.

02:20:18.000 I'm trying to cool him down, see?

02:20:20.000 What was so funny, I just got back from Vegas, Joe.

02:20:23.000 And I didn't tell this story in a book, but I get a chance to tell it here.

02:20:27.000 And I used to play a lot of poker out there, and at the Golden Nugget, there was a guy out there that sold watches.

02:20:33.000 His name was Sam Angel.

02:20:35.000 And he sold these knockoff watches.

02:20:38.000 I mean, they looked like they were authentic as they could be.

02:20:42.000 You could buy a Rolex from him at the time for like $35.

02:20:45.000 And I had this Rolex watch.

02:20:47.000 It was a knockoff.

02:20:47.000 It wasn't real, but man, they looked real.

02:20:50.000 Well, anyway, they took my money, but they didn't touch that Rolex watch.

02:20:53.000 So, I mean, clearly it was an inside job.

02:20:56.000 So, they took me back in the trunk of the car, and they said, they opened the trunk of the car, and they told me to get in.

02:21:02.000 I first walked as a no, I'm not getting the trunk of this car.

02:21:05.000 And they said, look, you'll get this trunk of this car one of two ways.

02:21:09.000 Either you're going to get it on your own, or you're going to fall in.

02:21:11.000 So anyway, I got in the trunk of the car.

02:21:13.000 They closed the trunk of the car.

02:21:15.000 So I told me, you know, your mind gets to racing.

02:21:18.000 I figure, well, they pull out, they're going to empty that double-barrel shotgun on me.

02:21:21.000 So I'm scrambling around.

02:21:23.000 I got the tire loose and got behind, you know, the spare tire.

02:21:27.000 The car goes by.

02:21:28.000 I breathe a sigh of relief.

02:21:31.000 They're gone.

02:21:32.000 All at once I realized, I'm in the trunk of this car.

02:21:35.000 And this wasn't back when they had a deal where you could open the trunk of the car.

02:21:38.000 And it was a Lincoln, and I got panicking.

02:21:42.000 I got thinking, I'm going to smother it in the trunk of this car.

02:21:45.000 So I got a tire tool, and I tried to get the trunk open.

02:21:49.000 And you know, your adrenaline, I wasn't that strong a guy, but adrenaline, I bent this tire tool in half and that truck wasn't going anywhere.

02:21:55.000 Well, finally, I got to go through the back seat.

02:21:58.000 There's some holes in the back seat where they got speakers and stuff.

02:22:01.000 And I finally dug through there and punched a hole in the back seat of the car and I'm screaming.

02:22:07.000 I never did wake my wife up, but I woke up to the next door neighbor. 0.99

02:22:10.000 So he goes over and wakes my wife up.

02:22:12.000 So Susan comes out.

02:22:14.000 She figures, you know, I come on the joint.

02:22:16.000 I'm drunk in the back of the car, right?

02:22:18.000 Well, anyway, she comes out.

02:22:20.000 She hears me in the backseat.

02:22:22.000 Finally, she opens the trunk and gets me out.

02:22:25.000 But no, I'm 99% sure I know who did it.

02:22:30.000 But anyway, it was a memorable experience.

02:22:35.000 Your whole life has been a series of memorable experiences, sir.

02:22:39.000 True.

02:22:39.000 Yeah, you're right.

02:22:41.000 One thing about it, Joe, I got my money's worth.

02:22:46.000 If it weren't all in tomorrow, I'd have to get shortchanged.

02:22:49.000 Yeah, I mean, you've got a great book out, and you've got wild stories, and you seem to have your peace of mind.

02:22:56.000 Oh, I do.

02:22:57.000 Which is amazing, considering what you've gone through, especially with the trial, what they did to you.

02:23:02.000 It's amazing that you're so relaxed and so calm and so at peace, and that speaks to your character.

02:23:08.000 Joe, my oldest son, when he was seven years old, was diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor.

02:23:14.000 He was given 30 days to live, and that changed my life.

02:23:21.000 I was a young guy at the time, gone all the time, as I wrote about in a book, and completely focused on making money.

02:23:31.000 I went through that, and it changed my life.

02:23:35.000 And as a result of that, I got involved with working with intellectually challenged people.

02:23:42.000 I got introduced to an organization in Las Vegas called Opportunity Village.

02:23:46.000 And it's strictly an organization that works with intellectually challenged people.

02:23:53.000 And that's been one of the most fulfilling things that's ever happened to me.

02:23:57.000 So, you know, it's every negative thing that's ever happened to me in my life, everyone, something positive has came out of it.

02:24:05.000 And that, involving my son Scott, who the grace of God is still alive today, he defied all odds.

02:24:15.000 But that changed my life.

02:24:16.000 It made a lot better man out of me.

02:24:20.000 That's awesome.

02:24:21.000 Billy, tell everybody the title of the book, where they can get it.

02:24:24.000 And is there an audiobook available?

02:24:26.000 There is.

02:24:26.000 Did you read it?

02:24:27.000 Unfortunately, I read it, Joe.

02:24:29.000 Oh, perfect.

02:24:30.000 You'll have to listen to this old ruspy voice.

02:24:32.000 I want you to read it.

02:24:33.000 It's your story.

02:24:34.000 I'd like it to be in your voice.

02:24:36.000 Well, the publisher trapped me.

02:24:37.000 The book's called Gambler, Seekers from a Life at Risk.

02:24:42.000 But back to the audiobook part of it, the publisher trapped me.

02:24:47.000 He said, would you try to do this?

02:24:48.000 He said, most people can't do it.

02:24:51.000 Of course, that's all they had to do was tell me that.

02:24:53.000 So I had a partial knee replacement.

02:24:56.000 So I go in this studio a couple weeks later.

02:24:59.000 I got earphones on like we have now.

02:25:01.000 I got a producer.

02:25:02.000 I got my knee all propped up in a chair with ice on it.

02:25:07.000 And I'm doing the audio portion of this book.

02:25:11.000 You've probably done a number of them, but You know, the part of the book that I wrote, the part of the book that's in my words, I had no problem with at all.

02:25:21.000 The part of the book in there that others wrote and there were words used that I don't use every day, sometimes I'd have to repeat those paragraphs two, three, four times.

02:25:31.000 The second day, it took me 40 days, 40 hours to do this thing.

02:25:35.000 The publisher, she started laughing.

02:25:37.000 She said it's so obvious, you know, you would never use a certain word.

02:25:41.000 But it was an experience.

02:25:44.000 I'll never forget it.

02:25:45.000 I'm glad I did do it.

02:25:47.000 But Simon Schuster's right.

02:25:48.000 There's very few people probably will do it because it's not an easy thing to do.

02:25:53.000 No, it's not an easy thing to do.

02:25:54.000 But that sounds like your whole life.

02:25:56.000 Yes, sir.

02:25:58.000 Well, listen, Billy, I appreciate your time.

02:26:00.000 I appreciate you coming in here.

02:26:01.000 And I appreciate you writing your book.

02:26:03.000 And I'm glad you did.

02:26:05.000 I really am.

02:26:06.000 I'm glad I got a chance to sit down and talk to you.

02:26:08.000 Well, thank you.

02:26:09.000 Thank you for having me.

02:26:10.000 I really appreciate it, and I have nothing but the utmost respect for you and what you do.

02:26:14.000 Thank you very much.

02:26:15.000 I appreciate that.

02:26:16.000 All right.

02:26:17.000 Bye, everybody.

02:26:18.000 Bye.

The Joe Rogan Experience - February 23, 2024

Joe Rogan Experience #2107 - Billy Walters

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