August 2, 2022 • 47 mins
Could it be possible that your favorite sports are fixed? Join the guys as they interview Brian Tuohy, author of The Fix is In, on the murky connections between sports, gambling, politics and organized crime in the first part of this two-episode series.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
So we often say that any industry, any enterprise past
a certain threshold of success, becomes ripe for conspiracies. And
it should be absolutely no surprise that the world of
sports is no different. Sports are a huge, huge thing
(00:24):
in almost every single part of the world. Uh you
know they're they're probably scientists and staff who have active
sports lives in Antarctica and pursue those hobbies. This was
such a big topic that we made it a two parter.
Do you remember this? Oh? I do? I remember talking
(00:44):
with Brian Tweet like it happened yesterday, even though it
was in September. But seriously, it was a great conversation.
It really illuminated for me personally the concept that in
any competition, any competition, no matter how big or small,
there is a regular market for that competition where you
(01:07):
can you know, market it, you can sell tickets to it,
and run things above board. There's a gray market, which
this I would say, it's a gray market where it's
like legal gambling and that kind of world like Vegas,
Atlantic City. Then there's the black market, which is the
gambling that happens underneath the table or is kind of
operating in the shadows, even on the field. Yes, so
(01:32):
uh tune in for this one and then stay tuned
for part two of this classic series. From UFOs to
psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is riddled with unexplained events.
You can turn back now or learn this stuff they
don't gant you to know. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(01:59):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They call
me Ben, and you are you, and this is stuff
they don't want you to know. We're doing something a
little bit different today. Ben the bookie Bowling, Noel numbers Brown,
Matt is bad at Math, Frederick, Matt Mad Money. Frederick.
We want to introduce you to a very special guest
(02:23):
in this episode. This is a two part episode about
sports fixing. And as we are not, uh, despite our
new monikers, as we are not ourselves experts on sports fixing. No.
I haven't done much gambling at all. I've been to
a casino two times. I watched a football game on
TV once. Oh it was a date and I was
(02:46):
trying to get in good with this gal and she
was a huge Stanford fan. And I tell you, I
sat through that whole game like a champ. And I
almost think maybe I understand how football works pretty timon. Well,
we've received questions for years from you and listeners just
like you who have asked us to cover something like
(03:08):
FIFA or something like even corruption in sumo wrestling. Uh
So we were fortunate enough to get an interview with
one of the world's pre eminent experts on sports fixing,
Mr Brian Tooey. Yeah, Brian has written extensively on the subjects.
He has three books a Season in the Abyss, The
Fixes In and Larceny Games, all of which dive deep
(03:30):
into the world of bookmaking, organized crime, where the money
goes in these scenarios. And of course the question is
what we're seeing legitimate? Are these games having their outcomes
manipulated by one of several possible forces. So we'll dive
(03:51):
into the first part of the interview where we get
we get a deeper understanding of how this sort of
system would work, a look at the history of corruption
in sports, and information about what inspired Brian to again
these investigations. Grant, could you tell the audience and us
(04:18):
what inspired you to become the world's leading expert on
corruption in sports? Well, it really took off when I
realized nobody else seemed to want to do this job.
I mean, I was really just a fan of professional
sports for a long time, growing up as a kid,
you know, a hockey fan to baseball fans, football fan,
and what have you. But as I got older and
(04:41):
perhaps a little wiser, I started noticing what I felt
were almost like too many coincidences that were occurring within
these games, within these sports that always seemed to benefit
the league. And I came to realize, when the leagues
have the ability to really control everything that surrounds the games,
what prevented them from controlling what happens within the games?
(05:03):
And once I kind of asked the question of myself
and started doing a little research, it kind of led
me down this path to where I am today. It's
interesting that you mentioned the way the league figures into
all of this, because obviously there is a whole lot
of profits to be made in and around professional sports,
whether it's the legal end of it, merchandizing ticket sales,
(05:26):
TV deals, things like that. We're talking billions and billions
of dollars. But when you really segment it out and
you talk about just the money that can be made
out of sports betting, how is all of this generated
and what kind of figures are we talking here. Well,
the professional leagues, the four main leagues, the NFL, Major
League Baseball, the NHL, in the NBA make a combined
(05:46):
about billion dollars a year in revenue. And as for
the sports gambling end of things, the problem is is
nobody really knows because the sports gambling done in the
United States today is done illegally and much of that
money is controlled by organized crime. The state in Nevada,
which is the only place where you can legally bet
(06:08):
on single games and all of these sports says they
come for about two to three percent of all the
sports gambly done in the nation and they took in
about what was it, I think about three or four
billion dollars on sports betting, which means if you extrapolate
that number, it means that perhaps as much as three
(06:30):
to four hundred billion dollars is being waged in the
United States today illegally, but nobody really knows. Smokes a
lot of money is yeah, that's so much money. So
these guys that are running the books on these in
these illegal gambling operations, how do they actually make money
(06:50):
on this operation? And moreover, I mean what's the structure
of this illegal operation? Like from you know, me being
a Joe on the street that wants to you know,
play about in a sports game, how do I go
from point A to point bs you making or losing
a whole bunch of money. Well that's the scary part
in a way, is most gamblers are recreational gamblers. You know,
(07:11):
their average Joe is or James, and they want to
bet twenty bucks or fifty bucks on the game this
weekend or what have you, and they don't realize that
many times when they do bet that twenty or fifty
dollars or a hundred dollars or whatever, they can afford
to lose or sometimes can't afford to lose whatever they're betting.
Most off of those small amounts are being bet with
local bookies, and they might be guys, people they know,
(07:34):
people they don't really well know. But the problem is
is even those small bets really get funneled into organized crime,
even if they're kind of gambling with somebody they know
or think they know. Because what happens is is local
bookies often get wagers on local teams. Like I live
in Wisconsin. So let's say in this example, most of
the bookies that I perhaps would deal with would take
(07:56):
a lot of bets on the Green Bay Packers in
the NFL, because a lot of people bet with their hearts,
they've bet on the home team, they bet on the
games they're gonna watch. And in Wisconsin, you watch the
Green Bay Packers or you don't watch television really today.
So the local bookies get overwhelmed with basically Green Bay
Packer money, and that's not good for them because what
most bookies want is a fifty fifty split on the game.
(08:19):
They want bet on the Packers. They want, say, bet
on the Bears, and they collect a ten percent on
the losers. So you have to bet eleven dollars to
win ten dollars. And that's how the bookies make their money.
And that's the big right is that like the concept
of the big sort of like a premium that you
have the bigger ish there take their rake however you
(08:42):
want to put it. Yeah. So, but what happens is
these local bookies in this case again get overwhelmed with
the money bet on the Packers. So what they want
to do is basically what they call layoff the money
and bet with other bookies, perhaps like in Chicago, if
the Packers are playing the Bears, because the Bear bookies
are gonna have too much money on the Bears, and
so they kind of swap wagers to kind of alleviate
(09:04):
their you know, exposure on these games. And so what
happens is little bookies bet with slightly bigger bookies. Bigger
bookies bet with even bigger bookies, and this money almost
actually funnels upwards, and sitting at the top of this
pyramid is organized crime, who have controlled illegal sports gambling
for probably a hundred years. It's one of those things
where even though you're betting with somebody you may know
(09:26):
and just somebody think is local, some guy at the bar,
that money gets funneled upwards to people who are running
organized crime. And then people say, well, you know, so
what it's, you know, a harmless crime, it's a victimless crime.
But the fact is that money that feeds organized crimes
then goes to prostitution, that goes to loan sharking, and
it goes to all the other bad things that organized
(09:46):
crime still does today. And just to be specific for
our audience members who may not be as aware of
the nuts and bolts of this of the betting process.
What is the point spread and why does it matter so? Well?
The point spread really only matters in mainly in the
NFL and the NBA or college basketball and college football
(10:08):
because too often games are almost lopsided. And this really
started way back about a hundred years or so, maybe
in twenties or thirties, where bookies wanted to take bets
on games, on all games that are being played, but
in certain instances, you know, people are almost certain that,
for example, the Packers are going to beat the Bears,
you know, almost no matter what happens, that are almost
(10:30):
certain Packers are going to beat the Bears, and the
odds that they would have to set on the game
would be so high that nobody want to bet on
the Packers because there return on their money would be
so low. And at the same time, the bookies who
wouldn't want to necessarily give huge odds on the Bears
to win because then if that miracles miracle did happen,
so they might have to lay out too much money
to those people who took the long shot. So over
(10:52):
time they developed what's called the point spread, and the
point spread basically kind of even the playing field, where
oftentimes at football, like if they gain Packers are playing
the Bears, they might say the Packers are minus seven,
which means that is, you have to subtract seven points
from the Packers at the end of the game and
or add seven points to the Bears total, and that's
(11:13):
what the final score wants up being in the betting circles.
So if the Packers won ten, you subtract seven, which
means the Packers really only scored seventeen points. The Bears
would get seven points. But yet four to ten differences
four team points, so it doesn't really come into play
for the points bread And if you bet the Packers,
(11:33):
you won. If you bet the Bears in this example,
you would lose. So it's a little convoluted concept. Yeah,
but that's a perfect explanation, absolutely, And I know folks
are probably eager for us to get into the whole
fixing aspect of it, But I do have one more
question about the rules and just sort of the you know,
structure for this betting scenario. Um. I know that in
your book Larceny Games, when you're talking about sort of
(11:55):
the history of betting and gambling on sports and how
at its heart it it is a simple prospect of
making a fifty fifty bat where you're saying, like, I
think it's gonna be this one, and I'm putting all
my eggs in that basket and I'm either gonna win
or I'm gonna lose. But at the end of the day,
that's not enough to attract enough people to continuously, you know,
(12:16):
keep people in business who want to you know, make
money on this betting. So the bookies came up with
this idea of odds and they basically created it, and
it's a little bit lopsided, I think from the way
I understanding it, where I'm sure there are stats that
go into determining these odds, but at the end of
the day, it's sort of like, well, you know, you
get more of a return on your money if you
(12:36):
maybe bet on the underdog and they win. But I
just wanted a little bit of clarification on how you
see odds playing into this and whether or not they
are based on stats or if it's just kind of
a construct in something that these bookies sort of came
up with too, you know, sweeten the pot. I guess, well,
it's interesting because really odds and even the point spread
are make believe numbers, you know, they don't necessarily reflect
(12:57):
the reality of the game or like a box match
or horse race, there really artificial numbers. And the point
spread is really almost based from what I understand from
talking to some of these guys who set the point spreads,
is based on their perception of the public perception of
the game that's about to be played. So it's funny
(13:19):
the guys who do like the NFL point spreads, they
can almost do them just off the top of the
heads without looking at computers or statistics or that sort
of things. They just know a lot of betters like
certain teams, they like certain matchups, and they just kind
of assumed that certain games are going to go a
certain way. So the guys were setting the point spreads
and creating the odds a lot of times can just
(13:41):
wing it because it's based off the perception of the
public's perception and not really the bookie's perception of what's
going to happen in the game. So if they point
set the point spread, like again in the pack of
Bearer game at minus seven, it doesn't mean that the
book he really thinks the packers are gonna win seventeen.
They may think the Packers are gonna win thirty five
(14:02):
to nothing, but they think that's what the public thinks
is that the game might be like seventeen matchup. So
that's how they create that point spread. And it's interesting
because now we start to see these frames, these interlocking
(14:26):
frames of perception that play a powerful role, almost as
powerful as the actual athletes in the game. And and
this brings us to a question that I was I
was dying to ask after we had checked out Larceny
Games Season and the abyss UH and the fixes in UH.
(14:48):
We wanted to ask you, what, in your opinion, are
the easiest and most difficult sports to fix? We know.
The unfortunate thing is I get asked a lot like
what's the least corrup sport? And unfortunately I can't name one,
because you really, if you do some digging around, you
(15:09):
will realize almost every professional sport has been negatively influenced
by some sort of corruption. I mean, you could go soccer, cricket, tennis, rugby, baseball, football, boxing, hockey,
the UFC hors ary scene. I mean, the list goes
on and on, and you can find corruption in terms
of altering the outcomes of certain events. In all of
(15:31):
those things, you can even find it. Little League Baseball,
we've seen it where you know, the Chicago team from
the Little League World Series a couple of years ago
was deemed illegal. Where I think a New York team
a few years ago ahead a pitcher who was fourteen
and he should have only been twelve, and they lied
about his age. I mean, it's unfortunately everywhere. But in
terms of your direct question, I think the easiest sports
(15:52):
to manipulate from a fixing angle for betting purposes, one
is soccer because it's happening all over the globe and
been happening for a very long time, and they can't
or maybe they don't, but they can't seem to stop it.
But in America, I think the two the biggest ones
to be football and basketball because of that point spread
(16:12):
and the idea of the point spread. And I can
explain why is basically because what people can do is
they can get athletes to what they call shaved points.
Where again, if you go back to that seven point
point spread in that Bear Packer, the fictional Bear Packer game,
I means you could approach the players or a player
from the Packers and say, hey, look, you can still
(16:33):
win the game. You can still beat the Bears. That's fine,
just don't cover that point spread. Instead of winning by
more than seven, just win by like three points, and
therefore I can bet the Bears. You can still win
your game. But because the Bears are getting seven points
and they only lost by three in the betting parlance,
they won the game by four. So that's the tricky thing.
(16:55):
And you can do it a lot, and I think
it occurs a lot, especially at the college level in
basket ball and football, because of these point spreads where
a team can still win but yet not covered a
point spread, and that makes it really hard to uncover
who really was giving a percent out there and who
maybe was doing something a little illegal. That's my question.
Isn't it really difficult to do? It seems like such
(17:15):
a precise thing to influence the outcome of a game
just by a certain number of points based on what
you do, and not have it be completely transparent to
anybody watching saying, oh, that guy totally took a dive there.
He screwed up that play. It was clearly on purpose, Like,
how do these It seems like they're a whole another
level of skill required to be able to do this
(17:36):
convincingly gets some funny. He said it like Joan Amoth
back in the late sixties was accused of throwing a
couple of football games because I think twice in the
season he threw with like five interceptions within a single game,
and he kind of got fingered for potentially throwing those games.
And Joe name was, when approached and asked about he said, look,
(17:57):
because I wouldn't be dumb enough to throw five interceptions
in the game. I fixed. What I would do is
I would throw the ball slightly out of the reach
of the wide receiver or I, you know, mishandle a snap,
or I would you just do something small that would
be imperceptible, and that's how it fixed the game. I
wouldn't make it obvious like that, which I always found
funny because that means obviously Joe Namith kind of thought
(18:18):
about it and how we would fix the game if
need be, But apparently he claimed he didn't do it
because he would have made it that obvious. And I mean,
there's a guy by the name of Lefty Rosenthal. He's
an old, old guy. He um the movie Casino was
actually based on Lefty Rosenthal. He's a real guy in
the movie. It's played by Roberts de Niro's name is
like Ace Rothstein or something like that, but that's really
(18:41):
left the Rosenthal. Left Rosenthal was known to fix games,
and he would actually have college kids college basketball players
practice missing layups so they looked more realistic when they
did it. He was even known to actually supposedly he
gave food poisoning to an entire football team that came
into town to play nor Western University, and he invited
(19:02):
the other team out for dinner and gave him all
food poisoning at a restaurant he was familiar with to
make sure he wanted his bet. So, I mean, there's
there's there's various ways to do this, but yeah, I
mean I think it wouldn't be necessarily blatantly obvious, although
sometimes it very well could be. And yet, you know,
how do you finger somebody for it, because it could
just be somebody's having a bad game and off day.
(19:25):
But proved that he did it on purpose, that's a
whole different thing. Yeah, that sounds like it could quickly
go into some subjective murky territory there. It's very it's
very interesting that you bring up the concept of college
athletes because, as we know, that's a continuing controversy here
(19:45):
in the States. Uh, these kids, really, these students are
in a surprisingly vulnerable position, and that led us to
to ask, not just in the realm of college sports,
by in the realm of professional sports, how do some
athletes become compromised to the point that they're willing to
(20:07):
throw a game or to shave some points? And by
that we mean, you know, not the ones who are
who get food poisoning, which is diabolical, um, but but
the you know, the ones who purposefully participate in this
kind of uh, this kind of corruption. Well, did you
guys happen to see that movie that just came out
(20:28):
called Suicide Squad? Yes? I actually did see it. Yes, Okay,
Well there's a scene in there where um, Viola Davis,
who's the head of the Suicide Squad, is asked, well,
how do you get all these bad guys to basically
do what you wanted to do? And herr responsive simple,
she said, Well, everybody has a weakness, and I exploit
that weakness. And I think that's exactly what can happen
(20:52):
with athletes and with coaches and with referees. I think
a lot of sports fans almost make it disconnect and
almost forget that these are people, and these are people
who are like you and me, people who can have problems,
people who can have gambling problems, who can have drug problems,
who want to use performance enhancing drugs, which is another
sort of drug problem. Who have women problems, We have
(21:13):
men problems, We have all sorts of weaknesses, you know, greed.
I mean, it's a very real thing for everybody to
have issues with this, with these things. And I think
smart people and we've seen again if you look at
soccer around the world, they've found that those weaknesses within
the players, within the coaches, within the referees, and then
(21:33):
exploit them. And that's all it takes, is it takes
a simple failing. I mean, I think if you go
with college especially and I think college is where really
people should be looking, especially United States, with the sort
of corruption when you're not paying the college athletes. And
I really don't necessarily agree that you should pay them,
but when you don't pay them and then football player
walks out into a stadium, he's surrounded by a hundred
(21:56):
thousand fans, it's being broadcast to three or four million
people at home. His co which is the highest paid
state employee, making three to five million dollars a year.
There's people in the stands wearing this kid's jersey and
get this kid getting zero dollars. And then somebody approaches
and says, hey, look, I'll give you ten thousand dollars.
Just slightly underperform, shave a few points, and make sure
(22:18):
this game goes my way. Oh why would a kid
not accept that money. It's a very easy offer to make,
I mean, and I think it's a very easy offer
to accept. Yeah, that same thing occurred to me earlier,
like where you know, there are kids getting in trouble
for selling autographs, for example, and it's sort of this
attitude of well, where's mine? You know, I want some
like everyone else is getting paid, and I mean, I'm
(22:39):
not like, especially if if you're a kid who maybe
had went into like college basketball with dreams of making
the NBA. And the fact of the matter is, it's
easier to be elected to Congress than it is to
make the National Basketball Association. To the player, there's more
members of Congress under our NBA players. And yet if
you went to college with that hope and dream and
then you know, your junior year realized that dream is
(23:02):
not gonna happen because I'm just not there good. And
yet I still gotten another year of college eligibility. And
again somebody comes along and says, and it doesn't have
to be that much money. I think I could have,
you know, fix the college basketball game with the money
I have in my bank accounting bean writer, don't make
a lot of money. I think you know, you could
approach the kids and make them generous, seemingly generous offers
(23:24):
that they would go for, because again, when everybody else
is out there making money, I think they assumed that
they should be too, So you think they're almost targeted.
Whereas someone that would be trying to get them to
enter into this would see what you're describing, like, oh,
they haven't really been performing incredibly well, they're almost done
with school. This would be an easy mark for you know,
getting what I want out of this. I think you
(23:46):
can do either way. I mean, I've seen in some
of the older FBI files I have related to, you know,
attempting to fix games where it was just a basic,
led out, direct approach like hey kid, you want to
fix a game for me? And then you know, I've
we've seen in you know, around again, especially in soccer.
Soccer is so incredibly corrupt, but we've seen where there
are really organized crime organizations I guess for lack of
(24:10):
better terms, that literally go out and try to target
individuals to get them to fix soccer matches. And so
I wouldn't be surprised if there's a similar organization within
the High States that may be doing the very same
thing within n C double A basketball or football and
just looking for weaknesses within certain programs and certain players
and targeting them and trying to get them to do
(24:32):
what they wanted to do. Because again, when there's perhaps
three to four hundred billion dollars being wagered and no
one there's no oversight over it, nobody's watching over it,
there's a lot of room to fudge figures and make
some easy money if no one's gonna, you know, come
after you for doing it. And you know, maybe this
is the most frightening thing here. Our show examines a
(24:53):
lot of allegations, a lot of theories, and a lot
of proof of gold duggery, And to me personally, the
most frightening thing about this situation is that, you know,
we're using the phrase organized crime, and what we're looking
at an action seems to be institutionalized crime. Uh with
(25:16):
the by which I mean the level of reach and
organization seems far, far beyond what the average fan thinks,
uh they're buying into when they make that dollar bet. Well,
I think you're right, because I don't Again, I think
a lot of fans they put on a fan hat
(25:37):
and when they put on their jersey and they watched TV,
they kind of disconnect from the reality of everything, the
reality of the players, the reality of the gambling that
surrounds with the reality of the media control surrounding it all.
And I think they just watched the game and assume
what happens on the game lives up to every cliche
that's out there, you know, be the player wants to give,
(26:00):
take it to the next level, and all those things.
I don't think fans are necessarily rational while they're watching
these sports, and so they don't recognize all the threats
and all the real possibilities that surround these games that
may be influencing and are corrupting the outcome of what
they think is a true athletic competition. And I think
there's so many variables that can influence these games that
(26:24):
it's something that really should be looked at closer and
not just be assumed that it is all these cliches
that are spouted week after week. And I want to
take it back just for a second and look at
some of the historical examples that will kind of give
a framework for our listeners to really see how this
stuff started occurring. Um, one of the big ones that
(26:46):
we found in the fixes in is the Black Sox.
If you want to talk a little bit about that,
the World Series and just kind of tell us that
story and then maybe give us a few more examples historically.
Uh Uh, Fixing player's a funny thing. I mean, you
guys probably might remember the answer to these questions, But
let me ask you a couple of quick questions. So
(27:08):
the Black Sox scandals you just said took place in
and that was the last time, supposedly, according to Major
League Baseball, a baseball game has been fixed. Okay, that's
nearly a hundred years now at this point. So when
was the last time National Hockey League game was admittedly
fixed by the league. Oh boy, without without going to Google,
(27:30):
I don't know that I can sufficiently answer that. Well,
the NHL was supposedly like in the nineties. I think
it was like six was the last time they said
the game was fixed? So when was the last time
that an NBA game was fixed? Last season? I don't
know that would be my answer, but yeah, what they claim. Yeah,
(27:50):
I've just as a sidebar here for the listeners. Uh, Brian,
if you're okay with it, I would like to point
everybody to uh your website the fixes in dot net
because in the course for our research, we saw some
fantastic uh modern articles um that we'll get into a
(28:11):
little bit later, But as soon as as soon as
you had asked about the NHL, I went directly to
it and I thought, oh, he's got to have something
on this. So, yeah, what do you do you believe
that the uh that the NBA was fixed last season? Well,
we can get into that, but my opinion would be
definitely yes. I mean, I think one of the main
(28:33):
things I try to point out to people because this
is kind of a different end of the fixing now
that we're talking about and I think games are fixed
for organized crime and gambling purposes, and I look into
that research that and at the same time, I think
games are fixed by the leagues themselves for entertainment purposes
and for television and advertising purposes. And I mean, I
(28:55):
think the same the same you know, the same processes
that can be used for fixing games for gambling reasons
can be used to fix games for the league's reasons.
And I think the NBA certainly manipulated their own games.
And the scary part, the scariest part of all, is
that it is not illegal for league like the NBA
(29:16):
to fix its own game. There's no law that prevents that, right,
which is fascinating because in your book you you have
mentioned in the fixes in I believe it is you've
mentioned a couple of laws that come kind of close, right,
like the quiz show law or the or the Sports
Bribery Act of n four. So what makes them close
(29:41):
but not, uh, you know, not on the money enough
to actually enforce you know, what they purport to enforce. Well,
the Quisho law came first, and I came in the
nineteen fifties out of the quiz show scandals. If anybody
ever saw that movie corrected by Robert Redford. That's a
true story. The television networks, basically, we're fixing their game shows.
(30:01):
And for the same reason I claimed the like the
NFL or the NBA is fixing their own games, they
were fixing their own game shows to make it more entertaining,
to drive up ratings, to make people more interested in
what was going on. And there was a whistleblower from
within one of the game shows, who feel who felt
to get screwed basically by the network, and he turned
him in, and Congress investigated, and out of this investigation
(30:23):
came this realization that yeah, they were fixing the game
shows to make it more interesting. And so a lot
was produced and it was basically called the Quiz Show Law.
But that just covers intellectual contests or contests of chance,
which chance would be like you know, rolling the dice
or some you know, the wheel of fortune is a
type of chance thing. But so you can't fix intellectual
(30:45):
contests for television. But that doesn't cover physical contests like
a sport, and nobody I think what's called sport a chance.
You know, you won't call football game a game a
chance you'd call poker baby a game of chance, but
not football dice. You might call a game chance, but
not basketball. I know people that will be upset about
the poker being a game of chance. Yeah, I know
that was probably a bad example, trying to blow right
(31:07):
past it. But but basically that's what the quation a
lot covers is mainly intellectual contests, not physical ones. And
then at the same time, in nineteen sixty four, Congress
passed the Sports Bribery Act, which made it illegal for
someone to bribe player, a coach, or a referee to
alter the outcome of a game. Amazingly, that wasn't a
federal crime before to fix a game, um, but after
(31:31):
nineteen sixty four was illegal. But that's a bribe. Now,
if the NBA tells its referees, the employer tells its
employees how to do their job, and that may alter
the outcome of a game, well that's not anybody being bribed.
That's just someone telling you how to do your job.
And you go out in the court and do your job,
and maybe that alters the outcome of a game, and
(31:52):
maybe it doesn't. But the fact of the matter is
that doesn't make it illegal. So the closest thing is
fraud that this they cover. But even fraud doesn't cover
it because when New York Jets fans sued the New
England Patriots over to Spygate scandal, that's part of like
a class action lawsuit, they ultimately lost in the court
ruled that look, when you buy a ticket to a game,
(32:15):
if you buy a ticket to an NFL game, that
team just basically has to provide a football game to you.
It doesn't have to be played on any certain rules.
Certain athletes don't have to perform or perform up to
a certain level. It doesn't mean a team can't cheat.
You pay to see football game. They provided a football game.
End of story. So there's really no law that covers
(32:37):
this in terms of a league fixing its own game
and making it illegal. It's not a crime because it
is simply entertainment, and the leagues will tell you that
their entertainment right legal legally they are, which which when
we learned about this, this may come as a blue
to die hard sports fans across the leagues. When we
(32:57):
learned about this, this kind of ruling would essentially render
UH sports leagues more on the level of wrestling than
it would for what they're proceved as. Is that correct? Oh,
very much so. And the funny thing is is ESPN,
you know, the worldwide leader in sports, They now cover
(33:17):
professional wrestling regularly. In fact, they have a special section
on their web page for professional wrestling. So, I mean
the outline is getting more and more blurred every day.
I'm sorry. Are you guys implying that professional wrestling isn't real? No? Oh,
we've done it. No, No, it's real, dude, Guys killing
me here, crushing my dreams. We thought it was best
(33:39):
that you learned this way with an expert. Appreciate it
right for me? Um? Well, what are the consequences of
people getting caught, whether it's a player or an official.
Maybe there's betting involved, or someone has you know, used
a position of influence to for a personal game. What's
the problem is nobody's gotten cat that was bringing up earlier,
(34:02):
you know, the nine nineteen White Sox. Last time it's
supposedly happened in baseball ninety for the NHL early nineteen fifties,
I think it's fifty four for the NBA, and the
NFL claims it's never happened once in its entire existence
that someone tried to or someone did fix the outcome
of a football game. So nobody's gotten con for this
crime in the United States except for college athletes. Okay,
(34:26):
in certain colleges like Boston College, Leedo, University of San Diego,
Northwestern there's been a few, but not a lot. Now
the scary part is to me is again, you look
outside the United States, there's soccer match fixing at every level.
We know that World Cup soccer matches, which is the
most watched, most popular sporting event in the world. We
(34:48):
know soccer matches have been fixed in the World Cup.
We know it. We know the Indian Cricket League, which
is their national sport, is in the most corrupt leagues
in the world. We know rugby in um what is
it in Australia has been fixed. We know baseball in
China has been fixed. I mean, we know sumo wrestling corrupted.
We know there's corruption everywhere else around the world, but
(35:10):
supposedly here in the United States it just doesn't happen.
And I don't believe that for one single You know, uh,
We're tempted to agree with you there, because when we
talk about athletes being caught cheating or when we talk
about the game being somehow compromised. The only real coverage
of it in the contemporary world is uh, you know,
(35:33):
an individual athlete in most cases UH doping or taking
performance enhancing drugs. So it seems like what's happening here
is a vast revenue stream for organized crime UH that
is going from the street level to the top and
then later global. And as as you said, this is
(35:57):
occurring today, is it occurring more or less or has
it always been the same and just unacknowledged. Well, I
think it's I think it has really been acknowledged. I
think more it's been brought to light, especially like in
soccer and with the corruption that was in FIFA and
even the International Olympic Committee to a certain extent, I
think it's come more to light, so more people are
(36:19):
looking at it. And at the same time, the more
people that seem to look as the more they realize
that they're having a very hard time preventing it because
it's such an easy crime to do, and yet it's
a very hard crime to prove to get someone taken
away and thrown in jail for it. Although it has happened.
I mean, like the Italian soccer league Serie A is
incredibly corrupt. It's been corrupted from the players all the
(36:42):
way up to the owners, and guys have been arrested
and thrown in jail for fixing matches and all sorts
of bad behavior there. Yet you know, I think it
was Fox Sports paid them a few million dollars so
they could broadcast it here in the United States, and
those Fox Sports ever talked about that corruption. Of course
not it doesn't, but I mean they're the problem with it.
(37:03):
And the why no one I think has ever been
really caught for to the professional level here in the
United States is how do you prove it? There is
no concrete evidence. And from the four dred some odd
files I obtained the Freeman of Information Act from the
FBI related to this, the FBI can't prove these things
have gone on. Yet they had great evidence. I mean,
they would talk to what they called top echelon informants,
(37:25):
which are really the high up mafia informants who worked
with bookies. It would say this bookie is working with
this player and they're going to fix this game, and
sure enough the game would end and exactly the way
the informants said it was going to end, but that
didn't prove that the game was fixed. You know, you
can't go to court off of that. So where's your
concrete evidence unless somebody admits to committing a federal crime,
(37:48):
which is gonna be hard to do if you don't
have evidence of it or you didn't get it on
a wire tap or some sort of recording of it.
You know, nothing's written down, it's not written on league letterhead,
it's not written you know, it's there's no for the
sort of thing. So the FBI got very frustrated in
investigating these things because of that lack of evidence. And
that's why the leagues can say this has never happened,
(38:09):
because no one's ever been caught and convicted of it happening.
But that doesn't necessarily make it true. It just makes
it true to their you know, proof of evidence. There.
I think they're wrapping up some of the more historical
background of sports fixing and bookmaking. I'm kind of interested in,
you know, at its most basic level, how did the
(38:31):
mob originally start getting into this and start kind of
looking for easy targets as far as which sports to fix,
Like I I picture boxing is being one because you
can just you know, offer somebody a lot of money,
or threaten somebody's family, things like that. But can you
kind of just lay it out a little bit about
like how this started, how it kind of ballooned into
(38:52):
what we see now in more modern times. Well, it's
hard to say, really because, like I said, I think
a lot of it was easy money. I mean, book
making in many ways is pretty much easy money because
most of the time, the public is wrong when they
make a bet, you know, I mean they really are.
I mean a lot of people almost make more money
betting against the way the general public is betting on
(39:14):
a game, because more often than not, the general public
is wrong. So I mean most it's very hard to
find a bookie who went out of business because his
clients were too good and winning too often. So I
mean to get into, you know, bookmaking, and like I say,
organized crime has been in it for a hundred years
or more. It's because more often than not, the people
who are betting lose over a period of time. So
(39:38):
that's why I think it's easy for them to go
into the business and make money. In terms of fixing,
I mean, it's it's kind of nice to have a
sure thing. And I think if you know that athletes
are betting with you, you can compromise them. If you
know athletes have a drug problem and you're the ones
applying the drugs, you can compromise them. I mean, there's
just ways to compromise athletes. And that's the way the
mob I think has made its money for threat of
(40:00):
history is finding the weaknesses within people and exploiting them.
And it's funny you bring up boxing because most people
don't realize that. Like for boxing, between the late forties
and early sixties, really one mobster controlled pretty much all
of boxing, and I mean literally controlled it. He determined
many times who would fight, who where they would fight,
(40:20):
and oftentimes who would win and who would lose, and
he would always get a cut of that money. But
I mean, boxing is actually what made television, believe it
or not. Who television became into the name was Frankie
Carbo and Frankie Carbon basically controlled boxing. He worked with
two guys who helped found the NHL, Arthur Wertz, whose
(40:41):
family still owns the black Hawks today, and James Norris,
who the Norris Trophy is named after. His father who
owned the Detroit Red Wings. He worked with those two
guys to put boxing events in their arenas because they
controlled Madison Square Garden in Chicago, Stadium, Olympia Stadium in Detroit,
and St. Louis Arena, and he the mob are well,
worked with those two guys put on boxing events and
(41:02):
those arenas, and they sold it the CBS and NBC
is Wednesday and Friday night fights and those events really
helped make television a must see thing. And it's I mean,
it's pretty amazing that really, those three guys really helped
influence television and made it something that everybody had to
see because boxing was such popular in those fifties and
(41:25):
early sixties, and yet it was controlled by organized crime
the entire time. So thank you mafia for cable television. Yes,
(41:45):
thank you for cable. Mobsters. Um I I mean we've
we've lived with cable, we grew up with cable. I'm
a cord cutter I am now, But what from the
ninth from the eighties up in until a couple of
years ago, I had that cable like directly attached to
my heart, intravenously pumping content into your bloodstream and right now,
(42:10):
ladies and gentlemen, you're with us in a moment outside
of time because we've taken a break. We can tell
you that behind the scenes, Noel, Matt and I realized
that we were not going to be able to fit
this entire interview into a single episode, so we knew
we would have to split it. And this is us
(42:31):
traveling into our past, which I guess is you were
present now. UH. Podcasting plays with time that way. We're
so high on the spice right now. Yeah, we're so
high on the spice right now that we are going
to take some time. We're gonna head out of here
and we'll be back next week with the second half
(42:51):
of the interview. But while while we're still here, while
it's still uh the three amigos in the studio, I
have to have to ask you, guys, what are you
thinking so far about this, about this weird connection with
the mafia and about uh Brian's Brian's statement that pretty
much all sports are rigged. So far, I'm pretty convinced,
(43:13):
I would have to say, but you know, maybe it's
just because Brian's convincing. I don't know. It seems like
after reading the material then hearing him talk about it
so openly and frankly. I mean, he's a very matter
of fact about it, and just it kind of just
speaks about it like a foregone conclusion. And not to
say that that means it's true, But in my mind,
(43:35):
with all of the cases of sports fixing that we've
we do know about in other parts of the world,
it just seems kind of naive to think that, you know,
with all that there is to gain from this, whether
it's TV deals, whether it's you know, big money bets
and organized crime, that this is not in fact happening
on some level in professional sports. I just I don't
(43:58):
I can't buy that they're so squeaky clean. Also, given
these doping scandals that we always see uncovered and have
been you know, for a long time now, how how
can we accept that that is a thing that happens,
that people are willing to go to those lengths, but
not the ones that Brian describes. So I'm kind of
with you on that map. Yeah, he did. He did
an excellent job I think building a case uh so far,
(44:21):
you know, at least providing motive. So listeners, hope you
enjoyed this episode as much as we're enjoying making it.
That's a tall order, as you said on Facebook Live
from earlier, but the journey is not over yet. Uh.
If you're looking for something else to check out while
you're waiting for the conclusion to this interview, which will
(44:44):
come out next week, Uh, then why not head over
to stuff they Don't Want You to Know dot com
where you can check out every audio podcast we have
ever done, along with so many of our videos. And
if you want to read more from Brian, you can
check out his side at the Fixes in dot net,
where you can see info on how to get ahold
of his books, the Fixes in Larceny Games, a Season
(45:06):
in the abyss not to be confused with the Slayer
album Seasons in the abyss um and he's got a
really it's it's a very telling little tagline on his page.
Here would you leave a multibillion dollar business up to chance? Oh?
Good question. And of course, if you have a suggestion
for an upcoming episode, or you want to see some
(45:27):
of the stuff we do that doesn't make it to
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(45:48):
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But you know what, we take the good with the
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it's good. We want it all objectivity. But yeah, you
(46:12):
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It helps the algorithm and helps people find out about
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(46:32):
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(46:52):
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
So we often say that any industry, any enterprise past
a certain threshold of success, becomes ripe for conspiracies. And
it should be absolutely no surprise that the world of
sports is no different. Sports are a huge, huge thing
(00:24):
in almost every single part of the world. Uh you
know they're they're probably scientists and staff who have active
sports lives in Antarctica and pursue those hobbies. This was
such a big topic that we made it a two parter.
Do you remember this? Oh? I do? I remember talking
(00:44):
with Brian Tweet like it happened yesterday, even though it
was in September. But seriously, it was a great conversation.
It really illuminated for me personally the concept that in
any competition, any competition, no matter how big or small,
there is a regular market for that competition where you
(01:07):
can you know, market it, you can sell tickets to it,
and run things above board. There's a gray market, which
this I would say, it's a gray market where it's
like legal gambling and that kind of world like Vegas,
Atlantic City. Then there's the black market, which is the
gambling that happens underneath the table or is kind of
operating in the shadows, even on the field. Yes, so
(01:32):
uh tune in for this one and then stay tuned
for part two of this classic series. From UFOs to
psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is riddled with unexplained events.
You can turn back now or learn this stuff they
don't gant you to know. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(01:59):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They call
me Ben, and you are you, and this is stuff
they don't want you to know. We're doing something a
little bit different today. Ben the bookie Bowling, Noel numbers Brown,
Matt is bad at Math, Frederick, Matt Mad Money. Frederick.
We want to introduce you to a very special guest
(02:23):
in this episode. This is a two part episode about
sports fixing. And as we are not, uh, despite our
new monikers, as we are not ourselves experts on sports fixing. No.
I haven't done much gambling at all. I've been to
a casino two times. I watched a football game on
TV once. Oh it was a date and I was
(02:46):
trying to get in good with this gal and she
was a huge Stanford fan. And I tell you, I
sat through that whole game like a champ. And I
almost think maybe I understand how football works pretty timon. Well,
we've received questions for years from you and listeners just
like you who have asked us to cover something like
(03:08):
FIFA or something like even corruption in sumo wrestling. Uh
So we were fortunate enough to get an interview with
one of the world's pre eminent experts on sports fixing,
Mr Brian Tooey. Yeah, Brian has written extensively on the subjects.
He has three books a Season in the Abyss, The
Fixes In and Larceny Games, all of which dive deep
(03:30):
into the world of bookmaking, organized crime, where the money
goes in these scenarios. And of course the question is
what we're seeing legitimate? Are these games having their outcomes
manipulated by one of several possible forces. So we'll dive
(03:51):
into the first part of the interview where we get
we get a deeper understanding of how this sort of
system would work, a look at the history of corruption
in sports, and information about what inspired Brian to again
these investigations. Grant, could you tell the audience and us
(04:18):
what inspired you to become the world's leading expert on
corruption in sports? Well, it really took off when I
realized nobody else seemed to want to do this job.
I mean, I was really just a fan of professional
sports for a long time, growing up as a kid,
you know, a hockey fan to baseball fans, football fan,
and what have you. But as I got older and
(04:41):
perhaps a little wiser, I started noticing what I felt
were almost like too many coincidences that were occurring within
these games, within these sports that always seemed to benefit
the league. And I came to realize, when the leagues
have the ability to really control everything that surrounds the games,
what prevented them from controlling what happens within the games?
(05:03):
And once I kind of asked the question of myself
and started doing a little research, it kind of led
me down this path to where I am today. It's
interesting that you mentioned the way the league figures into
all of this, because obviously there is a whole lot
of profits to be made in and around professional sports,
whether it's the legal end of it, merchandizing ticket sales,
(05:26):
TV deals, things like that. We're talking billions and billions
of dollars. But when you really segment it out and
you talk about just the money that can be made
out of sports betting, how is all of this generated
and what kind of figures are we talking here. Well,
the professional leagues, the four main leagues, the NFL, Major
League Baseball, the NHL, in the NBA make a combined
(05:46):
about billion dollars a year in revenue. And as for
the sports gambling end of things, the problem is is
nobody really knows because the sports gambling done in the
United States today is done illegally and much of that
money is controlled by organized crime. The state in Nevada,
which is the only place where you can legally bet
(06:08):
on single games and all of these sports says they
come for about two to three percent of all the
sports gambly done in the nation and they took in
about what was it, I think about three or four
billion dollars on sports betting, which means if you extrapolate
that number, it means that perhaps as much as three
(06:30):
to four hundred billion dollars is being waged in the
United States today illegally, but nobody really knows. Smokes a
lot of money is yeah, that's so much money. So
these guys that are running the books on these in
these illegal gambling operations, how do they actually make money
(06:50):
on this operation? And moreover, I mean what's the structure
of this illegal operation? Like from you know, me being
a Joe on the street that wants to you know,
play about in a sports game, how do I go
from point A to point bs you making or losing
a whole bunch of money. Well that's the scary part
in a way, is most gamblers are recreational gamblers. You know,
(07:11):
their average Joe is or James, and they want to
bet twenty bucks or fifty bucks on the game this
weekend or what have you, and they don't realize that
many times when they do bet that twenty or fifty
dollars or a hundred dollars or whatever, they can afford
to lose or sometimes can't afford to lose whatever they're betting.
Most off of those small amounts are being bet with
local bookies, and they might be guys, people they know,
(07:34):
people they don't really well know. But the problem is
is even those small bets really get funneled into organized crime,
even if they're kind of gambling with somebody they know
or think they know. Because what happens is is local
bookies often get wagers on local teams. Like I live
in Wisconsin. So let's say in this example, most of
the bookies that I perhaps would deal with would take
(07:56):
a lot of bets on the Green Bay Packers in
the NFL, because a lot of people bet with their hearts,
they've bet on the home team, they bet on the
games they're gonna watch. And in Wisconsin, you watch the
Green Bay Packers or you don't watch television really today.
So the local bookies get overwhelmed with basically Green Bay
Packer money, and that's not good for them because what
most bookies want is a fifty fifty split on the game.
(08:19):
They want bet on the Packers. They want, say, bet
on the Bears, and they collect a ten percent on
the losers. So you have to bet eleven dollars to
win ten dollars. And that's how the bookies make their money.
And that's the big right is that like the concept
of the big sort of like a premium that you
have the bigger ish there take their rake however you
(08:42):
want to put it. Yeah. So, but what happens is
these local bookies in this case again get overwhelmed with
the money bet on the Packers. So what they want
to do is basically what they call layoff the money
and bet with other bookies, perhaps like in Chicago, if
the Packers are playing the Bears, because the Bear bookies
are gonna have too much money on the Bears, and
so they kind of swap wagers to kind of alleviate
(09:04):
their you know, exposure on these games. And so what
happens is little bookies bet with slightly bigger bookies. Bigger
bookies bet with even bigger bookies, and this money almost
actually funnels upwards, and sitting at the top of this
pyramid is organized crime, who have controlled illegal sports gambling
for probably a hundred years. It's one of those things
where even though you're betting with somebody you may know
(09:26):
and just somebody think is local, some guy at the bar,
that money gets funneled upwards to people who are running
organized crime. And then people say, well, you know, so
what it's, you know, a harmless crime, it's a victimless crime.
But the fact is that money that feeds organized crimes
then goes to prostitution, that goes to loan sharking, and
it goes to all the other bad things that organized
(09:46):
crime still does today. And just to be specific for
our audience members who may not be as aware of
the nuts and bolts of this of the betting process.
What is the point spread and why does it matter so? Well?
The point spread really only matters in mainly in the
NFL and the NBA or college basketball and college football
(10:08):
because too often games are almost lopsided. And this really
started way back about a hundred years or so, maybe
in twenties or thirties, where bookies wanted to take bets
on games, on all games that are being played, but
in certain instances, you know, people are almost certain that,
for example, the Packers are going to beat the Bears,
you know, almost no matter what happens, that are almost
(10:30):
certain Packers are going to beat the Bears, and the
odds that they would have to set on the game
would be so high that nobody want to bet on
the Packers because there return on their money would be
so low. And at the same time, the bookies who
wouldn't want to necessarily give huge odds on the Bears
to win because then if that miracles miracle did happen,
so they might have to lay out too much money
to those people who took the long shot. So over
(10:52):
time they developed what's called the point spread, and the
point spread basically kind of even the playing field, where
oftentimes at football, like if they gain Packers are playing
the Bears, they might say the Packers are minus seven,
which means that is, you have to subtract seven points
from the Packers at the end of the game and
or add seven points to the Bears total, and that's
(11:13):
what the final score wants up being in the betting circles.
So if the Packers won ten, you subtract seven, which
means the Packers really only scored seventeen points. The Bears
would get seven points. But yet four to ten differences
four team points, so it doesn't really come into play
for the points bread And if you bet the Packers,
(11:33):
you won. If you bet the Bears in this example,
you would lose. So it's a little convoluted concept. Yeah,
but that's a perfect explanation, absolutely, And I know folks
are probably eager for us to get into the whole
fixing aspect of it, But I do have one more
question about the rules and just sort of the you know,
structure for this betting scenario. Um. I know that in
your book Larceny Games, when you're talking about sort of
(11:55):
the history of betting and gambling on sports and how
at its heart it it is a simple prospect of
making a fifty fifty bat where you're saying, like, I
think it's gonna be this one, and I'm putting all
my eggs in that basket and I'm either gonna win
or I'm gonna lose. But at the end of the day,
that's not enough to attract enough people to continuously, you know,
(12:16):
keep people in business who want to you know, make
money on this betting. So the bookies came up with
this idea of odds and they basically created it, and
it's a little bit lopsided, I think from the way
I understanding it, where I'm sure there are stats that
go into determining these odds, but at the end of
the day, it's sort of like, well, you know, you
get more of a return on your money if you
(12:36):
maybe bet on the underdog and they win. But I
just wanted a little bit of clarification on how you
see odds playing into this and whether or not they
are based on stats or if it's just kind of
a construct in something that these bookies sort of came
up with too, you know, sweeten the pot. I guess, well,
it's interesting because really odds and even the point spread
are make believe numbers, you know, they don't necessarily reflect
(12:57):
the reality of the game or like a box match
or horse race, there really artificial numbers. And the point
spread is really almost based from what I understand from
talking to some of these guys who set the point spreads,
is based on their perception of the public perception of
the game that's about to be played. So it's funny
(13:19):
the guys who do like the NFL point spreads, they
can almost do them just off the top of the
heads without looking at computers or statistics or that sort
of things. They just know a lot of betters like
certain teams, they like certain matchups, and they just kind
of assumed that certain games are going to go a
certain way. So the guys were setting the point spreads
and creating the odds a lot of times can just
(13:41):
wing it because it's based off the perception of the
public's perception and not really the bookie's perception of what's
going to happen in the game. So if they point
set the point spread, like again in the pack of
Bearer game at minus seven, it doesn't mean that the
book he really thinks the packers are gonna win seventeen.
They may think the Packers are gonna win thirty five
(14:02):
to nothing, but they think that's what the public thinks
is that the game might be like seventeen matchup. So
that's how they create that point spread. And it's interesting
because now we start to see these frames, these interlocking
(14:26):
frames of perception that play a powerful role, almost as
powerful as the actual athletes in the game. And and
this brings us to a question that I was I
was dying to ask after we had checked out Larceny
Games Season and the abyss UH and the fixes in UH.
(14:48):
We wanted to ask you, what, in your opinion, are
the easiest and most difficult sports to fix? We know.
The unfortunate thing is I get asked a lot like
what's the least corrup sport? And unfortunately I can't name one,
because you really, if you do some digging around, you
(15:09):
will realize almost every professional sport has been negatively influenced
by some sort of corruption. I mean, you could go soccer, cricket, tennis, rugby, baseball, football, boxing, hockey,
the UFC hors ary scene. I mean, the list goes
on and on, and you can find corruption in terms
of altering the outcomes of certain events. In all of
(15:31):
those things, you can even find it. Little League Baseball,
we've seen it where you know, the Chicago team from
the Little League World Series a couple of years ago
was deemed illegal. Where I think a New York team
a few years ago ahead a pitcher who was fourteen
and he should have only been twelve, and they lied
about his age. I mean, it's unfortunately everywhere. But in
terms of your direct question, I think the easiest sports
(15:52):
to manipulate from a fixing angle for betting purposes, one
is soccer because it's happening all over the globe and
been happening for a very long time, and they can't
or maybe they don't, but they can't seem to stop it.
But in America, I think the two the biggest ones
to be football and basketball because of that point spread
(16:12):
and the idea of the point spread. And I can
explain why is basically because what people can do is
they can get athletes to what they call shaved points.
Where again, if you go back to that seven point
point spread in that Bear Packer, the fictional Bear Packer game,
I means you could approach the players or a player
from the Packers and say, hey, look, you can still
(16:33):
win the game. You can still beat the Bears. That's fine,
just don't cover that point spread. Instead of winning by
more than seven, just win by like three points, and
therefore I can bet the Bears. You can still win
your game. But because the Bears are getting seven points
and they only lost by three in the betting parlance,
they won the game by four. So that's the tricky thing.
(16:55):
And you can do it a lot, and I think
it occurs a lot, especially at the college level in
basket ball and football, because of these point spreads where
a team can still win but yet not covered a
point spread, and that makes it really hard to uncover
who really was giving a percent out there and who
maybe was doing something a little illegal. That's my question.
Isn't it really difficult to do? It seems like such
(17:15):
a precise thing to influence the outcome of a game
just by a certain number of points based on what
you do, and not have it be completely transparent to
anybody watching saying, oh, that guy totally took a dive there.
He screwed up that play. It was clearly on purpose, Like,
how do these It seems like they're a whole another
level of skill required to be able to do this
(17:36):
convincingly gets some funny. He said it like Joan Amoth
back in the late sixties was accused of throwing a
couple of football games because I think twice in the
season he threw with like five interceptions within a single game,
and he kind of got fingered for potentially throwing those games.
And Joe name was, when approached and asked about he said, look,
(17:57):
because I wouldn't be dumb enough to throw five interceptions
in the game. I fixed. What I would do is
I would throw the ball slightly out of the reach
of the wide receiver or I, you know, mishandle a snap,
or I would you just do something small that would
be imperceptible, and that's how it fixed the game. I
wouldn't make it obvious like that, which I always found
funny because that means obviously Joe Namith kind of thought
(18:18):
about it and how we would fix the game if
need be, But apparently he claimed he didn't do it
because he would have made it that obvious. And I mean,
there's a guy by the name of Lefty Rosenthal. He's
an old, old guy. He um the movie Casino was
actually based on Lefty Rosenthal. He's a real guy in
the movie. It's played by Roberts de Niro's name is
like Ace Rothstein or something like that, but that's really
(18:41):
left the Rosenthal. Left Rosenthal was known to fix games,
and he would actually have college kids college basketball players
practice missing layups so they looked more realistic when they
did it. He was even known to actually supposedly he
gave food poisoning to an entire football team that came
into town to play nor Western University, and he invited
(19:02):
the other team out for dinner and gave him all
food poisoning at a restaurant he was familiar with to
make sure he wanted his bet. So, I mean, there's
there's there's various ways to do this, but yeah, I
mean I think it wouldn't be necessarily blatantly obvious, although
sometimes it very well could be. And yet, you know,
how do you finger somebody for it, because it could
just be somebody's having a bad game and off day.
(19:25):
But proved that he did it on purpose, that's a
whole different thing. Yeah, that sounds like it could quickly
go into some subjective murky territory there. It's very it's
very interesting that you bring up the concept of college
athletes because, as we know, that's a continuing controversy here
(19:45):
in the States. Uh, these kids, really, these students are
in a surprisingly vulnerable position, and that led us to
to ask, not just in the realm of college sports,
by in the realm of professional sports, how do some
athletes become compromised to the point that they're willing to
(20:07):
throw a game or to shave some points? And by
that we mean, you know, not the ones who are
who get food poisoning, which is diabolical, um, but but
the you know, the ones who purposefully participate in this
kind of uh, this kind of corruption. Well, did you
guys happen to see that movie that just came out
(20:28):
called Suicide Squad? Yes? I actually did see it. Yes, Okay,
Well there's a scene in there where um, Viola Davis,
who's the head of the Suicide Squad, is asked, well,
how do you get all these bad guys to basically
do what you wanted to do? And herr responsive simple,
she said, Well, everybody has a weakness, and I exploit
that weakness. And I think that's exactly what can happen
(20:52):
with athletes and with coaches and with referees. I think
a lot of sports fans almost make it disconnect and
almost forget that these are people, and these are people
who are like you and me, people who can have problems,
people who can have gambling problems, who can have drug problems,
who want to use performance enhancing drugs, which is another
sort of drug problem. Who have women problems, We have
(21:13):
men problems, We have all sorts of weaknesses, you know, greed.
I mean, it's a very real thing for everybody to
have issues with this, with these things. And I think
smart people and we've seen again if you look at
soccer around the world, they've found that those weaknesses within
the players, within the coaches, within the referees, and then
(21:33):
exploit them. And that's all it takes, is it takes
a simple failing. I mean, I think if you go
with college especially and I think college is where really
people should be looking, especially United States, with the sort
of corruption when you're not paying the college athletes. And
I really don't necessarily agree that you should pay them,
but when you don't pay them and then football player
walks out into a stadium, he's surrounded by a hundred
(21:56):
thousand fans, it's being broadcast to three or four million
people at home. His co which is the highest paid
state employee, making three to five million dollars a year.
There's people in the stands wearing this kid's jersey and
get this kid getting zero dollars. And then somebody approaches
and says, hey, look, I'll give you ten thousand dollars.
Just slightly underperform, shave a few points, and make sure
(22:18):
this game goes my way. Oh why would a kid
not accept that money. It's a very easy offer to make,
I mean, and I think it's a very easy offer
to accept. Yeah, that same thing occurred to me earlier,
like where you know, there are kids getting in trouble
for selling autographs, for example, and it's sort of this
attitude of well, where's mine? You know, I want some
like everyone else is getting paid, and I mean, I'm
(22:39):
not like, especially if if you're a kid who maybe
had went into like college basketball with dreams of making
the NBA. And the fact of the matter is, it's
easier to be elected to Congress than it is to
make the National Basketball Association. To the player, there's more
members of Congress under our NBA players. And yet if
you went to college with that hope and dream and
then you know, your junior year realized that dream is
(23:02):
not gonna happen because I'm just not there good. And
yet I still gotten another year of college eligibility. And
again somebody comes along and says, and it doesn't have
to be that much money. I think I could have,
you know, fix the college basketball game with the money
I have in my bank accounting bean writer, don't make
a lot of money. I think you know, you could
approach the kids and make them generous, seemingly generous offers
(23:24):
that they would go for, because again, when everybody else
is out there making money, I think they assumed that
they should be too, So you think they're almost targeted.
Whereas someone that would be trying to get them to
enter into this would see what you're describing, like, oh,
they haven't really been performing incredibly well, they're almost done
with school. This would be an easy mark for you know,
getting what I want out of this. I think you
(23:46):
can do either way. I mean, I've seen in some
of the older FBI files I have related to, you know,
attempting to fix games where it was just a basic,
led out, direct approach like hey kid, you want to
fix a game for me? And then you know, I've
we've seen in you know, around again, especially in soccer.
Soccer is so incredibly corrupt, but we've seen where there
are really organized crime organizations I guess for lack of
(24:10):
better terms, that literally go out and try to target
individuals to get them to fix soccer matches. And so
I wouldn't be surprised if there's a similar organization within
the High States that may be doing the very same
thing within n C double A basketball or football and
just looking for weaknesses within certain programs and certain players
and targeting them and trying to get them to do
(24:32):
what they wanted to do. Because again, when there's perhaps
three to four hundred billion dollars being wagered and no
one there's no oversight over it, nobody's watching over it,
there's a lot of room to fudge figures and make
some easy money if no one's gonna, you know, come
after you for doing it. And you know, maybe this
is the most frightening thing here. Our show examines a
(24:53):
lot of allegations, a lot of theories, and a lot
of proof of gold duggery, And to me personally, the
most frightening thing about this situation is that, you know,
we're using the phrase organized crime, and what we're looking
at an action seems to be institutionalized crime. Uh with
(25:16):
the by which I mean the level of reach and
organization seems far, far beyond what the average fan thinks,
uh they're buying into when they make that dollar bet. Well,
I think you're right, because I don't Again, I think
a lot of fans they put on a fan hat
(25:37):
and when they put on their jersey and they watched TV,
they kind of disconnect from the reality of everything, the
reality of the players, the reality of the gambling that
surrounds with the reality of the media control surrounding it all.
And I think they just watched the game and assume
what happens on the game lives up to every cliche
that's out there, you know, be the player wants to give,
(26:00):
take it to the next level, and all those things.
I don't think fans are necessarily rational while they're watching
these sports, and so they don't recognize all the threats
and all the real possibilities that surround these games that
may be influencing and are corrupting the outcome of what
they think is a true athletic competition. And I think
there's so many variables that can influence these games that
(26:24):
it's something that really should be looked at closer and
not just be assumed that it is all these cliches
that are spouted week after week. And I want to
take it back just for a second and look at
some of the historical examples that will kind of give
a framework for our listeners to really see how this
stuff started occurring. Um, one of the big ones that
(26:46):
we found in the fixes in is the Black Sox.
If you want to talk a little bit about that,
the World Series and just kind of tell us that
story and then maybe give us a few more examples historically.
Uh Uh, Fixing player's a funny thing. I mean, you
guys probably might remember the answer to these questions, But
let me ask you a couple of quick questions. So
(27:08):
the Black Sox scandals you just said took place in
and that was the last time, supposedly, according to Major
League Baseball, a baseball game has been fixed. Okay, that's
nearly a hundred years now at this point. So when
was the last time National Hockey League game was admittedly
fixed by the league. Oh boy, without without going to Google,
(27:30):
I don't know that I can sufficiently answer that. Well,
the NHL was supposedly like in the nineties. I think
it was like six was the last time they said
the game was fixed? So when was the last time
that an NBA game was fixed? Last season? I don't
know that would be my answer, but yeah, what they claim. Yeah,
(27:50):
I've just as a sidebar here for the listeners. Uh, Brian,
if you're okay with it, I would like to point
everybody to uh your website the fixes in dot net
because in the course for our research, we saw some
fantastic uh modern articles um that we'll get into a
(28:11):
little bit later, But as soon as as soon as
you had asked about the NHL, I went directly to
it and I thought, oh, he's got to have something
on this. So, yeah, what do you do you believe
that the uh that the NBA was fixed last season? Well,
we can get into that, but my opinion would be
definitely yes. I mean, I think one of the main
(28:33):
things I try to point out to people because this
is kind of a different end of the fixing now
that we're talking about and I think games are fixed
for organized crime and gambling purposes, and I look into
that research that and at the same time, I think
games are fixed by the leagues themselves for entertainment purposes
and for television and advertising purposes. And I mean, I
(28:55):
think the same the same you know, the same processes
that can be used for fixing games for gambling reasons
can be used to fix games for the league's reasons.
And I think the NBA certainly manipulated their own games.
And the scary part, the scariest part of all, is
that it is not illegal for league like the NBA
(29:16):
to fix its own game. There's no law that prevents that, right,
which is fascinating because in your book you you have
mentioned in the fixes in I believe it is you've
mentioned a couple of laws that come kind of close, right,
like the quiz show law or the or the Sports
Bribery Act of n four. So what makes them close
(29:41):
but not, uh, you know, not on the money enough
to actually enforce you know, what they purport to enforce. Well,
the Quisho law came first, and I came in the
nineteen fifties out of the quiz show scandals. If anybody
ever saw that movie corrected by Robert Redford. That's a
true story. The television networks, basically, we're fixing their game shows.
(30:01):
And for the same reason I claimed the like the
NFL or the NBA is fixing their own games, they
were fixing their own game shows to make it more entertaining,
to drive up ratings, to make people more interested in
what was going on. And there was a whistleblower from
within one of the game shows, who feel who felt
to get screwed basically by the network, and he turned
him in, and Congress investigated, and out of this investigation
(30:23):
came this realization that yeah, they were fixing the game
shows to make it more interesting. And so a lot
was produced and it was basically called the Quiz Show Law.
But that just covers intellectual contests or contests of chance,
which chance would be like you know, rolling the dice
or some you know, the wheel of fortune is a
type of chance thing. But so you can't fix intellectual
(30:45):
contests for television. But that doesn't cover physical contests like
a sport, and nobody I think what's called sport a chance.
You know, you won't call football game a game a
chance you'd call poker baby a game of chance, but
not football dice. You might call a game chance, but
not basketball. I know people that will be upset about
the poker being a game of chance. Yeah, I know
that was probably a bad example, trying to blow right
(31:07):
past it. But but basically that's what the quation a
lot covers is mainly intellectual contests, not physical ones. And
then at the same time, in nineteen sixty four, Congress
passed the Sports Bribery Act, which made it illegal for
someone to bribe player, a coach, or a referee to
alter the outcome of a game. Amazingly, that wasn't a
federal crime before to fix a game, um, but after
(31:31):
nineteen sixty four was illegal. But that's a bribe. Now,
if the NBA tells its referees, the employer tells its
employees how to do their job, and that may alter
the outcome of a game, well that's not anybody being bribed.
That's just someone telling you how to do your job.
And you go out in the court and do your job,
and maybe that alters the outcome of a game, and
(31:52):
maybe it doesn't. But the fact of the matter is
that doesn't make it illegal. So the closest thing is
fraud that this they cover. But even fraud doesn't cover
it because when New York Jets fans sued the New
England Patriots over to Spygate scandal, that's part of like
a class action lawsuit, they ultimately lost in the court
ruled that look, when you buy a ticket to a game,
(32:15):
if you buy a ticket to an NFL game, that
team just basically has to provide a football game to you.
It doesn't have to be played on any certain rules.
Certain athletes don't have to perform or perform up to
a certain level. It doesn't mean a team can't cheat.
You pay to see football game. They provided a football game.
End of story. So there's really no law that covers
(32:37):
this in terms of a league fixing its own game
and making it illegal. It's not a crime because it
is simply entertainment, and the leagues will tell you that
their entertainment right legal legally they are, which which when
we learned about this, this may come as a blue
to die hard sports fans across the leagues. When we
(32:57):
learned about this, this kind of ruling would essentially render
UH sports leagues more on the level of wrestling than
it would for what they're proceved as. Is that correct? Oh,
very much so. And the funny thing is is ESPN,
you know, the worldwide leader in sports, They now cover
(33:17):
professional wrestling regularly. In fact, they have a special section
on their web page for professional wrestling. So, I mean
the outline is getting more and more blurred every day.
I'm sorry. Are you guys implying that professional wrestling isn't real? No? Oh,
we've done it. No, No, it's real, dude, Guys killing
me here, crushing my dreams. We thought it was best
(33:39):
that you learned this way with an expert. Appreciate it
right for me? Um? Well, what are the consequences of
people getting caught, whether it's a player or an official.
Maybe there's betting involved, or someone has you know, used
a position of influence to for a personal game. What's
the problem is nobody's gotten cat that was bringing up earlier,
(34:02):
you know, the nine nineteen White Sox. Last time it's
supposedly happened in baseball ninety for the NHL early nineteen fifties,
I think it's fifty four for the NBA, and the
NFL claims it's never happened once in its entire existence
that someone tried to or someone did fix the outcome
of a football game. So nobody's gotten con for this
crime in the United States except for college athletes. Okay,
(34:26):
in certain colleges like Boston College, Leedo, University of San Diego,
Northwestern there's been a few, but not a lot. Now
the scary part is to me is again, you look
outside the United States, there's soccer match fixing at every level.
We know that World Cup soccer matches, which is the
most watched, most popular sporting event in the world. We
(34:48):
know soccer matches have been fixed in the World Cup.
We know it. We know the Indian Cricket League, which
is their national sport, is in the most corrupt leagues
in the world. We know rugby in um what is
it in Australia has been fixed. We know baseball in
China has been fixed. I mean, we know sumo wrestling corrupted.
We know there's corruption everywhere else around the world, but
(35:10):
supposedly here in the United States it just doesn't happen.
And I don't believe that for one single You know, uh,
We're tempted to agree with you there, because when we
talk about athletes being caught cheating or when we talk
about the game being somehow compromised. The only real coverage
of it in the contemporary world is uh, you know,
(35:33):
an individual athlete in most cases UH doping or taking
performance enhancing drugs. So it seems like what's happening here
is a vast revenue stream for organized crime UH that
is going from the street level to the top and
then later global. And as as you said, this is
(35:57):
occurring today, is it occurring more or less or has
it always been the same and just unacknowledged. Well, I
think it's I think it has really been acknowledged. I
think more it's been brought to light, especially like in
soccer and with the corruption that was in FIFA and
even the International Olympic Committee to a certain extent, I
think it's come more to light, so more people are
(36:19):
looking at it. And at the same time, the more
people that seem to look as the more they realize
that they're having a very hard time preventing it because
it's such an easy crime to do, and yet it's
a very hard crime to prove to get someone taken
away and thrown in jail for it. Although it has happened.
I mean, like the Italian soccer league Serie A is
incredibly corrupt. It's been corrupted from the players all the
(36:42):
way up to the owners, and guys have been arrested
and thrown in jail for fixing matches and all sorts
of bad behavior there. Yet you know, I think it
was Fox Sports paid them a few million dollars so
they could broadcast it here in the United States, and
those Fox Sports ever talked about that corruption. Of course
not it doesn't, but I mean they're the problem with it.
(37:03):
And the why no one I think has ever been
really caught for to the professional level here in the
United States is how do you prove it? There is
no concrete evidence. And from the four dred some odd
files I obtained the Freeman of Information Act from the
FBI related to this, the FBI can't prove these things
have gone on. Yet they had great evidence. I mean,
they would talk to what they called top echelon informants,
(37:25):
which are really the high up mafia informants who worked
with bookies. It would say this bookie is working with
this player and they're going to fix this game, and
sure enough the game would end and exactly the way
the informants said it was going to end, but that
didn't prove that the game was fixed. You know, you
can't go to court off of that. So where's your
concrete evidence unless somebody admits to committing a federal crime,
(37:48):
which is gonna be hard to do if you don't
have evidence of it or you didn't get it on
a wire tap or some sort of recording of it.
You know, nothing's written down, it's not written on league letterhead,
it's not written you know, it's there's no for the
sort of thing. So the FBI got very frustrated in
investigating these things because of that lack of evidence. And
that's why the leagues can say this has never happened,
(38:09):
because no one's ever been caught and convicted of it happening.
But that doesn't necessarily make it true. It just makes
it true to their you know, proof of evidence. There.
I think they're wrapping up some of the more historical
background of sports fixing and bookmaking. I'm kind of interested in,
you know, at its most basic level, how did the
(38:31):
mob originally start getting into this and start kind of
looking for easy targets as far as which sports to fix,
Like I I picture boxing is being one because you
can just you know, offer somebody a lot of money,
or threaten somebody's family, things like that. But can you
kind of just lay it out a little bit about
like how this started, how it kind of ballooned into
(38:52):
what we see now in more modern times. Well, it's
hard to say, really because, like I said, I think
a lot of it was easy money. I mean, book
making in many ways is pretty much easy money because
most of the time, the public is wrong when they
make a bet, you know, I mean they really are.
I mean a lot of people almost make more money
betting against the way the general public is betting on
(39:14):
a game, because more often than not, the general public
is wrong. So I mean most it's very hard to
find a bookie who went out of business because his
clients were too good and winning too often. So I
mean to get into, you know, bookmaking, and like I say,
organized crime has been in it for a hundred years
or more. It's because more often than not, the people
who are betting lose over a period of time. So
(39:38):
that's why I think it's easy for them to go
into the business and make money. In terms of fixing,
I mean, it's it's kind of nice to have a
sure thing. And I think if you know that athletes
are betting with you, you can compromise them. If you
know athletes have a drug problem and you're the ones
applying the drugs, you can compromise them. I mean, there's
just ways to compromise athletes. And that's the way the
mob I think has made its money for threat of
(40:00):
history is finding the weaknesses within people and exploiting them.
And it's funny you bring up boxing because most people
don't realize that. Like for boxing, between the late forties
and early sixties, really one mobster controlled pretty much all
of boxing, and I mean literally controlled it. He determined
many times who would fight, who where they would fight,
(40:20):
and oftentimes who would win and who would lose, and
he would always get a cut of that money. But
I mean, boxing is actually what made television, believe it
or not. Who television became into the name was Frankie
Carbo and Frankie Carbon basically controlled boxing. He worked with
two guys who helped found the NHL, Arthur Wertz, whose
(40:41):
family still owns the black Hawks today, and James Norris,
who the Norris Trophy is named after. His father who
owned the Detroit Red Wings. He worked with those two
guys to put boxing events in their arenas because they
controlled Madison Square Garden in Chicago, Stadium, Olympia Stadium in Detroit,
and St. Louis Arena, and he the mob are well,
worked with those two guys put on boxing events and
(41:02):
those arenas, and they sold it the CBS and NBC
is Wednesday and Friday night fights and those events really
helped make television a must see thing. And it's I mean,
it's pretty amazing that really, those three guys really helped
influence television and made it something that everybody had to
see because boxing was such popular in those fifties and
(41:25):
early sixties, and yet it was controlled by organized crime
the entire time. So thank you mafia for cable television. Yes,
(41:45):
thank you for cable. Mobsters. Um I I mean we've
we've lived with cable, we grew up with cable. I'm
a cord cutter I am now, But what from the
ninth from the eighties up in until a couple of
years ago, I had that cable like directly attached to
my heart, intravenously pumping content into your bloodstream and right now,
(42:10):
ladies and gentlemen, you're with us in a moment outside
of time because we've taken a break. We can tell
you that behind the scenes, Noel, Matt and I realized
that we were not going to be able to fit
this entire interview into a single episode, so we knew
we would have to split it. And this is us
(42:31):
traveling into our past, which I guess is you were
present now. UH. Podcasting plays with time that way. We're
so high on the spice right now. Yeah, we're so
high on the spice right now that we are going
to take some time. We're gonna head out of here
and we'll be back next week with the second half
(42:51):
of the interview. But while while we're still here, while
it's still uh the three amigos in the studio, I
have to have to ask you, guys, what are you
thinking so far about this, about this weird connection with
the mafia and about uh Brian's Brian's statement that pretty
much all sports are rigged. So far, I'm pretty convinced,
(43:13):
I would have to say, but you know, maybe it's
just because Brian's convincing. I don't know. It seems like
after reading the material then hearing him talk about it
so openly and frankly. I mean, he's a very matter
of fact about it, and just it kind of just
speaks about it like a foregone conclusion. And not to
say that that means it's true, But in my mind,
(43:35):
with all of the cases of sports fixing that we've
we do know about in other parts of the world,
it just seems kind of naive to think that, you know,
with all that there is to gain from this, whether
it's TV deals, whether it's you know, big money bets
and organized crime, that this is not in fact happening
on some level in professional sports. I just I don't
(43:58):
I can't buy that they're so squeaky clean. Also, given
these doping scandals that we always see uncovered and have
been you know, for a long time now, how how
can we accept that that is a thing that happens,
that people are willing to go to those lengths, but
not the ones that Brian describes. So I'm kind of
with you on that map. Yeah, he did. He did
an excellent job I think building a case uh so far,
(44:21):
you know, at least providing motive. So listeners, hope you
enjoyed this episode as much as we're enjoying making it.
That's a tall order, as you said on Facebook Live
from earlier, but the journey is not over yet. Uh.
If you're looking for something else to check out while
you're waiting for the conclusion to this interview, which will
(44:44):
come out next week, Uh, then why not head over
to stuff they Don't Want You to Know dot com
where you can check out every audio podcast we have
ever done, along with so many of our videos. And
if you want to read more from Brian, you can
check out his side at the Fixes in dot net,
where you can see info on how to get ahold
of his books, the Fixes in Larceny Games, a Season
(45:06):
in the abyss not to be confused with the Slayer
album Seasons in the abyss um and he's got a
really it's it's a very telling little tagline on his page.
Here would you leave a multibillion dollar business up to chance? Oh?
Good question. And of course, if you have a suggestion
for an upcoming episode, or you want to see some
(45:27):
of the stuff we do that doesn't make it to
the podcast, like you may have heard me mentioned Facebook Live,
well you can visit us on Facebook and Twitter, where
we are Conspiracy Stuff. You can find us on Instagram
where Conspiracy Stuff show and uh. If you're feeling particularly gregarious, generous, charitable,
if you feel like you need to give back, if
(45:48):
today is your day to do a good deed, then
why not drop us a review on iTunes? And many
of you have since the last time I checked. There
have been some nice reviews, some not so nice ones too,
But you know what, we take the good with the
bad folks, and we really appreciate your support. Yeah, yeah,
it's good. We want it all objectivity. But yeah, you
(46:12):
can do that on iTunes, You can do that on Stitcher,
there are any place that you can get the show,
and you have the ability to review us, please do
It helps the algorithm and helps people find out about
the show and keeps us from getting fired. And that's
the end of this classic episode. If you have any
thoughts or questions about this episode, you can get into
(46:32):
contact with us in a number of different ways. One
of the best is to give us a call. Our
number is one eight three three st d w y
t K. If you don't want to do that, you
can send us a good old fashioned email. We are
conspiracy at I Heart radio dot com. Stuff they Don't
Want You to Know is a production of I heart Radio.
(46:52):
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know News
Hosts And Creators
Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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