Episode 228- Mathew Bowyer | Shohei Ohtani Translators Bookie - The Sit Down: A Crime History Podcast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:11):
Welcome to The sit Down, a mafia history podcast. Here's
your host, Jeff Nado. What's Up, Everybody, and welcome into
another edition of the sit Down. As always, if you
enjoy this podcast, please make sure you leave us a

(00:31):
detailed review any five star rating. What's Up, Everybody, and
Welcome in to episode two hundred and twenty eight of
the podcast. My name is Jeff Nado, Hope Broyl. I'll
have any great week wherever you are. Got a terrific
interview plan for you today. As always, I continue to
try to find the most interesting people really in the

(00:53):
world of crime. We've definitely, over the last several months,
taken some different steers of this show sho. You know, obviously,
I've always said throughout the over two hundred and twenty
shows that we've done, the show wasn't always meant to
be a mafia show. It's definitely a show that for

(01:15):
the most part, the center of it has been organized crime.
But the thing I think that their best about this
show is the interviews. And you know, we've interviewed so
many cool people over the years, interesting people, some really
bad people. Today we're gonna interview a man who I
got to say I talked to for around two hours.

(01:37):
This was a conversation that I was able to get
through a connection I haven't in Las Vegas. A longtime gambler,
Bill Krackenberger, he had He and I had kind of
gotten in touch with each other, and he said to me,
you know, I can get you the Otani interpreter bookie.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
I said, okay, well, I mean he's been around.

Speaker 1 (01:54):
I know he's in some interviews on some big platforms,
But for me, I've said such of history with gambling
that I thought it'd be a great interview and it was.
This interview is recorded interview that I did last week.
We talked about everything. We talked about, you know, everything
from the start. You know, what Matt Chada was like
living in California, what got him into becoming a bookmaker?

(02:18):
You know, was that what he always wanted to do, which,
of course it wasn't. We talked about, you know, the
fact that not only was he one of the biggest
bookmakers in the country, he was one of the biggest
gamblers in the country. This is a guy who was
you know, spending you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars
a night on bacarat. We talked about, obviously, the the
Otani scandal. Was shehe Otani involved more than he leads on.

(02:43):
Was it just the transitor, Was it just the fact
that the transitor was taking money and paying boy Er back.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
In the end, he paid Muzihara.

Speaker 1 (02:52):
The transitor lost approximately forty million dollars to matt Boyer,
a lot of which he has not gotten back.

Speaker 2 (02:58):
We talked about the federal indictment.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
We talked about the fact that in less than a
month Matthew Boyer is going to federal prison. We talked
about his family, We talked about the people that matter
most to him, his book, you know, really the light
that he's had. And you have to say, looking back
on the interview, I'm this is a problem moment I've
had in doing this. You know, I've I've interviewed some
really cool people, some some like I said, some really

(03:23):
bad people. But you know, you say, what do you
want about Sambra Gravana. I mean, doing what I do,
interviewing Gravana was pretty pretty unbelievable. You know, I've interviewed
Jack Garcia and d ah It's the FBI guys. You know,
I've talked to tall sorts of people, but this was
definitely one of my favorites. So sit back, relax. We're
gonna get into the interview with Matt Boyer. I do

(03:43):
before we do that, kind of in kind of in
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Speaker 2 (05:24):
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Speaker 1 (05:24):
Profit X the one place you need to be wagering
on sports right now. All right, guys, let's get into it.
My interview with large scale bookmaker Matthew Boyer. Let's drop it,
let's bring him in. Matt Boyer. Matthew Boyer, you are
a guy who you've been around, We've seen you doing interviews.

Speaker 2 (05:47):
You have a book, out.

Speaker 1 (05:48):
You're about to go to federal prison, which we're gonna
speak to about.

Speaker 2 (05:52):
You've been doing this a long time. It's always a.

Speaker 1 (05:56):
Challenge, I think sometimes interviewing people. It's a challenge interviewing
you because you've been interviewed by a lot of people
that said. I want to take it in kind of
a different direction. I want to talk about gambling, how
addictive it can be. I've gambled for a long time.
You're a little bit older than me, but I've gambled
a long time. I get it. I see the pervasiveness
of it in society. Now we don't really realize it,

(06:17):
but it is quite destructive to young people. Young people's
minds are very malleable, and you know they see these things.
They think it's okay to do it. It's accepted. I
want to get into all that, but first, how you doing.
Thanks for jumping on. You have the clearest connection I've
ever seen from a guest. I deal with a lot
of like these older mob guys and stuff. Their connection

(06:38):
looks like they're on a potato. So thank you for that.
How you doing.

Speaker 2 (06:42):
Thanks for jumping on, Jeff.

Speaker 3 (06:44):
Thanks for having me.

Speaker 4 (06:45):
I'm doing great despite that, I'm turning myself in in
thirty days to possibly looks like longpak prison, leaving five
kids and my wife behind. I'm doing great because my
mindset is strong, and that's something I've really kind of
learned about myself in the last two years. I've always
known him a confident guy who has been very strong
in the mind, but even more so in the last

(07:05):
two years.

Speaker 1 (07:06):
Well, that's great, and you definitely need a strong mind
heading to federal prison or whatever you're about to do.
I will say, and I want to shout him out.
I'll shout out Bill Krackenberger. You know Bill, I'll give
him credit. Bill was one of the first people I
feel like to have you on a show for anyone
doesn't know. Bill's kind of a legendary sports better in
Las Vegas. Great guy, been on his show and he

(07:28):
I saw interviewed you and I thought, wow, you know,
that's pretty dope. So I want to start at the beginning.
You were born in nineteen seventy five. You're from California.
You were in a family that was all boys, that's correct.

Speaker 4 (07:43):
Yeah, three brothers. You know, we grew up in Cypress, California.
Here in North Orange County, middle class family, definitely had
all the perks and lived a great life.

Speaker 3 (07:52):
Great childhood.

Speaker 4 (07:53):
I have nothing but great things to say about the
first you know, twelve years of my life.

Speaker 2 (07:57):
Yeah, that's something that I don't hear very often.

Speaker 1 (08:00):
You know, the people that I speak to generally have
pretty poor childhoods or they don't have a lot of
great role models. In kind of starting your book, because
I this all kind of happened pretty quick and I
just got it. But from what I know, your father
did to have a bit of a drinking problem.

Speaker 2 (08:15):
Is that correct?

Speaker 3 (08:16):
Yeah, that'd be an understatement.

Speaker 4 (08:18):
Forty beers a day, three packs of cigarettes, forty years
a day. Yeah, I mean it was like it was
strange because he would drink alcohol like you and I
would drink water, well even more so, and to the
point where he really never got drunk because it was
just it was.

Speaker 3 (08:34):
A functioning alcoholic.

Speaker 4 (08:36):
And so because he was never drunk, and because he
was an entrepreneur and successful in his business, and back
then this reminds you, this is like nineteen eighty five
to ninety people kind of viewed it.

Speaker 3 (08:48):
It wasn't known to you know, go get help as much.
I mean there was.

Speaker 4 (08:51):
Of course, there was like you know, all kinds of
different ways of getting help, but nothing like it is today.
Wasn't talked about. It was kind of you know, okay, whatever,
and pushed under the rug. And because my dad was
very functional, nobody really viewed him as an alcoholic. It
was very obvious he was drinking that many beers. But
you know, when someone's not showing any signs of being
drunk or slurring the words or really just continues to

(09:13):
function and run a business and run a family, you
kind of don't question them.

Speaker 1 (09:18):
So he was kind of a functioning guy. You know,
you could tell it was bothering him, but he made
it kind of look okay, essentially.

Speaker 3 (09:25):
Yeah, and he had a great excuse.

Speaker 4 (09:27):
So ironically, my parents owned a bailbonds company and so
did my grandparents. So back then there was you know,
no Internet, so yellow pages, sitting around waiting for the
phone ring was his business. And by doing that a
pure boredom. You can only watch so much mash and
you know, Rockford Files and everything else that he used
to watch. So he would just drink beers and smoke

(09:48):
cigarettes in his bedroom all day long.

Speaker 3 (09:50):
And he was a militant guy, So you know, we
didn't really mess around.

Speaker 4 (09:54):
I mean, if you had a problem with him, you're
going to get an ass whoopan.

Speaker 3 (09:57):
So we were raised that way, which I'm grateful for.

Speaker 4 (10:00):
But at the same time, you know, he wasn't at
our football games or baseball games and wrestling events and all.
You know, I played almost every sport, and that was
kind of rough because every other dad would be there
and show up, you know, to a lot of the games,
and my dad was never there. My mom was a
beautiful woman, very attractive woman, so when she would show up,
all the dads would kind of hit on her because
they thought she was single, and truth be told, she

(10:22):
was stunning, suddenly beautiful, to the point where my kids
used to are my friends young kids would say, you know,
she's the Mills.

Speaker 2 (10:29):
And all that shit.

Speaker 3 (10:30):
I had to hear all those jokes growing up.

Speaker 1 (10:32):
That's tough.

Speaker 2 (10:33):
People never talk about that.

Speaker 1 (10:35):
That's a tough that's a tough realization when you become
like twelve, thirty, fourteen years old you have an attractive mother,
you know, you kind of know why your friends want
to you know, it's yeah, for sure enough, that's a
rough And nowadays I feel really bad for some of
these kids. You know, you look at like like Kim Kardashian,
Let's say, right her kids become older, it's like, how'd

(10:58):
she get fame? You know?

Speaker 3 (10:59):
Yeah, No, you're right.

Speaker 4 (11:00):
And nowadays, I mean, here's a good point. Kids say
everything now. I mean, but back in the day, you
say something, you might get your ass whooped. You know, people,
there was consequences for your actions of what you say.
Now it's there's zero consequences, to the point where I
got people on my Instagram literally. I mean, I'm telling
you that this is the hardest thing. I try not
to let it bother me, but it does. I'm going

(11:22):
to be banging your wife while you're in prison. I'm
going to be raising your four year old boy. I mean,
this shit that I hear Jeff is.

Speaker 3 (11:29):
Incredible, and I'm biting my tongue.

Speaker 4 (11:31):
I know they're just you know, some guy in a
basement that's you know, seven hundred pounds, that is watching
porn all day.

Speaker 3 (11:36):
But the point is it still hurts.

Speaker 4 (11:38):
You know, It's still even though I know it means nothing,
it still bothers me, especially when you talk about my wife.

Speaker 3 (11:42):
And my children.

Speaker 1 (11:44):
Let me tell you something. Okay, I've talked to people
that go to prison all the time. Okay, they talk
to me about it. You will hear worst ship on
the internet. You'll ever hear in prison.

Speaker 3 (11:54):
No doubt it, Jeff.

Speaker 4 (11:56):
Yeah, because on in prison, if you say something like that,
someone more than likely something's going to happen. Yeah, that
it's some robot or some fake you know account where
they could just say whatever they want with no repercussions,
which is really the way the world is now.

Speaker 3 (12:11):
It's really sad.

Speaker 4 (12:12):
And I know we're going to get into the younger
crowd about gambling, which it all kind of comes together,
but the point is there's no repercussions for your actions,
and people nowadays just say whatever, and it's really sad
for these young kids. Going back to your point, you
know you have an attractive mom. It's even worse now
because now you have the internet attacking these kids on
their tiktoks or whatever, and you know, kids are so vulnerable,

(12:33):
as you know, and it's kind of it's really a
sad world to grow up in. On that end, I mean,
there's a lot of opportunity, but there's a lot of
things that you've got to overcome.

Speaker 1 (12:42):
And then so these kids grow up in like two
done ten they have all this stuff happened to them,
and then in twenty twenty five they do all these
terrible things in the world's messed me. Wonder what happened here?

Speaker 2 (12:53):
Exactly right, right, It's all very cyclical. That said.

Speaker 1 (12:56):
So you're growing up, you have a pretty good life.
Your father have a substance abuse problem, but he wears
it well. Was he a good father looking back?

Speaker 4 (13:06):
Very loving, very caring father. I mean to say he
was a good father. You know, if I saw him today,
i'd give him a hug. And he's passed obviously, but
and I would love to you know, I loved him.

Speaker 3 (13:17):
I knew he loved me.

Speaker 4 (13:18):
But you know, there's there's a lot of errors that
I would you know, again, I'm a father, so I'm
not perfect.

Speaker 3 (13:24):
But I try to go to my kids games.

Speaker 4 (13:25):
I try to be you know, present, I try to
do all the things that maybe I didn't receive from him.
Did he choose alcohol over you know, being a father
at times?

Speaker 2 (13:34):
Yes?

Speaker 3 (13:35):
Do I think he did that on purpose?

Speaker 1 (13:36):
No?

Speaker 4 (13:37):
I think it was the disease of you know, addiction
and his alcohol abuse that would pulled him into. That
doesn't give him excuse because I'm guilty of a two Jeff.
I mean, there's many times where I would choose to
go to Las Vegas for three four days and miss
my kid's volleyball tournament or soccer games. And that's because
I purely had an addiction to gambling, and I wanted

(13:57):
to go fire and go have a good time and
get on a jet and have caviar and nice dinners
and go to the nightclub and go to the pool,
parties and commanders, and you know, when I was single,
chase girls, or.

Speaker 3 (14:06):
When I was married, bring my wife but leave the
kids at home, all that stuff.

Speaker 4 (14:10):
And so it's hard for me to you know, I've
really learned not to castones at people because unless you
walk in their shoes, you really don't know what they're
going through. But to answer your question, he would be
a good father, just he just struggled in some areas
for sure.

Speaker 1 (14:24):
Before I get into kind of your hustler months, I
do have to ask, because you mentioned, you know, the
jet set life, you know, the good world you had.
John Gottie talked about this, you know about he loved
the life that he called more than anything else. And
I always thought to myself, you know, it almost seemed
like he should have had kids, He shouldn't have had

(14:46):
a wife. He you know, and we also hurt. In
the sopranos, Karate soprano talks about it. He says, you know,
this life is not meant for family, you know. And
I'm not saying you were in the mafia, but you
did have a life that was not conducive to and
a wife. Did you ever think about that before you
you you know, you did have kids.

Speaker 3 (15:08):
Not at all.

Speaker 4 (15:10):
Actually, this is I'm really glad you've just asked this
question because it.

Speaker 3 (15:13):
Has yet to been.

Speaker 4 (15:14):
Talked about on anything I've done, and it's actually imperative
to what's happening right now the possible they're filming the
sizzle right now for my documentary for Netflix, and what
they're trying to show is exactly what you just asked,
the human element side of me and my life, which
is so different most bookmakers, I think you would attest
to this are doesn't mean they're bad people, but they're

(15:37):
not the best.

Speaker 3 (15:38):
Fathers in general.

Speaker 4 (15:39):
I mean usually out at strip clubs or gambling halls
or hustling or you know they're not exactly at all
the basketball volleyball games with their kids. I'm saying in general,
there's something that do, of course, and that was a
very tough juggle for me throughout my whole life. I
think as I got older, clearly I got better and
smarter about it. But I think the ones who suffered
the most would be my current thirty year old daughter

(16:01):
and maybe my twenty six and twenty two. Of course,
my fourteen year old daughter and my four year old
boy have gotten the best of it because I've really
that's the time of my life where I decided to
really juggle and balance, because balance is the most hardest
thing for anyone in life, period, I don't care what
you do. And as a bookmaker who has millions and
millions of dollars coming in, who loves to gamble and

(16:22):
also use that as a way of marketing, going to
these casinos and you know, these golf tournaments and all
these things that really pulled me in customers, being social
and being around people using my person personality, et cetera.
That was hard because you know, on the weekends, that's
when football is going on too. I have one hundred
games I'm watching I got millions of dollars riding being
at my daughter's soccer game.

Speaker 3 (16:42):
No offense.

Speaker 4 (16:43):
I love my daughter, I can't I want to watch
your play soccer, but I wish you played it Monday
at two o'clock, not Saturday at nine am when all
the games are going off and I'm hustling millions of dollars.

Speaker 3 (16:52):
Throughout the day. So that was a really tough juggle.

Speaker 4 (16:56):
And you know, to your point, being a father and
being a bookmate, I never thought like, as I grew
my business, I never planned on being a book maker.

Speaker 3 (17:04):
So that's the one thing I want to say, Like,
I started taking.

Speaker 4 (17:07):
Bets and making bets, and I really was a degenerate
losing the bookies, and I said, you know what, this
isn't working.

Speaker 3 (17:12):
How do I make this to where I.

Speaker 4 (17:13):
Could still be a degenerate and maybe use this money
to feed.

Speaker 3 (17:17):
My little fire.

Speaker 1 (17:18):
You also got smart because you know that betters don't
win generally. And that's one thing I've always been fascinated
by is how many people become betters.

Speaker 2 (17:28):
They don't just look at it and say, well, I.

Speaker 1 (17:31):
Have one group of people that seemingly don't make any money,
and then I have one group of people that have
billion dollar buildings with gold literally all in them.

Speaker 2 (17:38):
How do they do that? How do they do it?

Speaker 1 (17:41):
It's funny you brought that up, because I was going
to kind of go right into this. You've always had
a hostile mindset. You know, you work paper roots, you
you worked at a horse track at one point.

Speaker 2 (17:51):
I believe.

Speaker 1 (17:53):
You just mentioned I didn't want to be a bookmaker.
Not a lot of people do, you know. You just
kind of weirdly get into it because you were a
gambler and you wanted to fix that. What did you
want to be when you were younger? You know what?

Speaker 2 (18:02):
What were your dreams to be?

Speaker 3 (18:04):
Honest? I always want to be a stockbroker, which is
ironic because.

Speaker 4 (18:08):
I was what You're right, but I was. I was
a Series three commodity trader for eleven years, not stocks,
trading commodities, but almost the same thing.

Speaker 3 (18:17):
Really.

Speaker 4 (18:18):
I think a stockbroker was a little bit more on
a pedestal as opposed to commodity broker. But truth be told,
it really was the same thing. You're just trading commodities
as opposed to stocks. And what I found is I
hated it morally because commodity business unlike stocks because stockbroker.

Speaker 3 (18:34):
Stockbrokers are a little different were we were.

Speaker 4 (18:37):
I would say ninety percent of the clients I had
lost money or majority of their money, because it's it's
a it's a much higher risk reward, you know, investment.
And because of that, I got really tired of calling
people and trying to get as much money out of
them as possible so I could put them in something
that I knew that probably.

Speaker 3 (18:54):
Wasn't going to make them money.

Speaker 4 (18:56):
And it's ironic the paradigm here of I felt better
being a book maker morally than I did as a
commodity trader.

Speaker 3 (19:03):
Which was legal.

Speaker 4 (19:04):
And I actually explained that to the judge when I
had a conversation my last conversation I had to the
judge before he sentenced me, I kind of tried to
explain the paradigm because it didn't make it right. I
just wanted him to understand why I had gravitated, along
with the fact that I was addicted to gambling, but
why I gravitated to being a book maker as opposed
to continuing to be a commodity trader. Because a lot

(19:26):
of people say, well, what's wrong with you? You were
making a million dollars a year as a commodity trader. Legally,
you know, there's nothing wrong. You can't go there's no
risk of going to prison. That was what bothered me.
I laid my head down at night. And I'm not
saying a bookmaker lays his head down and it feels
like an angel, because we all know that's not the
truth either. But for me, it was a much better
career based on the way I felt about it as

(19:49):
opposed to commodity trading. And now this is one of
the benefits of where I'm going with this, what I'm
doing today, you know, selling my book and a public
speaking and all the things I'm starting to I finally
have a position where someone is winning on the other side.
I get to win when they win, not they lose.
For me to win, that feeling is fantastic. I've never
had that in my life, so I'm very excited about

(20:10):
my future.

Speaker 1 (20:11):
Well, you know, that's it's kind of weird how all
this is kind of sinking into me. You just wanted
something morally that you could be proud of. In a way,
I've also looked at my own life on that like
with like some of the stuff that I do. Like,
I wonder like, do I'm actually am I actually helping
people by bringing some of this awful stuff to light?
I mean, I bring up some really bad things. Do

(20:33):
I want to promote this? Do I want to morally
be involved with this? It's it is a tough thing
that is kind of wild. And what's interesting is a
lot of the things you talk about, whether it's stockbroker
even bookmaking. Now it's not something that the government make
money off of.

Speaker 2 (20:47):
And I'm going to tell you that you're wrong for
doing what you do.

Speaker 1 (20:51):
Yet you know where I live, thirty miles away, they're
accepting bets. But if I do it, it's it's a
morally bad issue. So you mentioned you were a gambling addict.
You're in recovery, you're trying to figure that out. Do
you remember the first bet you ever made?

Speaker 3 (21:11):
I don't. It was so long.

Speaker 2 (21:12):
I was like, what age was it?

Speaker 4 (21:14):
Probably thirteen twelve, right in that range, and you know
we're talking five ten dollars of course at that age.

Speaker 3 (21:19):
But my brothers Joey and Sean.

Speaker 4 (21:22):
Sean passed away sadly, but they were like on my
mentors when I was young because my dad as I said,
wasn't you know for my sporting events? And they kind
of helped me wrestle and I used to get in
a ton of fights when I was a kid.

Speaker 3 (21:34):
They would set up fights for me. I was so stupid,
these guys. But anyway, being the.

Speaker 4 (21:38):
Older brothers, I just really looked up to them and
they were my mentors really, and truth be told, that
that's where I learned a lot of things, gambling, you know, fighting,
just everything as being a boy turning into a man.

Speaker 3 (21:51):
Mostly I learned from my older brothers, in particular Sean.

Speaker 1 (21:55):
A lot of people that don't gamble don't understand right.
They don't get like, why do you do it? What's
the point of it? Will you? We try to properly explain,
like on a Saturday for instance, I get that feeling.

Speaker 2 (22:07):
I love it.

Speaker 1 (22:08):
It's part of my life, you know, waking up looking
at lines, you know, figuring out what you want to bet,
you know, thinking you have edges, which sometimes you do.
You know, some people have long term into some people
are very sharp but winning. Let's say let's say you
bet at noon, you bet on Penn State minus forty
and they beat Florida International sixty six nothing. What's that

(22:29):
feeling like? You know, they've always said winning money is
way better than money you know you make from work,
and yeah, yeah, like talk about that feeling and you
know the first time you felt that feeling.

Speaker 3 (22:41):
Truth be told. I hate to say this.

Speaker 4 (22:42):
My wife wouldn't love this comment, but I think it's
better than the best sex you ever had in your life,
because the dopamine.

Speaker 3 (22:48):
Rush lasts for so long.

Speaker 4 (22:50):
Yeah, you know, it's a three hour rush of a
watching a football game or two hours in a basketball.

Speaker 3 (22:55):
Game or whatever you're betting on. And that rush really
is from start to finish, whether you win or lose.

Speaker 4 (23:00):
In fact, sometimes you get a bigger rush out of
the loss, which is really sad and interesting, but it's
really the truth because when you lose, you actually feel
this feeling of like, oh fuck, I need to get
that back and more, and then you're the competitive fire
of who you are and not being able to win
something it actually makes you want to pick another game

(23:21):
for more money or figure it out.

Speaker 3 (23:22):
At least I'll speak for myself.

Speaker 1 (23:24):
I gotta tell you about this. You just did soft
one hunderbelly, right. The best interview he's ever done was
with a guy Archie Carris. Do you know who Archie
Carris is?

Speaker 3 (23:36):
Yes, I didn't see the interview, but I'm very familiar.

Speaker 2 (23:38):
Yes, So Archie died.

Speaker 1 (23:40):
I believe he was one of the most legendary gambas
in the history of Nevada. A big poker player, pool guy.
I mean, just it went through crazy swings and there's
a part in the interview where he discusses that.

Speaker 2 (23:54):
And I've tried to explain that to people that don't gamble.

Speaker 1 (23:56):
You know, you just talk about sometimes like you always
remember the losses you have, right, right, And he talked
about losing and sometimes it's more exciting than winning, you know,
it's how about.

Speaker 3 (24:10):
How about this?

Speaker 4 (24:10):
I thought it started to interrupt you, But I talk
about this all the time. When I would bet a
million dollars on a football game and I wanted to bet,
I was in between betting one point five or one
point four, whatever the number is, and then I win
the game for a million. I was like, I'm upset
that I didn't bet the other four or five hundred thousand.

Speaker 3 (24:26):
It's like, what is wrong with you? Do you just
want a million dollars on a game? And yet you
know that's the problem with me.

Speaker 4 (24:33):
For my gambling, I always there was never enough, and
that dopamine rush gets more fulfilled when you put yourself
to where you could actually hurt yourself financially, mentally, emotionally
when you lose. And that's exactly where the dopamine rush
comes from. That makes you enjoy that game or whatever
you're betting on. It could be a blackjack hand for

(24:55):
all that matters.

Speaker 3 (24:57):
And it's it's apparent across the country. I'm sure you've
seen this.

Speaker 4 (25:00):
You walk into a gas station, you see a guy
out front, usually not to be sound, you know, to
make fun of someone or whatever. But you'll see a
landscaper that's out there scratching lotto tickets, right, and you
can tell it's his last, you know, not last, but
probably forty dollars. That means a lot to him, right,
because it's all relative And I'm not putting him down.

(25:21):
I just meant like, I want you to understand the story, right,
whoever's listening, they're scratching those forty dollars in a lot
of tickets, and it's truly the same dopamine rush that
I get when I was betting seven hundred thousand dollars
in a game, and that's because it all relative. That
could change their life if they won, you know, five
thousand dollars on a ticket, that's life changing to them.
But yet the forty dollars means so much to them,

(25:41):
and that's that's really the point. So the zeros don't
really matter. It's how relative it is to your bankroll.
I always try to explain to people, Yeah, my story
seems a little more exciting than maybe that guy.

Speaker 3 (25:53):
At the liquor store, but it's no different.

Speaker 1 (25:55):
Really.

Speaker 3 (25:56):
It's just because the numbers.

Speaker 4 (25:57):
Are higher and it's all over the media, so I
can talk about it.

Speaker 3 (26:00):
But the reality is it's the same dopamine rush.

Speaker 4 (26:02):
And going back to what you said, what I said earlier,
it's better than sex, it's better than anything. And that's
why people do it, because you've made a comment earlier.
Why do people you know want to gamble when they
know they're probably going to lose. Well, the answer to
that is number one, it's the dopamine rush. Number two,
they want to beat something that is so hard to
win it if you can win gambling, and when you do,

(26:23):
I mean, you feel like a rock star because you're
beating something that nobody else wins at. And then also,
like you said earlier, it's money that you've won without
actually working for it and earning it.

Speaker 3 (26:33):
So it feels three.

Speaker 4 (26:34):
Times better for that reason alone. And the fact of
the matter is that we're so competitive, all of us
in the world. It's a way to feel like you're
an athlete too, and like you're in the game when
you're really not.

Speaker 3 (26:44):
We're sitting on a freaking couch having a beer.

Speaker 4 (26:46):
And so all of those things combined is a scary
conundrum because you now have all these rushes and feelings.
And by the way, at the end of the day,
it's entertainment too. I mean, you're satisfying three hours and
you're having a great time with friends, and everyone comes
together and you're shit talking and some people are betting
the other side, and all of that comes with us,
and it's very difficult to kick well.

Speaker 1 (27:07):
And I think that's one thing and why gambling's so
pervasive now is we've also learned that a lot of
the younger generations want to do very limited things to
make money. They want to be influencers, they want to
be consecrats, they want to be sports Betters, and they see,
we have done a great job in America for decades
of making bad people or morally corrupt people look like

(27:29):
great people, right, and we saw with the Mafia, for instance,
the Mafia are some of the worst people this country's
ever had in it. Okay, they have done nothing for society.
They have made one nationality people look really bad. What's
the first thing you think of when you think of Italians?
You either think of pizza or the mob. It's real simple,
good point. And Hollywood is one of the worst people

(27:52):
to blame with this because they every film they put
really bad people around the main character and try to
make him look like the hero, Tony Soprano, Michael Corleone, whatever,
And by the end of the movie you're rooting for
that person, and it's like, well, why these are bad people.
They did it with John Gotti, they did it with Alcopo,
you do it with everybody. He's a Robin Hood, you know,

(28:13):
it's it's it's nonsense. And they do it with gambling too.
You can be Matt Blear, you can fly on private jets,
you can be the next whoever. So it is really concerning,
and you know, but that's why we want to do it.

Speaker 2 (28:28):
I have to ask you.

Speaker 1 (28:29):
Eventually though, would become a book maker, you would decide
to take a different tact with it.

Speaker 2 (28:34):
You were still gambling.

Speaker 3 (28:35):
Though, right, Oh gosh, yes, it never stopped.

Speaker 1 (28:38):
Which you know, when you when you're getting involved with
selling narcotics bookmaking, they always kind of say, right, never
get high in your own supply. Of course, if you're
gonna sell cocaine, the best idea would be to not
do cocaine.

Speaker 2 (28:51):
You're gonna cut into your profits. You're kind of.

Speaker 1 (28:57):
You're kind of hurting yourself because you're making a lot
of money, but you're also giving it back.

Speaker 2 (29:00):
How did that all start becoming a bookie? Right?

Speaker 1 (29:02):
You? Because back when you started, it wasn't like it
is now where you can just go get some costa
Rican PPH place and they help you out. It's really
a thought of you have to have a place people
can call. How did that all work for you?

Speaker 4 (29:16):
You know, when I was younger, I was obviously really young,
sixteen fifteen, whatever I would take, I had a poker
ring in my house because back to my parents got
divorced at twelve.

Speaker 3 (29:27):
My dad was gone and then now my mom's hustling.
So she's working three jobs.

Speaker 4 (29:31):
You have four boys in a house home alone, which
is very dangerous, and that's what was going on. So
I started running a poker ring out of my house
and then we started betting on everything foot races to
Nintendo to Sega Genesis to whatever. And then you know,
the poker ring kind of started, you know, gaining traction,
so to where I was taking bets when.

Speaker 3 (29:49):
People would come in. I kind of did a little
local bookie.

Speaker 4 (29:52):
But of course there's back then there's no phone yet,
there's like pagers, whatever, so it wasn't like I was
running an operation. It was just more for fun when
people were there or whatever. Then I realized that I
was making a lot of money at a very young age,
more than my mom was really sadly, and I said,
you know, there's a business here. But at the same time,
like you said, there was no PPH. I couldn't scale it.

(30:13):
So fast forward to where I'm like twenty one twenty two,
that's when I started scaling the business because I was
running working at a commodities firm. I was a commodity trader,
and I had all these young guys making a shit
ton of money, and they were doing cocaine, hookers, gambling.
For the most part, some were family guys, but they
were gambling, and I was like, you know, this is
a dream scenario.

Speaker 3 (30:33):
I just started taking their action. And then that started.

Speaker 4 (30:35):
Really growing, because now I have guys who make a
lot of money, who could afford to pay, who aren't
going to stiff me, and now we're losing. Of course,
So I started making almost more money booking than I
did working this amazing job where I was making seven
eight hundred thousand dollars a year at twenty one years old.
And then I started going to Vegas, of course, because
I had an excess capital. So now here I am
going to Vegas, and I wasn't quite the private jets

(30:57):
and all that yet because I didn't have that kind
of bankroll. But I was definitly, you know, not villas
but penthouses, treated like a king. So when I walked
into Vegas at twenty one twenty two, I mean I
was the guy, you know for that age.

Speaker 3 (31:08):
I mean I walked in like you know, King Kong.

Speaker 4 (31:11):
You know, I'm bringing one hundred two hundred thousand dollars
back then, that's a lot of money and I could
afford it. So long story short, that addiction of me
gambling and feeling the king of the world in my
mind helped me build my business even more because I
was like, I don't know how much I lose, doesn't matter.

Speaker 3 (31:27):
I'm just going to make it up here.

Speaker 4 (31:29):
And of course, when I had a good trip in
Vegas and a good week at home, now I actually
can save some serious dollars. So I partlaid that and
then all of a sudden, the world's collided in regards
to the Internet. And when that happened, PPH came aboard,
and that's when I really knew. I told myself I
can make a business, a real business out of this.
So I was one of the forefront bookmakers to go

(31:51):
down to Costa Rica at IDs Data Wager, which is
one of the forefront operations. And I went and met
a woman named Tara and Buddy who passed away who
owned that place. I saw their you know, their software,
and just their amazing building and everything and all the clerks.
I was like, this is overwhelming, this is amazing. So
I started a PPH and I started scaling, and that's

(32:13):
when my business went from fifty players of really solid
players to like three hundred, and I would of course
never stopped from there.

Speaker 1 (32:20):
And I want to talk about kind of the what
a PPH is. But before we do that, the fifty,
let's say players. Yet you're you're doing the commodity stuff.
Is it it just as simple of you, know, because
that business is connections business, right, You'll just walk up
to you at a knowhere and say, hey, you're a
book maker, Can I get an account?

Speaker 2 (32:37):
It's no.

Speaker 1 (32:37):
Hey, Matt's a guy takes action. If you want to
bet on baseball, He's got you covered. Was it as
simple just you was using paper and pencil and you
were saying, okay, Joe's got a you were giving credit.

Speaker 4 (32:50):
I'm guessing yeah, yeah, I mean it was really it
was ridiculous to the point where I used to go
golfing with my brother on Saturday and I couldn't even
leave the damn golf cart because I'm riding on a
scorecard all the bets coming in because finally we had
cell phones, and I'm.

Speaker 3 (33:04):
Like, this is too much work. I can't go golf.

Speaker 4 (33:06):
I couldn't even hit a ball, so I'd like skip
a hole, skip another hole. Finally I realized I just
got a Saturdays and Sundays.

Speaker 3 (33:11):
I got to stay home.

Speaker 4 (33:12):
And you know, now it's truly a business. But to
your point, I was giving credit all based on referrals.
Clearly that's the most important way to get new business
because the referrals usually refer you know, a solid person,
because if you're dealing with you know, there's who your
circle is. Is everything right, I mean, if you have
a bad circle, it's probably going to be a bad referral.

Speaker 3 (33:31):
So if I didn't really feel comfortable, then I would,
you know, require some sort of deposit or whatnot.

Speaker 4 (33:36):
But back then was different too, because you know, this
the world there was less stiffs, more honorable people. Consequences
for your actions were much different, and slowly over time
and to the point we are today, it's completely changed
dramatically as you know, which we talked about off camera.

Speaker 3 (33:52):
But the truth be told.

Speaker 4 (33:54):
I mean, the world today is just soft and that's
the that's the best way to describe it.

Speaker 1 (33:58):
Well, there are no think across the board really in
every part of life, there are.

Speaker 2 (34:03):
No consequences for anything you do right.

Speaker 1 (34:05):
So like back in the day, if you didn't if
you didn't pay a book maker, they're gonna come and
take care of business. They're gonna get that money somewhere
or another. Nowadays, kids are just run I've heard kids
not even kidding that they'll be from say Philadelphia. They'll
run tabs up and just call their uncle who's an
agent in the FBI, and say deal with this or

(34:25):
no question.

Speaker 3 (34:27):
Or they'll just threaten that they're gonna call the FBI.

Speaker 1 (34:31):
Or my uncle's this and he ain't gonna you know,
it's really insane. But so you have fifty good players,
you're a young guy in your twenties, you're making money.
You mentioned scaling, you know, taking it to the next level,
getting more customers, getting bigger customers.

Speaker 2 (34:46):
I do want to ask for the pp ah.

Speaker 1 (34:48):
We always hear the word sharp, right, okay, especially really
you know the game, some of the games goes I'm
in you know, I'm on gambling Twitter. We've for years
heard all this person's sharp, that person sharp. Let's say
you have fifty players and Jerry is a winning gambler,
he wins consistently. He's costing your business money. Are you

(35:12):
ever going to cut Jerry off?

Speaker 4 (35:15):
Absolutely? But it took me a while. I was stubborn
and stupid more than other bookmakers, to where I didn't
really understand the sharp world as quickly as I should have.
I believe I had Billy Walter's betting for me multiple
times for beards, but I.

Speaker 3 (35:31):
Really didn't believe anyone could win.

Speaker 4 (35:32):
And I was so stubborn that I would just get
banged over the head. But I finally learned that the
hard way that these guys actually come out.

Speaker 1 (35:40):
You know, that's pretty amazing. That red book right there,
I think you see it right here. That is Billy
Walter's book, Billy Walters. If anyone that doesn't know is
I mean, you would agree the most prominent sports better.

Speaker 2 (35:54):
Of all the time known no question.

Speaker 1 (35:57):
When you say Beard, a beard is a person who
is an anonymous individual that puts bets in for Billy
because Billy can't walk into you know, dinywhere.

Speaker 2 (36:06):
And at games.

Speaker 1 (36:08):
These are businesses, so they get people, they pay someone
to go put bets in for them. So you actually
believe he was betting to you. You couldn't know it,
but you assumed he was.

Speaker 4 (36:18):
Oh, no question, just the betting pattern, and you know
I knew. I mean obviously, when you're in that world,
the underground world. You know this, We talk to a
lot of people in that world. We all kind of communicate.
The bookmakers talk to each other, and you find out
what Billy's betting and what side this is back in
the day more than now, but you find out what
he's betting and what side he's on, and then all
of a sudden you see these bets coming in on

(36:39):
the same side and the same games.

Speaker 3 (36:41):
Then you clearly know it's one of his beards.

Speaker 4 (36:43):
So that's when I started cutting guys off, but very
rarely because most of my circle, fortunately for me back then,
was squares and guys at my company or you know,
complete yo yos, and just like I was, you know,
up until thirty, I was a complete donkey, even though
I was taking bets. And so those are dream clients,
and especially ones that pay and paying time and you know,

(37:04):
aren't even it's not even affecting their life, which is
really ultimately the best scenario. You want a client that
can afford it.

Speaker 1 (37:10):
Obviously, would you ever say that, like maybe you mentioned scaling,
like ailing sounds good and all, but you know, when
you scale, you also have to realize you're going to
attract people like Billy walters that are going to beat
your book And did you ever just think maybe I'll
just stay here, I'll try to.

Speaker 4 (37:30):
I wasn't worried about that because at the end of
the day, I have the option of cutting them off.
And you know, and what I what I learned, I
think I did this better than most bookmakers is I
started developing relationships.

Speaker 3 (37:41):
When I cut them.

Speaker 4 (37:42):
Off, I would say, look, you're obviously a pro. And
when they try to lie to me that bothered me.
I'd be like, okay, they say, oh, I just got
lucky as they stop the nonsense, Like if you want
to work together, I have a couple of book makers
that I don't really love that I think will allow
you to play for a little while. Would never do
it to friends or peers that I respected, but I

(38:03):
would just, you know, have someone go get an account
with them, and I would take a piece of the account,
you know, thirty forty percent risk reward, and let this
professional just fire through another book maker. And that way
we built a good relationship, and we made a deal
not to come back through my website ever, through any
other format, beard whatnot.

Speaker 3 (38:21):
And they respected that.

Speaker 4 (38:22):
The RAS group is another one that's a pro out
there that I had good relationships with obviously crack. I mean,
he mentioned that I never gave him an account. He
knew that wouldn't last. But five minutes you get known
as a bookmaker. That's really just going to clip them fast.
It's a waste of time for them, you know, to
set up an account and have a beard set up
on account. We give them an account, they put in
eight bets, and then I just call them five minutes

(38:43):
later and I already see the wagers. I'm like, they're
all voided. Games haven't started. We're done.

Speaker 3 (38:48):
Don't ever do this again.

Speaker 4 (38:50):
And then the other thing I had to start doing
at the end, which I didn't do for a long time.
Another mistake I made is I always honored the bets,
and even if they were having started, I would honor
the wagers for sharp So they started like, oh, that's fine,
he'll he'll pay, he'll he'll at least take the bets
he already took. So then I had to realize it's
better for me to delete all the wagers and cut
the relationship.

Speaker 3 (39:10):
And then I had to at the end.

Speaker 4 (39:12):
Because the agents I had underneath me didn't understand it's
hard to explain to an agent what I'm talking to
you about.

Speaker 3 (39:19):
All they believe everyone just loses.

Speaker 4 (39:20):
And I say, look, these guys are going to win,
like you're gonna be in makeup.

Speaker 3 (39:24):
You're not gonna make any money. I've been doing this
thirty years, just trust me.

Speaker 4 (39:28):
And some of them are so stubborn they thought like
I was really making a poor decision. So I would
even teach him a lesson, and I say, a right, let's
turn them on. I know I'm gonna lose money, but
instead of a two times a game, let's give him
five hundred, which is still enough for some of these
shark groups. And you watch, within the first month, he's
gonna win five six thousand, and you're gonna say I
told you so, and you're gonna have a makeup and

(39:48):
I'll pay it.

Speaker 3 (39:49):
I've done that, even just to prove a point.

Speaker 4 (39:51):
And these guys are like, you know, of course the obvious,
Well why don't we just take those bets and bet
them somewhere else.

Speaker 3 (39:55):
I'm like, I've done all that. It doesn't work.

Speaker 4 (39:57):
The line moves and then you explain that, which impossible
to explain in two minutes to somebody who's never gambled much,
and there's so many nuances behind the scenes of running
a bookmaking operation, which is funny because nowadays everyone sees
the gambling, they see you know, DraftKings, fandels. They all
think they could be a legal bookmaker and they learned
the hard way. Nowadays, being a bookmaker is in my

(40:18):
belief because I'm no longer in the business, but two
years ago when I was, is the hardest ever because
of DraftKings, fan duel, because of the sharps, because of
the AI, because of robots, and because there's so many sharps,
and there's so many squares that are becoming smarter because
of AI. I mean, you got guys right now going
into chat GBT and asking the breakdown the game in
nine different ways. That's a lot better than a guy

(40:40):
looking at the Orange County Register and saying Patriots minus
seven g I like them this week.

Speaker 3 (40:45):
That changes the dynamic.

Speaker 4 (40:46):
Doesn't mean they're gonna win, but it sures how it
gives them a better edge of cutting their losses or
maybe winning a little bit more So, I think being
a bookmaker is so challenging today, never mind the fact
that it's illegal, but even on the you know, doing
it legal is challenging for DraftKings, fangal et cetera.

Speaker 2 (41:02):
And throwing the fact that you also have to collect.

Speaker 1 (41:04):
Now it's just harder you have to you know, it's
I was gonna ask you. You know, it's a significantly
easier job to be a better Now. I look, they're
still not winning, but your edges are a little bit better. Now.
You mentioned scaling, you eventually would you would scale and
get into the PPH world. Then the PPH is a
paper head. It is a it's generally based in a

(41:28):
foreign country antigue with Costa Rica, where there are basically
companies that have rooms where people sit in there and
just I'm gonna I'm gonna throw this up on the screen.
This is kind of how it works. There's a website.
It would it could be bet one two three dot com. Okay,
you go to bet one two three dot com. It's
like a portal. You as the head of the company,

(41:51):
would give a group of people these master lists and
they're they're all logins. And let's say I want a wager,
so Jeff is customer twenty. That's that account. I get
a pastor and everything I log in it looks just
like a fan door DraftKings. I wager every week I'm
either up or down on the credit line that I get,

(42:14):
and you that's how you collect. So you don't have
to write.

Speaker 2 (42:16):
Anything down anymore.

Speaker 1 (42:17):
You just go on a website and it's you basically
pay a company to handle all that for you. So
you said you went down to Latin America and and
kind of met these groups when you you could. I
mean you would imagine when you walked in here, you thought, wow,
this is going to be extremely important to me.

Speaker 2 (42:36):
Taking this from.

Speaker 1 (42:37):
A seven hundred thousand dollars business to a multimillion dollar business.

Speaker 3 (42:40):
Oh, no question. I mean I knew instantly.

Speaker 4 (42:43):
Scalability just became the easiest format in the world.

Speaker 3 (42:46):
And it really was.

Speaker 4 (42:47):
I mean, I can my life alone, just my personal life, Yeah,
changed drastically. I mean, even if I got zero more clients,
it was so worth it. And back then, you know
what I paid. It's funny, it's usually like right now,
PEP you can get for as little as like four dollars.
I've seen four dollars and usually it's like six to ten,
depending on where you go.

Speaker 3 (43:05):
And how many clients you have whatever.

Speaker 4 (43:07):
But I paid for PPH back then when I was
one of forefronts to go down there, thirty five dollars
per client, which.

Speaker 3 (43:16):
Is high, I mean really, but I would have.

Speaker 4 (43:18):
Paid a hundred because the reality is of how much
work that they're doing.

Speaker 2 (43:23):
It seemed so much time.

Speaker 4 (43:25):
Oh gosh and airs. I mean, you have tape recordings.
There's no oh I got the Patriots when I really didn't.
I mean I did tape record when I was taking wagers,
but there are times I was golfing I couldn't. So
it's it's tough, I'm telling you. But that being said,
the PPH just made everything easy for bookmakers, and that's
why I believe there's a lot more bookmakers than men.

(43:46):
That occurred because it was easy for guys just to
call up and say, hey, if I don't have to
be on the phone and there's no recording of me,
I can meet my client privately. I mean, for the
smaller bookmaker, they could really be you know, unknown from
the FEDS active, especially back then, because you don't have
like a lot of phone conversations anymore. Now it's just
I go meet you, Jeff, and we meet every Thursday

(44:08):
at freaking Buffalo Wild wings and settle up, and the
website says everything. So what sort of talk about on
the phone other than I'll see a wild wings at nine.

Speaker 1 (44:16):
O'clock at the height of the PPH world. How many
counts did you have? How many people were agents for you?

Speaker 4 (44:25):
I had forty eight agents when I was raided by
the Feds across the country. Yeah, but most of them
had a pretty big base of customers too.

Speaker 3 (44:34):
You know, there'd be something that had I want to.

Speaker 1 (44:36):
Bring real quick, I want to bring this up. This
is directly from your indictment. They would claim that you
had approximately seven hundred customers.

Speaker 2 (44:43):
Is that correct?

Speaker 4 (44:45):
You know what, I think I had about seven hundred
active when I was raided. I had twelve hundred customers.
But you know I had so many that owed me money, Yeah,
that weren't active. So you know, you have a guy
who owes you eight hundred thousand or whatever, eighty thousands,
matter with the number is, and he's shut off for
the moment because he can't pay anything until he starts
paying again. And those relationships were ongoing for twenty years.

(45:07):
I've had guys that I'm not joking. In fact, most
of them, literally most of them wanted to write a
letter to the judge for me saying that the service
I provided was fantastic. They're they're bummed and they're going
to go to some other book maker and try to
develop a good relationship.

Speaker 3 (45:22):
I said, well, thank you, guys, but that's really not
going to help me.

Speaker 4 (45:25):
Sadly, but you know, the relationships I built, truly are
have become friends. Even though we had a transactional business.
They you know, I gave them good deals. I gave
him discounts ten twenty thirty percent back. They can't get
that at DraftKings. Fandle My runner would pay them a
Monday morning, whether it was at their office or home,
put in their mailbox, whatever they requested. I mean, the
service that I provided, I believe was the best in

(45:48):
the country.

Speaker 3 (45:48):
That's why I had such great relationships.

Speaker 4 (45:51):
There's a lot of bookmakers, Jeff that had more customers
than me, but they didn't have the volume. I had
huge volume, very good client I mean, you could have
have you know this, in any business, you could have
forty clients and you could have one. If that one
is worth one hundred, then you want the one. Clearly,
I believe that's why my business was so good.

Speaker 1 (46:10):
So you had kind of a white glove service. And
this is why, like when when people talk about gambling
legalized or illegal gambling, this is why I legal gambling
will really never end because you are going to be
able to offer stuff to Joe Q that you know,
Draft Kings can't. When I go into DraftKings and wherever,
I have to have that five hundred dollars to bet

(46:31):
on the Eagles this week or the page you know
you are gonna offer me a significantly higher credit limit
your you're I can meet you and get paid Like
not that they won't pay it, but it's there's just
certain things you can get there that you're not going
to get at Driftings. Then the biggest one is you
don't have to put any money up to bet, and
that's way easier than having to have the money. So

(46:52):
your business is huge. Everything is about connections. You're meeting people,
you're you're on planes, you're going to Vegas. I will
ask how was that experience? Say going to Vegas did
you have you had all these VIP hosts and when
you go in, how does so let's say you want
to go to Vegas for a weekend you're in California.
How does that work at your height?

Speaker 4 (47:11):
Let me answer that. But I just want to touch
on something you said a minute ago. I think it's
important for the viewers the DraftKings fandal opening an account,
and you said illegal bookmakers will never go away.

Speaker 3 (47:21):
That is so accurate. First of all, when you open
an account of Draft Kings a.

Speaker 4 (47:25):
FanDuel, you're basically doing a colonoscopy of all your bank
assets and KYC all required by the federal government.

Speaker 3 (47:32):
So I understand why. But nobody wants that.

Speaker 4 (47:35):
People just want an account, They want to bet, they
want to meet somebody.

Speaker 3 (47:38):
They don't want their wife to know, or their work.

Speaker 1 (47:41):
And by the way, Matt, we forgot one big thing.
If I win twenty grand from you, I don't pay
any taxes on that.

Speaker 3 (47:48):
Well that's the other issue.

Speaker 4 (47:50):
And how about if you're a surgeon that's on TV
that you know you don't need.

Speaker 3 (47:54):
The world melody what you're doing. So that's huge.

Speaker 4 (47:57):
So I just want to touch on that because I
think it's important that people realize why illegal bookmakers will
always be around.

Speaker 1 (48:03):
And I'll put this into perspective to people that want
to hear it from just a normal person.

Speaker 2 (48:08):
I remember last February.

Speaker 1 (48:09):
I was betting Parks horse racing Monday afternoon in February,
fifty cent pick four. It was a thirty six dollar ticket.
I cash out, final race comes in underdog wins. I
won twenty three K on a thirty six dollars ticket.
I'm thinking to myself, beautiful and I didn't realize, oh wait,
it was over three hundred to one, so they're going

(48:30):
to tax me. I ended up getting like seventeen right,
and I'm thinking, like, what the fuck, Like, I'll just
I thought I was going to pay at the end
of the year. Whatever. If let's say, God forbid, you're
taking horses, you'd pay the full twenty three I'd have
never had to pay nothing on it. So that's another
big thing. And as you said, you have people that,

(48:51):
like most people, when it comes to like like someone
that's betting ten dollars, doesn't care about they have to risk.

Speaker 2 (48:57):
Eleven to win ten. They don't care.

Speaker 1 (48:59):
But when you're dealing with like a big surgeon or something,
if you offer a one o nine line instead of
a one ten line, that's that's very big, throwing taxes.

Speaker 2 (49:09):
All the different stuff.

Speaker 1 (49:10):
So it'll never end. And that's why you know, it's
it's just that's that's the black market for you.

Speaker 2 (49:17):
But how did a trip go?

Speaker 1 (49:19):
Is it? Are they sending you a jet or they like,
how's that work?

Speaker 3 (49:23):
It's actually amazing.

Speaker 4 (49:24):
I was sitting around doing an interview the other day
and they asked the same question, and it done to
me because as I answered, I.

Speaker 3 (49:31):
Had to think about, well what would I do?

Speaker 4 (49:33):
And I said, I would just be talking to you,
and I'd have an urge to go gamble, and I
would literally send an email and I'd have a plane
at John Wayne Airport, private airport ACI jet within two hours,
so I could be sitting here right now, and then
I would tell my wife, go pack up, we're leaving
literally in forty minutes to go to the private airport.
And they could pretty much get a plane here as

(49:55):
fast as I can get pilots to the airport and
get them to the you know, fly.

Speaker 3 (49:58):
At one hour over here. So I would jump on
a private jet that would be waiting for me.

Speaker 4 (50:02):
I'd roll up in my back then rolls Royce, which
felt amazing and having all these fancy shit, and I'd
pull up and the belman would whisk our bags in
the back of the jet and we'd beaten caviar within
two hours. And I'd be on a plane in Vegas
and then we'd have a of course full flight attendant service.
Get off, there'd be three rolls Royces waiting for us
from the Resorts World. We'd be whisked right to our room.

(50:25):
We didn't even check in because they had a credit
card on file. Of course, we didn't pay for our
rooms anyway. We walk right to the villa. It's an
eight thousand square foot palace that they call them at
the Resorts World. Four bedrooms with a pool, glass going
around the entire room, with a backyard with a barbecue,
I mean, eight butlers. They would have a crib for
my son, all the baby food, everything that we knew.

Speaker 3 (50:48):
If you like peanut butter cookies, they'd have more than
you can imagine.

Speaker 4 (50:50):
If you wanted a freaking banana milkshake with coconut shavings,
that's what you're getting.

Speaker 3 (50:55):
I mean, the service is impeccable.

Speaker 4 (50:56):
One thing I will say about Las Vegas is they
know how to take care of people, and clearly there's
a reason for it.

Speaker 1 (51:01):
Now you so you have everything you need. You know,
you have to pay for it out thing. How much
are you wagering on a let's say a forty eight
hour period.

Speaker 4 (51:12):
So my handle was usually like five million a shoe
every hour, and that's because of My average bet was
around thirty five thousand, but my hype bet or top
bet would be three hundred thousand. But that's including my ententraage.
My max bet was one hundred and fifty thousand. I
would bring two million for the most Baka Rot. I
got barred at blackjack at most casinos, so I stopped

(51:35):
playing it. Sadly, that's the only game I could hold
my own in bakra. You know, that's a demise for me,
but over time.

Speaker 3 (51:41):
But I loved it.

Speaker 4 (51:42):
But anyway, I was playing Bakrop because it was the
second best.

Speaker 3 (51:45):
Game edgewise for me in the casino.

Speaker 4 (51:47):
And I didn't really like Roulette or a dice I love,
but I just got too jonesy and put too much
out there every time I rolled the dice, which had
no chance, so I stayed away from it. And of
course I was betting sports for three to five hundred
thousand a game, sometimes a million at resources World, So
you know, I feel bad because of the sportsbook manager
who I was really friendly with and getting fired. I

(52:08):
believe his name was Richie. Great guy, and you know,
he was just doing his job. But the other day
I actually got in contact with him. But the moral
of the story, I was firing. You know, three to
five hundred thousand a game. I'm betting three hundred thousand
a hand, sometimes off the max, and the numbers were
just so big. So over time, my theoretical on a

(52:28):
trip could be anywhere from three hundred thousand to five
hundred thousand to even a million, I mean, depending on
where I was and how long it was there.

Speaker 1 (52:35):
So they were they were making out too. Everybody was happy.
You were being treated like a king. And the good
thing is you're meeting people. You're dealing with some of
the highest of rollers, the biggest of people. Let me
ask you, when you bet yourself, like even you know,
when you're making a ton of money, you're betting a
ton of money. We all as gamblers have things we
enjoyed betting on. You know, for me, it's I love

(52:57):
college football, right, I've done okay with it.

Speaker 2 (53:01):
What were you betting on?

Speaker 3 (53:02):
Everything? Moving?

Speaker 1 (53:04):
Okay, So you weren't so you were more of like
you didn't even care about watching. You were just like,
I need to get action on it. Did you have
did you have any edge at all?

Speaker 4 (53:13):
I mean, I don't want to sell it as like
I'm a complete heroin addict, but yeah, I was definitely
a gambling degenerate, but the I definitely handicapped.

Speaker 3 (53:21):
I definitely looked at sharps.

Speaker 4 (53:22):
I did have some logic to my gambling, but at
the end of the day, I still had the common
errors of chasing, or lack of discipline or bank money
Moore money management. Those things all came into to effect
for me, even though I knew better. But that's just
why gambling is so tough to beat, because you could
have all these rules and and you know, discipline, things

(53:44):
that you're supposed to do, and if you don't follow them,
you're gonna end up just losing because you you really you.

Speaker 3 (53:49):
Start betting games because they're on TV.

Speaker 4 (53:51):
You start betting their Sunday night game because you're down
and you want it all back. I'm guilty of all
of that, even though I knew was wrong. You know,
it goes back to that competitive fire of not wanting
to lose. Trying to win it all back, or I'm
about to leave on the trip and I'm down a million,
so I'll just bet a million on the last game,
win it and get out of her even I mean,
then you lose two million. So yeah, I am guilty that,

(54:11):
But I love football. That was my favorite sport to bet.
It was the hardest one in the NFL. College I
thought was much easier, of course, and I love college football,
but the limits were a little harder on college. And
when you're betting at the level I was, you can't
go bet eight hundred thousand on Georgia Tech versus SMU.

Speaker 3 (54:27):
They're not taking that.

Speaker 4 (54:29):
So that that kind of hindered my appetite for college
as far as because again back to the dop Mu rush,
I wanted a bet as much as I possibly care.

Speaker 1 (54:38):
Let me ask you in terms of like I mean,
I bet probably more than most people, or not more
money wise, but frequency you know, I keep track. I'm
very big with that. Do you ever remember as a
better did you ever have a winning year? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (54:55):
No, I definitely did. I had some great years. I
won four million dollars in a casino in the Panama.

Speaker 4 (55:02):
It's called Ocean Sun Casino. I closed them down. They
couldn't even pay me. It took forty five days to
pay me.

Speaker 3 (55:07):
I've never seen that. No job.

Speaker 1 (55:09):
So you went to a little casino in Florida could
pay you?

Speaker 3 (55:12):
Yeah? No, they were. It's in Panama.

Speaker 2 (55:15):
Oh Panama.

Speaker 4 (55:15):
Yeah, yeah, and they paid me. I just took forty
five days. But they're still open. All they have is
slots now you.

Speaker 2 (55:23):
Know their book making operations.

Speaker 4 (55:25):
I mean, I like to say that. I don't know
if I'm really the only reason, but let's be real.
Four billion dollar win. I never lost there. I went there,
I believe eight or nine trips. I never lost one time.
I don't know what it was. I just couldn't lose there.
But my host will verify this. They they were at
the end they couldn't actually pay me, which was really
I was started getting worried because I have no recourses
in Panama and what am I gonna do? Anyway, they paid,

(55:47):
But I've had some good runs. I won five and
a half million at Cosmo. Bill McBeth was president then
and they were selling it to black Rock or whatever,
and he end up taking away all my you know,
I went from Villa discounts, promo chips.

Speaker 3 (56:02):
As you start winning, they start taking things away.

Speaker 4 (56:04):
It's not just him, all casinos do because they got
to get their money back, and they clearly if you
have an edge, if you're considered an advantage player, which
I was in blackjack, they start taking things away.

Speaker 3 (56:14):
It's no different than crack trying to bet with me.

Speaker 4 (56:17):
I might give him an account, but I'll limit to
one hour before the game starts. I'll start taking away
all his edges so that I have the edge.

Speaker 1 (56:24):
Being a good better is a really hard job for
because it's so difficult to find places to take action,
and these are businesses in the end. With you know,
you were in Rated twice twenty twenty three, twenty fourteen
pre twenty fourteen. So let's say like late two thousands
to twenty fourteen inch bookmaking wise.

Speaker 2 (56:47):
Estimate, what are you doing a year?

Speaker 4 (56:50):
I would say probably you know, two three million profit?
Yeah wow, yeah, because the reality was the volume I
was doing was big, but you know, I didn't have
quite the capacity of customers and I had probably you know,
maybe three hundred, so I didn't get to seven eight hundred,
nine hundred thousand until later. But after I was raided.

(57:12):
That's where the learning curve should have started. Where I
should have went and got a real job and just
did the right thing. I chose to become the biggest
bookmaker in the country and and go all in oh,
which was you know the message that was taken wrong.

Speaker 2 (57:26):
Definitely talk to me about that in twenty fourteen.

Speaker 1 (57:28):
Are you obviously when when you're under surveillance by the FBI,
you know when your phones are tapped. I mean you
can any random person that has any know how I
can see if if an FBI, if some cars just
sitting outside of your house with nobody in it and
sitting there for years on end, you kind of feel
like there's something going on.

Speaker 2 (57:47):
You could see them following you.

Speaker 1 (57:49):
Did you have any inference to believe that you were
under investigation before they raided you?

Speaker 3 (57:54):
Not until after.

Speaker 4 (57:55):
That's when you everything you said you put together afterwards.

Speaker 2 (57:59):
You didn't have any indication.

Speaker 4 (58:01):
No, Because, honestly, Jeff, at that time of my life,
I was thirty nine, I truly had four kids. I
went from thinking I was a tough guy gangster, which
I never was, to being a father and really recognizing
that chasing money and trying to intimidate people and make
them pay was really the wrong message.

Speaker 3 (58:20):
Anyway.

Speaker 4 (58:21):
If I gave someone too much credit, I blame myself.
If I didn't vet the customer. It's easier just to
look in the mirror and say, all right, you know
you're getting screwed. But at the end of the day,
it's my fault. I did not do enough homework. I
should have made a post up or whatever. But point
being is, I wasn't hurting anybody.

Speaker 3 (58:35):
I was paying a lot of taxes.

Speaker 4 (58:36):
By the way, I know it looks salacious on the headlines,
but I paid a lot of money in taxes. In fact,
I want to touch on this for a second. In
twenty twenty two, whereas my falsified tax which are in
charge is from I paid six hundred and eighty thousand
dollars in taxes that year. I made four points something million,
four point eight I think they said from the federal government.

(58:59):
But the reality I lost four million dollars in the
casinos and sportsbooks. So my CPA filed as a professional gambler.
I thought I was doing my taxes correctly. I'm not
an angel, I'm not a victim, but I just want
to explain to the viewers that I actually was paying
what I deemed to be the proper amount of taxes,
but they wouldn't allow me to offset my gambling against

(59:19):
my profitable business because they they basically said, you were
running a legal business.

Speaker 2 (59:23):
We can't do that, can't.

Speaker 4 (59:24):
But the reality is, if you really break it down,
that was my net profit. I paid taxes based on
my net profit, the percentage I paid six hundred eighty grand.
I mean, most bookmakers in the country are not paying
six hundred eighty thousand dollars in taxes.

Speaker 1 (59:37):
They're not paying an emotion no, no, I mean.

Speaker 3 (59:40):
They really aren't. So I had no other forms of income.

Speaker 1 (59:42):
Really.

Speaker 4 (59:43):
I had a marketing business and now I have a
jiu jitsu studio. I have other things, but back then
I really didn't, and truth be told, I thought I was.
That's why I never thought they were coming for me,
because I didn't hurt nobody. I paid taxes, and even
when they left my home that day in twenty fourteen,
it was March twenty five, I felt like they were
kind to me. Like I mean, of course they were

(01:00:04):
in my home taking cash out of my house, but
they were kind to me. They were basically saying, look,
you don't hurt nobody. You know, I wouldn't recommend doing
this anymore. But at the end of the day, we're
gonna You're gonna sign a bannonm in forum which states
I can't hire an attorney and I'll let all the
proceeds go, but I won't be charged. And I was
so thrilled, of course, because I was scared. I was like, shit,
am I going to prison? I losing my business?

Speaker 2 (01:00:25):
So they were just trying to put you unnoticed.

Speaker 4 (01:00:28):
Yeah, yeah, And I took that message as Okay, if
this is the worst case scenario, I'll just go build
it bigger, just.

Speaker 2 (01:00:34):
Keep doing it.

Speaker 1 (01:00:35):
Yeah. Yeah, that's actually an interesting kind of way to
look at it. I mean, they you know, they really
didn't punish you. So why why even worry? This ain't
a big deal. Okay, So I want to ask you
about you were doing a lot of gambling. One thing
we learned in like high celebrity circles, high profile people.
Poker's big, right you these private poker games. Were you

(01:00:59):
doing anything like that? Were you meeting celebrities? Did you
have I mean I want to get into movie horta,
but did you have. You don't have to. I don't
want you to name them. I know you won't, you know,
not that kind of guy. But did you have athletes
betting into you? Did you have celebrities betting into you?

Speaker 3 (01:01:13):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (01:01:13):
I had quite a few. In my book Recalibrate, which
I know you bought it.

Speaker 3 (01:01:17):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:01:18):
Yeah, I'm you're going to talk about it here.

Speaker 3 (01:01:20):
Yeah. I don't mention any of the names of the celebrities.

Speaker 4 (01:01:24):
Thanks for putting that up that the the book talks about.
It gives you a scope of you know, how big
of a celebrity, let's call it an athlete they were,
But it doesn't mention their names, how of respect for them,
because I don't. They don't need that drama in their life.
And that doesn't really make me look like a better person.
But I had quite a few. I have some high
end celebrities and high end athletes that were betting, but

(01:01:45):
not on their own sport.

Speaker 1 (01:01:50):
So you were You're dealing with some pretty high profile
people you had, you had athletes? Did was that weird
to you? Like, even though they weren't betting on their
own sport, Like that's a little bit of a gray area.
How many would you like you're a book maker, how
many if you have ted athletes, how many are betting regularly?

Speaker 3 (01:02:10):
Man, I would say at least half truly. Yeah, that's
my opinion. When I say.

Speaker 4 (01:02:15):
Regularly, I mean like, you know, they probably have an
account with a bookmaker or bet when they go to
casinos or when they're allowed to. I'd say the other
five probably just stay away from it because they're athletes
and don't.

Speaker 3 (01:02:26):
Want to even have any concerns.

Speaker 4 (01:02:28):
But I think most of these athletes are so competitive
they gamble, I mean on sports in particular. But I
had about fifteen athletes and celebrities roughly that like big
names that I had through my site.

Speaker 3 (01:02:41):
You know I say big, I mean really big I had.
I'm sure some low level guys.

Speaker 4 (01:02:46):
I had a few hockey players that are retired that
are you know, if I said their names, you don't
even know them. But they made millions of dollars and
played hockey for many years and they're retired. They live
here in Orange County, play golf of them, et cetera.
But I'd say about fifteen really big athletes or celebrities
when it.

Speaker 1 (01:03:01):
Comes to like being a book maker at that level,
do you when you get like, let's say you meet
a basketball player an NBA player, are you giving them
all the same credit limit? Are you?

Speaker 2 (01:03:15):
Do you even worry about they won't pay you?

Speaker 3 (01:03:18):
I mean, listen, you know, great question.

Speaker 4 (01:03:22):
The truth of the matter is I had a guy
stick me for twelve million that his family's worth over
six billion dollars. So how much money somebody has doesn't
mean they're honorable or are willing to pay you. So
I found that the people that have less money usually
are more honorable. Maybe that's why they have less money,
because they actually value.

Speaker 3 (01:03:41):
Their their word and their honor more than.

Speaker 4 (01:03:43):
Anything, to their detriment to the point where they'll go broke,
even just to pay a debt, whereas some wealthier people
their their personal agenda is more important than their word
and honor. That being said, each athlete, celebrity, or high
profile type.

Speaker 3 (01:04:00):
Owned business owner is different.

Speaker 4 (01:04:02):
I would first ask them kind of what they wanted,
and if it was smaller or more.

Speaker 3 (01:04:06):
Reasonable, I wouldn't worry.

Speaker 4 (01:04:07):
But if it started getting these bigger numbers, I would say, listen,
I understand you're famous or your amazing athlete, but these
are still bigger dollar amounts and we need to build
some trust first, So either you can put up some
of the money or depending on the referral. Of course
the referrals strong, then I wouldn't even say this, But
if it was a little dicey, I would just say,
put up maybe twenty percent of the credit line or

(01:04:29):
something to show me good faith if you want these
large dollar amounts.

Speaker 3 (01:04:32):
Because here's the problem. If they win a million dollars
or whatever.

Speaker 4 (01:04:35):
The number is, I have to pay them, and if
they lose a million dollars, I'm not guaranteed to get it.

Speaker 3 (01:04:40):
So why expose myself until we build a relationship.

Speaker 1 (01:04:44):
You also were not a book maker that a lot
of bookmakers will pay someone with money they get from losers.
You weren't necessarily doing that. You were just if I
owe you money, I'm paying it. It's not your worry,
it's my worry.

Speaker 2 (01:05:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:05:01):
One of the selling points for myself and my agents
when I was a book maker was to let everyone
know that we're gonna do everything in our capability of
paying you on Monday, not waiting for Peter to pay
you or pullall or whatever. But it to be transparent.
One of the reasons why my business was so successful was.
I did use other customers to pay other ones, but

(01:05:22):
I basically gave them a little cookie for doing it.
So if you paid on a Monday, I might give
you a ten percent rebate or ten percent free play,
because I would like if I knew I could count
on Let's say, Jeff, you're betting with me, and you
know eight thousand. If I knew Jeff was paying me
eight thousand dollars through let's say Apple pay or Venmo,
I could move that eight grand to winners right away,

(01:05:44):
and I could have that, you know, taking care of
of course, you send me a screenshot showing you paid it,
I would send that to them to prove it, and
then I would credit you maybe eight hundred dollars in
free play in.

Speaker 3 (01:05:53):
This example, and that that was a way I would
do it.

Speaker 4 (01:05:56):
And then, of course, if whoever couldn't pay on Monday
or didn't, I say, I would fulfill the difference of
whatever I had to pay out. So on a given weekend,
I would have usually five to seven million dollars I
would have to transfer throughout the country through payouts and payans,
and I would say, okay, all I cared about was
on Monday Sunday night. Actually, after the game was over,

(01:06:16):
I would start and I would start hitting people up.
And then if you won, let's say you won four
grand and you're in Kentucky, how do you want to
be paid? That's all I'd figure out first. And then
I would go to all the losers and find out
when they when they're gonna pay or how they're going
to pay, and then I would transfer all that money,
and then of course whatever's left I would pay.

Speaker 3 (01:06:35):
Out of pocket.

Speaker 1 (01:06:36):
Gotcha, Okay, I want to get into epay. But I
have one final question in terms of your your bookmaking network.
I did a show maybe two years ago on a
very known book maker in the Philadelphia a Joe Vito Mastronardo.

Speaker 2 (01:06:51):
He's very well known.

Speaker 1 (01:06:53):
He always said that he would never attack anybody, he
would never beat anybody up. If you didn't pay, you
just didn't get to bet with him anymore. And that
was a major problem for a lot of people because
he did things a lot like you did.

Speaker 2 (01:07:05):
Real old school guy.

Speaker 1 (01:07:06):
Though you you know, obviously I've looked at your indictment.
There's no assault, there's no extortion. Let's say I owe
you twenty grand, and I'm basically saying, you know, go
fuck yourself, I'm not paying you.

Speaker 2 (01:07:23):
What what would you.

Speaker 3 (01:07:24):
Do if it was two years ago before I was raided.

Speaker 1 (01:07:28):
It'll say a lot of in your high levels.

Speaker 3 (01:07:31):
Well, let me give you two analogies.

Speaker 4 (01:07:34):
Two years ago, I was the weakest I would ever
be towards debt, weakest meaning I would do the least
because I had I was a father of five, My
business was so successful. I never wanted one poor decision
or chasing of a twenty thousand dollars debt to affect
this conglomerate business I built. So I again looked in
the mirror and said I didn't bet this customer or

(01:07:55):
my agent didn't And of course I would put pressure
on you. I would say, you know, Jeff, I don't
want to attack your social media accounts and let everybody
know that you don't pay. I don't want your wife
to take out the trash and have somebody come by
and say, hey, we're you know. So I would say
little comments that would be condescending but also kind of
send a message without threatening. And then if you go
back to where when I was a thirty year old kid, where.

Speaker 3 (01:08:16):
I was a punk who I thought was a tough guy.

Speaker 4 (01:08:19):
I would go to your house and I would knock
on your door, and I would have a confrontation, not physically,
and I would just look in your eyes and try
to locate you, whether it's your office, work wherever, and
make you uncomfortable and have a conversation, you know, just
looking in the eyes as a man, and say, look, man,
you know twenty grand.

Speaker 3 (01:08:34):
Tell you what you're jammed up. Let's work it out.
Nobody's saying that you got to pay twenty grand. Today.
We all get jammed up. I've been jammed up a
million times.

Speaker 4 (01:08:40):
I would always try to be real, and I mean
understanding with people, because I do know what it's like
to not be able to pay someone.

Speaker 3 (01:08:46):
It's happened to me so many times in my life.
And I would tell them that.

Speaker 4 (01:08:49):
And I think bringing that level of I'm holier than
now or I'm an angel and I'm perfect made them
feel more comfortable usually.

Speaker 3 (01:08:57):
And of course there's a lot.

Speaker 4 (01:08:58):
Of people that just don't give a flying shit and
they're not paying people, and then you would you would
semi threat them in a sense of like this is
gonna be a headache, this is gonna be a problem.
But never really following through because at the end of
the day, I wasn't going to risk I mean I
had some sticky situations, don't get me wrong, but those
turned into non violent and just more threatening back and

(01:09:18):
forth conversations.

Speaker 3 (01:09:20):
That we're all talk, and I was all talk.

Speaker 4 (01:09:23):
I'm not gonna lie because I wasn't going to risk
going to federal prison. Well I did anyway, but not
for assaulting someone or extortion or that kind of thing.

Speaker 1 (01:09:31):
Well, and you know better than me that if that
would have been involved, your prison sense that we'll talk
about would be significantly longer than it is.

Speaker 2 (01:09:38):
You're kind of you know, there's no violence.

Speaker 1 (01:09:42):
Before you pay.

Speaker 2 (01:09:43):
I'd be remiss.

Speaker 1 (01:09:44):
Obviously a lot of people that watch this channel we
talk about the mafia.

Speaker 2 (01:09:47):
I took up at an organized crime I can't lie
to you.

Speaker 1 (01:09:51):
Matt when when I when you were first arrested and
all this stuff came out, multiple people reached out to
me and said, is this guy connected to see it? All?
I had? I can't lie. I had heard your name
involved with one prominent crime family in New York City.
You though didn't know that, and this had more to

(01:10:12):
do with your personal wagering where you had some run
ins with who you now know, we're pretty involved people.

Speaker 4 (01:10:20):
Yeah, I was so stupid that I truly didn't believe
that the gentleman that we're talking about was involved in crime,
in the crime family.

Speaker 1 (01:10:31):
And I will point this out to all the people
that are curious. I absolutely know who the guy is.
He's based in Florida. He's with one of the Five.
He's very well known if you hear his name.

Speaker 4 (01:10:41):
So yeah, and there's an article which I think you
saw that talks about him sending me. I believe it
was like two hundred and forty thousand something, a big
figure to something that I won off him one week
and he actually sent it to me. I think it
was by US Postal Service, and it got picked up
by the Florida to Police Department actually not FEDS, and

(01:11:02):
when I think it was Cook County actually, But anyway,
moral of the story is I did not believe him.
So we got into a very you know, threatening conversation
back and forth.

Speaker 3 (01:11:12):
And I had no idea that.

Speaker 4 (01:11:13):
I was speaking to somebody who was involved in the mafia,
nor did I believe that, and thank god, it didn't escalate.

Speaker 3 (01:11:19):
But until recently when I saw the article.

Speaker 4 (01:11:22):
I did not believe he even sent the money, So
I actually wanted to apologize to him if he's watching this,
because yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:11:27):
He did send the money, and how honorable is that.

Speaker 4 (01:11:29):
I mean, yeah, I got scooped up by the police department,
but I didn't believe him. And you can understand why
I didn't believe him, because that lie was told a
lot throughout.

Speaker 3 (01:11:37):
The country in my time.

Speaker 4 (01:11:39):
But he was very honorable and you know, sadly that
money got confiscated, and more importantly, you know that means
they were looking into him.

Speaker 3 (01:11:46):
So I don't know what happened to him. I hope
he'd never had some indictments or problems. I'm not sure.

Speaker 1 (01:11:50):
Well, I won't say his full name, will say his
name is Tony.

Speaker 2 (01:11:53):
His name is Tony.

Speaker 1 (01:11:55):
He was made in the seventies, he goes back that far.
So you know, again, Tony, maybe you watch this, mat
apologizes I do. I do.

Speaker 4 (01:12:05):
Yeah, He's a very honorable man, no question, And you know,
I probably said some things I shouldn't have because I
was definitely questioning his honorability, which you.

Speaker 3 (01:12:14):
Know he was saying he sent it.

Speaker 4 (01:12:15):
I really didn't believe him, but he did and so
to me, all the credit to him for being honorable,
and clearly he was in a crime family, which I
didn't even know. I had another run in with crime
family in Boston. I was betting with It's in my book.
I was betting with them. I would call them soldiers
because they The gentleman I was betting with, his name

(01:12:35):
was Michael. He wasn't full Italian, so you know, you
know the history there, but definitely had some ties and
was running, yeah, exactly, and we I beat them for
a large amount of money, and basically he came out
and met me and sat down and looked me in
the eyes and told me, I'm not paying you, but
I have some ideas on how to resolve this. And

(01:12:56):
I was a little intimidated because I could tell, you know,
the way they speak and the way they handle things.
It's they're very fearless and they definitely have an impression.
And I think I thought I had that, to be
honest with you, but I realized at that moment that
I didn't have the power of or that, I should say,
the strength that they did as far as making an impression.

Speaker 3 (01:13:15):
But I knew he was tied.

Speaker 4 (01:13:16):
I knew there was ties there, so I was a
little intimidated. I was like twenty eight year old kid,
twenty five year old kid. And anyways, we end up
building a good relationship and it carried on later. And
then I ended up in Boston going to the Red
Sox game and ended up in a strip club with
some of my friends. And it was a very interesting
scenario because I was acting like an idiot, thrown names

(01:13:37):
around that I didn't belong to or shouldn't have, and
you know, these guys treated me like royalty. But moral
of the story is I had no ties to that.
I wasn't never involved in that. Of course, I was
a father of at that time, I think three kids.
But anyway, that was my run in there. But I
think because I was so loosely confident in the wrong manner,
it worked in my benefit at times, but it could

(01:13:59):
have been my dutch Man.

Speaker 3 (01:14:00):
And thank god it never led to anything.

Speaker 1 (01:14:01):
You know, dark there and the guy in Boston you're
referring to, I'll just say one of the highest stuff
high in that area. So we won't get into who,
but we'll to say he's a bigger guy.

Speaker 2 (01:14:13):
Let's see a.

Speaker 4 (01:14:14):
Very very large man and larger life and larger and
real life too.

Speaker 1 (01:14:18):
Yeah, so yeah, I would think you would agree. And
I heard I know you did some stuff with frenzies,
and Frenzies made a very good point about you just
happened to be in California, you know, in the thousands.
If you were in Ozone Park, Queens, I mean you,
you probably would have been shaken down. What would you
have done if, if let's say your height, you're making
tons of money some you know, tony type guy, the

(01:14:42):
guy you talk to, comes to you and says, listen, uh, Matt,
you know, we know you're making a ton of money here.
I don't know how you think this works. But you're
gonna you're gonna cut us in, You're gonna pass a
fee to operate, or you know, you're not gonna operate anymore.

Speaker 4 (01:14:57):
Would you just actually have that scenario occurred in California
with some Russians?

Speaker 1 (01:15:02):
Wow?

Speaker 2 (01:15:02):
Really? Yeah?

Speaker 4 (01:15:03):
It was probably two three years before I got raided,
actually not too long ago, so five years ago. And
I handled it the best way I possibly could. I
just said, you don't bring anything to the table for me.
I don't need, you know, protection, I don't need a bodyguard.
And I understand that you think this is your territory,
but the mafia days are over, especially in California. But

(01:15:26):
I also was respectful because you just never know who
you're talking to, and they definitely were serious people, but
I just explained to them, I'm not giving any part
of my business away. If you want to bring me
customers and I'll handle the business and give you a rip,
no problem.

Speaker 3 (01:15:39):
But so that conversation kind of it was weird.

Speaker 4 (01:15:42):
You know, I stood my ground but respectfully, and I
was definitely a little bit like shaky, like I was like, I.

Speaker 3 (01:15:47):
Don't want to have a problem with these guys.

Speaker 4 (01:15:48):
I mean, I was a little nervous that they could escalate,
but I think the fact that I stood my ground
and then I even said to them, if you have
other book makers that you would like to talk to
that possibly want your service, I'm happy to introduce you,
but I'm not interested. And it kind of went to
the wayside because they they he tried to give me
an impression that I kind of had to and I

(01:16:09):
gave him an impression that I don't have to, and
I think it was going to escalate, and I think
he realized maybe respecting me for being straightforward and look
in the eyes and just saying, look, man, it's you're
not taking a piece of my business.

Speaker 3 (01:16:22):
You know, I'm just being straightforward with you.

Speaker 4 (01:16:24):
That being said, going back to the Mafia days, they
probably wouldn't have been so kind and just said that's
that conversation probably would.

Speaker 3 (01:16:30):
Have went a little uglier. And I'm not gonna lie.

Speaker 4 (01:16:33):
If I was duct taped into a trunk, I think
I would think twice about my conversation about that.

Speaker 1 (01:16:39):
Well, we and we also know that from years past.
I mean, when the Mafia was in New York City
and very powerful, there really wasn't saying no, really wasn't
an option.

Speaker 4 (01:16:48):
Yeah, but but sorry to cut you off. But to
the point there there, I think there was some value
as a bookmaker, you know. And and then that's a
different conversation, right If I if I collected all the
money that I've been stiffed, but I walked away from
forty four million dollars when I got raided that is
still owed to me to this day that I can't receive.

(01:17:09):
You can't collect I mean twenty four million if that's
Epaim Mizohara, which is uncollectible, but think about that. If
I was able to receive fifty percent and forty four million,
I'd be happy to have somebody collect that, of course.
And if that's the case back in the days of
New York and Boston, et cetera.

Speaker 3 (01:17:25):
I mean I would I actually want to do business
with them.

Speaker 4 (01:17:28):
Now, don't get me wrong, I've never been a person
that wants to see somebody.

Speaker 3 (01:17:32):
Harm for not paying.

Speaker 4 (01:17:33):
I'm not an angel, but I you know, I definitely
would put pressure on people, but I don't want any violence.

Speaker 3 (01:17:37):
I'm a father, you know, I'm not a gang banger.
I'm not a tough guy.

Speaker 4 (01:17:41):
I mean, at the end of the day, someone doesn't pay,
I know what it feels like to owe money you
can't pay. And so I'm really happy that never occurred
because I wouldn't feel good about somebody getting roughed up
for not paying, even though that may be the right
message back in the day as far as being honorable and.

Speaker 3 (01:17:57):
Accountable for your actions, I just don't agree with the
violence sign.

Speaker 2 (01:18:01):
I respect that.

Speaker 1 (01:18:03):
So ultimately, you you know, you're having a good time
dealing with people you you you know, some baseball players,
certain athletes you had talked about. You went to kind
of after you know, a game. One night, you go
to a little poker game and you end up meeting
uh Epei Muzihara, who is the translator for Shohiltani, one

(01:18:24):
of the greatest baseball players ever, a guy who didn't
know a ton of English when he came or any
so they pay it for a translator. I guess tell
me a little bit about what kind of guy you
pay was. Does he just come to you and say, hey,
I hear you're a bookmaker? Can you get me an account?
Because it's really that simple. I mean, I've done it myself.

(01:18:44):
I'm not gonna lie. I mean, you know, people, you know,
being a bookmaker is really not that big a deal,
especially in certain areas, like it's a normal thing. You
go to a bar and that guy's a bookie, Right,
how did that all happen?

Speaker 4 (01:18:57):
Take out a step further. You go to a golf
course and everyone knows who the bookmaker is. At every club,
you know, there's usually two of them or three of
them sometimes. But and again these are guys who are
probably you know, one might be an engineer and he's
just running out atle operation on the side. But that
being said, epay that that particular day, I think it
was September, we went to Angels Padres game in San Diego, California.

(01:19:21):
My good friend was really close friends with David Fletcher.
He's also a friend of mine who played golf with
them many times, so we would hang out with him,
play golf with them, et cetera, and we would really
go to cheer him on, so to speak, because we
were friendly with him. And in that process, we went
to the after party. I'll call it the hotel where
the Angels were staying in San Diego. I believe it

(01:19:42):
was a Hilton, and they just had a like every
freaking baseball team or basketball team does, a local pizzas
and hanging out afterwards, dicking around playing cards. It wasn't
this serious, high stakes smallings team. It was just guys
having fun, buying for a couple of thousand dollars and
messing around. There was a base coach, a third base coach,
and three or four ballplayers Epai Misahara, and about six

(01:20:06):
or seven regular joes that were there that were friends
of somebody there.

Speaker 3 (01:20:10):
You know, they weren't.

Speaker 4 (01:20:10):
It was a private event, so to speak, but it
was just in the conference room of the hotel. So
Epay was there and my friend who was an agent
for me, saw Epay putting in sports bets on his phone,
and so he said kindly, hey, you know, Matt does that.
And I believe I don't know if it was a
legal or legal operation he was betting at. I think

(01:20:31):
it was illegal or excuse me, I think it was
legal because I think it was like a you know,
FanDuel or something like that, which in.

Speaker 3 (01:20:36):
California is not legal, but you could do props and stuff.

Speaker 4 (01:20:40):
So long story short, he said, oh, I didn't know that,
and then we create he created an account for him,
or I did on my site, and we get him
a small account was one thousand and eight thousand dollars
credit line. Our conversations were very limited. He's not a
man of many words, very very kind, very honorable guy.
Despite what happened, as far as the theft and all that,
he was sadly was just trying to pay his debt.

(01:21:03):
Not defending his actions. But I just want to be
clear that you know, when you're that honorable, you you
worry about one problem later.

Speaker 3 (01:21:09):
I think he was just trying to get out of
debt and win.

Speaker 4 (01:21:11):
Some money back, but the account started one thousand and
eight thousand dollars, so I wasn't even worried about it.
And then when we extended him from eight to forty
to one hundred to three hundred, then he paid the
three hundred thousand, and the many he paid the three
hundred thousand, and now I have this credible source that
showed credibility, was honorable, paid on time. He asked for

(01:21:31):
five hundred thousand dollars credit line. I assumed to try
to win some of the money back, and what is
his beak? I gave it to him, and then he
blew the five hundred thousand, and you know, he paid.
So everyone asked me, how do you give an interpreter
forty million dollars in credit? Well, I gave him the
credit because he.

Speaker 3 (01:21:48):
Was paying and he was making me on time.

Speaker 1 (01:21:50):
And you also would have assumed like maybe he had
family money and he was just friends with Otani going
back to Japan, and they just you know, you didn't
really think about it.

Speaker 2 (01:21:59):
Wasn't your job.

Speaker 1 (01:22:00):
Over the course though of a several year period, and
this is the federal document they would claim. Now I'll
just read it between on or about September twenty one
January twenty four, I am, which is Epe Muzihara placed
at least nineteen thousand bets through one of your websites.
During this period, Muziahara had total winning bets of Approxy

(01:22:23):
one hundred and forty two million and losing bets of
a proxy one hundred and eighty two nine to three five,
which is a net loss of about forty point six
million dollars. Had you ever come across of a better that.

Speaker 4 (01:22:37):
Bad, No, definitely not. I mean I've come across a
lot of really bad ones. Let's be honest. The zeros
attached to it and make it stand out. Yeah, me
and I had twenty five dollars fifty dollars players back
in the day that you probably bet the same amount
of bets over time, but I noticed because you know,
they're betting twenty five to fifty bucks. That being said,

(01:22:58):
this gentleman Epey was really bad.

Speaker 3 (01:23:01):
And I'll tell you why he was really bad.

Speaker 4 (01:23:02):
On top of the fact that you know the obvious,
he lost forty point six million dollars.

Speaker 3 (01:23:07):
But the reason he.

Speaker 4 (01:23:08):
Was so bad he's betting soccer, and soccer is so
difficult to win because they have to win in the
regulation time. Ye if it goes extended for those who
don't know you, the team might win, but you still
lose your wager. And that's why I hated betting soccer
in fact that it was the worst sport for me.
But you know, it's hard enough to win those of course,
the odds are a little better for that reason, and

(01:23:29):
then you're betting parlays of that those particular sports, it's difficult.
And he bet eighty percent of his bets were on
soccer because he's from Japan.

Speaker 3 (01:23:36):
Well he actually grew up here as well, but he's
back and forth.

Speaker 4 (01:23:39):
But he loved soccer and he played soccer, so that
was his passion and I think that was his demise
on gambling. He bet a little bit in an NFL,
a little bit of NBA zero baseball, and I think
he just loved soccer and he was a terrible.

Speaker 1 (01:23:51):
Better though, And obviously what made this illegal, at least
for him was you would find out through getting a
wire train from Shoeo Tani directly that he was actually
funneling money that Otani was earning from playing baseball to
cover his debts. Because as you alluded to he was
very close to Otani. They were good friends, and he

(01:24:15):
kind of ran He was kind of in a weird
way like his wife kind of he handled the finances.
He made sure everything ran smoothly. And when you're Otani,
you're making so much money. As long as you're taking
care of you don't really think about it when it
turned Muzi Haara is using the money that this guy's
earning to pay you, and you have glongly, not go longly.

Speaker 2 (01:24:36):
But you've talked about the fact that it really got
a little.

Speaker 1 (01:24:39):
Crazy when you started receiving wires, because now you're getting
wires from an account belonging to the best baseball player
on the planet. And what the media and what the
FEDS and all these people are gonna do is they're
gonna start saying, Hold on a second, is it really
Otani's money?

Speaker 2 (01:24:55):
Is it mixed in?

Speaker 1 (01:24:57):
I have that, and I know you're not going to
answer Oreo answer, and I'm guessing you're telling me the truth.
I don't ultimately know. Did you ever meet Chotani? Did
he ever wage you with you? So?

Speaker 4 (01:25:08):
I met him in a sense, I was around him,
never had any personal conversation.

Speaker 2 (01:25:13):
You know what you did for a living.

Speaker 3 (01:25:15):
I don't believe. So he wasn't introduced to me like, hey,
this is Matt.

Speaker 1 (01:25:18):
The had a little tech issue, so you weren't. It
wasn't like someone introduced and said, hey, this is Matt
the bookie, like it's it's just like you've seen him.

Speaker 2 (01:25:29):
That was really it.

Speaker 3 (01:25:31):
Yeah, Like I was obviously I would be around.

Speaker 4 (01:25:34):
I would go to spring training games because I was
friendly with David Fletcher. We would go to the spring
training of the casinos in Arizona and dick around, play
play you know a little bit of the small limits
the tiny limits there, but played blackjack stuff like that,
watch games, hang out, play golf and so there. I've
been in situations where I was around shoheo Tani, like

(01:25:55):
in the same room.

Speaker 3 (01:25:56):
But I never had a conversation with him. I don't.

Speaker 4 (01:25:58):
I don't think back then he spoke on with zero
English and it wasn't like hey, here's Matt's the bookie
or anything like that. So I can honestly tell you
I've never really spoken to him. I've never had a conversation.
I don't have his phone number, and I still I'm
going to say this clearly. To this day, I still
believe one hundred million percent that he did not gamble.

(01:26:18):
The part doesn't question that. I still think that that
really is in question to me is whether he helped
his friend financially, at least initially, and then maybe his
friend just kept tapping the well.

Speaker 3 (01:26:29):
I don't know that.

Speaker 4 (01:26:30):
I'm just that's just my assumption, which is nothing wrong
with loaning your friend money for his gambling addiction or
helping a really close friend out.

Speaker 3 (01:26:37):
We've all been there, maybe.

Speaker 4 (01:26:39):
Not sort a tune of seventeen million, but you know,
my opinion is, and this is solely my opinion, he
helped him initially, borrowed some money, he kept, he pay
kept chasing, and I have quite a bit of history
to know that the wire transfers were sent to me.

Speaker 3 (01:26:54):
It seemed like every time the Angels would pay.

Speaker 4 (01:26:56):
That's why the money that he was making, I believe
that that bank account, this is all my assumption, was
his Angel's money. Clearly he was making much more endorsements,
and I don't believe Epay had access to that account.
That's my opinion, but I believe that he would get
a wire and he would send me five hundred thousand,
because it was like sporadically every few weeks.

Speaker 3 (01:27:16):
And he always said, I have to wait. I didn't
ask why.

Speaker 4 (01:27:19):
You don't ask somebody why when the money's coming in
and you're happy. So I asked little questions. You could
see all my text messages. They're in the indictment. There's
like ninety of them between us, and you'll see him
making fun of himself and joking and looking like it's
no big deal. And in fact, as a gambler, we
all do that. It's like, oh, I suck at this
and I can never win, but we give me more credit,

(01:27:39):
give me a bump. He asked them a million times,
and you could see me saying, hey, I finally capped
him at twenty four million.

Speaker 3 (01:27:45):
I don't know why that number. It was just getting
out of control.

Speaker 4 (01:27:48):
Kept asking for more credit, and I said, epay, we
got to have some sort of lid on this thing.
It's already the numbers are ridiculous. You're very honorable, you've
been paying. You've already paid me at that point. Whatever
it was twelve million, Let's keep it at twenty four
And every time you want to play, you just got
to send me a wire and I'll take it off
the balance and you could play.

Speaker 3 (01:28:06):
You win some back, we'll lower it down.

Speaker 1 (01:28:08):
Which he never made any money with you.

Speaker 3 (01:28:12):
No, I paid him like eighty eight thousand one time.

Speaker 1 (01:28:14):
I mean, is nothing compared.

Speaker 4 (01:28:17):
Oh yeah, I was on a total free roll technically,
I mean I wasn't, but I had to be once
he got down seven eight million.

Speaker 3 (01:28:23):
I never had to worry about money.

Speaker 1 (01:28:25):
Well, did you ever think, like obviously hide and say
it's easy to say now, but did you maybe think
like maybe I should tell him like don't ever because
you knew his connections to Atani, Like maybe hey, don't
send me anything connected to him.

Speaker 4 (01:28:39):
No, because at that point I was balls deep. And
the reason I say that is I didn't know was
Shohi Atani's bank account was sending the money until the
third wire transfer. Okay, that's when I had that O
shit moment, which I think you heard me talk about
with Crack, and that that moment was like, Okay, this
is great, but this is bad. But I've already received
three wires, and let's be honest, if you're going to

(01:29:02):
have a problems cutting it off from three to.

Speaker 3 (01:29:04):
Seven, to me, I was already committed.

Speaker 4 (01:29:07):
This crime per se of receiving a wire from the
best baseball player on the face of the earth. And
I was greedy. I was getting five hundred thousand every
two weeks. It's like, you don't want to rock the boat.
But in hindsight, I mean, yeah, I could have said, hey,
send a wire from Ipe Misahara and made him again,
I don't even know what was going on, but he
could have wired it to his account and wired it
to me.

Speaker 1 (01:29:27):
But I guess it wouldn't really mattered. It still really wouldn't.

Speaker 3 (01:29:30):
Yeah, he's still stealing, he's still doing whatever happened.

Speaker 4 (01:29:33):
And again, if you look at the indictment and you
look at the last text message between us, it's really
strange that he says I said, it's all a cover up,
because to that day I thought it was all bullshit.

Speaker 3 (01:29:44):
I still thought show Hey and him might be betting together.

Speaker 4 (01:29:47):
Maybe maybe show Hay was in on it a little bit,
because I saw him pitching and I knew he wasn't
putting the bets in at the same time. But maybe
they're they're boys, their partner in the account, or maybe
just lending them the money. I definitely didn't think he
was stealing. So I said, it's all a cover up,
and he says, technically, I fucked up.

Speaker 3 (01:30:04):
But why why do you say technically? What does that
word mean to me?

Speaker 4 (01:30:07):
That there's a lot of like a big question mark
behind that does technically mean?

Speaker 3 (01:30:12):
Hey? He okayed me to send a wire or two
and then I just.

Speaker 4 (01:30:15):
Ran it to the next level because I had an
addiction and I was chasing, chasing, which easily can happen.
I mean, do you know a many times I've been
in a casino where I've lent a friend of mine
who's a degenerate.

Speaker 3 (01:30:24):
I had, he had my chips, he's holding five hundred thousand.

Speaker 4 (01:30:28):
And he's not even a big gambler, and maybe he
was going to borrow fifty and they woke up the
next day and owed me one to fifty.

Speaker 1 (01:30:33):
Because theres all the time in that world, right right,
and then the zero sound crazy, but they're not when
you're in that environment or you have access to it.

Speaker 4 (01:30:41):
You know, I can tell you this, Jeff, if you
took a true degenerate gambler and you give him access
to one hundred million dollars, they're going to access it, whether.

Speaker 3 (01:30:51):
It's illegal or not. Because they want to feed the
dopamine rush, the addiction.

Speaker 1 (01:30:54):
And most degenerate gamblers, if they have one hundred, they'll
find a way to spend one twenty. So that's for sure,
so they'll come out. It's just how it worked. So
I get what you're saying. So let me ask you,
out of one hundred percent, what is the likelihood that
in some way. I'm not saying he was betting. I'm saying,
did he know fully what was going on? In terms

(01:31:21):
of whatever? Is it fifty percent? Twenty percent?

Speaker 3 (01:31:25):
If I had to put a perspective, I think it's
very low.

Speaker 4 (01:31:28):
I'm I'm not even trying to protect Shovia tany like,
I'm just being honest. I think that he definitely knew
something was happening with Epay Mazahara on he was gambling,
and I think I believe that he didn't know the
details and didn't want to know and was just focus
on playing baseball. That's truly my opinion. But I don't
believe he had no knowledge, and which he has said

(01:31:49):
on TV. So I hate to say that I'm calling
him a liar because I have no proof, and I
hate when people do that because I know the feeling
of being judged, and I don't want to do that.
But I'm just telling you my honest opinion. I have
no factual basis behind it, but I do believe he
knew something was happening. And I do find it strange
that he had a ninety minute interview IPA did with

(01:32:09):
Tisha Thompson from ESPN that has not been aired, that
got changed by the Dodgers and said he was lying,
and he changes, you know everything.

Speaker 3 (01:32:17):
I just find that a little strange.

Speaker 4 (01:32:19):
But at the end of the day, I do believe
Shoey Tony didn't wager. I do believe it in gamble
and loaning money to his friend, even though it was
sent to legally. I know that by baseball rules that
that's actually, you know whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:32:32):
I have to be honest, I agree with you. I
don't think he did either. I think he was probably
trying to be a good friend. You know, his friend
was in a troublesome way, and that's just how it went.
Ipa Muziar ultimately played guilty. He received fifty seven months
in federal prison and that's where he currently sits in Pennsylvania.
He'll be eligible for release in twenty twenty nine. Do

(01:32:53):
you think they still speak?

Speaker 3 (01:32:56):
No, I do not.

Speaker 2 (01:32:57):
They're not friends anymore.

Speaker 3 (01:32:58):
I don't think so.

Speaker 4 (01:33:00):
In fact, that's something I would I can't gamble anymore,
but I would waste a lot on That's my opinion.

Speaker 2 (01:33:05):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:33:07):
Ultimately, in twenty twenty three, the federal government rated you
just like they normally do. They arrested you know, they
put it handcuffs, your wife, they put it handcuffs a
painter that was working at your house that day. You
had a child, a young child in your arms. And
they ultimately served you up with this out of the
Central District, California, operating in a legal gambling business, money laundering,

(01:33:30):
tax return, false tax turns, aiding in a bedding, all
the normal stuff that to hit you with you down
the road. Pled guilty, and within the last several weeks
you were sentenced. This is your sentencing report right here.
Twelve months in a day, you were scheduled to go
to prison. One month from today, October tenth, twenty twenty five,

(01:33:53):
you will go to a FCI, which is you're not
going to go to some penitentiary. You'll be in there
with you know guys, I know many people that have
been to f cis for you.

Speaker 2 (01:34:04):
It'll be tough you have kids.

Speaker 1 (01:34:06):
But I've spoken One of my friends with the FCI
was there for nine years and he told me if
I didn't have kids, this wouldn't be really bad at all.
I mean, it's it is what it is. That said
a year is not bad in terms of you know
your plea and you have to basically give up about
one point six million dollars on restitution. I guess were

(01:34:29):
you happy with that sentence?

Speaker 4 (01:34:31):
Very very I thought the judge and the prosecution were
very reasonable.

Speaker 3 (01:34:36):
You know, listen, I immediately put guilty.

Speaker 4 (01:34:39):
I tried to show the government to save resources to
fight it, because that's important. I've never been charged or
arrested in my life with any form of a crime.
I do pay taxes, despite what it says. I paid
a lot in taxes in my lifetime, in fact millions.
And you know, I did something wrong and I have
to be accountable for the actions I chose to be
in a legal business. Whether I like the law or

(01:35:00):
agree with them, that doesn't matter. I knew I was
breaking them. So I'm very pleased with the situation. I'm
not pleased with the fact that I'm leaving my five
kids and my wife behind.

Speaker 3 (01:35:09):
But that's something I got to live with and deal with.

Speaker 4 (01:35:11):
I knew when I was on a private jet and
enjoying my lifestyle and you know, flying high.

Speaker 3 (01:35:15):
I mean there was risk.

Speaker 4 (01:35:17):
So the judge, the prosecution, they could have been much
harder on me. I was looking at like three or
four years, and I do believe all the mitigation I did.
You know, I spoke at the USC with some college kids,
trying to give back and help them from learning from
adversity and addiction, et cetera. I work for a nonprofit
called prison Professors dot org, which we help all the
people in prison receive you know, basically it's like a

(01:35:40):
podcast and a book, so we try to help people.
And that's kind of my new calling. I mean, you know,
everyone says when they get caught, they're sorry and all that.
Of course, are sorry you're caught, and I don't. I
don't shy away from that. I'd still be bookmaking if
I wasn't caught.

Speaker 3 (01:35:54):
I don't lie about it.

Speaker 4 (01:35:55):
I'm honest and I'm not perfect, but I'm learning from
my mistakes. Because when you fall down, what if people
want you to do? Like crawling a hole and get
depressed and start using drugs and drinking my life away,
or or reform yourself be better. That's what I'm choosing,
and I'm excited about my future.

Speaker 1 (01:36:11):
Well, you'll do about you know, you'll do eighty five percent.
You're not even gonna do a year. You will be
better for it. That said, you still have to surrender.
You have to drive to a facility, get out of
your car and walk to a guy who will meet you,
and he will take you to prison. How are you
preparing for that? Are you? Are you talking to any consultants?

(01:36:32):
Are you you know? You can only you can only
have about three hundred dollars a month in commissary. You
could have all the money in the world. Yeah, you
are you? You know obviously it's kind of crazy, Matt
to think about so, like on the ninth of October,
especially in the nice bed and a nice house, and
the next twenty four hours later you'll be on a

(01:36:54):
pretty crappy and I don't mean to be like this,
but oh.

Speaker 3 (01:36:57):
That's the truth, man.

Speaker 2 (01:36:58):
I mean, are.

Speaker 1 (01:36:58):
You you have a certain toothpaste you want to use
you can't necessarily use? I mean, are you?

Speaker 2 (01:37:04):
Yeah? You prepared for that. I mean, how are you
prepared for that?

Speaker 4 (01:37:07):
I don't think you're ever prepared for it until you
go through it. Of course, mentally you I first of all,
I hired a company called White Collar Advice justin.

Speaker 3 (01:37:15):
PAPERNI great, I've heard of mine now, great guy.

Speaker 4 (01:37:18):
He's really helped me with mindset and kind of understanding
what I'm about to deal with.

Speaker 3 (01:37:22):
And their team has been great.

Speaker 4 (01:37:24):
But at the end of the day, man, I have
a really strong mind and I can handle myself. I'm
hoping there's no scuffles. I'm going to a camp, you know,
lower level shit's going on. But it's not like I'm
going to be too worried about getting shanked or you know,
cartel members getting up on me or whatever. But the
hard part for me is going to be the pretty
boy lifestyle that I've been living right Like, like you said,

(01:37:46):
I gotta go.

Speaker 3 (01:37:47):
Shower a bunch of dudes.

Speaker 4 (01:37:48):
I gotta sleep in a bunk that's uncomfortable with guys snoring,
including myself. I'm not going to use the toothpaste I want.
I'm not going to shower when I want. I can't
go to the gym when I want. I got to
report for count I got to eat this food, this nasty.
I got to be around guys that I really, frankly
don't want to be around and don't want to have
new friends. But I'll make the best of it, and
I'm sure there's some good people in there. Good people

(01:38:09):
do bad things that happens, and they reform, So I'll
make the best of it. But the hardest part will
be walking into that prison, being strip search, just tending over,
coughing and showing your bunghole and making sure that you know,
because I don't feel that that's really reforming a person
and making me a better person for the you know,
coming out on the you know, socially, but that's the

(01:38:30):
price you pay. I hate to see tax dollars go
to that because I think I'm a better place for
society to be out here working, paying back to the
United States government taxes. Being a father, I don't think
it's helping a four year old or a fourteen year old.
But you know, again, you have to have some consequences,
so it's a tough conversation. That being said, I'm ready
to handle it because I have to, and I got

(01:38:52):
to be ready to just move on and make the
best of it.

Speaker 1 (01:38:55):
The worst part for you is that you got to
miss Christmas. That kind of sucks. I would have tried
to get it in January. But at any rate, your
paperwork's good. I mean, you're not a showmo or something
like that, So I mean I think ultimately it'll go
by pretty quick and your mindset, as justin I'm sure
will tell you your mindset's all that matters. You think
though about it as someone that's about to go to prison.

(01:39:16):
You ever think about the fact that someone that's gonna
get life they'll never come home. You know, it's almost
insane to think about You're only going for a year
or so and you're thinking, Wow, But yeah, well, look.

Speaker 2 (01:39:28):
Your mindset's great.

Speaker 1 (01:39:29):
You're now doing a lot of media stuff. Is your
plan in the future to speak to to to you know,
young people and athletes, because I think as we kind
of wrap this up the future of gambling, I've always
said I hate legalization personally, and it's not because I
don't like the things that have come. It's cool that
I can bet on DraftKings and stuff, but it's the

(01:39:51):
pervasiveness of gambling.

Speaker 2 (01:39:54):
It's the shoving in your face.

Speaker 1 (01:39:55):
It's these goofy people that think they have an edge
and they can just sit there and talk to you
about gambling and there's no oversight with that. Anybody can
be a tout now, anybody can sell picks. There's no
touching balance system there. And that's what's concerning to me
about the regulation is there's really not any irregulation. You know, Like,
if I'm a plumber, I have to have a license
to be a plumber, right If I sell marijuana legally,

(01:40:19):
I have a board that I have to answer to. Literally,
anybody can create an account, whether they're a scammer or not,
and sell picks to people and they have no idea.

Speaker 2 (01:40:28):
There's a lot of things about it that suck.

Speaker 1 (01:40:30):
And would you agree that for young people, you know
it's say eighteen to thirty, this is really a concerning
thought in the next ten fifteen years, I mean, it's
really easy to get into gambling.

Speaker 4 (01:40:46):
Oh its sure is. It's actually the next epidemic right now.
That's being as happening as we speak. Because here's what's happening,
right You have a like I have a twenty two
year old daughter. All her male friends that I got
to know as a father being around them.

Speaker 3 (01:41:01):
They all gamble.

Speaker 4 (01:41:02):
My twenty six year old daughter, same thing or boyfriend,
they all gamble. And they're not professionals. They're not making
money doing this, and they're doing it for fun, which
is what gambling should be about. But because Lebron James
and Kevin Hard and Jamie Fox are on these commercials,
these are people that are mentors to them, they look
up to and they're promoting it right, which I understand

(01:41:22):
it's a business, but these kids are developing these really
bad habits and addictions that they don't even know it.
So fast forward when they're thirty thirty five and they
have two kids and a mortgage and all these responsibilities,
and now they have this gambling problem that turns into
a life problem where they can't even pay their mortgage
and they get behind with bookmakers or fan duel or DraftKings,

(01:41:44):
and they're using credit cards and all kinds of issues.
These are things that are going to be a real
big problem down the road for the world, and we're
going to see it, sadly come out in about five years.

Speaker 1 (01:41:54):
Look, I'll also make it clear I promote a site
pay me to promote them that said and I always
will say, I mean, these are grown adults. You can
make grown adults decisions. But again it is a illness
and you need to make sure gambling responsibly. But again,
these are grown adults and they need to make decisions.

(01:42:15):
It should be a little harder though with some of
this stuff to make happen. But so you have the
book coming out or it is out. I'm not coming out.
It is out, Matt Matthew Boer dot com. You can
go buy the book. I'm gonna include the link in
the pink comment. People always ask me about books. If
you could notice the last hour and a half, this
is you haven't even gotten into some of your stories

(01:42:37):
and all that sort of thing. What's next? I mean,
obviously a book's great. Do you want to do? You
mentioned to me some of the things maybe on TV?
What's next?

Speaker 2 (01:42:47):
Are they going to do a movie on you?

Speaker 1 (01:42:49):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (01:42:49):
So the book I wrote just because it was like
therapeutic to put for my children to see, you know,
all the wild things I've done in my life and
really just kind of show them what I was thinking
as a far throughout my life. And then it's been
therapeutic because it's shown the world kind of where my
mind frame is good, bad, and indifferent because I don't
just you know, I could, you know, easily just put

(01:43:11):
in the book all the positive stuff. I don't do
that because there's many dark times and moments that are
really shitty. And I was living kind of a double
life being a father and trying to be present with
my wife and kids and being a nine to five guy,
which I never was, and yet fighting this dopamine rush
and crazy lifestyle and wild you know stories, which are
all in the book. That being said, that's all over.

(01:43:33):
So the raid for me was the best and worst
day of my life. And the proponents of that and
where I'm going is very exciting because now, as I
said earlier, it's a win win.

Speaker 3 (01:43:44):
So my plan has motivational speaking.

Speaker 4 (01:43:46):
Maybe talk to NFL teams, NBA, MLB, whatever, promote them
from you know, staying away from book makers so they
don't ruin their lives and careers and gamble later down
the road when you know, or when it's legal at
in Vegas here and there sporadically, but also talking to
people who have gambling addictions, that may have addictions and
other things mindset, you know, overcoming adversity, all things that

(01:44:08):
I think I've done pretty well over my lifetime, and
I'm trying to show that now, which is why I've
documented my situation from the Federal raid until now. Most
people talk about what they do after prison. I've been
talking about what I'm doing building the minute I was rated,
which was writing this book. And I do have a
current feature film offer for a film, and we're pushing

(01:44:28):
that aside until I get out of prison. But we
are filming right now the documentary The Sizzle, and I'm
hoping that I get on a Netflix or an Apple
or some big.

Speaker 3 (01:44:37):
Premiere, and that's what we're working on. So I'm very
excited about the future.

Speaker 2 (01:44:40):
My guess is you're going to get that.

Speaker 1 (01:44:42):
I have two questions before we let you go, and
I asked these most of them to every guest to
have on here. The first, though, is only to you,
nearly twenty five percent of federal inmates when they go
to prison and come home, nearly twenty five percent within
eight years go back to federal prison. Obviously, everything you
tell me, you have a great mindset. But again, Matt,

(01:45:05):
I've never found a mobster, very rarely other than the
ones that cooperate. I've never found one. It doesn't go
right back into that life when they come out. Sure,
you're not a mob guy, you're not a gangster, but
you know you are better and you are someone where
you know you can make a lot of money as
a bookmaker and maybe you don't do it as high
as you did before. Is that possible?

Speaker 4 (01:45:29):
Listen, anything's possible. So I'm not going to sit here
and tell you that you know that's not possible. But
I'll be honest based on what I've gone through and
the father of five kids and my wife and how
long worth it anymore? What's that It's not worth it? No,
forgetting not worth it? How about the fact that I
would everything I'm standing for today would be wiped away
what I've gone through in the last two years, you know,

(01:45:51):
because the first forty eight years of my life was
a certain person and now I've kind of developed into
a whole different person. Really, And what I'm advocating for
is not you can't gamble. I mean people should gamble
when they can control and have fun and entertainment, bring
people together. There's nothing wrong with gambling, but if you're
doing something illegal or you have an addiction to it,
there's a problem, and I'm trying to propose, you know,

(01:46:14):
show people that I made the mistake on both ends, gambling,
addiction and illegally, and if I went back and did
the same thing, it just really supersedes everything I'm teaching
and trying to show. That being said, do I think
about you know, when I watch a game, do I
think about gambling?

Speaker 3 (01:46:29):
Or do I miss the money?

Speaker 4 (01:46:31):
Of course, there's no doubt, and those temptations will be
there the rest of my life.

Speaker 3 (01:46:36):
But if I could fulfill that cup.

Speaker 4 (01:46:38):
On a win win and make more than I made before,
which may seem hard for most people, but for.

Speaker 3 (01:46:42):
Me, I know what I can do. I've done it.

Speaker 4 (01:46:43):
I've done it legally, I've done it illegally. I was
the largest commodity retail trader in the world. I was
making big money. So I know what I can do
and I will just you know, feed that fire as
opposed to the legal side.

Speaker 1 (01:46:54):
Well, they say the first forty years of your life
is learn and then the last forty are living. So
I mean you've kind of done that. I think you'd
be fine. I mean, you have a hustle's mindset, You're
always going to be good. Final question, do you regret
your life?

Speaker 3 (01:47:08):
Never? And I have? Would do it all over again
times five?

Speaker 1 (01:47:12):
Fair enough. Go get Matt Boyer's book, recalibrate. Matt. You've
really I'm happy you've You've answered all my questions. You
didn't say I couldn't talk about anything. You're very open
Matthew Boer dot com. Go check it out. And I
would also advise go check out some of the interviews
that Matt's done. I mean, you did one with Crack,
you did one with Frenzies. You know, I try to

(01:47:33):
do it maybe a little different way, but but but
you can learn something from all of it. I really
appreciate you coming on. I know you have a lot
going on right now. Good luck with your time in prison.
I'm sure it'll go by quite quickly, and then you
got your whole life ahead of you.

Speaker 3 (01:47:49):
So I'm excited.

Speaker 4 (01:47:51):
Jeff, thank you very much for you You have some
great questions, great interview. I'm excited to share my story.
I'm excited to hopefully motivate somebody who's watching this. It's
hire them to be a better human, better person, learn
from whatever mistakes I've made. And I think you pointed
out a lot of insight that others haven't. So so
grateful for your time today. And I think people watching
this if they read my book, and I make very

(01:48:13):
little in the book, by the way, so it's not
just a sales pitch. I think they'll see and they'll
learn a lot, and I think it'll motivate them in
a positive light. And that's really why I wrote it
to begin with. But that being said, I'm very excited
for chapter two of my life.

Speaker 3 (01:48:26):
I think I'm gonna do some big things. And thanks
again for having me on.

Speaker 1 (01:48:30):
And not to toot your horn, but according to Amazon,
you're the number one best seller in terms of gambling,
addiction and recovery book, So yeah, I.

Speaker 3 (01:48:38):
Was pretty happy with that.

Speaker 4 (01:48:39):
I mean, truly, I didn't expect that, but people were
buying quite a bit of these books.

Speaker 3 (01:48:44):
And again, I didn't do it.

Speaker 4 (01:48:45):
As a money making thing because that nobody really makes
money in books, that's a fact. But I'm learning that,
you know, just self promoting and my social media has
really worked and I haven't even spent one dollar in
advertising or anything yet. But I plan on getting a
publisher and reap publishing it professionally after I get out
of prison.

Speaker 1 (01:49:02):
I also include a lot of your links to Instagram
that sort of thing.

Speaker 2 (01:49:06):
It's free.

Speaker 1 (01:49:06):
I would always tell anybody out there, Like what you
don't realize is maybe you're a UPS driver, Matt, but
document your job at UPS and make more than that.
Like right, the Internet is there, it is free, and
it allows you to do and be whoever you want. So,
Matthew Boyer, thank you for coming on to share your
story with me.

Speaker 2 (01:49:25):
I really appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (01:49:25):
Go check out the book Recalibrate, get it wherever you
get books, Amazon, Bournes and Noble. Matt, good luck with everything.
Maybe we'll talk to you again soon when you get
out of prison.

Speaker 3 (01:49:34):
You can talk to do a round two with you, Jeff.

Speaker 4 (01:49:36):
When I get out, I've been told that I'm looking
at six to eight months with good times, So we'll
see what happens.

Speaker 2 (01:49:42):
Hey think of it like this, Matt. A couple of
months away from your wife.

Speaker 3 (01:49:46):
Yeah, I mean she's beautiful. I don't want to minute
you want to be away from her.

Speaker 4 (01:49:50):
But truth be told, you know, sometimes just being alone
and having time to really think and just be a
better version of yourself, you got to take advantage.

Speaker 2 (01:49:58):
Of it so couldn't agree more.

Speaker 1 (01:49:59):
Thanks, thank you for your time, man, I really appreciate
it and hang on when I hang up here. But
thanks everybody for watching. Let me know what you think
of the comments below. We'll see you next week here
on the sit dow

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Episode 228- Mathew Bowyer | Shohei Ohtani Translators Bookie

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Episode 228- Mathew Bowyer | Shohei Ohtani Translators Bookie