Winky I miss those threads!
Here are a few excerpts from one of my all-time favorite articles:
Meet Kevin Duffy. He once bragged in a New York Daily News ad, "I'm coming off a great weekend & as usual, all my customers crushed [their] bookmakers." Too bad the ad was delivered to the News's offices before any of the games were played!
Ripoffs Rule the Roost, Exhibit B: The Source, a sports-adviser service in Farmingdale, NY, owned by Stu Feiner, who also owns a few 900 call-in lines. Exhibit C is Feiner's brother-in-law, the aforementioned Kevin Duffy, perhaps the nation's most prominent adviser, who became famous for running ads that said, "I will go 7-0 for you today, absolutely free." Too bad "absolutely free" meant you first had to sign up for a month's service at $350. Then, if Duffy didn't go 7-0 in the first week, you got the next month free. Duffy, who operates out of Massapequa, Long Island, also claimed to be no worse than 75% right, ever. Yet when his picks were audited by the Sports Monitor of Oklahoma City, one of the rare legitimate monitors (among the dozens of such outfits that purport to keep tabs on the performance of tout services), he never fared better than 58.8% in any regular football season between 1985 and '88, and he sank as low as 39.7% for his college picks in '87. Eventually the Sports Monitor refused to monitor Duffy because of his "deceptive ad practices."
Feiner agreed to be monitored by SI for four weeks in September. To his credit, he unfailingly gave us his choices. To his discredit, Feiner went 19-32, a 37% win rate, and lost us an imaginary $6,210 based on $100 per unit. During that same period, we were anonymously calling Feiner's 800 number, where, curiously, he claimed to be cleaning up. On Sept. 23, for instance, after Feiner had gone 3-11 for the week on his picks for SI, bringing his record for us to 11-25, one of his shills, Kenny Leeds, said in response to our anonymous call, "This week I [meaning the company] went 3-0, the week before, I was 3-1." On Oct. 3, after Feiner had gone 7-7 for the weekend, we again called anonymously and got another Feiner salesman, Larry Marco. "This past weekend, we swept the board," Marco said. Then Leeds called back. "This kid Feiner is making betting history," he said. Yeah, so did Art Schlichter.
Feiner was fined $13,000 in February 1990 by the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs for false and misleading advertising, yet he sent out a promotional brochure last month that reported a "1991 documented record college and pro: 9-3." Knowing Feiner's record as we did, we asked him how he could say this. "That's what I had the first week." he said, before you started documenting me." Fine. That would've been the weekend of Aug. 31-Sept. 2. The booklet, however, was dated Sept. 19-Oct. 7, 1991. During one of our anonymous calls, Leeds told us he had "strong information" on a game he wanted us to buy, so strong it was a dead mortal lock, so strong that he was putting $2000 of his own money on the game. We were dubious.
Leeds: You don't believe me? I'll fly you out here [from Colorado].
SI: Fly me out there?
Leeds: I'll fly you to __ Long Island, and I'll have you take a ride with me!
SI: Why?
Leeds" To see how I pick it [his winnings] up and where I pick it up from.
SI: Can you fly me out this week?
Leeds: What I'm saying isÉI'm using-that's a little bit of a mild exaggeration. Don't get me wrong, but I've met a lot of my clients. I've met Dan Marino.
SI: You know Dan Marino? Leeds: Well, I stood next to him at the Super Bowl, and my friend took my picture with him.
Other than suffering the repercussions of having your home telephone number sold to dozens of other advisers, other than sitting through the constant pitches to pay for "special information games" or "steam plays of the year," other than getting con calls from the very same service claiming to be another service that heard you were looking for somebody new, you'll find dealing with 800 phone services is a real treat.
Feiner says that if somebody calls his 800 number and doesn't sign up, "We'll call him every day for a couple months, because eventually they'll change their minds.
In investigating Feiner's tactics, an inspector for the Consumer Affairs Department called one of Feiner's 800 numbers to take him up on an offer of a free line on a game during the '89 football season. The investigator spoke with a man known as Sonny Greco, also known as Phil Bonvino, a salesman for Stu Mitchell's Locker Room Report, still another service owned by Feiner. After a breathless, oath-laden pause-free speech, Greco went for the close. His pace was furious. The detective, posing as a customer named Stan, balked. Greco screamed louder.
Stan: I'm being bombarded here. Lemme think on it. I got a lot of guarantees here.
Sonny: I'm not interested in anybody else you're call., Stan! The difference here is this, OK? We own this game tonight on over-under! We own this information. Now go get your credit card, and let's start making money! You don't need to deal with anybody but me!
Stan: WaitÉ
Sonny: I own this game in over-under! I have the winner! Tonight! No what's your credit-card number?
Stan: OK, lemme get back to you.
Sonny: Stan, you're not going to call me back! You know it as well as I do, and if you think I'm going to let you off the phone with that ___, you're crazy! OK? I've got the winner tonight! I own this game in over-under, and I'm going to own your bookmaker's ass! So get your credit card out and let's get going!
Stan: Lemme tell you what we're gonna do. I'm gonna think about it. Sonny (louder still): Stan, there's nothing to think about! Click.
Greco is ruthless, loud and scary. No wonder Feiner has given him his own sports service-Phil Bonvino's Locker Room Report. Says a former phone tout for a large Long Island service, "There were plenty of times when we'd tell a guy, 'Look, if you don't come across, I'm gonna tell your wife you're gambling again.' Or we'd tell high school kids that we were going to tell their parents." Says the ex-salesman for Kevin Duffy, "We'd call up anybody, even guys we knew were going to Gamblers Anonymous. We'd stay on them." Question: How do sports advisers get away with it? Better question: Who are customers supposed to complain to? Gamblers don't want to turn anybody in because most of them are breaking the law themselves. As a result, the touts go unpoliced.
It was like feeding drugs to an addict," says the ex-salesman for Duffy. "We'd try to take whoever we got and make them bet more. We'd take college kids who were betting $25 and say, 'Hey, you got to bet $500 on this game. If you don't bet a nickel I'm not gonna give it to you.' If they won, they got a taste for big money. If they lost, they were desperate to get out [of the hole], and so they start chasingÉ How can anyone who works for Kevin and Stu have a conscience? Basically, I was just hurting people." And that, unfortunately, is the only absolute lock we found.
sb
Stu's tagline should read "Beating the hell out of your bankroll for over 20 years!"
