I say this... there are many ways to make a buck and J.D. found a lucrative one at that....whether or not its legal the way some touts present it is debateable at best...however, like J.D. says... if people are foolish enough to spend the money on this kind of information more power to the guy with his hand out collecting it...many of the readers here have paid someone at some point for picks, most may not admit it...hell I worked for Mike Warren for a couple months at one time...of course I was very green about the business back then, 98% of the people paying for picks would blow the money foolishly anyway...its the 2% that go over the deep end thats disturbing.
J.D. whats the worst story you have heard regarding a down and out gambler paying for picks?...I'm sure you have seen it all man...
J.D. whats the worst story you have heard regarding a down and out gambler paying for picks?...I'm sure you have seen it all man...
Lou
FYI Jeff was prosecuted in Wisc. not Missouri and I wasnt even involved in the Missouri case. Once again you are a liar with no evidence to backup anything you say. I have no problems saying what I know-David Tedder put the nail on Jeff and Duane. Luckily, I went to an attorney here in Ga. and he told me Tedders whole tax scheme was pretty good except for one thing-it involved illegal gaming funds-thats what buried Jeff & Duane. And also the Dan Pastorini stuff was rough on them.
FYI Jeff was prosecuted in Wisc. not Missouri and I wasnt even involved in the Missouri case. Once again you are a liar with no evidence to backup anything you say. I have no problems saying what I know-David Tedder put the nail on Jeff and Duane. Luckily, I went to an attorney here in Ga. and he told me Tedders whole tax scheme was pretty good except for one thing-it involved illegal gaming funds-thats what buried Jeff & Duane. And also the Dan Pastorini stuff was rough on them.
This just gets better and better:
JohnnyDeMarco
posted August 25, 2004 03:54 PM
MAX1234
First of all anyone who bets 50k on a game is an idiot and that further proves my point of why should I bet my money when there is somebody stupid enough to take advice and go bet 50k on it.
Posts: 562 | Location: Atlanta, Ga USA | Registered: July 06, 2000
Wow, the first person I've seen call Billy Walters an idiot and it's from a scamidcapper... LMAO again.
Lou,
Good to see you posting again. All is well here.
JohnnyDeMarco
posted August 25, 2004 03:54 PM
MAX1234
First of all anyone who bets 50k on a game is an idiot and that further proves my point of why should I bet my money when there is somebody stupid enough to take advice and go bet 50k on it.
Posts: 562 | Location: Atlanta, Ga USA | Registered: July 06, 2000
Wow, the first person I've seen call Billy Walters an idiot and it's from a scamidcapper... LMAO again.
Lou,
Good to see you posting again. All is well here.
Ahhhh the good old days. Here's some friendly reading Journey from the DOJ:
Internet Sports Bookmakers Plead Guilty; Will Forfeit $3.3 Million in Criminal Earnings
Madison, Wisconsin -- Grant C. Johnson, United States Attorney for the Western District of Wisconsin, announced today that Duane Pede, age 52, of Amherst Junction, Wisconsin, and Jeff D'Ambrosia, age 42, of Henderson, Nevada, pleaded guilty to gambling and tax charges in United States District Court in Madison. A foreign corporation, Gold Medal Sports, which operated on the Island of Curacao in the Dutch Netherland Antilles, also entered a guilty plea to racketeering and a criminal forfeiture count today.
The corporation has agreed to forfeit more than $3.3 million in criminal earnings, and Pede and D’Ambrosia will pay over $1.4 million in back taxes. The guilty pleas cap the initial phase of a three-year undercover and financial investigation into illegal offshore sports bookmaking and sports handicapping telemarketing services.
Pede and D'Ambrosia pleaded guilty to an information that charged both men with violating the Wire Wagering Act. The maximum penalty for this charge is two years in prison, a $250,000 fine, and a one-year term of supervised release. Pede and D’Ambrosia each pleaded guilty to filing a false 1998 federal income tax return. The maximum penalty for this offense is three years in prison, a $250,000 fine, and a three-year term of supervised release.
As part of the plea agreement, Pede and D'Ambrosia agreed to: (1) cooperate with authorities; (2) pay the maximum fine allowable under the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines; and (3) pay $1,429,565 in back taxes to the Internal Revenue Service.
Gold Medal Sports pleaded guilty to one count of racketeering and one count of criminal asset forfeiture. As part of the plea agreement, the corporation agreed to: (1) forfeit $3,336,087 in criminal earnings; and (2) publish a disclaimer in the USA Today regarding its lack of inside information in its sports handicapping services.
United States District Judge Barbara B. Crabb scheduled sentencing for the three defendants for February 26, 2002, at 1:00 pm.
According to the first information, Pede and D'Ambrosia were engaged in the business of wagering and sports betting through an entity called Gold Medal Sports Book, located in Curacao, N.V., from August 1996 to April 2000. Gold Medal Sports took sports wagers from customers in the United States over the telephone lines and the Internet. Pede and D'Ambrosia had Gold Medal Sports mail brochures to U.S. residents advertising its sports book services and soliciting U.S. residents to place sports wagers over the phone from the United States to Curacao. The publishing of these brochures was done by a publishing company also owned by Pede and D'Ambrosia.
The Gold Medal Sports advertising brochures would often be mailed out in conjunction with the mailing of information for one of the four handicapper services also owned and operated by Pede and D'Ambrosia – Jeff Allen Sports, Mike Wynn Sports, Razor Sharp Sports or Dan Pastorini Sports. All of these mailings came out of Stevens Point, Wisconsin.
The information alleges that Gold Medal Sports handled phone and Internet sports bets from U.S. customers in excess of $33,000,000 for 1996, $167,000,000 for 1997, $119,000,000 for 1998, $78,000,000 in 1999, and $5,700,000 in the first quarter of 2000. The information specifically alleges that on October 27, 1999, an Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigation Division (IRS-CID) undercover agent placed a sports wager over the phone from Beloit, Wisconsin to Gold Medal Sports in Curacao, for $1,000 on the Green Bay Packers to beat the Seattle Seahawks by more than five points on Monday Night Football on November 1, 1999. This violates the Wire Wagering Act, which makes it a felony to operate a gambling business and accept sports wagers over the phone lines or Internet from customers in the United States.
The information also charges both defendants with filing a false 1998 federal income tax return. According to the information, the returns were false because the defendants failed to inform the Internal Revenue Service that they had foreign bank accounts.
The second information charges Pede and D'Ambrosia's company, Gold Medal Sports, with gambling, money laundering, mail fraud and racketeering. According to the second information, Gold Medal Sports through its majority stock owners, Duane Pede and Jeff D'Ambrosia, conducted the affairs of a racketeering enterprise using a combination of foreign and domestic corporations all of which were owned and controlled, in part, by Pede and D'Ambrosia.
The information alleges that Pede and D'Ambrosia owned Sports Spectrum LLC, which was a limited liability corporation made up of two companies — NSN Inc and The Scoreboard Inc. D'Ambrosia was the majority stockholder of NSN, Inc. Pede was the controlling owner of The Scoreboard, Inc. According to the information, Sports Spectrum was incorporated on July 20, 1995, and had offices located in Las Vegas, Nevada (where D'Ambrosia worked) and Nelsonville, Wisconsin (where Pede worked). Sports Spectrum LLC was engaged in a variety of operations including: (1) providing up-to-the-minute betting lines for sporting events over the phone for a fee; (2) providing up-to-the-minute scores on sporting events over the phone for a fee; (3) selling guaranteed winning picks on sporting events over the phone for a fee using one of four handicapper services called Jeff Allen Sports, Mike Wynn Sports, Razor Sharp Sports, and Dan Pastorini Sports; (4) sports betting and online casino gambling through one of two sports books — Gold Medal Sports and Seven Palms Casino; and (5) providing access to the Internet through a company called Sports Spectrum Internet Services.
The second information further alleged that the racketeering enterprise supported and promoted the illegal activities of Gold Medal Sports by 1) combining the direct mailing program of the handicapping services with Gold Medal mailings; 2) using their publishing company to do all the print and mail work for all of the related entities; 3) having Sports Spectrum telemarketers refer handicapping customers to Gold Medal for betting; and 4) sharing accounting staff, computer staff, database support staff, and managers.
According to the second information, the gambling charges stem from Wire Wagering Act violations dealing with sports bets placed by undercover IRS-CID agents over the phone and Internet in Wisconsin with Gold Medal Sports in Curacao. The money laundering charges stem from twenty-one identified wire transfers or check disbursements, made in excess of $10,000, with Gold Medal betting funds. The identified money laundering transactions total in excess of $3,200,000 over a three-year time span.
The final set of charges in the second information relate to mail fraud counts. According to the information, Pede and D'Ambrosia's company, Sports Spectrum, solicited customers through false advertising to call one of four sports handicapper services (Jeff Allen Sports, Mike Wynn Sports, Razor Sharp Sports, and Dan Pastorini Sports) for the purpose of receiving "guaranteed" winning picks on upcoming sporting events. Once a customer called one of the four handicapper services, phone salesmen or "touters" would make and use false pretenses, statements and representations in an attempt to sell weekly or monthly "winning" pick packages to the customer.
According to the second information, of the four sports handicapper services operated by Sports Spectrum, two of them were totally fictitious, that is, sports handicappers Mike Wynn and Sam Sharp were not real persons. The ultimate picks for Mike Wynn and Sam Sharp were decided by Duane Pede or Jeff D'Ambrosia. Further, the second information alleges that sports handicapping service Dan Pastorini Sports was a front. Dan Pastorini was paid by Sports Spectrum to pose for pictures and make some radio appearances. Pastorini was not involved in any sports handicapping whatsoever, and did not make any of the picks or obtain any of the information attributable to him in the advertising and phone scripts. Jeff D'Ambrosia made the picks for Dan Pastorini Sports.
The second information alleged that Sports Spectrum engaged in false, deceptive and misleading advertising to customers by engaging in a direct mailing program that included letters and brochures from the four sports handicapping services. The direct mailing program also included mailing out game schedule/scoring booklets that contained advertisements for the four sports handicapping services. These letters and ads in the schedule/scoring booklets contained false, deceptive and misleading information in that: (1) they depicted fictitious people (Mike Wynn and Sam Sharp) and attributed to these people equally fictitious backgrounds, histories, and information obtained from inside sources; (2) they falsely depicted Dan Pastorini as a source of information for winning picks because of his network of contacts in the NFL and sporting world; and (3) they falsely claimed that Wynn, Sharp and Pastorini had "inside information," "inside contacts," "contacts at the stadium," "confirmed unpublished injury information," "direct from the locker room information" "privileged team information," and that "my crew of scouts has relayed pertinent information," which allowed them to make "guaranteed" winning picks on upcoming sporting events.
The second information further alleged that as part of the direct mailing program, copies of brochures for Gold Medal Sports were included in solicitation letters or scoring booklets. On other occasions, Gold Medal Sports used the Sports Spectrum mailing list to send brochures directly to Sports Spectrum customers in Gold Medal Sports envelopes. These brochures advertised how to set up an account at Gold Medal Sports, the toll-free phone number to call, how to send in money, the minimum and maximum bet amounts, the betting rules and regulations, the types of acceptable bets and timing of those bets, and how to get winnings back without reports being filed with any government institutions.
Michael Chertoff, Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division, United States Department of Justice, said, "This prosecution reflects the Justice Department's continued commitment to vigorously investigate and prosecute illegal offshore sports betting operations. Those individuals that continue to target bettors in the United States to place wagers over the phone or internet will be pursued to the fullest extent under the law."
United States Attorney Johnson commented that "The Department of Justice has a history of aggressively prosecuting these types of cases."
The first such prosecution occurred in 1998 in the Southern District of New York with a case against Jay Cohen, part-owner of World Sports Exchange, who operated an offshore sports book in Antigua. A jury convicted Cohen of violating the Wire Wagering Act in February 1999. The conviction was affirmed by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals on July 31, 2001.
In January 2000, federal prosecutors in St. Louis, Missouri charged Marc Meghrouni and Scott Shaver, owners of Paradise Casino, who operated an offshore sports book in Curacao, with violating the Wire Wagering Act, as well as tax fraud. Additionally, Paradise Casino was charged with money laundering relating to the spending of betting funds in the United States. Meghrouni, Shaver and Paradise pled guilty to all of the charges and agreed to forfeit a one million dollar condominium, and a 1995 Lamborghini.
United States Attorney Johnson also said that "Bettors need to know it is against the law to place sports bets with offshore sports books."
Johnson praised the combined efforts of four law enforcement agencies in working together to make the case. The charges against Pede, D'Ambrosia and Gold Medal were the result of an investigation conducted by agents with the Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigation Division; United States Postal Inspection Service; the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and the State of Wisconsin Department of Justice, Division of Criminal Investigation, Gaming Enforcement Bureau.
Internet Sports Bookmakers Plead Guilty; Will Forfeit $3.3 Million in Criminal Earnings
Madison, Wisconsin -- Grant C. Johnson, United States Attorney for the Western District of Wisconsin, announced today that Duane Pede, age 52, of Amherst Junction, Wisconsin, and Jeff D'Ambrosia, age 42, of Henderson, Nevada, pleaded guilty to gambling and tax charges in United States District Court in Madison. A foreign corporation, Gold Medal Sports, which operated on the Island of Curacao in the Dutch Netherland Antilles, also entered a guilty plea to racketeering and a criminal forfeiture count today.
The corporation has agreed to forfeit more than $3.3 million in criminal earnings, and Pede and D’Ambrosia will pay over $1.4 million in back taxes. The guilty pleas cap the initial phase of a three-year undercover and financial investigation into illegal offshore sports bookmaking and sports handicapping telemarketing services.
Pede and D'Ambrosia pleaded guilty to an information that charged both men with violating the Wire Wagering Act. The maximum penalty for this charge is two years in prison, a $250,000 fine, and a one-year term of supervised release. Pede and D’Ambrosia each pleaded guilty to filing a false 1998 federal income tax return. The maximum penalty for this offense is three years in prison, a $250,000 fine, and a three-year term of supervised release.
As part of the plea agreement, Pede and D'Ambrosia agreed to: (1) cooperate with authorities; (2) pay the maximum fine allowable under the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines; and (3) pay $1,429,565 in back taxes to the Internal Revenue Service.
Gold Medal Sports pleaded guilty to one count of racketeering and one count of criminal asset forfeiture. As part of the plea agreement, the corporation agreed to: (1) forfeit $3,336,087 in criminal earnings; and (2) publish a disclaimer in the USA Today regarding its lack of inside information in its sports handicapping services.
United States District Judge Barbara B. Crabb scheduled sentencing for the three defendants for February 26, 2002, at 1:00 pm.
According to the first information, Pede and D'Ambrosia were engaged in the business of wagering and sports betting through an entity called Gold Medal Sports Book, located in Curacao, N.V., from August 1996 to April 2000. Gold Medal Sports took sports wagers from customers in the United States over the telephone lines and the Internet. Pede and D'Ambrosia had Gold Medal Sports mail brochures to U.S. residents advertising its sports book services and soliciting U.S. residents to place sports wagers over the phone from the United States to Curacao. The publishing of these brochures was done by a publishing company also owned by Pede and D'Ambrosia.
The Gold Medal Sports advertising brochures would often be mailed out in conjunction with the mailing of information for one of the four handicapper services also owned and operated by Pede and D'Ambrosia – Jeff Allen Sports, Mike Wynn Sports, Razor Sharp Sports or Dan Pastorini Sports. All of these mailings came out of Stevens Point, Wisconsin.
The information alleges that Gold Medal Sports handled phone and Internet sports bets from U.S. customers in excess of $33,000,000 for 1996, $167,000,000 for 1997, $119,000,000 for 1998, $78,000,000 in 1999, and $5,700,000 in the first quarter of 2000. The information specifically alleges that on October 27, 1999, an Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigation Division (IRS-CID) undercover agent placed a sports wager over the phone from Beloit, Wisconsin to Gold Medal Sports in Curacao, for $1,000 on the Green Bay Packers to beat the Seattle Seahawks by more than five points on Monday Night Football on November 1, 1999. This violates the Wire Wagering Act, which makes it a felony to operate a gambling business and accept sports wagers over the phone lines or Internet from customers in the United States.
The information also charges both defendants with filing a false 1998 federal income tax return. According to the information, the returns were false because the defendants failed to inform the Internal Revenue Service that they had foreign bank accounts.
The second information charges Pede and D'Ambrosia's company, Gold Medal Sports, with gambling, money laundering, mail fraud and racketeering. According to the second information, Gold Medal Sports through its majority stock owners, Duane Pede and Jeff D'Ambrosia, conducted the affairs of a racketeering enterprise using a combination of foreign and domestic corporations all of which were owned and controlled, in part, by Pede and D'Ambrosia.
The information alleges that Pede and D'Ambrosia owned Sports Spectrum LLC, which was a limited liability corporation made up of two companies — NSN Inc and The Scoreboard Inc. D'Ambrosia was the majority stockholder of NSN, Inc. Pede was the controlling owner of The Scoreboard, Inc. According to the information, Sports Spectrum was incorporated on July 20, 1995, and had offices located in Las Vegas, Nevada (where D'Ambrosia worked) and Nelsonville, Wisconsin (where Pede worked). Sports Spectrum LLC was engaged in a variety of operations including: (1) providing up-to-the-minute betting lines for sporting events over the phone for a fee; (2) providing up-to-the-minute scores on sporting events over the phone for a fee; (3) selling guaranteed winning picks on sporting events over the phone for a fee using one of four handicapper services called Jeff Allen Sports, Mike Wynn Sports, Razor Sharp Sports, and Dan Pastorini Sports; (4) sports betting and online casino gambling through one of two sports books — Gold Medal Sports and Seven Palms Casino; and (5) providing access to the Internet through a company called Sports Spectrum Internet Services.
The second information further alleged that the racketeering enterprise supported and promoted the illegal activities of Gold Medal Sports by 1) combining the direct mailing program of the handicapping services with Gold Medal mailings; 2) using their publishing company to do all the print and mail work for all of the related entities; 3) having Sports Spectrum telemarketers refer handicapping customers to Gold Medal for betting; and 4) sharing accounting staff, computer staff, database support staff, and managers.
According to the second information, the gambling charges stem from Wire Wagering Act violations dealing with sports bets placed by undercover IRS-CID agents over the phone and Internet in Wisconsin with Gold Medal Sports in Curacao. The money laundering charges stem from twenty-one identified wire transfers or check disbursements, made in excess of $10,000, with Gold Medal betting funds. The identified money laundering transactions total in excess of $3,200,000 over a three-year time span.
The final set of charges in the second information relate to mail fraud counts. According to the information, Pede and D'Ambrosia's company, Sports Spectrum, solicited customers through false advertising to call one of four sports handicapper services (Jeff Allen Sports, Mike Wynn Sports, Razor Sharp Sports, and Dan Pastorini Sports) for the purpose of receiving "guaranteed" winning picks on upcoming sporting events. Once a customer called one of the four handicapper services, phone salesmen or "touters" would make and use false pretenses, statements and representations in an attempt to sell weekly or monthly "winning" pick packages to the customer.
According to the second information, of the four sports handicapper services operated by Sports Spectrum, two of them were totally fictitious, that is, sports handicappers Mike Wynn and Sam Sharp were not real persons. The ultimate picks for Mike Wynn and Sam Sharp were decided by Duane Pede or Jeff D'Ambrosia. Further, the second information alleges that sports handicapping service Dan Pastorini Sports was a front. Dan Pastorini was paid by Sports Spectrum to pose for pictures and make some radio appearances. Pastorini was not involved in any sports handicapping whatsoever, and did not make any of the picks or obtain any of the information attributable to him in the advertising and phone scripts. Jeff D'Ambrosia made the picks for Dan Pastorini Sports.
The second information alleged that Sports Spectrum engaged in false, deceptive and misleading advertising to customers by engaging in a direct mailing program that included letters and brochures from the four sports handicapping services. The direct mailing program also included mailing out game schedule/scoring booklets that contained advertisements for the four sports handicapping services. These letters and ads in the schedule/scoring booklets contained false, deceptive and misleading information in that: (1) they depicted fictitious people (Mike Wynn and Sam Sharp) and attributed to these people equally fictitious backgrounds, histories, and information obtained from inside sources; (2) they falsely depicted Dan Pastorini as a source of information for winning picks because of his network of contacts in the NFL and sporting world; and (3) they falsely claimed that Wynn, Sharp and Pastorini had "inside information," "inside contacts," "contacts at the stadium," "confirmed unpublished injury information," "direct from the locker room information" "privileged team information," and that "my crew of scouts has relayed pertinent information," which allowed them to make "guaranteed" winning picks on upcoming sporting events.
The second information further alleged that as part of the direct mailing program, copies of brochures for Gold Medal Sports were included in solicitation letters or scoring booklets. On other occasions, Gold Medal Sports used the Sports Spectrum mailing list to send brochures directly to Sports Spectrum customers in Gold Medal Sports envelopes. These brochures advertised how to set up an account at Gold Medal Sports, the toll-free phone number to call, how to send in money, the minimum and maximum bet amounts, the betting rules and regulations, the types of acceptable bets and timing of those bets, and how to get winnings back without reports being filed with any government institutions.
Michael Chertoff, Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division, United States Department of Justice, said, "This prosecution reflects the Justice Department's continued commitment to vigorously investigate and prosecute illegal offshore sports betting operations. Those individuals that continue to target bettors in the United States to place wagers over the phone or internet will be pursued to the fullest extent under the law."
United States Attorney Johnson commented that "The Department of Justice has a history of aggressively prosecuting these types of cases."
The first such prosecution occurred in 1998 in the Southern District of New York with a case against Jay Cohen, part-owner of World Sports Exchange, who operated an offshore sports book in Antigua. A jury convicted Cohen of violating the Wire Wagering Act in February 1999. The conviction was affirmed by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals on July 31, 2001.
In January 2000, federal prosecutors in St. Louis, Missouri charged Marc Meghrouni and Scott Shaver, owners of Paradise Casino, who operated an offshore sports book in Curacao, with violating the Wire Wagering Act, as well as tax fraud. Additionally, Paradise Casino was charged with money laundering relating to the spending of betting funds in the United States. Meghrouni, Shaver and Paradise pled guilty to all of the charges and agreed to forfeit a one million dollar condominium, and a 1995 Lamborghini.
United States Attorney Johnson also said that "Bettors need to know it is against the law to place sports bets with offshore sports books."
Johnson praised the combined efforts of four law enforcement agencies in working together to make the case. The charges against Pede, D'Ambrosia and Gold Medal were the result of an investigation conducted by agents with the Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigation Division; United States Postal Inspection Service; the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and the State of Wisconsin Department of Justice, Division of Criminal Investigation, Gaming Enforcement Bureau.
You may not be John, but we know all about your tactics as a tout. You haven't exactly been the Golden Child over there.
From our favorite read in SI (I will give you credit for your reported "good intentions"):
If you think guys like Feiner and Warren will make you wish you have never installed your phone, Atlanta's John L. Edens, alias Johnny DeMarco, the Babe Ruth of 900 sales pitchers, will make you wish Alexander Graham Bell had never been born. According to published ads and taped phone calls, Edens:
Got on his 800 line and told listeners to call his 900 line for $25, "and if the game loses, there'll be no charge." That, of course, is a lie. Once a call is made on a 900 line, the charge is automatic.
Told customers of one of his phone services that his special guest-selector that day was "a former six-time NBA basketball All-Star who wishes to remain anonymous due to security matters." The anonymous "All-Star" then got on the line and offered his inside information on "three big plays, tonight."
Told his customers on another occasion, "Sporting Illustrated magazine calls the Handicapping Hotline the Number One value in sports." Remarkably, there is no Sporting Illustrated.
Wrote in a print ad, which appeared in the schedule of games he sent out to customers in early 1991, that his service was rated "the very best available by the Interstate Sports Commission, the nation's only legitimate monitoring service." The ad failed to mention that the ISC is owned by a company with which, DeMarco acknowledges, he is "affiliated."
Got on his 800 line in March 1989 and said he had spoken with then N.C. State coach Jim Valvano and had "key" information on the Final Four. Valvano says he has never spoken to DeMarco.
Luckily for all of us, DeMarco/Edens has good intentions. "OK," he says, "so you go berserk on your ads-and some of the those are a little ridiculous-but if you can get people under your belt, you can help them more than you hurt them. Most gamblers are losers. You slow the guy down so he's only betting a couple of games, not the whole board." Hey, if this guy made a hole in one, he'd probably write down a zero.
From our favorite read in SI (I will give you credit for your reported "good intentions"):
If you think guys like Feiner and Warren will make you wish you have never installed your phone, Atlanta's John L. Edens, alias Johnny DeMarco, the Babe Ruth of 900 sales pitchers, will make you wish Alexander Graham Bell had never been born. According to published ads and taped phone calls, Edens:
Got on his 800 line and told listeners to call his 900 line for $25, "and if the game loses, there'll be no charge." That, of course, is a lie. Once a call is made on a 900 line, the charge is automatic.
Told customers of one of his phone services that his special guest-selector that day was "a former six-time NBA basketball All-Star who wishes to remain anonymous due to security matters." The anonymous "All-Star" then got on the line and offered his inside information on "three big plays, tonight."
Told his customers on another occasion, "Sporting Illustrated magazine calls the Handicapping Hotline the Number One value in sports." Remarkably, there is no Sporting Illustrated.
Wrote in a print ad, which appeared in the schedule of games he sent out to customers in early 1991, that his service was rated "the very best available by the Interstate Sports Commission, the nation's only legitimate monitoring service." The ad failed to mention that the ISC is owned by a company with which, DeMarco acknowledges, he is "affiliated."
Got on his 800 line in March 1989 and said he had spoken with then N.C. State coach Jim Valvano and had "key" information on the Final Four. Valvano says he has never spoken to DeMarco.
Luckily for all of us, DeMarco/Edens has good intentions. "OK," he says, "so you go berserk on your ads-and some of the those are a little ridiculous-but if you can get people under your belt, you can help them more than you hurt them. Most gamblers are losers. You slow the guy down so he's only betting a couple of games, not the whole board." Hey, if this guy made a hole in one, he'd probably write down a zero.
"In January 2000, federal prosecutors in St. Louis, Missouri charged Marc Meghrouni and Scott Shaver, owners of Paradise Casino, who operated an offshore sports book in Curacao, with violating the Wire Wagering Act, as well as tax fraud. Additionally, Paradise Casino was charged with money laundering relating to the spending of betting funds in the United States. Meghrouni, Shaver and Paradise pled guilty to all of the charges and agreed to forfeit a one million dollar condominium, and a 1995 Lamborghini.
United States Attorney Johnson also said that "Bettors need to know it is against the law to place sports bets with offshore sports books."
http://www.jsonline.com/news/state/mar03/125621.asp
"Meanwhile, the U.S. attorney in St. Louis busted up an Internet gambling ring based there. Two defendants told authorities they were just small fish - the big kahuna was Gold Medal Sports."
United States Attorney Johnson also said that "Bettors need to know it is against the law to place sports bets with offshore sports books."
http://www.jsonline.com/news/state/mar03/125621.asp
"Meanwhile, the U.S. attorney in St. Louis busted up an Internet gambling ring based there. Two defendants told authorities they were just small fish - the big kahuna was Gold Medal Sports."
John we also know the feds aren't going to go naming every single one of their rats in a news article.
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