#2107 - Billy Walters

I was lucky. I had two sisters who were older than me.

My grandmother on my father's side took my oldest sister. My aunt on my father's side took my other sister.

My grandmother, on my mother's side, took me to raise me. Luckily for me, I could have had four parents. I couldn't have had a better role model than her. She worked two jobs. She was an extremely proud lady.

She wouldn't have taken any assistance from anyone if her life depended on it. So I learned a lot of things from her early on in life that have been extremely important to me and have kind of carried me through to where I'm at today. She worked these two jobs. The first places, Joe, I ever went when I left my home were a Baptist church, Sunday school on Sunday morning, church. afterwards, training union.

on Sunday night, prayer meeting. on Wednesday night. I went to a Christian youth organization. on Sunday night called the Royal Ambassadors. But when I was around four, my grandmother had these two jobs.

She had to have someone to keep an eye on me, while my Uncle Harry had a pool room. So she started dropping me off at the pool room when I was four years old. My Uncle Harry, he went to the back pool table. He put up a couple old wooden Coca-Cola cases, handed me a pool stick, and he went back to work. I actually started banging pool balls when I was four.

By the time I'm six, I'm racking balls in Uncle Harry's pool room and playing penny nine ball. So my life, when I was six, I'm in church five times a week, and I'm in my Uncle Harry's pool room, and I just began the first grade. So that was my life.

There's been a lot of ups and downs. I've got a lot of knots on my head in between, I'm sure.

But, you know, someone asked me how I became so good at gambling. I told them I became good at it by losing.

And, you know, I think my life, Joe, when you kind of look back on it, the thing that's sustained me has been perseverance. You know, I learned from my grandmother at a very early age, you know, you don't quit. You know, if you make a commitment to anything, you keep it come hell or high water. And so when I look back on my life and I look back through where I began in gambling,

and, you know, where I'm at with it today, I literally almost can't believe that sometimes I didn't quit. And I tried to figure out, okay, why didn't I quit? Well, the bottom line is I loved it. I had a passion for it. It was something that I really enjoyed doing.

I don't think there's any question in my mind. at one time I was addicted to it.

And then, of course, I was determined to be successful at it. And fortunately, I was and am.

And, as, you know, my bankroll got bigger, as the amount of money that I had to bet with became bigger or got bigger, my bets became much larger. And so there was a combination of confidence and access to capital and access to markets.

I played in a tournament with him in West End Billiards in New Jersey, Elizabeth, New Jersey, in like 1990..

We probably know some of the same people. But I'm sure I was never as good a player as you. I quit playing pool when I was like 15, 16 years old.

You're looking for every possible advantage. You essentially had an algorithm before there was algorithms.

The other people involved initially were all gone, except he and I. Then I realized, Joe, during that period of time, that he was going to eventually lose his edge. And I recruited six other guys that had similar backgrounds to his.

And they did their analysis independent of what he was doing. The only person they talked to was me. And they provided me with their information. I knew each. I knew their strengths.

I knew their weaknesses. And I would take a look at seven different pieces of information and then decide what I was going to do. And then, over the years, like anything else, I got a little bit better at what I did.

And luckily, you know, I've worked, Joe, over the years with probably a minimum of 50 handicappers. Every one of them have basically gotten to the point where they couldn't win. You know, in order to win handicapping, you have to come up with new ideas. And you have to come up with new ideas that are relevant, that mean something. And because the people making the line are getting smarter, the competition is getting smarter.

So whatever edge you start off with, that's going to erode. Other people are going to catch on. Okay. Well, over the years, and when I was in my heyday, I was spending $6 to $8 million in research and development.

We're doing simulations. We're running lots of different things to go back and see if we can find something that would have made a difference in a game or will make a difference in a game going forward. as far as a prediction is concerned, that's relevant, that we can quantify, that makes sense. And if we can, then our information, it will strengthen our information and allow me to continue to be able to bet on sports. I only bet on sports, Joe, today.

I love it. If I didn't, I didn't have the passion for it. I couldn't do it. But I still win, and I have an advantage. And if I get to the point that I don't have that advantage, I'll quit.

Okay. But I still have the advantage. But in order to maintain that advantage, I continually have to be able to recognize, find things that make a material difference or make that quantified difference with the outcome of a game, to stay ahead of the herd, so to speak. Because you've got really smart people making a line. You've got other really smart people betting.

Okay. I'm the guy. I don't bet on Monday or Tuesday or Sunday night when the line's soft. I'm the guy. I bet on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

Why do I bet on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday? Because that's when you can bet the most money.

Early in the week, you can only make small bets. I'm not interested in making small bets today.

As a matter of fact, most of the guys that gamble for a living or call themselves professional handicappers, they don't bet the NFL because it's just too tough to beat. Okay. If that line comes out on Sunday or Monday, or whenever it comes out, that's your best chance of finding something there. where that odds maker missed something. Okay.

But by Tuesday, that's gone. Okay. Now, different sports, college football, a non-Power Five conference team,

you may find more of an advantage with that early on or even later on. Because in the colleges, they're making the line on 130 games, and it's much more difficult for them to make the line on 130 games. You've got personnel that changes every year. It's just more difficult for them to do that. And then, on top of that, the Power Five teams, you know, like Texas, is an example.

There's not much about Texas that everybody doesn't know. But when you're looking at Louisiana Tech or you're looking at one of these other teams, say a non-Power Five team, okay, the guy who's actually doing the handicapping may have an advantage over the guy making the line. Because there may be things pertaining to that particular team that it's not in the USA today. It's not on ESPN Sports. I mean, there could be a little advantages.

But back to what you're talking about, why do they have the limits cheaper? It's because the line's more vulnerable. I would say by, you know, Tuesday with the NFL, by Tuesday, Wednesday with the college football, Power Five or non-Power Five, all those numbers are solid. Years ago, Joe, the guys that I actually feel like were smarter bookmakers than the bookmakers today, as soon as they felt like the line was solid, they would take a full limit bet. Because if you're a bookmaker, stop and think about it.

What you're trying to do, you're trying to write as many bets on one side as you are on the other side. So, as an example, once you feel like your number's solid, if you take a bet on a Wednesday or Thursday and that game doesn't start until Sunday, you can move your line. You've got four or five days to get action back on the other side.

Some of the bookmakers today, and frankly, I don't understand the rationale at all, because it really doesn't make any sense. A lot of them wait until the day before the game or the day of the game before they'll take a full limit bet. Which makes no sense. Because what happens if they wait until the day of the game or the day before the game and they take a full limit bet, they have a small amount of time to get action back the other way. I mean, if you're a bookmaker, what is bookmaking?

It's taking bets both ways and you're trying to earn the vigorous. You're really not trying to gamble. There's going to be times, you're going to be lopsided on one game, but the ideal thing for a bookmaker is to have as many bets on one side as he does the other and the volume equal out. You've earned the juice and basically you've got no risk or very little risk. Okay, so I can't answer your question as to why some people today wait until later on.

I mean, I think in their minds they may think, well, maybe the line's more solid or something. But at the end of the day, the line by Thursday is solid as a rock. And I think if I were a bookmaker, and I have been a bookmaker, as soon as I feel like the line's solid on whatever the sport is, I want to take as many bets as I can take, as early as I can take them to move my line to draw action back on the other side. But you've got people out there today that some, not all, the guys that I think are smarter bookmakers, they start taking full limit bets on Thursday because that gives them Sunday night, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Now they feel like the line is solid, and it is solid.

But if they take a bet on a Thursday, they've got Friday, they've got Saturday, they've got Sunday to draw action back on the other side.

But you have different strategies from different guys. You've got a lot of guys out there today, Joe, that are booking. They really don't know anything about booking. They're great at creating databases. They're great at generating customer accounts and what have you.

But they really don't understand the art of bookmaking.

They've got these preconceived opinions.

What most of them do, they'll go hire someone to be their bookmaker, and they'll look at that guy's background or his bio, and he would have worked at some place in Las Vegas, at some hotel, and he'll have a title of XYZ or whatever it is. And they don't really know anything about bookmaking. This guy looks like the real deal. He's been interviewed, and you read the things written about him, and you would think he knows what he's doing. So they hire the guy, they put him in that position.

And a lot of those guys don't know anything about booking. They really don't. And what they do know is they know that they don't know a lot about booking. And so, as a result, what they do, instead of trying to promote and create action, they're trying to... A lot of things that they do, in my opinion, it keeps action down, so to speak.

Now, there's exceptions to the rule. You've got a sportsbook in Las Vegas called Circa. They're open to anyone and everyone that comes in the door. I don't care who you are. And they have room limits.

They give everyone the same room limits, and they're generous limits. I mean, on the NFL, you can bet $50,000 a game. On college football, you can bet up to $50,000 a game. Sometimes they take $20,000.. Sometimes they take $30,000..

But they're smart. These guys know how to book.

Anyone can open the counter. I have an account for myself. If they take a bet from me, they move the line. And they're going to force somebody back on the other side of that bet. But they know how to book.

There's guys there. Nick Bogdanovich has been in the business for a long, long time, and others. They understand the art of bookmaking.

And you've got others in Las Vegas, and you've got others in other parts of the world that really understand bookmaking. I mean, you've got some guys offshore that understand it extremely well.

And they were filled with local sports stories that were written by that local sports writer. And then we'd bring them back, and we had readers who read those stories. And anything that they read in one of those stories that they felt like was material to that particular game, it would be passed along to the handicapper. And today, you can read a thousand newspapers online and get that same information.

We have a program that we've written now that we have like 140 beat writers in the NFL, that we cover. Anything that that beat writer writes or anything that comes out on Twitter or social media, the program we have, it will scrape it, and we have that immediately. So if there's a story there, and there's anything in that story that we feel like is going to have any real meaning toward the game, we're able to take that. A lot of time, the time involved with it is everything, too, because eventually that story is going to come out everywhere. But back when you're talking about, prior to the internet,

Joe,

way, way back, it's kind of crazy. But I used to have a Zenith Transatlantic Radio, and I was set to listen to pregame shows and postgame shows. But the other thing I used to do is I would call a lot of the cities, and I had people in all these cities. And I would have someone to put the phone up to the radio, and I would listen to the pregame show, and I would listen to the postgame show. Wow.

Yeah, and you were able to learn a lot from that. And today, information is a lot more accessible than it was then.

First thing,

the total's not going to be as much. If he slows this thing down and he starts running the ball, they're not going to get as many plays. And there's probably a pretty high possibility that the total is going to come down. some on this game. They talk about players.

They talk about injuries, especially the quarterback. If you're talking about the quarterback and you've got a quarterback who's playing injured, I mean, how that's going to affect his performance is really important.

Okay, then, okay, who's playing? Again, we listen and we follow Dr. David Chow quite a bit. And we think he does an excellent job. He's on the series on the NFL Network.

And he talks about the key players on a weekly basis. And from an injury perspective, how he feels like that's going to affect their performance. There are many more players that Dr. Chow doesn't cover that we cover that are playing injured. And, again, we do a lot of reading.

We've got 140 beat writers we cover. I have a guy on my team. He's a qualitative guy. He's not a computer guy, right? He probably knows more about the NFL as far as a qualitative guy is concerned, I believe, than any man alive.

Okay.

And after we get the medical information, we'll figure out how we feel like their performance is going to be affected against that particular opponent that week. And then, if a player's worth a point and a half, we may downgrade him to. he's only worth three-quarters of a point. Or he may be worth a point. If a guy's out, okay, well, we've got a backup.

We know the value of the guy that's out. What's a backup worth? Okay, backup could be worth zero. He could be worth, you know, half a point. And he's replacing a guy.

that's a point and a half guy, so we have to downgrade the priority and buy a point that week. And the other thing with this qualitative guy, he watches every NFL game. He grades every play. Okay, how many times have you watched a football game? and you'll see the score, it wasn't indicative at all of what the score should have been.

So let's say, you know, receiver's going down the field and he doesn't have anybody within 20 yards of him. And he gets thrown a perfect pass, he just drops it. Okay, well, he was unlucky. He should have had that pass. On the other hand, let's say he's going down the field and we had a pass like that in the playoffs when San Francisco was playing Detroit.

They threw a ball and it hit a helmet, ricocheted, and ended up in a real long completion and a touchdown. Well, that was lucky. Okay, so when we look at the box score, we look at the yardage, we take that off. Okay, you know, there's plays that happen in the NFL, when you look at box scores, as far as we're concerned, are misleading. Okay, when you look at the total amount of yards, everybody kind of looks at the same thing.

You know, you look at time possession.

So if you're looking at offensive performance against Pittsburgh with T.J. Watt out, you know, you're not looking at what Pittsburgh's defense really is. So you got to make an adjustment when you look at that, and you got to put that into your priority. When I wrote the book, it took me six months to do this. one section.

We wrote what we call the master class, okay? And I wrote what we call betting strategy. I wrote that for the 99.9% of people who bet sports, and we got a lot of new sports bettors today that have no chance. I wrote that for them, okay? And I put the basics in there.

I put basic betting strategy in there, which that's probably as important to them or more important than handicapping is. I put all the charts in there. that tells them exactly what each half point is worth. I put charts in there that tells them exactly how a money line compares to a point spread. Flat on a game's two, here's a money line equivalent.

If you can get a better deal, take it. If you can't, take the other, okay? I put stuff in there, basic stuff, because none of that stuff is out there. now. Guys don't have any idea, if they're buying a half a point, what the fair price is to pay.

And all these points, they have a different value. Here's an example. If you're buying a game on or off of three, say from 2.5 to three in the NFL, or 3.5 to three, that's worth 22 additional cents. It's not worth 23,, but it's worth 22.. If you can do it for 20, buy it.

21,, buy it. If you feel like it's going to be a low-scoring game and you can buy it for 22,, buy it. But if it's 23,, you're better off taking the 2.5.. But people don't know that, Joe. Okay, what's the value of two?

Well, the value of two is much less than it is three. The value of two is only worth six cents, where three is worth 23.. The different numbers have different values. So I put those charts in there. for the guy that I pointed out, too.

I also put another section in there. We'll call it kind of the advanced section. And that section, I tried to write it in such a manner to where I felt like people could understand it. And that's the guy or the lady who wants to become a serious handicapper. And I explained in there exactly, 100%, Joe, exactly how I do everything.

Okay? This book was written at the end of the NFL season, not this year, but last year. It came out in August. Everything that I know about sports betting and handicapping is in that book. I would not have sold that information 10 years ago for $20 million.

And I never had any intention of ever writing this book and putting that in there. But I'm 77.. It's my legacy. I see all these new people out there betting sports. And they're doing it in states now where it's legal.

I'm proud of that. I'm glad that sports has come around to that. But also, I still have – there's a lot of things I'm apprehensive about also. But anyway, so I wrote this. That was one of the reasons I wrote the book.

But in those two sections, if you want to be Billy Wolters and you want to be a handicapper, and I don't care what sport it is, I use the NFL as a model. But this model is the same model for every sport. Whether you're betting on golf or you're betting on NASCAR, or you're betting on soccer or baseball, it's the same principle. That's the way they all work. So I put that in there.

And then, for people who are betting any type of sport, but especially the NFL or college football, I put all those charts in there to explain to people. Because right now, I don't care what site you go up on, Joe, a lot of these new places, the reason they're making the money they're making is, if you were to poll sports bettors out there today, everyone thinks making a bet on a sporting event, you're laying 11 to 10.. That's the premise that we've all been taught, that you're laying 11 to win 10.. A lot of these bets today, and, matter of fact, almost all – well, not a lot of them, all of them, these – we'll call them, you know, the teasers, the parlays, those bets. Some of those bets, a guy's laying $1.50, and he doesn't even know it.

Because there's no requirement to disclose the odds you're laying, so they're not going to tell you. But like these in-game parlays, and you're doing these 3 and 14 parlays, and you're doing these teasers, a lot of these places are charging you $1.50 to $1.. You've got no chance of winning. You've got zero chance of winning. I couldn't win.

I wouldn't even think about playing them. But the average person who's playing them, they don't know that. So because right now, there's no requirement to disclose that to the customer.

And we all want to bet a small amount of money, want a large amount of money, right, Joe? Yeah. Okay, well, you've got a lot of people out there, they're making these bets, and they're laying $1.40, $1.50, and they don't know it. But when you look at these publicly traded companies, it's right out there in the public. When they report their earnings, they're doing very well, but they all refer to these parlays and teasers.

That's where they're making the majority of their money.

They're not making the majority of their money on straight bets, where people are laying $11 to $10.. They're making it on these proposition bets.

They've got a feeling. They want to bet their team. They want to make the game more exciting. And so those people are basically very under–they're very under-researched. They don't have the full grasp of understanding of the complexities of sports gambling, because it's a lot more complex than I ever thought.

When I was going over your stuff, I was like, oh, my goodness. This involves so much time, so much time. This is not a simple thing. as like, oh, I follow sports. I think Kansas City is going to win.

It's complicated, very, very complicated. And to win at a level that you won at over your career and the numbers. What is the biggest bet you ever placed?

Joe, the world's made up of a lot of different kind of people, as we both know.

But, no, I feel like any time I won a bet, I got lucky because I won a bet. And the reason I had such a big bet is what I do, Joe, is, I make a line on the game myself, my prediction of what I feel like the differential should be.

So I'll just give you a rough example. Let's say the NFL. Let's say I would have to have a minimum of, say, a point-and-a-half differential from the line. I make. Point-and-a-half, two points.

Well, I would bet one unit. That would be the smallest bet I would make. But for each half point, if I made the line on a game six and they had an eight, I would bet one unit. If they made it eight-and-a-half, I would bet two units.

If they made it four units, if they made it ten, I would bet five units. Well, the New Orleans game you asked me about, which I couldn't believe, was a Super Bowl game. And this type of year, we never get this kind of differential. But I had, like, a seven-point differential between the line I made and the line they made. They made Indianapolis seven, and I thought the game should be pick'em.

And when I saw the line, I couldn't believe it. I went back. I said, well, maybe I made a mistake here. I went back, redid it, redid it. No, pick'em.

So that's how I ended up with such a large bet.

It's not a problem, or less. I mean, unless it involves some injury or something that may take us until we get some more clarity on that. But I'm going to know real close to where I'm at, frankly, as soon as the game's over, almost within an hour or two.

Because, at the end of the day, whether you're a casino or whether you're a bettor, the integrity of sports is the most important thing in the world to you. The good thing about what's going on today, there's probably more transparency in betting today than there ever has been. All of the legalized gambling that's taken place, they have everyone's account information. They know everything you're doing. And the other thing about betting on sports, Joe, unlike, say, Wall Street, it is a small market.

Much, much smaller market than Wall Street. So if you go out and you make a sizable bet in sports, the line's going to move and it's impossible to hide it. Okay? Now, there's people such as myself, and I'm not the only one. There's a lot of people in the sports business.

If they see a line on a game, move half a point, a punt, or whatever, they know who caused that line to move 99% of the time. Okay? I'll give you an example. The Arizona State situation that came up years ago. I don't know if you remember that one or not.

It was their basketball team, and they were fixing games. And then what happened, there was a bunch of guys that came to Las Vegas, and they bet on one of these games. The line moved six or seven points. I bet on the other side of it because, you know, the line I make. And, of course, I had no idea that they were shaving points.

And I lost the bet. Well, they came back to town a little bit later, and they brought six, seven guys. And they were going to all the different sports books, and they were betting, and the line moved six or seven points again. Lines on games don't move six or seven points. Well, the second time I didn't bet because, and sure enough, they won the game by, like, 20.

again. They came back the third time, and by now I'm taping the games. I'm looking at the games. They came back the third time, and they did the same thing. Well, I called Steve Ducharme, who was the head of Game and Control for the Game and Control Board.

He was the law enforcement part of Game and Control, and told him what was going on. And they dispatched some agents. They tried to get these people to talk to them. They left Las Vegas and went back to Arizona. And then later on, I think one of them got kind of caught up in a drug deal.

And then it came out they were fixing games. And there were a couple of players that were intentionally throwing off, and they were fixing games. And that's how that scandal came out.

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

It's to make it a lot less appealing to the person betting on that team. So when somebody comes to town and they move a line, six or seven points, no better in the world is going to do that. And in order to do that, they went to every sportsbook in town, and they just, you know, they laid six and a half, seven, seven and a half, eight, eight and a half, nine, nine and a half, ten. Okay, well, because they were new to betting, okay? They knew they had an edge because of what they were doing, but they didn't know anything about betting.

As a result, you know, they created something that was easy for anyone to see. I saw it again the first time. I didn't know the exact,

you know, I didn't know exactly who was doing it. And I bet on the other side. Of course, I lost my money. And, of course, I came back the second time. I've seen these things before, and I didn't bet.

And then, of course, you know, we taped the game. We looked at it. It was pretty easy to see who was doing what they were doing. They came back the third time, did the same thing. Frankly, you know, to give you the—I mean, these guys were trying to break in jails, what they were trying to do.

Anybody—I mean, they were. Anybody would do what they were doing. It was just stupid. I mean, anyone could see what they were doing. The only thing that surprised me, it took three games for someone to finally turn them in.

And I don't—sports books, I don't think I ever turned them in. I mean, I called the shard myself because, again, anything that involves integrity of sports, they're affecting my business. If people get to where they don't trust betting on sports, then the limits are going to go down. And it's going to reduce my ability to be able to bet on sports. The other one, you know, with a referee, the NFL referee, Gambers knew about that eight months before he got busted by law enforcement.

People quit betting on the games. Well, sure. I mean, it wasn't like—.

On an NBA basketball game, if you were to bet $250,000 on an NFL basketball game, it would probably move a point and a half, two points. So, and again, the people taking the bet, people such as myself and others, if a line moves on a game, and it moves like that, and, okay, I want to know who bet on that game. If it's another handicapper, or there's an injury out, or there's something there that makes sense as to why that game moved, then, okay, I understand it. But if there's some mysterious person that's betting a lot of money on a game that hasn't been doing this for a period of time, and then I'm looking at an outcome of a game that doesn't make sense, or if I tape it, and I see, you know, something that's out of the ordinary about the way the game's being officiated, or some player's performance, this stuff is easy, Joe, to see. And you're not dealing with, exactly, you're not dealing here with master criminals.

You're dealing with people that, frankly, aren't very smart. And a number of them, they aren't very smart to be doing what they're doing, and the way they go about it, they're even, you know, about, you know, I don't know if you remember the thing years ago with Hot Rod Williams. I mean, there's the ones...

And I have way more confidence in that than I do the other.

Everybody who has an account, you know, you take all these young players that haven't, you know, they haven't been, I'll call it schooled correctly. They haven't been, you know, whether it be their teams or whomever, they haven't explained to them, you know, the repercussions about betting on sports if they're a professional athlete. We've had some here recently that, you know, basically, these guys are kids, Joe. They're kids. They don't know any better.

And someone should have sat down with them and explained to them the ramifications of what they were doing. Maybe they did, maybe they didn't. But we've had a few of them out there now, but, you know, you've seen how quick they catch them, because it's all transparent. They go in and make these bets. It doesn't take them any time at all to figure out who they are, if they're a football player or whatever they're doing.

And it's been brought to the public's attention. So, you know, if it's that easy to catch them, somebody out there making large bets on something, moving the line substantially, and you don't know who this person is, and you're looking at, and they do this more than one time or two times, and you're seeing an outcome of a game that doesn't make sense, it isn't going to take long to figure this out.

And I'm trying to think of a good reason as to why it would be a problem with him betting on his team. I really haven't thought about that closely.

So it could have been just unfair accusations designed to taint his reputation?

Then they find out that this guy had been doing this for quite a while, or allegedly had been doing this for quite a while. And so then they pass this law now, or pass a rule with the UFC that no one can gamble. But I would imagine that fighting is probably the most difficult thing to get right, in terms of to figure out a line. Did you do any gambling on boxing or MMA fights?

MMA, you know, back to kind of what you were talking about there, again. Well, the NFL, you know, you're talking about transparency. I mean, if a player's injured, they have to report that. The team does, the league does. So the public knows that.

And, you know, they have regular reporting requirements. And then, like, before the NFL games, every Sunday, an hour and a half before the games, they have to come out with a final report.

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

Would it make any sense to make that a requirement to disclose injuries?

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

Just grab a hold of him quickly. Really force him to wrestle. If you know he's got a blown-out knee and he can't really adjust on the feet or shoot for takedowns or even defend them. well. Yeah.

Yeah, you would definitely change things. And fighters hide injuries all the time. I mean, Dreckis Duplessis, when he won against Robert Whitaker, he had a broken foot. He beat one of the top guys in the world with a broken foot. And that's kind of crazy that fighters do that, but that's the type of human being you're dealing with.

And they can win that way. Just because you know that a guy's injured doesn't mean that this guy's going to lose. There's certain guys that find a way to win no matter what. And I would imagine that that—the thing that would give me pause is scoring. Judges' scoring is horrible.

It's the worst part of the sport. It's so bad. It's so bad that maybe 10% to 20% of fights, you'll have one card. that's so off, you're like, What the fuck was that guy watching? It happens all the time.

As commentators, we're just scratching our head. How did he give it to the other guy? In what world? And I will go back and watch it again and see if I'm being biased. I'll watch it with the sound off.

I'll just analyze all the positions and all the things that's happening. Damage done and control of the octagon and pushing the pace. I'll look at the volume. I'll look at the amount of strikes landed. And then I'll be like, How?

How the fuck did that guy see it for the other person? It doesn't make any sense. And I always wonder if someone's on the take. I always wonder. Because I know that there was a case in Vegas where there was a woman who had given out very questionable decisions.

Like multiple questionable decisions. And the last one was so egregious that she kind of just went away. But I've always wondered if those people were on the take. Because Don King, famously, was a sneaky dude and did a lot of very under the radar shit. that was probably not good.

And I would think that if you have a fighter and that fighter's working for you, you would definitely have relationships, at the very least, with these judges. So they would be more inclined to score for you. Maybe you take them on a vacation. Maybe you take them to dinner. Maybe you do whatever you can do to get inside their good graces.

And then, if it's like, Eh, this guy or this guy. I'm going to go with this guy because I like Don King. Or, you know, Bob Arum. He does me well. So I'm going to lean towards that guy.

That would be a real issue with me if I was gambling. Particularly on boxing.

I love boxing. I've always loved fighting. You know, I used to go to all the fights at the Silver Slipper.

You know, I enjoyed it a lot.

And I remember I had a fighter. He was a really good fighter. He'd won the National Golden Gloves like five, six times. as an amateur fighter. He'd beat Aaron Pryor.

His name was Terry Silver. And he was a lightweight and really, really, really good amateur. And I remember, in order to get his first fight on television there, we had to agree with Bruce Trampler and Bob Arum. We had to agree to multiple contracts if he won the fight. That's the only way to get him on the card.

And then you'd have guys that didn't, that weren't signed or hadn't agreed to those contracts. They couldn't get rated. They couldn't get a fight. So you're right. There was a tremendous amount of politics in it, and that's the primary reason I got out of it.

But I still love boxing. I love fighting. I don't understand him nearly as well as you do.

I was seeing this advantage. I was like, man, even though this guy is an underdog, he's fighting the most dominant featherweight of all time, this guy's got some big advantages. He's just got big advantages that I see as a fighter, as a person who knows how to fight, and I'm watching the way he moves. I'm like, he moves better. He's more precise.

He's more accurate. It's complicated. And then you have to take into account how many times the guy's been fighting that year, how banged up he is. Because, just like quarterbacks on football days, you're going to fight injured. Everybody fights injured.

There's always something. There's always a neck thing or a back thing or a hand thing. No, fighter fights 100%. Very, very, very rarely, I should say.

Some of them don't know how to fight at all. And they're the ones who are deciding who wins and who doesn't win fights.

There's been quite a few of them. And when someone is an incredibly popular fighter, like a Canelo Alvarez or someone like that, where there's so much money invested in this fighter, and there's so much money potentially in future matchups, that if they lose, boy, that could switch the amount of money you make by an extraordinary amount. But if they get away with a robbery, just a little bit of a robbery, over six months, a year, two years, people forget. They forget.

It was almost, man, I wish he was alive today. And he's one of my all-time favorite fighters, I have to say. I grew up in Boston.

And he confused the shit out of people because of that. That's a great skill. And that's something Terrence Crawford does so well. Such a good skill. The ability to switch sides.

It's just so baffling. And if you've ever sparred before, if you're used to sparring Orthodox people, and then you spar in a Southpaw, your whole brain has to do all these extra calculations. And if you're not accustomed to sparring, just sparring with Southpaws, forget about fighting them. It screws everything up in your head. You have to readjust.

And unless you've gone through a whole camp with Southpaws, that's one thing that people are very reluctant to do. Like, say, if a fighter is scheduled to fight an Orthodox fighter, and then, two weeks out, that guy gets injured, and then another guy steps in to take his place, you find out this guy's a Southpaw, like, oh, shit. It's such a different strategy. Everything changes with your movement. You don't want to lead into the power hand.

So instead of circling to the left, now you're circling to the right. There's a lot going on.

I think there's something about left-handed people. They see the way everybody's doing everything backwards, and so they have to see the way they do it, and then do it their way, and I think there's some sort of an advantage in that.

I know a lot of people that are left-handed. They just seem to have, there's like an extra thing that they have that orthodox people don't have.

No. But Jimmy Montoya has been training fighters in L.A. for a zillion years. And he's stable. Back in those days, he had like 120 fighters.

And he would bring guys over, whether it be the Silver Slipper or the Showboat or the Hacienda. And a lot of his fighters were on the card. And he brought over this Hispanic kid, and this kid's fighting. Terry. You looked at the guy's record, and I think he was like maybe one-three, lost two, and he had a draw.

And I'm thinking, well, this guy's got like zero chance. So this is back when I'm drinking some, too. So we go to the fight, my wife, Susan and I. And Billy's working a spit bucket. And the fight starts, and I'm betting everybody.

I can bet in the crowd. I'm laying five-to-one, ten-to-one, twenty-to-one up. I think I'm just stealing, you know. I think Terry's probably going to knock him out in the first round. Well, Terry had gotten him a girlfriend in the meantime.

And so he goes out there in the first round. He probably hit this guy 80 times. The guy never laid a glove on him. Terry Silver had a really, really good left jab, as good as any you've ever seen in your life. But he didn't have a lot of power.

And the amateur ranks said he won like five national golden gloves. But when he turned pro, he really didn't have a real good punch. So he came out in the second round, and he drops his gloves, and he's showing off. And this kid hit him. And when he hit him, his mouthpiece went out.

And then he's got the whaling on his head. And I'm thinking, I'm watching this, I can't believe it. And, you know, he kind of knocked him silly, so to speak. Well, Terry's, you know, he's had enough fights. He probably had as an amateur, probably 50, 60 fights.

So he got out of the round. So they come out in the third round, and he still isn't shaking it completely off. And the guy goes whaling on him again. And now, you know, he's bleeding, and he's got a gash over one eye. Blood's coming out.

A little blood's coming out of his mouth. So the fourth round comes out. He's still just wearing him out. My wife, Susan, said, look, you've got to stop this fight. So I run down to Billy, and I said, Billy, I said, stop the fight.

And I said, by the way, I need to borrow $50,000.. He looked up at me, and he said, let's let him go a little longer.

So Terry gets out of the round. He comes out in the fifth round, and the fight completely turns around. And he starts wearing this other guy's head out, and he wins the fifth round. I mean, it's not even close. So they come out for the sixth round.

And this was only a six-round fight, Joe, but it was one of the best fights I've ever seen in my life. And, I mean, they stood toe-to-toe in the sixth round, and they fought. The bell rings. Well, I got a draw. But it was one of the best fights I've ever seen.

It was a six-round fight, and I got a draw. And the reason I got a draw is I had a kid who was a real classy fighter. And I got to tell you the ending of this story. I'm in prison. I'm in Pensacola.

And I get letters. And I got a letter. And I hadn't seen Terry Silver since then. When I gave up the fighters, I gave Terry to somebody. I gave Tyrone Moore to Billy, and I gave Dana Roston to Billy.

I'm in prison. Fast forward, 2018-19.. I wish I had brought the letter. I'll send you a copy of the letter. And the letter is from Terry Silver.

And he said, Billy, he said, you know, I remember he was talking about the fight. And he said, you know, I remember you tried to stop the fight. He said, I could not lose that fight for you and Miss Susan. And he went on to talk about, you know, that and talked about our relationship. And, anyway, he sent me this letter.

And, I mean, I don't know, 40 years later I get this letter in prison from this kid. And it's all about that night, that fight at the Hacienda, and how he wasn't going to lose that fight. And he wasn't going to let him lose that fight because of Susan and me. And it was touching. Wow.

Yeah.

well, the bullet would have stopped the fight. But the problem was, I said, I need to borrow $50,000.. He said, let's let him go a little longer.

That's hilarious.

See, Joe, publicly. people know I bet on sports, and they know I'm pretty good at that.

But I do a lot of other things, Joe. Since the late 80s, you know, I've owned golf courses. I had seven golf courses in Las Vegas, which I built from scratch, four of them and the other three. But I've owned and operated golf courses since the late 80s. I've had golf courses in Chicago, New Mexico, Arizona.

But I had seven in Las Vegas.

You know, when I got out of school, I went into the automobile business. I was in it 16 years. I got out. But I'm in the automobile business, too. So I had 22 car dealerships at one time.

So I had to golf courses, car dealerships. I don't own sports, but I also invest in stocks. I invest my own money, not someone else's money. And, you know, actually, I probably have a bigger presence with that than I do betting sports. Because it's a bigger market, you can bet more.

I bought a stock. I'd owned it for 10 years. And I'd gotten involved. There was an SEC investigation. The initial investigation was into myself and Carl Icahn.

And it involved a stock trade that I did with that that he'd owned stock in. And that investigation went three and a half years. It went nowhere because there was nothing there. There was no wrongdoing at all. And then there was a stock that I'd owned for 10 years, a stock called Dean Foods.

And they'd been involved in a material transaction. They'd spun off a part of their company. And I owned a large amount of the stock. And the SEC was looking at anyone who bought and sold stock around a certain period of time. And I was one of those people.

And it was at the end of the other investigation. And because of my notoriety, who I was, I'd been indicted six times before. And I'd gone to court and beat them five times. That started in 1983..

Bet on sports. Now, here we are, 2024..

Betting on sports is legal in the majority of the United States. In 2023, in Las Vegas, the Circa Hotel, I was inducted into the Sports Gambler's Hall of Fame for betting on sports. But in 1990, in Las Vegas, Nevada, I was indicted, along with my wife, in charge with betting on sports. So, yeah, I'd gone to court a number of times. I'd beat them a number of times.

Every one of the indictments were centered around my sports betting. That's what they were centered around, nothing more than the less. But, you know, I was a sports bettor.

It was ridiculous. I went to court. My wife and I, we were exonerated.

He was a former police officer. So anyway, they chose not to indict us. They dropped the case. It was over with. But we were exonerated in all the charges except the one charge, and we were voted 11-1 to acquit us on that.

And then I was indicted three times after that for the same thing, betting on sports. It was thrown out of court every time. So anyway, but what happens, what I realized through all of this, Joe,

is the higher profile you have, the bigger target you become, especially if you're someone who's beat them a number of times over a period of years. There becomes a vendetta. You're the guy that everybody wants to bring down. And then I'm involved in New York, originally with a guy, with Carl Icahn, one of the most successful investors in the history of the world, and that investigation went nowhere because there was nothing there. And then this issue came up with Dean Foods, and bottom line was there was a lot of motivation to get me, to indict me, and that's exactly what happened.

The four people that were, five people were involved in my case, three prosecutors, a supervisor, and the former U.S. attorney. Four of them, as soon as my case was over within a matter of months, held press conferences, and their claim to fame was they had sent me to prison. Three of them have gone into private practice today. Their sole business is they represent people with white-collar crimes in the Southern District of New York.

They bring them back over with the people that they worked with for years, and they cut deals. The fourth one ran for the U.S. Congress in New York. He's now a United States congressman. And the guy who was a former U.S.

attorney, he is now working for a law firm representing people with white-collar crimes. So they went from what they were doing to these very high-paying jobs making a lot of money. The other fellow is now in politics. He's a congressman from New York. So there's a lot of motivation for people on that side to send high-profile people to prison, and that's kind of how they get to the next rung of the letter, so to speak.

You know, the reason I wrote this book, Joe, is, I started, I began to write this book in 2003 with a guy in Las Vegas. His name was Jack Sheehan. Good friend, good writer, good guy. And we worked on it for a while, and I decided I'm not writing any book. Okay.

Well, fast-forward 2017..

I walked into federal prison in Pensacola, Florida when I was 71 years old for a five-year sentence, which could have easily been a life sentence.

And while I was in prison, my daughter committed suicide.

So I had to write this book. I had to write it for a number of reasons. I wanted to share my childhood that you and I went over a little bit. I want to help people because, you know, I don't care who you are or what part you're at in your life. We all have issues that we're dealing with.

So I wanted to share my childhood, and then I wanted to share, you know, the addictions that I had when I was younger. I had an issue with alcohol. I got addicted to betting sports. And then later on in my life, as I became more mature and I was able to overcome those things, you know, I got in business. I've been successful with that.

And, you know, I've become a fairly successful sports fighter.

And then I went to prison, which I had to share that experience, because when I went into prison, there was only one positive thing that came out of that jail. I mentored around two dozen men. And some of these men have been in prison 20, 25 years. And it really opened my eyes. You know, every time there was a visitation where I was at prison, I had someone who visited me.

Sixty percent of the people in prison never get a visit. But these men that I mentored, not a one of them wanted to go back to prison. But I spent a lot of one-on-one time with them, and the closer they would get to release, you know, the more apprehensive they became. I mean, tough guys, you know.

Ripped guys, been in prison 20, 25 years. They would become very emotional. They didn't want to go back to prison, but they knew they were probably going to come back to prison because they had no way to earn a living. The only thing they learned in prison was how to become a better criminal. And, yeah, they were going to get out.

While they were in the halfway house, they were going to get a job someplace making minimum wage. But as soon as that was over, they had to do something to feed their families. And they, you know, they had no job skill set. So when I got out of prison, I knew I had to try to do something about that, okay? And so I got involved with Harry Reid when I recently got out of prison, former senator from Nevada, former majority leader.

And I got involved with Harry because, clearly, Democrats are in power, and I wanted to put vocational schools in the federal prisons. And I was willing to put up some of my money initially to get it started. And, unfortunately, Senator Reid passed away before we were able to get anything done. Well, a former sheriff in Las Vegas, Bill Young, he told me, he said, Bill, it's the best reentry program in the United States. It's in Las Vegas.

He said it's called Hope for Prisoners. I said, I never heard of it. He said, well, I want you to meet this guy that runs it. So there's a guy who runs it, his name is John Ponder, who's been in prison himself twice. He started his program in 2012,.

Joe. The recidivism rate is only 5%. So, you know, being a leery guy, being a gambler, you know, there's a lot of people looking for your money these days. We all know that. But I met with John Ponder, and became really impressed with him.

But the more I learned about him and the program and what he's done, I got superly impressed. And so my wife and I got more involved. We made some financial assistance available, and they were able to add to some of the things they were doing. as far as, you know, teaching and stuff. This is an 18-month program.

these people are in, by the way. And the first thing they do, almost every one of these people have an issue with drugs. First thing they do is get them off of drugs. Second thing they do, they get them right with their families. You've got to be right with your family.

And that's the reason this program works so good.

And every month, we have a graduation there. The graduation, Joe, is held at Metropolitan Police Headquarters in downtown Las Vegas. There's usually 50 to 75 police officers there. Come to find out, there's 200 police officers in Las Vegas Metro that are mentoring these people. now.

A typical graduation, you've got the mayor there, you've got the district attorney there, you've got a judge there, you've got the head of corrections for Nevada, sometimes the governor's there if he's in town. And usually you've got about 1,000 people there, friends, and you've got a lot of mentors in the Las Vegas area that come. They come up, and they receive their diplomas, and the second that's over, there's a job fair, and they all have jobs before they leave. And then in these graduations, they'll invariably always have someone who's been out of the program for a year, two years, or five years. They'll come up and speak, and they'll talk about their life and how it changed their life.

So the current governor we have, he was a former sheriff that was involved in this program. His name is Joe Lombardo. And so Joe recognized how important it is for these people to have a job skill set when they come out of prison also. So we spoke to him and the head of corrections in Nevada, and we now are putting vocational schools in Nevada prisons. And they're going to be able to get certified to be an electrician, plumber, air conditioner, repair, truck driver.

And when we decided to do this, of course it takes money, there's another family in Las Vegas, the Ingolstadt family, and so they agreed to put up $2 million. Susan and I agreed to put up $2 million, and the state agreed to put up $1 million. So the night they made this announcement, I was asked to come and speak. And I got there, and there was another speaker. Her name was Alice Johnson.

Do you know Alice Johnson?

And so Alice Johnson got up and spoke, and I was blown away with her, and I was blown away with her speech. I think she was from Mississippi, I think, or Louisiana, one of the two. And she'd gone to prison for being, quote, a drug mule. And if I understood her correctly, and I think I did, I think her role as a drug mule was she was conveying messages between the guy selling drugs and the guy supplying drugs, and she was strictly on the phone conveying messages, never touched a drug, never sold a drug. First time offense they gave her life in prison was no parole.

But that went into either all or most of the prisons in the United States that night. So we followed it up. We went out to Indian Springs State Prison in Nevada. And we walked in the gymnasium. I was there with John Ponder and myself.

And there was, I don't know, 500, 600, 800 inmates there.

And when we originally walked in, we started talking to them. You could kind of see, you know, they were kind of disinterested. Some were listening, but most weren't. But when John got up and he got to talking about what we were going to do, you could see they started to get more interested. And when I got up there, you know, I said, well, you guys are probably trying to figure out what this old graded dude here is going to talk to you about today.

So I kind of explained to them, while I was there, what my background was, the fact that I'd been in prison, and what we were going to do with the vocational schools.

Well, Joe, when you got finished, you could hear a pin drop. And we started doing Q&A. And it seems like the questions went on forever. Finally, the correctional officer said, you know, they have to get back. And we had to end the Q&A.

But now we have vocational schools in Nevada, prisons in Nevada. And it's just, to me, it's not only those men that I remembered, that I mentored. Okay. When they go home, a lot of them have families. You know, they got four or five children.

Okay. So those children, if that father goes home and he has a job as an electrician, a plumber, air conditioner repair, their father is no longer a criminal. Their father is an electrician. He's a plumber. And I think there is a much greater chance that that child will follow in those footsteps than possibly that of crime, a life of crime.

So, anyway, long story.

And I can see, you know, it's almost a sense that a large, large part of them are going to become addicted. Okay. If I had been pitched on sports the way they were being pitched on sports today with a phone, I mean, I got addicted without it. I can only imagine what it would have been with it. And then on top of it, there's, no, there's no law whatsoever now that they have to disclose anything.

So people are making bets on sports. They have no idea what the odds are. They're laying or getting or anything else. There's no disclosure whatsoever. And then, on top of that, you know, they don't even understand the basics of sports betting.

So I wanted to put that in a book. And by the way, Joe, you didn't ask me this. 100% of any money that comes out of this book goes to charity. It goes to Opportunity Village in Las Vegas, which is an organization that works with intellectually challenged people. It goes to Hope for Prisoners, and it goes to an organization in Louisville, Kentucky, called Cedar Neck Lodge, which works with intellectually challenged people.

and I had taken that non-public information,

and I had used it to trade on the stock, take advantage, unfair advantage, illegal advantage, and made money, and that was the allegation. And that's what I was convicted of when I went to prison. Now, you know, I could give you the background and the details of it, Joe, and I think even the life you led, I think you would find it fairly interesting. I owned this stock for 10 years, and this fellow who was on the board of directors, his name was Tom Davis. I had recently met this guy in Dallas, Texas, in like 2000,, and I was trying to raise money.

I was trying to buy American National Golf Properties. He was running Donaldson, Lufkin, and Generette in Dallas at the time, which was an investment bank. And I went there to try to raise the money to buy these entities, and I didn't raise any money through him, but I hit it off with him. I liked the guy a lot. He played golf, and we knew some other people.

He had a home in La Jolla at the time, and so we became friends. In 2002, Donaldson, Lufkin, and Generette got sold out, and he started his own private investment firm. And then, you know, he would call us on deals in Las Vegas, and we invested in some of the deals he called us on and some of the deals we didn't invest in. This guy was a very prominent guy in Dallas. He owned part of the Dallas Stars.

He owned part of the Texas Rangers. He was a member of Preston Trail Country Club.

When he was in La Jolla, I played golf with him. I played in a member guest with him one time at La Jolla Country Club. I had a lot of respect for this guy, and every time I was ever around this guy, he was the most buttoned-up guy that you could ever imagine.

And I didn't realize it at the time, and I don't think most people around him realized it, but I think he ended up with a real issue with alcohol,

and it came out in court. It looked like he ended up with some sort of uncontrollable issue, I think, with women, too.

And I think he lost all of his money gambling.

And then what happened? after he lost all of his money gambling, he was on the board of directors of a charity in Dallas, and he'd actually embezzled some money from them to pay some of his gambling debts.

Clearly, I was totally unaware of any of this, or I don't think anyone, most people, I don't think anyone in Texas even knew about it, especially the people at Dean Foods. But what happened is Dean Foods, when I got involved with it early on, they were made up of three different divisions. They had what we'll call a regular milk division, which was the majority of their business, the majority of their revenue. Then they had an organic division called White Wave, and then they had another division that primarily sold products to institutions, say, like McDonald's and long-shelf-type products. Well, during the years, people quit drinking a lot less milk.

We'll call it fluid milk. And as a result, the fluid milk business was in decline. The organic business was growing leaps and bounds, you know, soy milk, oat milk, those types of different milks. Well, the stock traded at a depressed price because the majority of their revenue came from fluid milk, just regular old milk. But the other parts of their business, they were growing substantially.

And that was really the play with the stock. Now, the federal government, they set the price of raw milk. every month. That's publicized. So that's what the farmer gets for his milk when he sells it to someone who's in the milk business.

So I bought into this stock, and I realized pretty quick that I thought it was like J&J. I thought it was something that didn't have a lot of volatility to it. Well, I realized there was a lot more volatility to it than I realized because of the price of milk, the price of petroleum products, because Dean Foods had a huge fleet of trucks for transportation that were all running on diesel fuel, and then the cartons were made out of oil. And there were a lot of things that had material influence on how they were going to do as a company. Well, in 2010,, Dean Foods came out and publicly announced that they were looking at spinning off White Wave, the organic division.

They hired a company to come in and do an assessment and came back and said, well, the timing wasn't right for them to do it, but it was something they would certainly consider in the future if they felt like it was in the best interest of the company. In 2000, I sold all of my stock.

In 2011,. to the very end of 2011,, I bought 58,900 shares of that stock from J.P. Morgan. And the only reason I bought the stock, and for me it was a very, very small amount of stock, a very small investment, the only reason I bought the stock was J.P. Morgan was their lead bank.

And I knew if I ever tried to talk to that analyst about Dean Foods and he wasn't available, he was in a blackout period, maybe there was something going on. Because I knew they were going to spin this company off eventually, and not only did I know it, everyone else knew it. It wasn't a matter of if, it was just a matter of when. So you fast forward to May of 2012.. That month, Deutsche Bank had come out with a report and they had predicted that White Wave was going to be spun off.

Well, they had an earnings report that month in May, and I had put a limited order in to buy the stock. Do you know what a limited order is?

A limited order on stock, let's say the stock's trading at $10.. You call your broker up and you say, Okay, Joe, I want to buy so many shares of Dean Foods stock, but I'm not paying any more than $10.. If it goes past $10, I don't want any. But anything you can buy for $10 or less, I want to buy this number of shares of stock. So I put a limited order in that day to buy that stock, and I didn't get it bought.

I got half the stock bought because the price had gone up. Well, the next day they reported earnings, and they also announced that they were back considering to spin off White Wave stock. The stock went up about $1.20.. I bought another 750,000 shares of stock and paid the additional $1.20.. I didn't sell a share.

That was in May. In June, I didn't buy any stock. In July, there was a severe drought in the United States. Corn prices went through the ceiling, and when corn prices went up, the price of milk's going to go up because a farmer's got to feed his milk with corn, right?

And then, on top of that, what happened when the corn prices went way up, the Dean Foods stock price went way down, and I had a loss on the stock. at that time. I had a paper loss of, I don't know, $3,000,000, $4,000,000, $5,000,000.. Well, when they did that, I went back in, and I bought another, say, 1.5 million shares of the stock, which was consistent with what I've done with every stock I've ever owned. almost.

If I buy a stock, price goes down, I'm going to buy more of that stock to average the price out, especially if I feel like the stock is really undervalued. And the only reason Dean Foods stock had gone down was because of this drought, and the corn prices had gone up. Both of those things were temporary. Droughts don't last forever, and I knew as soon as the drought normalized itself, the stock would go back up regardless. But on top of that, Dean Foods had announced that they were considering spinning off White Wave stock.

This was the second time publicly that they had done this, because in 2010, they did it, they did a study. Now this is 2012.. So in August, when they reported earnings, they confirmed, we're going to spin off White Wave stock. The stock goes up about $4.50 a share. I didn't sell a share, Joe.

I bought another million shares. I paid an additional $4.50 a share.

Now, from that August until the following February of the next year, every time Dean Foods stock would go down, I would buy more of it. Okay? So now we get to February of 2013, and I own 5,300,000 shares of the stock. Well, I wanted to buy a home in Palm Desert, so I bought a home at a place called Big Horn Country Club. I sold a million shares of the stock to pay for the house, and I kept 4,300,000 shares.

Two weeks later, Dean Foods reported earnings, and the earnings were bad. The stock went down $2..

That was one of the charges of insider trading. they charged me with, Joe. They said that I had prior knowledge that the earnings were going to be bad. I avoided a $2 million loss on the million shares of stock that I sold, but I lost 8.6 million on the stock I kept. So does that make sense to you?

If you're trading on insider trading, I would only sell a million shares of it. I mean, why wouldn't I sell it all, you know? That was one of the charges. But anyway, fast forward.

And when they did, Mr. Davis, he identified me, and rightfully so, who I was, what our relationship was. So the SEC, they were doing their investigation, and then, after the case in New York, when Mr. Icahn and I went away, there was nothing there, this Dean Foods thing came up, and I didn't realize it at the time, but Tom Davis had gotten involved in some pretty bad things.

So the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, they leaked two stories, and all the details in the book about the leaked stories, 100% of it, and when they leaked these stories, and one of the stories, they put Tom Davis' name in the book, so Tom Davis and his lawyer, a guy named Milshammer, they contact the SEC and they say, look, we want to come and give a voluntary interview. So they go up, they give a voluntary interview, and they say, look, they denied emphatically that they'd ever given me any inside information,

told them. under no circumstances had they ever given me any inside information. Well, the SEC, but more importantly the FBI, continued to investigate Tom Davis. They learned that he had embezzled this money from a better women's charity in Dallas. They learned that he had a fraudulent tax return filed, because what happened, when he took this money out of this charity, when he put the money back in the charity, it creates an entry, you know, withdrawal and an entry.

Well, the guy who normally filed the taxes for the charity, it, told him we're going to have to show this withdrawal and this entry. He said, oh, no, no, you can't do that, because he didn't want other people on the board of directors to know what he had done. So he gets someone else to file a return, which is fraudulent. He doesn't disclose this. And then come to find out, he had given inside information to someone else in Dallas, another man there.

So they continued to investigate him, and I think, after he and his lawyer learned that they had him for embezzlement, they had him for tax fraud, and they believed they had him for insider trading, this other man there, that he had actually given inside information to. Two years after he'd given his interview, he decided that he did want to make a deal. So his lawyer had represented Mark Cuban in his case in Dallas when Mark Cuban had an SEC case. In that case, his lawyer had hired a lawyer out of New York, a guy named Chris Clark. And Chris Clark was the lawyer that recently represented President Biden that had to withdraw from the case.

I'm sorry, he didn't represent President Biden. I'll take that back. He represented President Biden's son. But he had to withdraw himself from the case for some reason. sometime back.

That's the same Chris Clark. Well, anyway, Milshimer had called us, Chris Clark, and said, look,

we gave an interview two years ago, but evidently things have changed. They felt like they were under a threat of him getting some major jail time because he embezzled the money, filed a fraudulent tax return, and he had given this other guy insider information. So, Chris Clark, there's another young lawyer who had just joined their firm, and this young lawyer was named Tom, his name was Naftalis.

And he, I think Benjamin Naftalis. And he had just worked at the Southern District of New York, and he'd been gone for a short period of time. And he'd actually worked in the, I think, worked with the same prosecutors who were investigating this case.

So Tom Davis and Milshimer, they end up retaining Chris Clark and this Benjamin Naftalis to represent them. So they go up there and decide they're going to make a deal with the government. In return, the government, they're not going to, you know, they're not going to push for him to spend any time in prison. So he,

do you know what a proffer is?

And the reason for a proffer is that once you tell them, then they'll decide, okay, if you're willing, this is what we're willing to do for you. Well, Davis went to have these proffer sessions with the FBI and the prosecutors in pertaining to me.

If you were going to have a proffer session and you were going to tell someone about someone else, how many proffer sessions do you think it would take for you to tell someone that story? And say, let's say, the proffer sessions lasted two hours each, two and a half hours each. How long do you think it would tell for you to explain to someone, you know, how long do you think it may take? I don't know. It took him 29 of them.

He had 29 proffer sessions, Joe.

And in court, he testified. He didn't think he was going to do one day in jail. Bottom line was, embezzlement of maturity, filing, a fraudulent tax return, giving another man inside information. All those things, he wasn't going to do one day in jail for any of them.

And he was their only witness against me, Joe.

Now, my lawyers caught him in a minimum of 25 lies. I mean, he came out in court, I think on one business trip, he called 22 escort services.

Oh, yeah, I mean, the guy. He was off the rails. No, the guy that I described to you, that I met in 2000,, 2002, the guy that used to own part of the Dallas Stars and the Texas Rangers, and the guy that was just, I mean, he'd gone from that to this. With drugs involved? I don't know.

A lot of alcohol was involved, I know that. But to give you an idea how wacky this guy was, he pleads guilty to a bunch of felonies. It wouldn't make no difference if he had pleaded guilty to 100 of them, because they told him he was convinced he wasn't going to do a day in jail. And they were going after you. Oh, yeah, yeah.

And so, anyway, after he does this, to give you an idea how wacky this guy was, after he does this, he comes to Las Vegas and he throws a party at the Wynn Hotel celebrating his deal. he's cut with the government, and he lost another $50,000 there gambling. That's how wacked out this guy was. So, anyway, so that was their only witness against me, Joe. They had no other witnesses against me.

They had 60 days of wiretaps on me. How many do you think they played in court? Zero. Zero, that's right. The lead FBI agent in the case, who was in charge of the entire squad of the White Collar Crime Investigation Unit in New York, his name was David Chavez.

When these stories were leaked in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, our lawyers filed a complaint with the court accusing the FBI and the Southern District of leaking this information to the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. They came back and denied it, said this never happened, said we were on a fishing expedition. That's what Preet Bharara said, we were on a fishing expedition. But the judge, to their surprise, I think he said something like, well, these quotes are almost identical to the ones that were made at the grand jury. He orders an evidentiary hearing, which completely shocked them, because normally the judges are just a rubber stamp for them up there and they just take their word.

We didn't have anything to do with this. There's no point in having a hearing. Well, this judge, he did. He said, well, we need to have an evidentiary hearing.

So, a couple days before the hearing, they sent a letter over to the judge. It's a letter, they call it a camera. What that means is it's a private letter that no one else can see. My lawyers never got a copy of it. But they sent this letter over to this judge.

They said, judge, you know what, we did do. this. Said David Chavez, the head of the white-collar crime unit for the FBI in New York, he's the one who did it. And said, yeah, there were five other FBI agents who were aware of it, who were in the meetings with him, but they really didn't have anything to do with it. It was just him.

But he did it, and we want to fess up. But we want you to keep this totally private. We don't want anyone to know anything about this. It will hurt our reputation, and we recommend that you hold him in contempt of court. Well, our lawyers had found out that there was a letter, but they found out they weren't telling us what was in it.

My lawyers filed a bunch of motions for this judge to make this letter public. Finally, the judge did make the letter public.

Don't copy the letters. in my book. There were approximately 2,000 e-mails, Joe. They turned over. five or six is what they turned over.