Latest / WiseKracks / He Invented Online Sports Betting! Jay Cohen Talks Prison, Big Bets & More!

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He Invented Online Sports Betting! Jay Cohen Talks Prison, Big Bets & More! · WiseKracks

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Special edition of Wisecracks with guests.
• 0:02
  Speaker 2: Jay Cohen, who thirty years ago left the Pacific Options
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: Exchange in San Francisco and moved to Antigua, founded World
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: Sports Exchange and online betting exchange and sportsbook. He was
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: one of the pioneers of the industry, and the government
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: wanted him so bad they put him in jail for it.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Jay hasn't talked to anyone publicly about this in decades.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: He's promoting his new fantastic book, Oddsman Out, and today
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: we have him on Wisecracks.
• 0:31
  Speaker 3: I'm Jim Lampley. I've looked through the front window of
• 0:34
  Speaker 3: American sports for fifty years. Countless title fights, fourteen Olympics,
• 0:39
  Speaker 3: the biggest moments in American sports. But one of the
• 0:42
  Speaker 3: most remarkable stories I ever encountered didn't happen in an arena.
• 0:47
  Speaker 3: Jacoen and Steve Schillinger were traders from the Pacific Stock Exchange.
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: Schillinger a gifted, almost obsessive odds maker, Cohen a hard
• 0:56
  Speaker 3: charging entrepreneur. Along with their young runner, Hayden.
• 0:59
  Speaker 4: Ware, they built World Sports.
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: Exchange and offshore operation in Antigua that was not only.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: Legal, it was revolutionary.
• 1:08
  Speaker 4: Before draftkicks before Calshi, before any of it. They introduced
• 1:13
  Speaker 4: live in game waging. The industry now takes it for granted,
• 1:17
  Speaker 4: but leagues, lobbyists, and legislators moved to shut them down,
• 1:22
  Speaker 4: cloaking themselves in integrity, insisting that gambling was a threat
• 1:27
  Speaker 4: to the soul of American sport. Cohen came back to
• 1:30
  Speaker 4: the United States to stand trial, represented by the legendary
• 1:34
  Speaker 4: Benjamin Brafman.
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: He fought and lost. Schillinger and Ware stayed on the island,
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: entrepreneurs trapped in paradise. Today, those same leagues are making
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: hundreds of millions from sportsbook partnerships. Their logos are plastered
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: across every betting app in America. The moral high ground
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: didn't disappear, it was sold. I went to Antigua. I
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: reported this story for HBO Real Sports in nineteen ninety nine.
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: I thought I knew the whole story, But Cohen's new
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: book reveals how justice can be bent to serve those
• 2:09
  Speaker 3: with money, power.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: And influence. I couldn't put it down.
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: Oddsman Out The untold story of how professional sports crushed
• 2:18
  Speaker 3: the pioneers of online betting by Jacobin.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: Hey Guys.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: A special episode of wise practice. I haven't seen him
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: in twenty four years in person. I haven't seen them
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: even haven't talked to him in twenty four years.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: I can't believe it's been that long.
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: So Jay Cohen, founder of one of the founders of
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: World Sports Exchange.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: Wrote a new book.
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: I've gotten a lot of phone calls and emails and
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: even text saying, hey, did you read this new book?
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: This is about two months ago, And I said no.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: And then I got a second one and a third one.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: These guys don't have even know each other, and said
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: this is fantastic. So I said, oh good, I'd like
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: to maybe have him talk to him. I haven't talked
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: to some years, but he does know me, and we
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: know each other. Jay, thank you for doing this, and
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: this is one of your first shows.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: You're doing a right, it's.
• 3:12
  Speaker 5: One of the first three. Thank you for having me,
• 3:15
  Speaker 5: thank you for covering the story, and thank you for
• 3:17
  Speaker 5: helping me promote the book because books need readers.
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but you look exactly the same as you did
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: last time I seen you. That's insane. So it's good
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: that you're keeping yourself going there.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: You know, it's great.
• 3:30
  Speaker 5: Well, there wasn't an expression in prison that they would
• 3:34
  Speaker 5: say prison preserves.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: People, Prison preserved you. You know, that's one of the
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: questions I had for you. So what is the name
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: of the book? Again? Just for the listeners and viewers.
• 3:44
  Speaker 5: The book is called Odds Man Out, and I'm the
• 3:49
  Speaker 5: author and the forward was written by my trial attorney,
• 3:54
  Speaker 5: Ben Brofman.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: Oh, a very very big name attorney for sure. So
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: I'll start out at the beginning. I have like twenties.
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: I don't know if I can get all these questions in,
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: but uh, this is these are ones that I wrote up,
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: and uh, one of my one of my partners, wrote
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: wrote this up.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: So let's start out.
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: So, Jay, you were a nuclear engineer, grad from Berkeley
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: and then trading options I believe in San fran And
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: how did you, a guy like you end up running
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: the World's one of the you know, one of the
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: first guys that run a world's online sports book.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: How did that happen?
• 4:30
  Speaker 5: Well? I was an options market maker for calls and
• 4:34
  Speaker 5: puts on equity options. And the truth is when you're
• 4:38
  Speaker 5: when you're writing, when you're buying and selling calls and puts,
• 4:42
  Speaker 5: you're basically writing and you're you're buying and selling bets
• 4:46
  Speaker 5: on stocks, so it's really the same business. I was
• 4:49
  Speaker 5: the house and Steve Schullinger, who started World Sports Exchange
• 4:55
  Speaker 5: with me. He was older than me. He was on
• 4:58
  Speaker 5: the trading for and he was always an incredible odds
• 5:02
  Speaker 5: maker and he was always doing all these side bets
• 5:05
  Speaker 5: on the side. And when the oj Simpson trial started,
• 5:11
  Speaker 5: he started a marketplace for the trial and he had
• 5:15
  Speaker 5: three products, guilty, not guilty and other and he would
• 5:19
  Speaker 5: make markets in all three, in all three contracts every
• 5:25
  Speaker 5: day during the trial during the day, and people it
• 5:29
  Speaker 5: went as far as New York, the Morgan Stanley broker
• 5:33
  Speaker 5: would run into Steve and say, I need a quote
• 5:36
  Speaker 5: for Harry on the desk in New York. Where can
• 5:38
  Speaker 5: I buy ten not guilty, sell ten guilty? That type
• 5:41
  Speaker 5: of stuff? It was that big and it was very popular.
• 5:47
  Speaker 5: I didn't do it with him, but I was right
• 5:50
  Speaker 5: next to him the whole time. And then when that
• 5:53
  Speaker 5: died down after the trial ended, he started doing it
• 5:55
  Speaker 5: on ordinary traditional sports. But he was also doing MVP
• 6:02
  Speaker 5: bets and season long bets on the will be the
• 6:05
  Speaker 5: baseball MVP who win the Baseball World Championship, et cetera.
• 6:10
  Speaker 5: And it seemed very popular. So I said to him,
• 6:12
  Speaker 5: I said, we should put this on the internet. We
• 6:15
  Speaker 5: should make this a business, because this is a revolutionary
• 6:19
  Speaker 5: way to bet because you can trade in and out
• 6:22
  Speaker 5: of your bet, unlike Vegas, where you you take something
• 6:25
  Speaker 5: at ten to one and if the odds improved to
• 6:30
  Speaker 5: three to one, you can't get out. The only way
• 6:33
  Speaker 5: you can get the get out is to bet the
• 6:34
  Speaker 5: rest of the field. And Steve's method you could sell
• 6:38
  Speaker 5: the bet bank. So that's what we did. So he said, fine,
• 6:42
  Speaker 5: go ahead, and you do all the work and I'll
• 6:46
  Speaker 5: come make the make the odds. You figure out how
• 6:49
  Speaker 5: to set it up, and I'll come.
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: With was Steve also from you were from like Queens,
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: New York as a kid?
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: Right? Was Steve? Also from the York Steve's Chicago Chicago?
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, and you guys meet, do you guys meet
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: in the business, in the trading business?
• 7:05
  Speaker 5: In the trading pit we used to you know, he
• 7:07
  Speaker 5: stee Steve was was was a floater.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: I was.
• 7:12
  Speaker 5: I stayed in one pit and it was generally a
• 7:15
  Speaker 5: quiet pit, but Steve would move around to whatever is busy.
• 7:20
  Speaker 5: He would just trade the most active issues because he
• 7:23
  Speaker 5: was fast. That's where he made his money, and we
• 7:27
  Speaker 5: had stock get busy, so he kind of came over
• 7:30
  Speaker 5: to our pit. We used to call people. They came
• 7:32
  Speaker 5: over to your pit only when it was busy. Boat people,
• 7:35
  Speaker 5: you know, yeah, all these dead issues. All of a
• 7:37
  Speaker 5: sudden something got very active, you know, some news on
• 7:42
  Speaker 5: the stop and we'd say the boats have landed here,
• 7:44
  Speaker 5: the boat people. But Steve, he took a liking to
• 7:48
  Speaker 5: our pit and he kind of made it a kind
• 7:52
  Speaker 5: of pseudo home. He would still move around when things
• 7:55
  Speaker 5: got busy elsewhere, but he and I started having lunch
• 7:58
  Speaker 5: together every day at ten thirty. That's became friends. It's great.
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: And then how did you how did you make that
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: move to Antigua? Obviously couldn't do this to uh of course,
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: enough trading for California. So why the servers mattered so much?
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: Why why Antigua?
• 8:17
  Speaker 5: Well, I researched multiple jurisdictions, and where can we do
• 8:20
  Speaker 5: this legally? We talked to lawyers, obviously, and of all
• 8:26
  Speaker 5: the places I called around, I had I had this
• 8:28
  Speaker 5: little book about all shore jurisdictions. Wasn't related to gamings,
• 8:33
  Speaker 5: were related to banking. But I had a lot of
• 8:35
  Speaker 5: phone numbers in there had government phone numbers for every
• 8:38
  Speaker 5: every place in the world you can think of. So
• 8:40
  Speaker 5: I called them all and h including Costa Rica and
• 8:45
  Speaker 5: Costa Rica. They said, oh, you just work it out
• 8:48
  Speaker 5: with the local local government, with the local mayor. I'm
• 8:52
  Speaker 5: I'm looking for that stumbled upon Antigua. Antigua had this
• 8:56
  Speaker 5: structured regulation. They'd been working with the state Department and
• 9:00
  Speaker 5: it was it was actually a highly regulated environment, which
• 9:04
  Speaker 5: is what I preferred. I wasn't I wasn't looking to hide.
• 9:07
  Speaker 5: I was looking to to be open, you know, to
• 9:10
  Speaker 5: be transparent.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that that's great.
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: And let me ask you about uh this, this is
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: this came from a couple of different people.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: This question.
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: Uh when I asked questions this morning on Twitter a
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: bank roll, So what did you actually start out with
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: a starting bank or what did you think you needed?
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: You sold shares? This person said this, you through a
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: real private, private placement. You sold some shares, and I
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: think I love something to do with a.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: Law firm.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: I was reading how much how did how much did
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: it take to really get off the ground.
• 9:45
  Speaker 5: Now we raised this We raised about eight hundred thousand, okay,
• 9:50
  Speaker 5: and a lot of that a lot of that went
• 9:53
  Speaker 5: to development, to building the you know, coding and developing
• 9:59
  Speaker 5: and and hardware and moving and things were expensive back then.
• 10:05
  Speaker 5: When I got to Antigua and I met with the
• 10:07
  Speaker 5: head of cable and wireless, I said, how much is
• 10:09
  Speaker 5: a T one line? I don't know if t wonders
• 10:12
  Speaker 5: the things. And at the time he said, I think
• 10:15
  Speaker 5: he told me like nineteen thousand dollars a month. I said,
• 10:20
  Speaker 5: you're crazy, he said, so I just laid all this
• 10:23
  Speaker 5: cable to Florida. I want to get my money. I said,
• 10:26
  Speaker 5: you want to get it back in a year. So,
• 10:28
  Speaker 5: I mean that's a lot of things were more expensive
• 10:32
  Speaker 5: than had we just been in Florida. Sure, sure, the
• 10:39
  Speaker 5: bank roll wasn't really an issue in the early days.
• 10:42
  Speaker 5: Certainly it wasn't like we had that much business. If
• 10:47
  Speaker 5: you read the book There's a day that there's a
• 10:50
  Speaker 5: day I talked about the book where early on where
• 10:53
  Speaker 5: Steve and I are just sitting there all day long,
• 10:56
  Speaker 5: next to each other, staring at the screen, the phone
• 10:59
  Speaker 5: dinner ring once all day and where did we really
• 11:02
  Speaker 5: make the right.
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that was the next question. My Johnny Detroit from
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: a Wadgers tadcast. What did year one look like? So
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: were you profitable out of the gate or did it
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: take times? How's like it took some time?
• 11:16
  Speaker 5: I would say, I would say, well once because we
• 11:18
  Speaker 5: got down there and everyone laughed at us were going
• 11:21
  Speaker 5: down there and opening in January. They said, oh, book,
• 11:26
  Speaker 5: any real book, he knows to open at football season.
• 11:30
  Speaker 5: And once football season did come, things that'd pick up
• 11:35
  Speaker 5: quite a bit. And I'm sure we by the end
• 11:38
  Speaker 5: of football season we were we were probably even, but
• 11:42
  Speaker 5: that that first spring down there was kind of lonely.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, you guys have political markets.
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: You said that you don't want to be on the
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: side of a guy who knows something that you don't.
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: How did you and Steve handle that and the sharp
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: betters when you were the house on every trade?
• 12:05
  Speaker 5: Yeah, well, well, of course Steve, I mean that was
• 12:07
  Speaker 5: Steve's gold. But he hated. I would say, well, let's
• 12:11
  Speaker 5: put up the political races, let's put up the stock market,
• 12:14
  Speaker 5: let's put up And Steve hated all that because he's
• 12:17
  Speaker 5: he felt, you know, there are people who know much
• 12:19
  Speaker 5: more about it than him, and he doesn't want to
• 12:21
  Speaker 5: be on the other side of that. So he was
• 12:23
  Speaker 5: okay with ten fifty one hundred dollars bets, but if
• 12:26
  Speaker 5: someone came in wanted to bet five or ten dimes
• 12:29
  Speaker 5: on a bet like that, he wanted no part of that.
• 12:32
  Speaker 5: And I agree, I agree with that that assessment as
• 12:37
  Speaker 5: far as I can tell. And I don't follow these
• 12:40
  Speaker 5: new companies that closely today, but they're doing mainly player
• 12:45
  Speaker 5: to player, so they don't care. They match them up
• 12:48
  Speaker 5: that they're not market. Yeah, they're not the contra to
• 12:53
  Speaker 5: every trade, so they don't care. But we cared and
• 12:58
  Speaker 5: we had to adjust accordingly. And you know, you know,
• 13:02
  Speaker 5: in the sports business it's pretty uh, you know, both
• 13:06
  Speaker 5: booking to sharps as a whole. You know, skill set
• 13:09
  Speaker 5: you developed in the sports game and you know, you
• 13:12
  Speaker 5: limit them, you try to move off them, all all
• 13:15
  Speaker 5: that sort of stuff. Then they play games on you
• 13:17
  Speaker 5: and you play games back. But in like I said,
• 13:22
  Speaker 5: in the political markets, there was you know, again, it
• 13:26
  Speaker 5: was all fifty twenty dollars and then if someone came
• 13:29
  Speaker 5: in heavy, you just did not want to be part
• 13:32
  Speaker 5: of it.
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: So, you know, I remember from them, I remember from
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: the forum days. I think he was at our meetup
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: when we all met together at the Palm Steakhouse there
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: in Vegas. I think from our meet up there was
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: a guy named maca Velli Brandon and he said, he said,
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: I remember him being very good on your website. Did
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: you do you remember him? You remember him betting there
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: at all? Not really some of them?
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, sure, sure no.
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: And speaking of which too, you know, I made a
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: lot of money and bonuses back in the nineties, early two.
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: Thousands, very early. And uh, you.
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: Guys used to have some sign up bonuses and kind
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: of sign up deals too. Uh did you have a
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: lot of scammers and fraud and chargeback bonus abuse of
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: people trying to you know, did you have a lot
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: of that or not?
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: Really?
• 14:19
  Speaker 5: I don't think we had a lot of it.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's good.
• 14:21
  Speaker 5: I saw I read this, you know, I read this
• 14:24
  Speaker 5: stupid book sometime at some point in my career. It's it.
• 14:28
  Speaker 5: You shouldn't be offering better deals to your new customers
• 14:31
  Speaker 5: and your old customers.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: You know, interesting treat treat your treat.
• 14:36
  Speaker 5: Your old customer as well. They're your customers. So that's
• 14:39
  Speaker 5: why every fall we did, whatever we offered, we offered
• 14:43
  Speaker 5: to everyone, you know, not not just the new the
• 14:46
  Speaker 5: new customers when we when we did a whatever, a
• 14:49
  Speaker 5: bonus promotional bonus, we tried to do it for everyone,
• 14:52
  Speaker 5: so he didn't sing, Wow, hey, why punish this guy
• 14:55
  Speaker 5: because he's.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: Been yeah yeah, yeah yeah, So.
• 14:57
  Speaker 5: We did that. I know when when I I came
• 15:00
  Speaker 5: back to Antigua in six uh, you know, when I
• 15:05
  Speaker 5: walked out the door in ninety seven, there were four
• 15:08
  Speaker 5: of us and I came back. There's over one hundred,
• 15:12
  Speaker 5: and Hayden's got a fifteen he's running a fifteen person
• 15:15
  Speaker 5: fraud department.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 15:17
  Speaker 5: And all they're doing the fraud department, all they're doing
• 15:21
  Speaker 5: is running. And I don't know what kind of tools
• 15:23
  Speaker 5: they had access to, all kinds of fancy tools. I
• 15:26
  Speaker 5: don't know if they were legal or illegal, but they
• 15:28
  Speaker 5: were running. As the background checks on everyone. Sure told
• 15:31
  Speaker 5: me one time someone came in, someone called them, got
• 15:35
  Speaker 5: up to him and said, hey, they won't take my deposit.
• 15:39
  Speaker 5: And Hayden called the fraud department and said, what's wrong
• 15:42
  Speaker 5: with this guy? Why are you walking it? And they said, oh,
• 15:45
  Speaker 5: he declared bankruptcy six years ago.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: They were running, why, that's why they want to do?
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: You might as well close the shop if you have
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: to worry about.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: People like the Clarb.
• 15:56
  Speaker 5: I'm just saying they were very particulous, they were aggressive.
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: But yeah, you know, you guys launched the live in
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: game betting. I think it was like around nineteen ninety seven,
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: the cash out, next step back, next score markets. When
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: you watch a modern broadcast today with the live odds,
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: what goes through your head?
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: Like, no one, you guys did that thirty years ago.
• 16:23
  Speaker 5: Well it hurts, you know. I mean, first of all,
• 16:24
  Speaker 5: no one even tried to do it for at least
• 16:27
  Speaker 5: five years. And the way I understand and to this day,
• 16:30
  Speaker 5: no one does it as well as we did it.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: Amazing.
• 16:33
  Speaker 5: Everyone describes it. People I talked to who tried it
• 16:36
  Speaker 5: today say it's very clunky. It's not clear. Ours was
• 16:40
  Speaker 5: idiot proof, you know, and you bought you sold. That
• 16:42
  Speaker 5: was January ninety seven. And this game I'm going to
• 16:45
  Speaker 5: throw off bat bats is going to strike out single, double, triple,
• 16:48
  Speaker 5: who's going to score next? He's running all this at once,
• 16:51
  Speaker 5: and today they're all using databases everything. This was all Steve.
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: That's unbelievable.
• 16:56
  Speaker 5: Wow, he would make markets still the last second, and
• 17:02
  Speaker 5: so yeah, do do I get them? Honestly, outside of
• 17:06
  Speaker 5: writing this book. I've gone out of my way to
• 17:09
  Speaker 5: avoid charging everything. Sure, the there have been several times
• 17:15
  Speaker 5: I've applied for jobs in Europe. Uh, there was one
• 17:20
  Speaker 5: that like specifically said, manage a team of live traders,
• 17:23
  Speaker 5: sports traders, you know, and I get the rejection email.
• 17:27
  Speaker 5: You know, sorry, we we We've gone with someone with
• 17:31
  Speaker 5: more experience, and.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: I'm more experience.
• 17:33
  Speaker 5: You dig up, Steve, you know, I mean, I mean,
• 17:36
  Speaker 5: I always say, it's like Tesla not getting a job
• 17:38
  Speaker 5: at the electric company, and and and they then they
• 17:41
  Speaker 5: they say, and then what's even more insulting is I'll
• 17:45
  Speaker 5: look up sometimes the HR person will put their name
• 17:49
  Speaker 5: on it, and I'll run a search on the HR person.
• 17:52
  Speaker 5: And you know, before this job, she was a cashier
• 17:56
  Speaker 5: at the super.
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: Right right right, right right, No, it's a trust me.
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: It's the same thing here in the States. Also, so
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: you guys had interesting golf markets, prices moving on every
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: whole tiger Woods opening, way off the rest of the field.
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: Why did the golf work so well? That was a
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: big thing with WSX.
• 18:17
  Speaker 5: In part it was number one because it was the
• 18:19
  Speaker 5: Tiger era. He always started out around fifteen or twenty
• 18:23
  Speaker 5: dollars and everyone else was two dollars or one dollar.
• 18:27
  Speaker 5: It might be a couple of guys, five or six,
• 18:29
  Speaker 5: and there were so many of them. And again Steve,
• 18:32
  Speaker 5: he's watching, he's watching on TV for four days straight.
• 18:35
  Speaker 5: He's watching every hole someone bogey, someone birdies, and the
• 18:39
  Speaker 5: prices would shift, you know, five or ten dollars just
• 18:41
  Speaker 5: like that. So you bought them for two, you sold
• 18:44
  Speaker 5: them for six, you're out, you're done, and you tripled
• 18:47
  Speaker 5: your money. And that's great, you know, That's why it
• 18:50
  Speaker 5: was exciting.
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: It was.
• 18:51
  Speaker 5: It was fun. So but golf really lent itself to
• 18:56
  Speaker 5: that with Tiger because either Tiger would be on fire
• 18:59
  Speaker 5: and then he would just kind of run up or
• 19:03
  Speaker 5: he'd fall apart, and then then the whole all the
• 19:05
  Speaker 5: different field players would start coming up and it was
• 19:10
  Speaker 5: just wild. I mean I remember, and then at the
• 19:13
  Speaker 5: end of golf when you had some of these three
• 19:15
  Speaker 5: or four way ties, and then I remember there was
• 19:18
  Speaker 5: some big British Open where the guy just fell apart
• 19:21
  Speaker 5: at the end. He was a clear favorite. He just
• 19:23
  Speaker 5: went to visis. So things like that. We had a
• 19:26
  Speaker 5: guy when we first started the live betting, I think
• 19:31
  Speaker 5: we might have even been a test game, and he
• 19:36
  Speaker 5: was in the futures business commodities, and he made some
• 19:40
  Speaker 5: kind of software for future strading, so he was a
• 19:42
  Speaker 5: pretty season future strading. But he was also a big
• 19:46
  Speaker 5: gamble and he tried our live game betting on It
• 19:50
  Speaker 5: was a college game or whatever when we first started,
• 19:53
  Speaker 5: and he called us after the game and he said
• 19:55
  Speaker 5: that was the most fun I ever had.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah, yeah.
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: So and you know also you guys had you could
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: trade in and out bet mid game, like better is today?
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: I think the cash outs or something. I was driving
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: down the VSA today down to my show. A VSA
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: today is a big sign William Hill has, Oh you
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: can do cash outs. And there you're showing the cash
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: out option like this is nothing new. You guys were
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: doing this. You know how far ahead of the industry
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: were you guys? Twenty eight years ahead of the of
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: the industry. Yeah, at least twenty Yeah.
• 20:28
  Speaker 5: They call it cash out. I understand. It's like it's
• 20:31
  Speaker 5: got some gidding charges, it's got Yes, we were just
• 20:34
  Speaker 5: straight you know markets. Yeah, markets fifty bit of fifty two,
• 20:37
  Speaker 5: sell it, you know, sell it to fifty. That's what
• 20:39
  Speaker 5: you have to think about, you know, cashing out. We
• 20:43
  Speaker 5: didn't call it cash out, buy more, sell more, sell
• 20:47
  Speaker 5: extra whatever. You know, who cares? I mean, that's that's
• 20:50
  Speaker 5: what we did.
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: The Calshi poly market, the election betting and prediction markets.
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: You see the is any of that actually knew? No,
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: this was the stuff you were doing. And then this
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: is the nineties, Am I correct by saying it? You
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: guys were that market before this came legal to the
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: States here, So that was Bushkerry.
• 21:14
  Speaker 5: Yeah, they were making markets on that back then.
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: Sure, So Janet Reno's Department of Justice came after you
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: under the Wire Act. And when did you start realizing
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: the government was actually coming after you here in the States.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: Now you were.
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: Living in Antigua, is that correct? And now you actually
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: could have stayed there in Antigua out in paradise, I guess.
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: But and you actually flew back to the States to
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: fight it. What years were this happening and your partners
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: obviously stayed in Antigua.
• 21:46
  Speaker 5: Well, we were charged in March of ninety eight. That's
• 21:49
  Speaker 5: when I found out about the day I was charged.
• 21:54
  Speaker 5: In the SI article. It was a cover story in
• 21:57
  Speaker 5: SI came out in January, and in that very article,
• 22:01
  Speaker 5: the spokesperson named John Russell for the DOJ Criminal Division
• 22:05
  Speaker 5: in Washington said, it's out of our jurisdiction. And then
• 22:11
  Speaker 5: three months later, I'm charged by the Southern District of
• 22:13
  Speaker 5: New York. Right, and the whole jann areno thing. I
• 22:17
  Speaker 5: don't know why she was involved in it at all,
• 22:20
  Speaker 5: but they obviously put some talking points in front of her.
• 22:24
  Speaker 5: But the whole prosecution was really out of the Southern District.
• 22:28
  Speaker 5: And that's you know again, if you read the book,
• 22:30
  Speaker 5: the whole case came about because the lawyers for the
• 22:33
  Speaker 5: sports leagues went to their cronies at the Southern District
• 22:38
  Speaker 5: of New York Prosecutor's office and said, you know, you
• 22:42
  Speaker 5: got to go after these guys. That's how the case started. Oh,
• 22:46
  Speaker 5: that's on our website. The OLDWSX dot com is still
• 22:51
  Speaker 5: up there. We put it back up. Oh wow, you
• 22:54
  Speaker 5: can see the documentation, all the correspondence between the law
• 22:58
  Speaker 5: firm representing NFL, NBA, Baseball, and hockey and the Southern District.
• 23:04
  Speaker 5: The letters we were able to subpin to that, the
• 23:07
  Speaker 5: letters that went back and forth. Look at Cohen, look
• 23:10
  Speaker 5: at what he's doing now. And they're very chummy. They're
• 23:12
  Speaker 5: not like they're not to whom and make concern. It's
• 23:15
  Speaker 5: dear Tom, look at her now. So the original prosecutor
• 23:20
  Speaker 5: on my case was named Tom Rubin, and before Tom
• 23:24
  Speaker 5: Rubin was an assistant US attorney, he worked for this
• 23:27
  Speaker 5: law firm that represented the sports leagues. And the point
• 23:32
  Speaker 5: person at that law firm named Larren Reisner. Before he
• 23:35
  Speaker 5: worked for that law firm, he worked in the prosecutor's office.
• 23:40
  Speaker 5: We found like twenty five people moved back and forth,
• 23:43
  Speaker 5: and we found that that law firm in particular even
• 23:47
  Speaker 5: had a rule. You know, they're big on their seniority.
• 23:50
  Speaker 5: So if you're working at this New York law firm,
• 23:53
  Speaker 5: if you went to work for the Southern District for
• 23:55
  Speaker 5: two or three years and then came back, you still
• 23:57
  Speaker 5: got credit towards your seniority for those years. There as
• 24:01
  Speaker 5: a total revolving door. Chummy, Yeah, it was. They brought
• 24:08
  Speaker 5: the case right. Southern District wasn't looking for me. The
• 24:12
  Speaker 5: law firm was looking for me, and they that's how
• 24:16
  Speaker 5: the case started. That's it. And the journal article. They
• 24:20
  Speaker 5: didn't like seeing us in the journal.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes, yes, uh.
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: Your whole defense was that the bet happens where the
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: server is. The FEDS called that absurd. Uh then then
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: used your exact argument in Florida for the seminoles.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: I mean, how did that sit with you? Amazing?
• 24:40
  Speaker 5: Not only did they use that exact argument today, they
• 24:42
  Speaker 5: were using that argument for capital OTV at the time,
• 24:47
  Speaker 5: and the judge at the time of my trial, the
• 24:51
  Speaker 5: prosecutor denied that, and the judge took him at his word.
• 24:57
  Speaker 5: Then we found proof of that, and in my habeas petition,
• 25:02
  Speaker 5: which was filed while I was locked up, we raised
• 25:07
  Speaker 5: that because you can raise things you find after you
• 25:09
  Speaker 5: can't raise you, you have to raise the behavior. And
• 25:12
  Speaker 5: we raised that and the judge that Ben and my
• 25:15
  Speaker 5: other lawyer, Melinda were there and I wasn't there, and
• 25:19
  Speaker 5: they said that grace the judge he understood it finally,
• 25:26
  Speaker 5: and he ruled in the Habeast petition that they that
• 25:31
  Speaker 5: they lied, that they lied at trial, and that they
• 25:36
  Speaker 5: made an error what's called the trial error, which should
• 25:40
  Speaker 5: be in a new trial. But then the judge said,
• 25:45
  Speaker 5: but in my opinion, it was harmless error. There's a
• 25:50
  Speaker 5: reversible error and harmless error. The judge declared that it
• 25:54
  Speaker 5: wouldn't have made a difference.
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: Wow, and you became the first American convicted of internet bookmaking.
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: Uh what was it like hearing guilty on all eight accounts?
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: And I had to be like, oh God, big.
• 26:08
  Speaker 5: Well it was so the way that the way the
• 26:11
  Speaker 5: judge was directing the verdict. If you if you read
• 26:14
  Speaker 5: the transcript, if you read the set, the set the
• 26:17
  Speaker 5: jury instructions. I have one friend that I had one
• 26:20
  Speaker 5: doctor friend in New York and he only came to
• 26:22
  Speaker 5: the day the judge was reading the jury instructions. He
• 26:26
  Speaker 5: could have believed. I mean the judge, the judge told
• 26:29
  Speaker 5: the jury my testimony. Defendants rarely take the stand right.
• 26:33
  Speaker 5: Judge told the jury my testimony was not relevant.
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: Wow, I mean from the start.
• 26:40
  Speaker 5: After after the trial, we're walking on the street and
• 26:46
  Speaker 5: one of the jurors came up to me and she
• 26:49
  Speaker 5: said to me, we wanted to acquit you, but the
• 26:52
  Speaker 5: judge gave us no choice. Then recently with the book,
• 26:59
  Speaker 5: Uh think it's in the book. But we tracked down
• 27:01
  Speaker 5: the the jury forum and we were able to find
• 27:04
  Speaker 5: them and he he, he corroborated that that that woman
• 27:11
  Speaker 5: was the holdout. She had a hard time at the
• 27:12
  Speaker 5: whole thing, and she was she was holding back and
• 27:16
  Speaker 5: he and the jury foreman said Hey, we like the guy,
• 27:19
  Speaker 5: you know, but the way the judge framed this thing,
• 27:21
  Speaker 5: we had no choice. Wow, that was you know six
• 27:25
  Speaker 5: months ago we heard that or whatever it was.
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: Well you wind up doing eighteen months. Uh, some of
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: it here in law in North Las Vegas?
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: Is that right?
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: Walking distance from the Vegas books? Doing it legally?
• 27:37
  Speaker 4: Uh?
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: You know once you went what you went to prison for?
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: What was going for your head in there? Can you
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: even believe what was happening to you?
• 27:44
  Speaker 5: I mean it was just you know, you could see
• 27:46
  Speaker 5: the lights of the strip at night, you know, I
• 27:48
  Speaker 5: mean unbelievable.
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: Well, the booking, booking the same action that you were
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: in jail for from another country. And even ANTIVU people
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: don't know this part too. And TIVA took your case
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: to the wto right and they won. You won in
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: two thousand and five. And like I said, the US
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: never complied and no one knows that story. Why why
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: doesn't anyone? Why is that not out there?
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: You know?
• 28:12
  Speaker 5: Well, it's just it's highly technical. I mean it was
• 28:14
  Speaker 5: in the it was in it. It made a couple
• 28:16
  Speaker 5: of articles and the wire services and you know, there
• 28:21
  Speaker 5: were these trade magazines, you know, like for international trade
• 28:26
  Speaker 5: that that covered the David versus Goliath story there, but
• 28:31
  Speaker 5: here was part of the problem. So we won the
• 28:33
  Speaker 5: We actually won the first case. It was the first
• 28:36
  Speaker 5: day I got out. I was in the half light house,
• 28:39
  Speaker 5: and that's the day we won the first case. And
• 28:43
  Speaker 5: that was before the appeal. And so that one we
• 28:47
  Speaker 5: won straight up or really across the board. And of
• 28:50
  Speaker 5: course the US appealed, and two years later the appellate decision.
• 28:55
  Speaker 5: And but this decision was like three hundred pages. The
• 29:00
  Speaker 5: US upheld all the antiqua complaints relating to the federal charges,
• 29:07
  Speaker 5: including ten eighty four. They said that the Wire Act
• 29:11
  Speaker 5: was not compliant with the US commitment for the treaty,
• 29:15
  Speaker 5: and a bunch of other gambling laws federal were not compliant.
• 29:20
  Speaker 5: But they dismissed We enlisted thousands of state laws, okay,
• 29:28
  Speaker 5: and the wto PELO panel set those aside. They didn't
• 29:33
  Speaker 5: say they're no good at all. They just said you
• 29:37
  Speaker 5: didn't bring enough evidence for those. So had we wanted
• 29:43
  Speaker 5: to spend another several million dollars building up each state law,
• 29:48
  Speaker 5: that would have been that we could have done that.
• 29:49
  Speaker 5: But so the the way they dismissed it was like
• 29:52
  Speaker 5: you just didn't show your case. So so then anyway,
• 29:57
  Speaker 5: after that, I of the wire services, I can't remember
• 30:01
  Speaker 5: it was AP or UPI or whoever it was, or
• 30:04
  Speaker 5: Reuters and they and they, they put an article. Both
• 30:08
  Speaker 5: sides claimed victory in wto appeal said we won the right,
• 30:16
  Speaker 5: both sides. So I called the reporter who was on
• 30:20
  Speaker 5: the case, right, and she said, well, the US put
• 30:25
  Speaker 5: out a press release claiming victory. I said, well, did
• 30:29
  Speaker 5: you read the opinion? She said no, said wow, both
• 30:34
  Speaker 5: sides claim victory.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: That's amazing, amazing.
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: Going back to that, though, JA, going back to my
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: first questions, I briefed skipped over, how was your time listening?
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: A time is always going to be bad, but you
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: weren't in with like the hardened criminals, right was it?
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: Was it okay for you there the eighteen months away?
• 30:52
  Speaker 5: Nellis was fine. I was boring, you know, that's sure,
• 30:56
  Speaker 5: say what's it's boring? That's what it is. But everything
• 31:00
  Speaker 5: is about finding a routine. And there were guys there,
• 31:03
  Speaker 5: you know there. It's not like there were old guys
• 31:07
  Speaker 5: there who who romanticized about the old days when it
• 31:11
  Speaker 5: really was club fed right before they brought in all
• 31:15
  Speaker 5: the drug guys. Uh, it's not like it used to be.
• 31:19
  Speaker 5: So that's but they they said, in the in the
• 31:23
  Speaker 5: old days, the military shared the chow hall and they
• 31:27
  Speaker 5: would even leave their m sixteens against the door, right,
• 31:31
  Speaker 5: and you know they they had a lot more leeway, you.
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: Know, sure, sure, but.
• 31:37
  Speaker 5: That But of course by the time I got there,
• 31:40
  Speaker 5: it was more more strict, more control. It was fine,
• 31:43
  Speaker 5: It wasn't It wasn't hard time by any means. I
• 31:48
  Speaker 5: managed to, uh work my way into a job. You
• 31:51
  Speaker 5: have to have a job. So I got a job
• 31:54
  Speaker 5: in the g ed department, teaching algebra and geometry. Okay,
• 32:00
  Speaker 5: gang guys who never finished high school. So that was nice.
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you compare yourself to Kurt Flood. I read the
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: guy who took on baseball, changed the game, ended up
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: a footnote while everyone else cashed in.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: Is that how you see your place with this?
• 32:19
  Speaker 5: Well that's why now I still, I mean, I keep
• 32:22
  Speaker 5: saying I'm gonna end up a footnote, right, I mean they,
• 32:27
  Speaker 5: I mean they they they're using my my my model.
• 32:30
  Speaker 5: First they drive me out of business, you know that,
• 32:32
  Speaker 5: And now and and now they're they're making millions off
• 32:37
  Speaker 5: of my model. I mean sure, not even doing it
• 32:40
  Speaker 5: as well. That's the sad thing.
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: That's unbelievable, thirty years later, not even doing it as well.
• 32:45
  Speaker 5: Uh.
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: And you also we were off air in being I said, wait, Jay,
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: don't say nothing else. Tell it.
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: Let's tell the people that are watching.
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: So you're you're living abroad, and like even I read
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: that you can't even come see your dad and.
• 32:57
  Speaker 6: My dad find you to.
• 32:59
  Speaker 5: Get what is my citizenship? In twenty twenty, twenty twelve,
• 33:06
  Speaker 5: I gave up a you citizenship. And in what year
• 33:15
  Speaker 5: probably around twenty twenty, not till twenty twenty three or twenty,
• 33:21
  Speaker 5: I applied for a visitor visa to go to the US,
• 33:25
  Speaker 5: and I had read up all their rules, and they
• 33:28
  Speaker 5: have this whole thing you can't come in all if
• 33:30
  Speaker 5: you committed a crime of moral turpitude. Now, there's actual
• 33:33
  Speaker 5: a State Department Foreign Affairs manual that defines crimes of
• 33:38
  Speaker 5: moral turpitude for visa issuance purposes. And in that manual,
• 33:43
  Speaker 5: this is a section I could send it to you
• 33:46
  Speaker 5: where it says the following crimes are crimes of moral turpitude,
• 33:49
  Speaker 5: and of course it's violent crimes, bad stuff. Right, That
• 33:53
  Speaker 5: an all the bad stuff you can think of. And
• 33:55
  Speaker 5: then there's actually a section that says specifically the crimes
• 34:00
  Speaker 5: are not crimes of moral alterpatude, and it says gambling.
• 34:05
  Speaker 5: So I applied for a Lisa. They made me get
• 34:10
  Speaker 5: criminal records. It took me over a year to get
• 34:13
  Speaker 5: criminal records from every place I ever lived, which I did.
• 34:18
  Speaker 5: I turned them all into them, and when they finally
• 34:21
  Speaker 5: got everything, they said, you would deny you because he
• 34:25
  Speaker 5: committed crime a moral interpretude. And there's no one that
• 34:27
  Speaker 5: talked to us, like talk him to a wall. So
• 34:29
  Speaker 5: we finally reached someone in Washington and they said, oh,
• 34:33
  Speaker 5: this is over a year old. To ply again, I
• 34:35
  Speaker 5: applied again. I go back to the embassy guys sitting
• 34:40
  Speaker 5: on the other side of the glass. I have all
• 34:43
  Speaker 5: the criminal records with me this time, and all he
• 34:49
  Speaker 5: does is look at the old denial and then he
• 34:52
  Speaker 5: denied me right there on the spot, crime a moral interpretude.
• 34:56
  Speaker 5: And it's like, you don't know who to There's no
• 35:02
  Speaker 5: there's no one.
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: That's a shame. You can't even see your ninety two
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: year old dad's.
• 35:06
  Speaker 5: I mean, it's not yeah, you know, we always you know,
• 35:13
  Speaker 5: follow the rule. These are your rules. It's in your book.
• 35:17
  Speaker 5: I don't know. You know, either either I can't read,
• 35:22
  Speaker 5: either I have a problem with reading comprehension, or they do,
• 35:25
  Speaker 5: because it's pretty clear for my reading comprehension of their
• 35:31
  Speaker 5: manual should be not a crime mo moral turpitude. I
• 35:37
  Speaker 5: think there's something And if people have said this book,
• 35:40
  Speaker 5: like when I tell them I was convicted under the
• 35:42
  Speaker 5: Wire Act, which is usually the wires to transmit gambling
• 35:46
  Speaker 5: information for some reason. Whatever, people your wire, they right
• 35:52
  Speaker 5: immediately go to Wyre fraud.
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: Right right, right right. I don't think it was from
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: nineteen sixty one, right, Yeah.
• 36:00
  Speaker 5: I'm wondering if these people even read my documents and
• 36:04
  Speaker 5: just all why are act?
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: Wow? Wow?
• 36:09
  Speaker 6: Uh?
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: How about the PayPal story? So tell people about the
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: PayPal They came to you saying we're gonna fight with you,
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: and then you know, they do this massive gambling volume
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: and then they pulled the plug.
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: eBay pulled the plug. I guess something like what happened there?
• 36:23
  Speaker 5: Well, I was in Miami speaking at a gaming conference
• 36:26
  Speaker 5: in Miami. I was on bail. It was before I
• 36:29
  Speaker 5: went away, and this guy comes up to me. I
• 36:32
  Speaker 5: wish I had his card still he was some executive
• 36:38
  Speaker 5: senior vice president of PayPal. So I just want to
• 36:41
  Speaker 5: let you know we're ready to get into the game.
• 36:45
  Speaker 5: We're with you, we're gonna fight with you. We believe
• 36:48
  Speaker 5: in what you're doing. Thank you, and we're going to
• 36:50
  Speaker 5: fight with you. And you know, we're going to get
• 36:52
  Speaker 5: into the gaming business. I said, that's great, thank you.
• 36:55
  Speaker 5: Great to hear, you know, And I mean I wasn't
• 36:58
  Speaker 5: involved in the business then. And apparently they did get involved,
• 37:03
  Speaker 5: and according to Hayden, they did massive, massive volume, not
• 37:09
  Speaker 5: just with US, but with the whole industry, and that
• 37:13
  Speaker 5: pumped up their numbers, and with those numbers they were
• 37:16
  Speaker 5: able to look very attractive to eBay when they sold
• 37:19
  Speaker 5: out to eBay. And a day or two after they
• 37:23
  Speaker 5: sold to eBay, someone wrote an article said, does he
• 37:27
  Speaker 5: does eBay realize how much of their money comes from gaming?
• 37:31
  Speaker 5: And within a week, eBay announced that PayPal would be
• 37:34
  Speaker 5: withdrawing from the US market.
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: Gotcha, gotcha.
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: You know, if you can go back to that guy
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety six on the trading floor about to
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: move to Antigua, would you tell them to do it
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: all again or over again, or would you refrain from that.
• 37:53
  Speaker 5: Well, obviously there's a couple of tiny little things I
• 37:56
  Speaker 5: would have done differently, but I would I would have
• 38:01
  Speaker 5: I would have done it again because at the time,
• 38:04
  Speaker 5: I said to myself, I had a pretty good career going.
• 38:07
  Speaker 5: I was making a lot of money. I was in
• 38:10
  Speaker 5: my twenties, I was single, I was was making good,
• 38:15
  Speaker 5: very good money. And I I said to myself, this
• 38:22
  Speaker 5: is going to be big one day. And I don't
• 38:24
  Speaker 5: want to be the guy sitting there that says I
• 38:28
  Speaker 5: was going to do that. I thought that I was
• 38:32
  Speaker 5: going to do that. No, I said, I'm going to
• 38:34
  Speaker 5: do it, you know. That's that's the thing. And you
• 38:38
  Speaker 5: know I said about doing it, you know, legally, and
• 38:40
  Speaker 5: that was my goal. One. I'll tell you one stupid
• 38:44
  Speaker 5: thing that we didn't raise at the trial. And you're
• 38:47
  Speaker 5: talking about different things that you wish you'd said something
• 38:51
  Speaker 5: right In the US Code under which I was convicted,
• 38:59
  Speaker 5: there's a d definition of a gambling business and it
• 39:03
  Speaker 5: says five or more people. I think back and said,
• 39:08
  Speaker 5: you know, when I left, there were only four of us. Yeah, now,
• 39:13
  Speaker 5: I'm sure I'm sure had I raised that, then they
• 39:16
  Speaker 5: would have, you know, played the tapes of after I
• 39:19
  Speaker 5: left more different voices on the phones and say aha,
• 39:22
  Speaker 5: it's either bigger now or or try to include the people,
• 39:28
  Speaker 5: the advertising people made it a bigger business or something.
• 39:31
  Speaker 5: But it was kind of it was kind of the
• 39:35
  Speaker 5: defense I always wish I had raised at the last second. Yeah,
• 39:39
  Speaker 5: how many people were in that office?
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: So did Europe?
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: Did the business actually fold into I see some contradicting
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: statements here, WSC fold around twenty twenty thirteen? Is that
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: the approximate year that you actually felt and some customers
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: sad the would ever paid out? So what actually happened
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: those final days?
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: Jake?
• 40:01
  Speaker 5: Well, I wasn't there, Okay, clear that. I mean I left.
• 40:07
  Speaker 5: I left the island in two thousand and nine. Before that,
• 40:10
  Speaker 5: the last time I was on the island was two
• 40:12
  Speaker 5: thousand and nine. In two thousand and nine, I was
• 40:15
  Speaker 5: visiting and that's when my it guy said, Hey, there's
• 40:19
  Speaker 5: this new thing called bitcoin. We should check it out.
• 40:22
  Speaker 5: I was like, wow, you know, it's crazy. Yeah, of course,
• 40:26
  Speaker 5: you know you know how that ended. So but yeah,
• 40:30
  Speaker 5: I mean it was a combination of lay downs, I mean,
• 40:38
  Speaker 5: banks confiscating money, being forced to deal with crooked credit
• 40:43
  Speaker 5: credit card processors that never paid them and then I
• 40:51
  Speaker 5: think and not being able to develop new customers because
• 40:55
  Speaker 5: only it was like there was a point where only
• 40:58
  Speaker 5: like ten percent of the were going through and even
• 41:02
  Speaker 5: some of those were through crooked credit card processors, and
• 41:06
  Speaker 5: then they ended up stealing all that money. You know,
• 41:10
  Speaker 5: That's that's how it used to go. I mean, let's
• 41:14
  Speaker 5: say one and then you know, and then you know,
• 41:18
  Speaker 5: word got out and then.
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: It's a run on the bank.
• 41:22
  Speaker 5: It's a spiral. Yeah, I mean, it's it's but uh
• 41:27
  Speaker 5: if I mean, if if we had if W S
• 41:31
  Speaker 5: e X had all the money that that people laid
• 41:34
  Speaker 5: down on them, they they would have paid everyone and
• 41:37
  Speaker 5: had plenty of money left over there.
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: There were so what rumors, there's rumors that are made
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: off was involved partners losing money.
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: That that's all BS, that's all BS.
• 41:49
  Speaker 5: But whatever, whatever whatever money was was was was not paid. Uh.
• 41:56
  Speaker 5: W S e X was not paid two to three
• 41:59
  Speaker 5: times as much from from crooked processors banks and there
• 42:06
  Speaker 5: was no recourse. Oh I'm sorry, the government took it,
• 42:09
  Speaker 5: you know, I think from a bank or whatever. And
• 42:12
  Speaker 5: then again the dirty processors, you know, I mean, you
• 42:16
  Speaker 5: you couldn't run to the cops. You couldn't you know,
• 42:18
  Speaker 5: didn't do anything. So a lot a lot of it
• 42:21
  Speaker 5: was that. And but a lot of.
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: The sports.
• 42:27
  Speaker 5: What's that.
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: A lot of the other sports books I'm sure also
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: had that, uh, you know, the bet Cristians of the
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: world and you know whatever, I don't know, always back
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: their bow dog or whoever they were back back in
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: the day. But a lot of them folded too, though
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: you know, I know myself. The sports market, I can
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: go on and on as Antigue I think it was
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: Eddie Haddie.
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: I think the guy's name was and and and there,
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: and then I can go on and on.
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: There was multiple places, uh that folded and and didn't
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: and didn't pay people. But that is some of the reasons,
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: I guess too. I never realized how bad the crooked
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: processors of credit cards were and stuff. I didn't know
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: that payment solutions was that much of a hurdle, you.
• 43:05
  Speaker 5: You know, they and they were. They were charging more
• 43:08
  Speaker 5: and more and then it was even worse when they
• 43:10
  Speaker 5: took all one hundred percent. So then but it was, uh,
• 43:17
  Speaker 5: it would go like I was I gonna say, they would.
• 43:24
  Speaker 5: The other thing is some of our competitors, I mean,
• 43:28
  Speaker 5: we were one hundred percent post up. Always. We never
• 43:33
  Speaker 5: had agents doing pay. Yeah, the guys with the credit
• 43:38
  Speaker 5: business and paying collect guys on the on the out there,
• 43:42
  Speaker 5: they could function, you know, we couldn't. And the other thing,
• 43:49
  Speaker 5: uh did We were in a you know, also in
• 43:53
  Speaker 5: a hyper growth period, you know with we had Matchbook.
• 43:58
  Speaker 5: We're building Matchbook, you're building the poker. The casino we were.
• 44:03
  Speaker 5: We were trying to be a super book, a super casino.
• 44:06
  Speaker 5: And also, I mean another mistake when when the UI
• 44:12
  Speaker 5: GEA passed and then when it came into effect. We
• 44:16
  Speaker 5: were always good to our people. We never like said,
• 44:18
  Speaker 5: you know what, our businesses now, we're going to lay
• 44:20
  Speaker 5: off half the people. No, we kept it going. You know,
• 44:23
  Speaker 5: they said, no, we're gonna you know, we want to
• 44:26
  Speaker 5: say we're fighting, we're year we want We never cut
• 44:29
  Speaker 5: salaries or things like that. I mean, so that's you know,
• 44:33
  Speaker 5: eventually we offered some kind of attrition packages a lot
• 44:38
  Speaker 5: of people took. But we're always super kind to our
• 44:43
  Speaker 5: employees down there. And never you know, I always say
• 44:49
  Speaker 5: I'm I'm not a good I'm not a good businessman
• 44:53
  Speaker 5: at that stuff. I'm not good at looking at people
• 44:56
  Speaker 5: and saying oh, thirty percent of you have to go
• 44:58
  Speaker 5: tomorrow and that's it. Sorry. Sorry, were our business now,
• 45:02
  Speaker 5: so thirty percent of you have to go goodbye. I'm
• 45:05
  Speaker 5: I don't have that in me, or at least I didn't.
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you know, you know that that business of
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: credit in the States and meeting someone on the street,
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: that is virtually over that. You know, there's unless you're
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: doing with a local guy or something, but there's the
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: big books that used to have, you know, people here
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: in the States and agents and stuff that that virtually
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: I don't even even though I live in Vegas, a
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: gambling state, and I just don't hear of that, Like
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: like I used to back in the day.
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: But I forgot about Matchbook. That's right.
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: You you actually ran Matchbook, right, So what made you
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: go over to the peer to peer betting exchange from
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: you know, you.
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: Guys were the house.
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: Now you're letting people go face to face.
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: How did you get involved with that? I forgot about that?
• 45:54
  Speaker 5: Well that was Hayden. He actually did that while it
• 45:56
  Speaker 5: was away, Okay, And uh I think I think somehow
• 46:04
  Speaker 5: originally they were they went to Ireland and they were
• 46:07
  Speaker 5: gonna kind of target the European market, and somehow it
• 46:10
  Speaker 5: turned into matchbook and Steve's attitude was, you know, when
• 46:15
  Speaker 5: all the wise guys send him over there, kill each other,
• 46:18
  Speaker 5: let them let them, uh them kill each other. And honestly,
• 46:23
  Speaker 5: UH probably probably got caught on the wrong side of
• 46:29
  Speaker 5: that too much in development, both in development costs, uh,
• 46:34
  Speaker 5: and I think there was a lot of seating of
• 46:38
  Speaker 5: the markets saying, well, we gotta we gotta get it going,
• 46:41
  Speaker 5: and here they are taking on the best the best
• 46:44
  Speaker 5: players in the world. So that was really run independently
• 46:49
  Speaker 5: at the time, but they they did. It was a
• 46:53
  Speaker 5: nice name and a nice product in the end, which
• 46:57
  Speaker 5: we sold. And then you know, in one once ui
• 47:01
  Speaker 5: Gea passed, I was lost a lot of customers just
• 47:05
  Speaker 5: when the thing passed, and all the headlines were your
• 47:08
  Speaker 5: congress ban's internet gambling and like half the people took
• 47:13
  Speaker 5: their money out the next day and that this is
• 47:15
  Speaker 5: you know, we paid, We used to pay in five
• 47:17
  Speaker 5: minutes back then, everyone got paid back then. Yeah, you know,
• 47:21
  Speaker 5: it was fine, you know that that's the way it was.
• 47:24
  Speaker 5: But it didn't It's not good for business, you know,
• 47:27
  Speaker 5: when you know you lose half your customer base overnight
• 47:29
  Speaker 5: because of a stupid headline.
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, in sixteen minutes, I mean sixty minutes. I heard
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: like the next day you were flooded with new customers,
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: have to be on sixty minutes.
• 47:40
  Speaker 5: Sixty minutes was great. I again, I was. I was
• 47:45
  Speaker 5: home in San Francisco. I was pending appeal, and my lawyer,
• 47:49
  Speaker 5: then Rothman, got calls the sixty minutes piece is so
• 47:53
  Speaker 5: positive that then what happened was I had lost my trial,
• 47:58
  Speaker 5: and uh Ben, I got a call from Haydes said,
• 48:03
  Speaker 5: sixty minuts goals. They want to do it. They want
• 48:05
  Speaker 5: to do a story about us. I had always wanted
• 48:07
  Speaker 5: to do sixty minutes. I said, this is great.
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: Is the biggest news program at the time.
• 48:11
  Speaker 5: Doubt ten million people. I called Ben. I said, Ben,
• 48:16
  Speaker 5: sixty minutes gold. They want to do a story. And
• 48:19
  Speaker 5: up from the time I got charged up until then,
• 48:22
  Speaker 5: I had been like media lockout because Ben said, don't
• 48:25
  Speaker 5: talk to the press. So he said, don't do it.
• 48:27
  Speaker 5: It's going to be a hack job. I said, Ben,
• 48:29
  Speaker 5: the media lockout's over. I'm doing it, and he said, okay,
• 48:33
  Speaker 5: then I want to be on.
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: Two so oh wow. So then he can wind up
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: doing with you.
• 48:39
  Speaker 5: So we both did it, and we actually we shot
• 48:42
  Speaker 5: the b roll and we actually shot the interviews, both
• 48:46
  Speaker 5: he and I. The day of my sentencing, I was
• 48:49
  Speaker 5: in New York and we do the sentencing, and then
• 48:52
  Speaker 5: we went to the CBS studios. We met with Morley Safer,
• 48:56
  Speaker 5: both Ben and I and did the did the interviews,
• 49:00
  Speaker 5: and anyway, it didn't air for a long.
• 49:05
  Speaker 7: Time, and Ben was nervous and I didn't care anymore,
• 49:09
  Speaker 7: and and the producer kept assuring us that we were
• 49:13
  Speaker 7: gonna love it, and sure enough it came out.
• 49:16
  Speaker 5: It was It was fantastic. We looked great. The government
• 49:19
  Speaker 5: looked like idiots.
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: That's right. I remember that.
• 49:23
  Speaker 5: And Ben. I talked to Ben the next day, I said, Hey,
• 49:27
  Speaker 5: how do you like it? And he said, he said,
• 49:29
  Speaker 5: I'm getting calls from from criminal defense lawyers around the
• 49:33
  Speaker 5: country saying, who do you know at sixty minutes to
• 49:37
  Speaker 5: get a positive story, unt already convicted.
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: Unbelievable thinking about that in that aspect, that's.
• 49:45
  Speaker 5: How good it was. That's how clean we were. We
• 49:48
  Speaker 5: weren't we were you know, we were straight up guys.
• 49:52
  Speaker 5: We weren't shady or anything.
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: Am I right by saying that got you a lot
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: of business?
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: The next day.
• 50:00
  Speaker 5: I wasn't there, but they did. They the phones. The
• 50:03
  Speaker 5: phones were ringing off the.
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: Hook, the ring of.
• 50:06
  Speaker 5: One time before I got in trouble, I was back
• 50:09
  Speaker 5: in San Francisco one uh long, you know, when we
• 50:13
  Speaker 5: were still new, long before the problems, and uh I
• 50:17
  Speaker 5: went to San Francisco for a few days and uh
• 50:21
  Speaker 5: we had a we had a press agent, we had
• 50:23
  Speaker 5: a p R kid and UH I did a thing
• 50:27
  Speaker 5: on I think it was on c NBC. UH it
• 50:32
  Speaker 5: might No, it was some some NBC related channel. I
• 50:39
  Speaker 5: know that because I was I went to some NBC
• 50:42
  Speaker 5: studio in San Francisco. And that's when I did this
• 50:47
  Speaker 5: debate against the Attorney General of Wisconsin, a guy who
• 50:51
  Speaker 5: later turned out he became governor after that name was Doyle.
• 50:55
  Speaker 5: And I buried the guy and I felt like I
• 51:01
  Speaker 5: did very well anyway. And that that's when we were
• 51:03
  Speaker 5: just a four person company. So when I left the interview,
• 51:07
  Speaker 5: and this was long before we were in trouble, I
• 51:09
  Speaker 5: was walking. I was walking down van Ness Avenue, I
• 51:12
  Speaker 5: had my suit on still, and I picked up a payphone.
• 51:15
  Speaker 5: I called the office see if they saw it, and
• 51:17
  Speaker 5: they just can't talk phones. Phones ringing off the hook
• 51:20
  Speaker 5: and apparently they put our our our eight hundred numbers
• 51:23
  Speaker 5: something on the on the.
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes, off the hut.
• 51:28
  Speaker 5: All the media was good media.
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: One of the viewers said to me when I when
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: I asked for questions, ask them what the largest single
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: wager ever was that you ever booked and the largest
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: winner the largest loser? Did you have real sharp guys
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: in there's a couple of questions.
• 51:46
  Speaker 5: In one day. Those are questions for Hayden and Steve.
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: Oh, I got you.
• 51:52
  Speaker 5: They they had some very big squares.
• 51:55
  Speaker 6: I know.
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: Unfortunately it's a sad note. You said, questions for hating
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: and Steve. Steve no longer with us. That had a
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: really uh that had to really affect you the day
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: that he committed suicide.
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: I'm sure.
• 52:09
  Speaker 5: Yeah, well I can say in the book I for
• 52:12
  Speaker 5: Steve it was like the correct move. You know, he
• 52:16
  Speaker 5: was so analytical and so you know, if this then
• 52:20
  Speaker 5: this and this and this and if this then I'm
• 52:23
  Speaker 5: I'm gonna kill myself. That was him. You know, you
• 52:28
  Speaker 5: didn't believe in God, you know, he just just like
• 52:32
  Speaker 5: that was that was how he saw the world.
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: You know, so did did and he did that like
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: when you guys folded, like almost the same day even.
• 52:40
  Speaker 5: Yeah, like the day of the company folded. It says
• 52:43
  Speaker 5: no more. And then they found him the next morning
• 52:46
  Speaker 5: or something.
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: Did he have a family? Did he have wife? Kids? Family?
• 52:51
  Speaker 5: He was a serial engager and he was married at
• 52:56
  Speaker 5: the time when we went down there. You had a
• 52:59
  Speaker 5: wife and four kids. Two were kind of adopted and
• 53:05
  Speaker 5: two were his own. And they left eventually, and he
• 53:09
  Speaker 5: split up with her, and then he got engaged a
• 53:11
  Speaker 5: couple of times, and he was married to this woman.
• 53:14
  Speaker 5: I know he was married to a woman when he
• 53:15
  Speaker 5: passed away, but she wasn't there anymore and she was
• 53:20
  Speaker 5: back in the US, And yeah, that's a shame, that's
• 53:23
  Speaker 5: what happened. I mean, he was he was so funny
• 53:27
  Speaker 5: with his with his engagements. He was always he would
• 53:30
  Speaker 5: he would call me up and say, do you want
• 53:32
  Speaker 5: to buy an engagement ring cheap? Because he says, he says,
• 53:37
  Speaker 5: he says, whenever I break up with them, I let
• 53:39
  Speaker 5: them keep the disposable camera in the ring. And these
• 53:42
  Speaker 5: are great rings. If you'd like a good deal on one,
• 53:45
  Speaker 5: she'd like.
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: Out right, Oh my god.
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: David Allison from Twitter says, can you ask Sha for me,
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: are the prediction markets here to stay even after twenty
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: twenty eight if there's a new party at the top.
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: So if we have a new president, do you think
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: they're here forever.
• 54:03
  Speaker 5: I think they'll They'll figure out a way to keep
• 54:05
  Speaker 5: them going. There's there's too much, too much money involved
• 54:09
  Speaker 5: in them. And cal She, you know, I always say that,
• 54:12
  Speaker 5: you know, we were just trying to run a business.
• 54:14
  Speaker 5: A lot of these companies, they're experts in rounds of financing,
• 54:18
  Speaker 5: you know. And cal She's whole claim to fame is
• 54:23
  Speaker 5: that they're approved by the CFTC. And then you look
• 54:28
  Speaker 5: at their board of directors and they have a former
• 54:30
  Speaker 5: CFTC guy on their board.
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: Oh wow, Yeah.
• 54:33
  Speaker 5: I never I never thought like that. I just wanted
• 54:35
  Speaker 5: to run my business and peace. I wasn't. It wasn't
• 54:38
  Speaker 5: looking for favors. I wasn't looking for connections or just
• 54:42
  Speaker 5: you know, we're gonna do what we do and try
• 54:44
  Speaker 5: to do it well. And I'll tell you I just
• 54:47
  Speaker 5: want to say this about doing well because I was
• 54:49
  Speaker 5: dealing with some other company the other day and I
• 54:51
  Speaker 5: sent them an email might have been Apple. I get
• 54:54
  Speaker 5: an email, we'll get back you in seventy two hours,
• 54:56
  Speaker 5: seventy two hours. I had a rule, I said, I
• 55:00
  Speaker 5: don't everyone want to hear I said, every email gets
• 55:04
  Speaker 5: answered in an hour or less, and not with just
• 55:07
  Speaker 5: some candors. Fine, if you can't, you know, if you
• 55:09
  Speaker 5: can't answer, you guys workings, and that's fine. But we
• 55:12
  Speaker 5: don't treat our so we treat customers well. You know,
• 55:16
  Speaker 5: we treated people well. I paid people to sit there
• 55:19
  Speaker 5: to make sure they can answer the emails in an hour.
• 55:22
  Speaker 5: You know, that's that was to me. That's customer service. Today,
• 55:28
  Speaker 5: vice president of customer service is rewarded by how little
• 55:31
  Speaker 5: he spends on customer service.
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: I mean, you can call one of these casinos here
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: down the street here, and you can call and you're
• 55:38
  Speaker 2: you're calling out of the country, and you think you're
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: calling Caesar's palace.
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: I mean the call.
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: It's amazing what a difference in customer service is today
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: to even ten years ago.
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: And of course when you guys were doing it, it
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: really is.
• 55:50
  Speaker 5: We treated our customers with respect and and and the
• 55:55
  Speaker 5: other funny thing was like I would put a bank,
• 55:59
  Speaker 5: I would put banner heads up everywhere, and you know,
• 56:02
  Speaker 5: you know, with some site, you know, maybe we get
• 56:05
  Speaker 5: two customers from I would say, well, you never know,
• 56:08
  Speaker 5: maybe this guy's got a friend who's going to send
• 56:10
  Speaker 5: ten thousand.
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: You don't know, sure, you.
• 56:11
  Speaker 5: Know where a leads to be. So I would carpet.
• 56:16
  Speaker 5: Back then I was able to. We had no analytics,
• 56:19
  Speaker 5: we had none of that stuff. But I would just
• 56:22
  Speaker 5: carpet every gaming site, every remote sports that would take
• 56:27
  Speaker 5: our banners out. I tell you, how about you want
• 56:30
  Speaker 5: fifty a month, undre a month? Okay, good, you know,
• 56:32
  Speaker 5: whatever it was, we would just spread it out.
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: Danny Dimes from Twitter, Hey, Jay, do you do you
• 56:39
  Speaker 2: think the existence of prediction markets will make the traditional
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: books eventually have to lower their juice from the standard
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: one to ten to maybe one oh five or closer
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: to one o five.
• 56:50
  Speaker 5: I I don't know. Are the prediction markets? See the
• 56:56
  Speaker 5: prediction markets, as I understand, and are mostly peered here.
• 57:00
  Speaker 5: They are well so that you know the Yes, there
• 57:05
  Speaker 5: were books that took less than one ten, but they
• 57:07
  Speaker 5: were they were, you know, basically as far as I knew,
• 57:12
  Speaker 5: they were kind of running a betting business and using
• 57:16
  Speaker 5: the action, using the books to make their bets, right
• 57:20
  Speaker 5: right right. You know, there's a there's a famous better.
• 57:25
  Speaker 5: Obviously you know who he is. And he used to say,
• 57:28
  Speaker 5: you know what's the problem. I mean, they're getting one
• 57:31
  Speaker 5: ten to one hundred, and I just want to make
• 57:33
  Speaker 5: a bet, and they don't want to take my bet.
• 57:35
  Speaker 5: You know, he wants a bet one hundred thousand, right,
• 57:38
  Speaker 5: And my answer to that would be we put up
• 57:41
  Speaker 5: three hundred lines a day. You know, if you want
• 57:44
  Speaker 5: to bet one hundred thousand an all three hundred, I'm
• 57:47
  Speaker 5: happy to take your action. But you just want to
• 57:49
  Speaker 5: sit there and cherry pick. You want to cherry pick
• 57:52
  Speaker 5: the one that's out of out of wine. You know.
• 57:56
  Speaker 5: That's that's that's the that's the difference in the business. So,
• 58:01
  Speaker 5: uh is one ten too high or too expensive for
• 58:05
  Speaker 5: the risks they need to cover?
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 58:08
  Speaker 5: I've been around in a while, you.
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: Know, how about how about this?
• 58:14
  Speaker 5: It wasn't I can tell you this. It wasn't a
• 58:15
  Speaker 5: high margin business. Even even with one ten to one hundred,
• 58:20
  Speaker 5: It wasn't like a high margin business, and and and
• 58:24
  Speaker 5: and on the live betting it was actually even the
• 58:29
  Speaker 5: margins were even lower than than the regular betting.
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: So last week Bette Bash was in town and h
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: I got to got to talk to Billy Walters again.
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: Uh, face to face.
• 58:42
  Speaker 2: We had a nice little conversation and uh, well you
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: know I've known him for twenty five more, maybe had
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: twenty eight years something like that. We want to tell
• 58:49
  Speaker 2: everyone you have any Billy Walter stories?
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: I think you do me. Yeah, I really don't think.
• 58:55
  Speaker 5: Okay, because he came, I was gone already.
• 58:59
  Speaker 2: Okay, I tell you had one something about Miller time.
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: Is that something else?
• 59:03
  Speaker 5: Oh? No, that was a guy. Okay, I'll tell you
• 59:07
  Speaker 5: that story.
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 59:08
  Speaker 5: That guy was very early when we started, and he
• 59:15
  Speaker 5: was our whale, I mean, and he would he would
• 59:19
  Speaker 5: bet and if he if he'd lose, he'd send more money.
• 59:23
  Speaker 5: He'd bet the second half if he'd win up. I mean,
• 59:26
  Speaker 5: he would just bet and bet and bet and bet, bet,
• 59:29
  Speaker 5: and he was he was wild, and you know he'd
• 59:32
  Speaker 5: send you know, and his deposits kept getting bigger and bigger.
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: But like one hundred thousand, half a million.
• 59:38
  Speaker 5: Well they after I left, So right before I left,
• 59:41
  Speaker 5: right before we got in trouble, right, I got an
• 59:44
  Speaker 5: email from him saying, I've come into a lot of money.
• 59:49
  Speaker 5: I like to step up my bets. Can I trust you? Guys?
• 59:53
  Speaker 5: And he had finally won something. He said, I know
• 59:55
  Speaker 5: you sent me thirty thousand recently, but I just want
• 59:58
  Speaker 5: to make sure I can trust you with this kind
• 59:59
  Speaker 5: of money. And I said, well, I said, you want
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 5: to send six figures like that usually Bryce and uh
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 5: a banquire and and I also, but also he was
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 5: indifferent the price, and our system would move the thing
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 5: on before we had a chance to move it back.
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 5: He would bet you know, minus three mins three and
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 5: a half minus four, minus four and a half minus
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 5: five until he drained whatever account he had. He was
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 5: indifferent to price. It was insane. He would run the
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 5: thing up before we even had a chance to all time,
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 5: and and his his last name was Miller. So when
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 5: when he would start betting and the machine would start
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 5: dinging and anyway it turns out. And then so then
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 5: he sends these banquips. This is after I left. This
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 5: is when I had first gone back, and he was
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 5: betting like crazy on baseball and he he, I guess
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 5: the bank. The bank retracted one wire and canceled another.
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 5: These are six figure wires, and they said there was
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 5: fraud involved. And so Steve calls his guy's number, and
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 5: his mother answers, and she said, oh, he's he's a
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 5: very sick boy. He's he would say he was working
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 5: at the bank. He was like a teller.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: Oh god.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 5: And originally, originally he was just kind of stealing from
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 5: the till to send all the western unions. And then
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 5: he somehow advanced to figuring out how to send the
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 5: actual bank wire.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: Wow, I didn't I didn't know this. I got more
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: serious here and.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 5: Then and then he went to his mother said he
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 5: went to some kind of gambling rehab and Steve, Steve
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 5: never missed. He's always the funniest guy in the world,
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 5: never missed the beat. And I was already home, you know,
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 5: because I had come back him and charged him. I'm
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 5: sitting on my thumb on my butt, and I talked
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 5: to Steve. He said, Jay, why don't you go check
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 5: into the same gambling rehab center as Miller sit.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 2: Down next to Yeah, that.
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 5: Is, and he is working in some kind of some
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 5: kind of you know.
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: It wasn't even like a big name man like a
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: mom and pop bank.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 5: Smell or something. Yeah. So that was him, and we
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 5: had another one years later. Again. I was I was
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 5: in prison when I heard this story. I'm sitting in
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 5: the visiting yard and one of our lawyers comes and
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 5: he tells me this story. He said, this guy he
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 5: was he was betting crazy on mainly blackjack, and he
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 5: was down hundreds of thousands of dollars in blackjack. And
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 5: he would always he was always flirting with the operators.
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 5: I'm going to come pick you up on my jet
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 5: and this and that. Yeah, it's always very, very friendly.
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 5: And it turns out he worked not only did he
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 5: work for a giant consulting company, he worked for a
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 5: consulting company. Its specialized in how to help companies prevent,
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 5: you know, do fraud prevention.
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: Okay, wow.
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 5: And so one of our lawyers comes, he comes, he
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 5: sees me in the prison visiting room and he said,
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 5: you're not going to believe this. He said, the FBI
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 5: called Antigua. They want they want records on this disguised
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 5: deposits and what he did with it. And I said, well,
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 5: the FBI hasn't know that down the hole, then they can.
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 5: They sent me out to prison for the same for
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 5: the same place, you know, And I said, well, this
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 5: is what I would tell them. I said, I would
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 5: tell them in honoring our license and whatever. Tell them
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 5: if you if the FBI comes to an antigue in
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 5: court and asks for this, and the antiguing court orders
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 5: this guy, we won't contest it. You know, we'll cooperate,
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 5: but we can't just you can't just send them stuff
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 5: because they knock on the door and say, give us,
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 5: give us this guy's details. It's guy, And as far
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 5: as I know, it got dropped. It never never went
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 5: any further. But I don't want to name the the
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 5: I won't name the consulting company. But the way the
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 5: guy did it was he sent the money and he
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 5: made his username like that of the consulting company, so
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 5: let's call it Actmere. And in the wire orders he
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 5: would say uh under the description he would say for
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 5: ACME LLLC, it was actually his gaming. So the company
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 5: thought the wires were going to something for the ACME company.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: R wow. Let me reframe that.
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 2: Billy Walters question, what did Steve learn from Billy Walters?
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 5: Well, I think he learned that, Billy. I think again,
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 5: I wasn't there when most of that was going on,
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 5: but I think Steve thought he could. Yeah. I mean,
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 5: obviously I think Steve met his match there. I mean,
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 5: I think Steve thought he could, you know, he could,
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 5: he could bet his plays. But then I think Billy
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 5: double crossed him. Billy figured out what he was doing,
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 5: and then you know he can't. He started sending in
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 5: the fakes to Steve. Steve would bet big somewhere else,
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 5: and then you know he's hold on second on the phone,
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 5: thank you.
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: Well, we're getting ready to wrap up, we're getting.
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 5: Well, yeah, I mean I think that's that's what's I think.
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 5: At first he thought it was great that he was
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 5: getting the inside line.
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 6: Right, and sure Billy didn't appreciate it when he was
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 6: getting used and and gave him, I mean, Billy the opposite.
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: So yeah, so Jay, you know, I want to ask you,
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: what's life like now? What do you do every day?
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 2: Are you are are you actively working or were you
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 2: actually were you looking for a job?
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: Is that what I read read? Well?
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean I I was working for a while
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 5: in finance. I had a local job and a remote job.
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 5: I gave up the local job, and then they had
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 5: layoffs where I had the remote jobs. And now I'm
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 5: kind of just floating in the ether. It's it's not
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 5: I have a wife and child here, and it's not.
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 5: It's not easy. It's not easy because where I am
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 5: doesn't pay a lot, even if I find something in English,
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 5: and it's always I've applied to a lot of jobs
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 5: in English speaking countries, and I honestly think that my
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 5: biggest hurdle is is when they say I need a visa,
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 5: they might say, hell, we got one hundred guys applied,
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 5: these ten are good, let's get let's what. Yeah, so
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 5: that's and plus I'm I'm old and you know wants
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 5: an old guy? Right, Yes, I am well credentialed. I've
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 5: picked up several financial credentials. I haven't wasted any time.
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 5: People say, why do you get all these credentials at
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 5: your agency? To make myself more marketable? Sure it doesn't.
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 5: Well it did help for a while with that that
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 5: one remote job that that the situation just changed there.
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know there's there's a Simpsons line, uh that
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 2: I know you love.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: Uh.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 2: Maybe there's no moral to this story. It's just a
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 2: bunch of stuff that happened. Yeah, after everything? Is that
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 2: how you see your own story?
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 6: Yeah?
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 5: I mean quite often. Yeah, I mean it's just I mean,
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 5: like you asked me earlier, what would I do would
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 5: I would I not do it. No, I would not
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 5: do it because I didn't want I didn't want that feeling.
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 5: I wish I fought the case a little differently. Yeah,
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 5: you know, kind of wish it, you know, something more
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 5: Perry Mason like stood up and yelled in court. But
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 5: would that worked? I don't know with that crazy.
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: Change, right right right? Yeah, yeah, looking.
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 5: Back, looking back, I was you know, I spent I
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 5: spent almost four years on bail. Had I just sat
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 5: in M d C, I would have been.
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: There, true things like that. Yeah.
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, I really appreciate you you being so transparent,
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 2: asking answer all the questions. And I'm sure we're going
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 2: to have a niche for this, uh this content, and
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 2: we really appreciate you having having you on Wisecracks and
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 2: look forward to seeing you again.
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 5: Thank you, John, thank you for having me. And uh,
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 5: I do remember that dinner at the Palm. I wish
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 5: I wish we could have it again.
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 2: Oh you know, I told you, Jonathan Lerner said today,
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 2: he said, ask Jay Cohen if he remembers he didn't
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 2: have enough money to pay the dinner bill. I didn't
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 2: even remember that, so I guess you know all these
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 2: people showed.
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: Up from the major wager site and I.
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 2: Think it was like sixty people whatever it was.
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: The bill was like seven grand.
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 5: You had five pay I paid it. I paid it,
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 5: you did pay it, I had it.
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: I need to do you remember everything? Yeah, And I said, well,
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: it's that's funny, but yeah.
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 2: No, it was a great get together and we were
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 2: all rooting for I'm still rooting for you now, of course,
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 2: and I'm sure people are appreciate having you on. Thank
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 2: you very I appreciate you coming on with us. Thank
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 2: you very much.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 5: Okay, thank you correctn