Adam Meyer, once the self-proclaimed ‘sports consultant to your stars,’ was sentenced to eight years in prison for charges fraud that is including extortion, racketeering and brandishing a firearm.

Meyer’s case was bizarre. Here had been a high-rolling handicapper, who once boasted that his client list ‘reads just like the front page of Variety,’ accused of impersonating a shadowy fictional gangster of his own innovation to be able to perpetrate a $45 million fraud that ended in the violent attack of the Wisconsin liquor magnate.

In his defense, Meyer advertised insanity, drug addiction, and he was an undercover agent. Also more bizarrely, the claim that is latter really be true.

Bogus Bookies

Meyer had been the CEO of betting consultancy site Real Money Sports, which charged clients up to $250,000 for his activities betting advice.

A slick, media-savvy operator, he made regular television and radio appearances as a tipster, billing himself as the man who had won over $1 million betting on the Green Bay Packers at Super Bowl XLV.

He told their clients he had a highly improbable 64.8 % edge over the bookies.

One such client was Gary Sadoff, 64, the aforementioned liquor magnate; the master, in fact, of the Badger Liquor Company of Wisconsin, the biggest booze distributor in the state.

Based on the documents, Sadoff began tips that are buying Meyer back 2007 while the pair were buddies. As well as offering tips, Meyer would also hook his clients up with offshore bookmakers, who would accept their very bets that are large no concerns asked.

Meyer claimed, falsely, he had no commercial relationship with these bookmakers, whereas, in reality, client money had been often wired to records he actually controlled.

Wong Number

When Sadoff made a decision to stop his expensive gambling habit, Meyer concocted a tale. Meyer’s life is at risk because he owed money to a fictional bookie gangster named Kent Wong, and because Wong believed that Sadoff and Meyer had been lovers, Wong held him responsible for Meyer’s debt, and was coming for him.

Meyer would also telephone Sadoff, pretending to to be Wong, complete with a Chinese accent, threatening and demanding money from the businessman.

When Sadoff declined to deliver more income, the situation escalated. Meyer as well as an associate flew to Wisconsin and threatened Sadoff with a gun, until he was coerced into providing a further $9.8 million.

Meyer, and their associate, Ray Batista, were arrested soon after the incident, in December 2014, therefore the latter sentenced to four years in January.

Insanity Plea

Meyer’s solicitors stated their client ended up being addicted to drugs and had mental wellness dilemmas in which ‘a different identity, or personality, periodically surfaces to Meyer’s detriment.’

Meyer additionally stated the ‘public authority’ defense, and that their crimes were committed during the behest of several US government and police agencies for whom he was an undercover agent. He said he was used by authorities to root down illegal activities betting operations.

The appropriate authorities deny this, but documents unsealed in June, and kept secret from the public on the behest of Meyer’s lawyers, suggest, at least in a kind that is conspiracy-theory of, that there could be a modicum of truth into the claim.

Working for the Feds?

In 2007, the year he advertised he started working for the feds as an undercover agent, Meyer was arrested for scamming $6 million from casinos in Nevada and Connecticut. Considering he currently possessed a criminal conviction at this time, he had been staring down the nose at a probably nine years imprisonment. Alternatively, he received two years probation.

‘That’s maybe not a big departure [from sentencing guidelines],’ Jeffrey Cramer, a previous federal prosecutor in New York and Chicago, told the Milwaulkee Journal-Sentinal after it presented him with the facts. That is huge. That’s absolutely huge.’

Did the activities consultant to the stars cut a deal with the feds in exchange for leniency? Unexpectedly Meyer’s assertion that he helped the FBI seize $750 million from offshore bookies does not appear quite so angry after all.