Joe Rogan Experience #2107 — Billy Walters Transcript

Transcript

0:00 Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out! Not really. I knew George. He's a great man. did some public-private partnerships with local government and didn't make any money. Yeah, I would agree with that. You essentially started gambling in a pool hall when you were about six years old. oldest sister, my aunt on my father's side took my other sister, and my And so I learned a lot of things from her early on in life that have been extremely important

3:32 But when I was around four, my grandmother, I'm six I'm racking balls in Uncle Harry's poolroom and playing pinning I did and I have. Excuse me. There's been a lot of... You know, if you make a commitment to anything, I had a passion for it. Well, I started off playing penny nine ball and by the time And so there was a combination of confidence Yeah, I lived in New York. I was playing eight hours a day. Okay. Yeah

7:53 And of course, over the years, Ronnie Allen, I'm sure you know Ronnie Allen. You're looking for injuries, you're looking for every possible advantage. his edge. And I recruited six other guys that had similar backgrounds to his. And In order to win handicapping, you have to come up with new ideas and you have to Every year? and see if we can find something that would have made a difference

11:11 I love it. or that quantified difference with the outcome of a game Because that's when you can bet the most money. and all sports are different, some sports sports you know college football a non-power five conference team you know But when you're looking at Louisiana Tech or you're looking at one of these other teams, smarter bookmakers than the bookmakers today.

14:42 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 pets on one side as he does the other and the volume equal out and you've earned the is I want to take as many bets as I can take, as early as I But you have different strategies from different guys.

17:10 who, to be their bookmaker, and they'll look at that guy's, He's been interviewed, and you read the things that were written about him, and you would trying to, a lot of things that they do in my opinion, it keeps action down, so to speak. Sometimes they take $20,000. And they're gonna force somebody back that really understand Well, prior to the internet, some of the information today that you can get off your smartphone

20:09 And we bring them back and we had readers Anything that that beatwriter writes or anything that comes out on Twitter or social media, A lot of time, the time involved with it But the other thing I used to do is I would call So you would send people to the airport, you know as an example if a coach says look, you know, we're gonna, you know, we're gonna slow this thing down.

22:45 especially the quarterback. there's 1400 players in a field, Again, we listen and we follow Dr. David Chow quite a bit. We got 140 beat writers we cover. A qualitative guy? that week. And then if a player is worth a point and a half we may downgrade him to he's and you'll see the score, it wasn't indicative at all and ended up in a real long completion and a touchdown.

26:11 thing, you know, you look at the time of possession. Well, if you look at Pittsburgh's performance We wrote what we call the master class, okay? as important to them or more important than handicapping is. a half a point what the fair price is to pay. And all these points to have a different value is an example. But if it's 23, you're better off taking a two and a half.

28:50 I also put another section in there. I would not have sold that information ten years ago for $20 million, and I never had that was one of the reasons I wrote the book. or your betting on the NASCAR, everyone thinks making a bet on a sporting event your land 11 to 10. I wouldn't even think about playing them, But the average person who's playing them,

32:01 they're making these bets, Well, what I'm getting from you is that to be a successful sports gambler requires an They want to bet their team. I fall sports, I think Kansas City's gonna win. It's not, it's complicated, very, very complicated. And to win at a level that you won at over your Joe the world's made up of a lot of different kind of people as we both know, but no, I

34:34 One guy might put a little bit more flour in than the other guy does and so that's how we end up with different There's a lot of things the larger better I make. let's say I would have to have a minimum of say a point and a half differential from the line they make If they made it nine and a half, I would bet four units. be Pickham. on a Super Bowl game, how much time are you researching?

37:13 And, you know, clearly if they're playing some injury or something that, you know, How much do you think that goes on today? Things have happened in the past, but you know who uncovered each and every one of those? Joe and like say Wall Street 99% of the time, okay? They were shaving points and I lost the bet and by now I'm taping the games, I'm looking at the games.

40:49 And then later on, I think one of them got kind of caught up in a drug deal. I mean, you got guys who no one's ever laid eyes on And in order to do that, they want every sports book in town. I didn't know exactly who was doing it. to break in jails what they were trying to do. anything that involves integrity of sports, People quit betting on the games.

44:07 $250,000 on an NFL basketball game it would probably move a point and a half two points I see you know something that's out of the ordinary to be doing what they're doing in, betting on sports or investing in stocks. it well, I know how small the market is. Everybody who has an account, you take all of these young players that haven't, you know, Maybe they did, maybe they didn't. But we've had a few of them out there now,

47:26 You're seeing an outcome of a game that doesn't make sense I'm not saying it didn't happen, but I've never heard that allegation. So he was always betting for his team. pluses and minuses, I may have a different opinion Was he ever accused? to taint his reputation even for a while? No, I think he did bet on his team. No, against. no one would ever think anything of it.

50:45 Are you aware of the UFC betting scandal? And he was letting these people in this online betting group know that one of the people that he was involved with was injured of to figure out a line. He had better fighters than I did, record-wise. again, well the NFL, you know, you talk about transparency, Now, famously, many Pacquiao was injured going into the Floyd Mayweather fight.

53:35 You and my friend Kevin Howley, would it make any sense to make that a requirement to disclose if you found out that a fighter was injured. and he can't really adjust on the feet human being you're dealing with and they can win that way. Like it doesn't you'll have one car that's so off. and then I'll be like, how? and the last one was so egregious that she kind of just went away.

56:38 take them to dinner, maybe you do whatever you can do to get inside their Oh, yeah. We you know, it's you know just I That's the only way to get him on the card. guy, I mean, they'd be ranked in the top 10. But I still love boxing, I love fighting, Good guy. But a guy like you that knows as much as you Like I can look at a fighter like a guy like Ilya to pour you who just won the world title against Volkanowski

1:00:55 It's complicated and then you have to take into account, you know there's not a more robbed feeling in the world. Well, I'll be back in the 80 way, a lot of those controversial decisions in boxing like that, where there's so much money invested in this fighter and there's so much money Yeah. That's crazy. You have to factor that in. How would you, like, so when you were

1:03:19 Did you really? It was a weird one. He embodied discipline. He was the man. That's a great skill. your whole brain has to do all these extra calculations. Orthodox fighter and then two weeks out that guy gets injured and then another Oh yeah. I'm not a left-handed person So what was the biggest fight that you ever put on? and he's fighting some kid out of LA.

1:06:56 Hispanic kid and this this kid's fighting Terry and you looked at the I think Terry's probably gonna knock him out But he didn't have a lot of power, his mouthpiece went out. in check and they're completely off. And I said, by the way, I need to borrow $50,000. but it's one of the best fights I've ever seen in my life. prison, I'm in Pensacola and I get letters and I got a letter and I hadn't

1:10:22 And he said, Billy, said, And it's all about that night, that fight at the Aussie and how he wasn't going to lose And I need to borrow 50,000. I went to jail for insider trading. I got I was in at 16 years I got out, I went into the automobile business. I was in it 16 years. an SEC investigation, the initial investigation was into myself and Carl Icahn.

1:13:07 and I owned a large amount of this stock. Well, yeah, Mark Man was. charged with being a part of a criminal conspiracy conspiring to bet on sports my sports betting. I was charged with being part of a criminal conspiracy, conspiring to bet on sports, betting The vote was 11-1 to acquit us and come to find out that one guy voted against us hadn't for the same thing, betting on sports.

1:16:15 And then I'm involved in New York originally with a guy with Carl Icahn, one of the most to prison. Three of them have gone into private practice today. They're sole people with white collar crimes. So they went from what they were doing to these very high paying jobs making a lot of is I started, I began to write this book in 2003 So I had to write this book.

1:19:03 You know, I got in business. Every time there was a visitation where I was at in prison, I had someone who visited I mean, tough guys, I mean tough guys, you know, ripped guys that And they, you know, they didn't have no job skills set. Well a former sheriff in Las Vegas bill young But I met with John Ponder and became really impressed with him. right with your family. And that's the reason this program works so good. And

1:23:00 You've got the head of corrections for Nevada. have someone who's been out of the program for a year, two years or five years. in Nevada prisons. And I got there and there was another speaker. away with her speech. First time offense, they gave her life in prison You can kind of see, you know, they were kind of disinterested, So I kind of explained to them while I was there what my background was, the fact that

1:27:01 those men that I remembered that I mentored. And I think there's a much greater chance that that child will follow in those footsteps And I see the way that sports is being marketed, And then on top of it, there's no law whatsoever now So I wanted to put that in the book. That's beautiful. the stock, take advantage, unfair advantage, illegal advantage,

1:30:03 I was trying to buy American golf and national golf properties Then he would call us on deals in Las Vegas I played in a member guest with him one time at La Jolla Country Club. golf with him. I played to remember guests with him one time in court and it looked like he ended up with some sort of uncontrollable issue I think when I got involved with it early on,

1:32:34 Well during the years, people quit drinking a lot less milk. And that was really the play with the stock. And there were a lot of things that had material influence on how they were going to do as a company. a very small investment. Well, they had an earnings report that month in May and I had put a limited order in to If it goes past 10, I don't want any,

1:36:13 Stock went up about a dollar and twenty cents. I bought another 750,000 shares of Well what he did that I went back in and I bought another, say, Both those things were temporary. wave stock. Stock goes up about four dollars and a half a share. I didn't so I bought a home in a place called Big Horn Country Club. that the earnings were going to be bad.

1:39:09 That was one of the charges. the following August, which was a year after they announced publicly they were going to So the SEC, they were doing their investigation. and one of the stories they put Toll them under no circumstances that they ever give me any inside to have to show this withdrawal in this entry. they had him for embezzlement, they had him for tax fraud and they believed they had him

1:42:58 take that back. He represented President Biden's son. But he had to withdraw himself from a So Chris Clark, there's another young lawyer who had just joined their firm, and this young So they go up there and decide they're going to make a deal with the government and return What a proffer is, Joe, if you meet with prosecutors Well, Davis went to have these proffer sessions with the FBI and the prosecutors and pertaining

1:45:20 for you to explain to someone, you know, And in court, he said, I never asked him for any of them. that I met in 2000, 2002, the guy that used to own But it gave you an idea how wacky this guy was. So anyway, so that was their only witness against me, Joe. Crime Investigation Unit in New York. His name was David Chavez. said we were on a fishing expedition.

1:48:26 which completely shocked them because normally the judges are just a rubber stamp form up there and they But they sent this letter over to this judge. and, and we want to fess up. But we want you to keep this Well, finally the judge did make the letter public and, uh, don't copy the letters in His name is Protus. And when he was forced to do the correction, he was upset

1:51:10 He's right under Preet Bahara. what happened. if she were to call you up and interview you, Icahn's name was in there. for eight years of prosecutors. contempt and obstruction of justice. in retrospect, like I said, 31 months to think about this, our case went on for a little He couldn't stay on the jury any longer. And we talked about it, And he was on there for one reason.

1:56:03 or whether the guy was going to leave or whether he wasn't. unless I explained my relationship with him. with me and he was afraid to testify with the SEC because he was concerned they would and they tell them something that ends up getting you And well, the prosecutors weren't about to call him because they knew what he was going trade. didn't do something wrong or he wouldn't buy in his way out. That's what the average guy thinks, right?

1:59:22 I mean, that I didn't put in there and I'm not going to put in there. I only put the stuff in there that involved our I have a fellow who works with me, advises me on a lot of things. extremely respected journalist. He'd done 12 books. He's a highly highly well-known extremely respected journalist but someone who no one would question their credibility.

2:01:19 I can't say enough good things about Armick. inside and out, and you can ask either one of the, It was rough. Also, it's fucking dangerous. The, I went to Pensacola Prison and I hired a prison consultant. Well, I go there and there had been a story written And this building, this is where Naval Airmen There's 200 men on this floor. Medical care there was, it was pitiful.

2:05:40 It's like in February. Guy goes back in, this doctor's death. I mean, really, really sick. I got chewed out for coming back down. multiple occasions so the good thing about the place was there were no bars horrible. It's like, I saw some guy the other day You think it's a country club, partner, and I wouldn't sell this doctor, I worked in the laundry myself.

2:08:48 But I mean, it just, anyway, it is what it is. If you do have a medical issue and you truly do have the flu and it's diagnosed by the I filed a federal lawsuit in New York. Do you know that not one media organization in New York even reported the lawsuit? Yeah. of limitations. The only suit that I filed. There's only suit I could file And then they turn that over to the judge with a recommendation, their recommendation.

2:13:02 board of directors, That part I understand. Okay, but So the Supreme Court comes along later on and they rule that a portion of those fees You know, look, I'm not the only guy who's been through something similar to this. than I did for myself. until the people who make the laws do something about this. The problem I see there is when the bad ones they have, the good ones start to blind eye

2:15:36 we learned this through our discovery. I mean, I've had people are very close to me when I decided to write this book and when get prosecuted. Okay, what can I do with Chavez? I can't do anything with Chavez. I can't All the time, partner. everybody would kind of think well the books written about this guy as a your case, your story involves the FBI, involves the New York Times, it involves

2:18:31 business, dangerous, you're involved with all sorts of Wow. It was a country music joint. I didn't have a garage and I pull up from the condo and I got out of the car. The old shotgun was jumping up and down. And I used to play a lot of poker out there, I mean, it clearly was an inside job. So you and your mind gets erased and I figure, well, they pull out,

2:21:45 So I got a tire tool and I tried to get the truck open. and punched a hole in the backseat of Yeah, you're right. they did to you. and completely focused on, you know, making money, you know. And that's been one of the most fulfilling things Billy, tell everybody the title of the book where they can get it. And is there an audio book available? The book's called Gamma, Seekers from a Life at Risk.

2:24:59 I got earphones on like we have now. four times. The second day, it took me 40 days, 40 hours to do this thing. The publisher, Well thank you. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it and I have nothing