From the Miami
Herald, November 22, 2007
http://www.miamiherald.com/775/story/318446.html
Offshore sports gambling
'pioneer' tells about wild life
By ADRIAN SAINZ
Associated Press
Business Writer
MIAMI -- He learned at the knee of his bookmaker father in New York, took
street bets in his teens, and partied with Las Vegas high-rollers. He made
millions of dollars as a self-proclaimed offshore sports gambling
"pioneer," flirted with Internet gambling and was pinched by the FBI.
That's the story of Steve Budin,
who saw his life come crashing down when he was arrested in 1998 in the first-ever
U.S. prosecution of Internet sports betting.
His life is detailed in his book, "Bets, Drugs and
Rock & Roll." Released in early October, the book has been ranked
among the most popular sports books on Amazon.com. It shows the birth of
offshore sports gambling, which by the early 1990s left behind the street
bookies for a system where bettors could pick games from their home, making
calls to a sports book in Central America with credit card in hand.
"Even though we were offshore sports book pirates and
pioneers, we lived like rock stars. We were wrapped up in the middle of an MC
Hammer video in the 80s," the quick-tongued Budin
said from his downtown Miami office.
"We had the big houses and big pools and the tons of
people and the parties. But don't get me wrong. We work very, very hard, 16
hours a day."
Gambling on sports became a much-discussed issue this
year when NBA referee Tim Donaghy pleaded guilty to
felony charges for taking cash payoffs from gamblers and betting on games he
officiated. Sports gambling is essentially illegal in
every state but Nevada, where sports books in Las Vegas casinos attract
gamblers from around the world.
In addition, there are many sports books located in
foreign countries that provide credit card processing and allow people to make
bets over the Internet.
Budin went to high school in Miami, where he
began building an affluent client list, plying an illegal sports gambling trade
by tapping his New York financial connections and using charm and street
smarts.
"You don't go to college and major in being a
bookie," Budin said. "... The people that
you're going to deal with are the type of people that work on the street, and
those aren't nice people."
By the time he was in his 20s, Budin
decided to enter the legitimate gambling world, so he began conducting gambling
junkets for high-rollers in Las Vegas, where the vices mentioned in the title
of his book proliferate.
One of his clients told Budin
he had a license to begin sports betting in Panama for residents of that
country, an effort that failed miserably. But Budin's
vision led him to the idea of offering telephone bets for U.S.-based gamblers
in a friendly foreign country where laws and politicians permitted such
activity.
He secured some money from investors he calls his silent
partners and refers to only by aliases "Bo" and "Donnie."
He moved his operations to Costa Rica and SDB Global began fielding telephone
sports bets from U.S.-based bettors.
"Part of the reason why we made the whole offshore
movement was to transition the business and take it from a shady street
business and make it the Wal-Mart of sports betting and bring it to the masses
in a way that they had never been given it before," Budin
said.
The enterprise took off, making Budin
a multimillionaire. By 1998, several years into his offshore gambling business,
SBD Global was clearing a profit of $10 million a year.
As Internet technology improved, Budin
started preparing to take bets in cyberspace rather than the phone, a move he
expected to generate hundreds of millions of dollars. He had a goal of taking
sports gambling to the World Wide Web in March 1998.
That's when the U.S. government stepped in before he
could ever take one Internet bet. Budin and more than
a dozen others, including his father, were charged with conspiracy for allowing
thousands of people to bet on professional and college sports events, breaking
a 1961 law making it a crime to use interstate telephone lines for gambling,
and advertising their services on the Internet.
Then-Attorney General Janet Reno said at the time that
the Internet was "not an electronic sanctuary for illegal betting."
Father David Budin pleaded
guilty while Steve Budin's prosecution was deferred
in lieu of $2.5 million in fines, the son said. Some defendants fought the charges,
while others remain fugitives.
Steve Budin was forced to start
over, and today he has a successful Web site where he sells sports gambling
tips for $20 a pop.
One industry observer, Russ Hawkins, says Budin's claims of being a pioneer are just bragger's words.
Hawkins, chief executive of majorwager.com, a sports gambling information Web
site, said other offshore sports books existed before Budin's
and he did nothing new.
"He's a lot of talk," Hawkins said. "He's
trying to make money on a book. He's all bravado."
Brandon Lang disagrees. Lang - whose ability to pick
football games was portrayed in the film "Two for the Money," with
Matthew McConaughey playing Lang's character - is a
friend of Budin's and wrote the foreword to the book.
"There is jealousy that runs rampant in this
business," Lang said. "They mix up his confidence with conceit. He's
one of the sharpest people I have ever met."
Budin laughs when he calls himself brilliant
or a genius, but one can tell he's only half-joking.
He said he learned from his past and says his wife and
three children - not illegal bets or drugs or rock and roll - are his No. 1
priority.
"I've lived on the edge my whole life and that's
something that obviously appealed to me. Maybe the book was a little bit of
therapy," he said. "I have to be close to the edge, or else it's not
fun for me. I'm just not standing over it anymore. I've moved two steps back
from the edge. I think that's a big growth."