Bamboozled (16 page)

A month after Joey went back to prison, the Feds pulled the plug on
Operation Matchbook
and on January 6, 2004, sixteen FBI agents raided Arum's office, removing computers, medical records, fight tapes, boxer contracts, and financial documents.

The warrant named Trampler, matchmaker Pete Susens, manager/agent Cameron Dunkin, and Sean Gibbons, who was fired later that month for reasons unspecified. Sean's history of being investigated prior to his employment at Top Rank came to light as well as how he had come to be known the “Oklahoma Meat Packer.”

When the
Las Vegas Sun
asked Oklahoma Department of Labor commissioner Brenda Reneau Wynn to elaborate on the allegations about Gibbons she emphatically said “Ugh.”

Boxing columnist Katherine Dunn wrote: “Oklahoma state boxing regulators reported that an Oklahoma meat packer named Sean Gibbons … ran a revolving stable of bad-to-mediocre boxers who traveled the Midwest pretending to fight each other under phony names, creating fraudulent wins for fictitious fighters with ‘respectable' records.”

While it was difficult to prove many of the charges, it appeared that Sean had a history of bringing in bribed fighters to lose multiple times, fighting under multiple aliasses to bolster the rank of fighters he was trying to promote. Compounding the charges alleging that he would bring in fighters from Mexico, were those accusing him of calling in the border guards to send them home without pay.

Investigator Skip Nicholson's 26 page report alleges that
Sean had “boxers using at least one other alias (sometimes three) and Social Security number, fraud, forgery and fight fixing.”

Arum, who personally had risked the most to help Torrey with huge amounts of cash and offering him his first professional fight well into middle age, finally became bitter when he understood that the man he had gone out of his way to help had conned and betrayed him, but he still did not comment and kept his PR staff mostly silent on the matter.

A spokesman for Top Rank did say the company “does not know the scope of the government's investigation” but intended to continue “lawfully co-operating with it”.

In a scene befitting of virtually everyone's perspective and behavior in this scenario, Arum's friend Bill Caplan paints Top Rank as the victim: “That's all [Joey] was. He was a con artist,” said Caplan, a fight publicist. “Bob just wanted to give the guy a break. He paid thousands in expenses for him, knowing he would never make anything. He was just trying to give him a chance at having a new life.”

Based on Frank Manzoni's reports that he compiled with Joey's help, police are now investigating allegations of fighters taking the ring under multiple aliases, soft match-ups to assist popular boxers and widespread “skimming” of fighters' fees by Top Rank executives. De La Hoya and Esch fights were both put under scrutiny amid suspicions that—quite unknown to either of them—their opponents were bribed to be beaten.

Even in Las Vegas, a city built on a history of crime, the citizens were transfixed by the story of one of the most colourful police operations in the city's history.

Joey says that the most common question he is asked is “What was the best experience
in your two years of freedom?” Contrary to what you might expect from a man who endlessly partied on the FBI's dime till the wee hours of the morning with cocaine and prostitutes, he claims it was “seeing the world at a lower level from hostel to hostel, bus to bus, and his final month in Mexico and South America.” And perhaps that's true. Perhaps all of the excess was just his expression, yearning for something missing in his life.

Eligible for parole since 1994, Joey has become increasingly bitter about his extended sentence and lack of prospects.

And to this day he waffles back and forth between the mantra he repeated through B.A.D. and YDI,
“reject the easy path of victimhood.”
and, well, does exactly that, claiming that he is the victim of the FBI, the judicial system, the mob, and even the street gangs. He says “The decisions that you make today can and will matter in years to come, so why blame it on bullshit and stop being a victim.”

But yet, as recently as 2012, as Joey watched three inmates be taken to the Parole Board for release, he again paints himself as the victim.

Joey describes the situation as: “It was not the parole board that freed those men: No, it was that those inmates had family and money to be able to ‘pay' for there loved one to be freed!” One of the men was denied for five years. He had no representation and was serving life for 3 strikes after being caught with one gram of cocaine.

The other two had committed grisly crimes. One had served 15 years on a rape and murder, and another 18 years for
killing his own daughter. They were all released.

In the same wind, Joey blames his lack of family, his lack of representation, and his lack of cash as the reasons he hasn't been freed. It's as if he hasn't read the clear legal briefs about why Pamela Frohrenrich went after him so fervently for so many years—that his lack of remorse, his distortion of the truth, and, yes, his twisting of the details of each situation to make himself appear as the victim.

Joey fails to accept that the DA sees remorse in these men. Instead, he'll give you an extended speech about how unfair it is that a good lawyer costs good money and how freedom shouldn't have a price. While we can all more or less agree to that as a rough and moral concept, the particulars are where it gets nasty.

There are things that we may never know. Did Joey walk into the FBI office in San Diego and offer dirt on Top Rank, thinking that it would assist him in his parole hearings? There doesn't seem to be any reason why the FBI would lie about this detail.

We may never know if the man Joey murdered was his crooked boxing manager withholding money from him, but his perspective differed notably from the stories that his friends told. While I'm sure that many reading this far can relate to what it's like to be a painfully bored teenager longing for a more interesting life, it can never justify the crimes that Joey does admit to, even if you accept that his home life was less harmonious than it would appear on paper.

Like clock work, Joey receives numerous letters from attorneys vowing to have him paroled for five to ten thousand dollars. He was appointed the great Tracy Lum, Esquire who informed him that it was a good time to be released, but without his pals at the FBI or Top Rank, Joey no longer receives monthly checks of $5,000-10,000 and can't change how he spent each of them on a month of partying.

On May 29, 2009 Joey was scheduled for another parole board hearing. He was 100% sure that this time he would be released and that “justice” would prevail.

As Joey walked into the parole board room that hot May day, he sensed that something was wrong. As Joey was seated he saw an elderly man with a gold shirt and green pants nudge down his glasses and state, “I don't care who you were or who you are, this is gonna be a fair hearing.”
Yeah, right,
Joey thought, smiling, and said, “Good morning to you too sir.”

These are the transcripts from that May 2009 appeals court hearing:

If you've read this far, you know that Joey's start date was long before 2004, but a “misunderstanding” like this is not something an inmate serving a life sentence can easily correct without an expensive attorney.

Joey's state-appointed attorney explained to the commissioner that Joey had served his time and the only reason Joey was appearing in front of him was based on being eligible for parole.

Joey's attorney stated: “I will leave a record for ‘our appeal,' and I will get you free.” Joey again thought freedom would be right around the corner.