Florida handicapper Adam Meyer, who has been charged with extorting $25 million from Wisconsin‘s largest liquor distributor, 64-year old Gary Sadoff, claims he aided several government agencies in seizing more than $750 million from online sports betting operators.
Documents filed by Joel Hirschhorn, Meyer’s former lawyer, earlier this year that were under seal in a Wisconsin federal court were unsealed on Tuesday by the state’s federal court handling the charges against Meyer, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Meyer, 43 is the former head of prediction service Real Money Sports, which charged as much as $250,000 for betting tips. He was arrested in his Fort Lauderdale-area home in December 2014 after being charged with fraud and extortion and using a firearm to extort millions from Sadoff. The owner of Badger Liquor Co. Inc. in Wisconsin, Sadoff, was a client of the self-proclaimed “sports consultant to the stars.”
According to documents filed with the court in March by Hirschhorn, Meyer began to snitch in 2001 after he was indicted on unspecified charges. Meyer’s lawyer claimed there was a request for a reduced sentence, using the “public authority” defense due to the assistance Meyer provided to law enforcement, in a sealed motion in another federal case.
Meyer asserted the claim that he cooperated with several government agencies including the IRS, FBI, Secret Service and the New York Police Department’s Organized Crime Unit, resulting in “at least 30” individuals being arrested in addition to the dismissal of a US Treasury Department staffer and a Secret Service agent. Another claim by Hirschhorn was that Meyer’s work led to the seizure of “at least $750m from illegal offshore bookmaking operations by an FBI-led task force.”
In an attempt to strengthen Meyer’s one time plan to plead insanity, according to Hirschhorn, his client’s undercover work required that he befriend “members of the Mafia, loan sharks, extortionists, bookmakers, offshore bookmaking organizations, high profile and large wager gamblers.” Hirschhorn said that the alleged association between Meyers and these undesirables led to a lessening of his “executive functioning” capability.
Meanwhile, Meyer is being detained in Wisconsin after he violated the terms of his bail by failing multiple drug tests. Meyer has since abandoned his “public authority” defense and his trial is scheduled to begin in February, 2016.