What Happened to Joh nny Demarco?

[savage1]

Does anyone know what happened to Joh nny Demarco, arguably one of the biggest liars/scamdicappers of our time?
I haven't heard his irritating voice on any of the comp. lines in a while, and I was wondering whether he retired or was just "laughed away" because people found out what a liar he was.
ps remember Jack Price/Corey Black(head)? He also hasn't been heard from since June of 2005.

[Spark]

Atlanta’s John L. Edens alias ****** DeMarco, the Babe Ruth of 900 sales pitchers, will make you wish Alexander Graham Bell had never been born. According to published ads and taped phone calls, Edens:



Got on his 800 line and told listeners to call his 900 line for $25, “and if the game loses, there’ll be no charge.” That, of course, is a lie. Once a call is made on a 900 line, the charge is automatic.
Told customers of one of his phone services that his special guest-selector that day was “a former six-time NBA basketball All-Star who wishes to remain anonymous due to security matters.” The anonymous “All-Star” then got on the line and offered his inside information on “three big plays, tonight.”
Told his customers on another occasion, “Sporting Illustrated magazine calls the Handicapping Hotline the Number One value in sports.” Remarkably, there is no Sporting Illustrated.
Wrote in a print ad, which appeared in the schedule of games he sent out to customers in early 1991, that his service was rated “the very best available by the Interstate Sports Commission, the nation’s only legitimate monitoring service.” The ad failed to mention that the ISC is owned by a company with which, DeMarco acknowledges, he is “affiliated.”
Got on his 800 line in March 1989 and said he had spoken with then N.C. State coach Jim Valvano and had “key” information on the Final Four. Valvano says he has never spoken to DeMarco.

[Spark]

Saavy, We would have so much fun with these a couple of years ago ...

[savage1]

Spark-I recall at times his saying he had such notables as Dan Pastorini, Bill Walton and Dr. Jack Ramsay on his payroll and providing to him important and "inside" and "exclusive" information on who was going to cover the points on a given day.
ps Rememember also whenever you called he stated that within the last week or so a dime player was already up 50K or so playing his games. lol

[Spark]

Oh yeah ... He is ranked right up there with Jack Price ... hahahahahahaha

[Spark]

Meet Jack Price. He's here to bury your bookmaker. He once promised to blow his brains out if the football predictions he gave out to customers on his gambling-advice phone line were wrong. They were, but he and his brains are still with us. Meet Ron Bash, a.k.a. the Coach. He is here to pound your bookie. His ads say he took his team to the Final Four. Did he mention that the Final Four he took them to was in Division III? Meet Kevin Duffy. He once bragged in a New York Daily News ad, "I'm coming off a great weekend & as usual, all my customers crushed [their] bookmakers." Too bad the ad was delivered to the News's offices before any of the games were played. In a world of cheats, cons, grifters, swindlers, carnival barkers and people you would not want to change your fifty, the brotherhood of so-called sports advisors is a gutter unto itself. Consider the service that told its clients that because of a late change in the weather, they should bet the Kansas City Chiefs that day. Only problem-as Phil Mushnick pointed out in his New York Post column-was that the Chiefs were playing in Seattle, indoors, Or consider Final Score Sports, a nationally advertised service that once picked the Cleveland Browns to beat the Cincinnati Bengals on a Monday night. Unfortunately, the game was the Denver Broncos at the Buffalo Bills. Then there was the guy whose ad listed his brilliant 10-year record for Monday Night Football. Oddly, he had been in business for only five.

This is an industry in which duplicity is the leading economic indicator.

It is also a business in which profits can be enormous-some services are believed by at least one close observer of the industry to make as much as $1 million annually. Last year the people at the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs looked into the advertising practices of the sports-adviser business and came away with their hair on end. "These have been among the most egregious, outrageous claims we've ever encountered," says a department attorney, Fred Cantor.

The idea of sports advisers seems square enough. For a fee of about $300 a month, you call a guy who's really in the know about sports-particularly football-on his 800 number, and he tells you whom to bet on and how much to wager. Or you ring his 900 line, and for about $10 to $50 per call, he'll give you-most often in a recorded announcement-the one or two games that weekend on which he thinks you can make a score. The average gambler could use a leg up, right?

Not this kind. SI took a two-month test drive through the world of sports-advisory services and found misleading ads, bait-and-switches, repeated claims of fixes coming down, misrepresentation of records, unforgivably high-pressured sales techniques, phone harassment, phone threats, phony guarantees, mail fraud, wire fraud and some perfectly dreadful manners. Even the pictures lied. One man was shown in ads to be both Mountain Man Obie ("the legend who broke the bank at Tijuana [sic]") and Mike Zimbo ("the most feared name in Vegas"). Two years ago the Lombardi Sports Wire, a handicapping service based in Oceanside, NY, sent out different letters to two groups of its customers. One group was urged to take Pitt over Notre Dame in a "blowout," and the other was urged to take Notre Dame over Pitt in a "blow out." Apparently Lombardi felt strongly both ways.

Splitting games 50-50 like that-known in the biz as "double-siding"-is the oldest trick in the handicapper's very ***** book. That way he knows he has at least some happy customers coming back. The second-oldest trick is to have one of your services try to sign up customers who haven't been doing well with another of your services. Why not, when the same guy owns both? Then there was the salesman trying to hawk the Professor's Picks who told us, "We'll have a Play of the Year for you every three or four weeks."

Oops!

These touts, who are largely unregulated, try to come off as near clairvoyants who routinely hit 75% to 90% of the games on their lists. But the honest handicappers who allow themselves to be monitored independently are lucky to break 52.38%, which, with a bookie's 10% commission on losses, is the break-even point for the gamblers. The touts call themselves Bobby Cash, Edmund Slick, the Swami, Dr. Bob, Action Man, Bill (Get) Wells and Bob Winsmore. Very few names, as you may have gathered, are real. The services claim to have the latest in computer and satellite technology, as well as inside info from a sprawling network of scouts, trainers (Jeff Allen Sports claimed to have "200 trainers on our payroll"), reports, traveling secretaries, coaches and even athletes. In reality, what they usual have are six salesmen in a 10 x 12 office working banks of phones while the boss sits with the Gold Sheet on his lap, a hole in his shoe and a wild guess on his mind. Most advisers have no computer, no satellite, no sources and no more of a clue about whom to pick in tonight's game than your uncle Wolfgang.

"I remember once a guy needed a bailout game real bad," says a former salesman for a major tout operating out of New York City. "He was buried, so he wanted to put two or three dimes [$2000 or $3000] down on something good. I said I had a lock for him. I put him on hold, and I went into my boss's office and I said, 'Who do you want to pick, the Jets or Minnesota?' And he said, 'Take Minnesota. My mom likes purple.' So I gave this poor sucker Minnesota based on some lady's favorite color. He lost."

Ripoffs Rule the Roost, Exhibit A: the Professor's seven-days-a-week 900 Econ-O-Phone. For only $2 for the first minute and $1 for every minute after that, the Professor (Ed Horowitz, a 49-year-old former cocaine addict who claims he taught a course in taxation one year, part-time, at the New York City campus of Pace University) promises to give his "essential" selections. We tried it. For the first seven minutes, we heard a tape of the Professor-who babbled like a man at a podium looking for his notes-plugging his other phone lines and dispersing bits of gambling theory that never quite went anywhere. Finally, he came to the pick we'd paid for. Guess what it was-the New York Jets vs. Chicago Bears game from two nights before. He urged us to take the high side of the over-under (38); the total score of the game was 32 (Chicago won 19-13). It is not a good sign when you are picking games two days late and still screwing them up.

SI: I have a complaint.

Professor's operator: So call the complaint department.

SI: I called the Econ-O-Phone. It gave me the Jets and the Bears.

Operator: So, who'd he give you?

SI: It doesn't matter. the game was played Monday. Today is Wednesday.

Operator: Oh. Has this ever happened to you before?

SI: No, this was the first time I ever used it.

Operator: What game did you want?

SI: I don't know. Just seeing what he said about baseball.

Operator: We're concentrating on football now. Call back tomorrow night.

SI: But the ad says the deal operates seven days a week.

Operator: How much do you think you spent?

SI: Eight dollars.

Operator: You'll live.

Click.

Maybe the Professor has been distracted lately. On April 11, he was arrested in New York City on charges of possessing gambling records, a felony. The Professor plea-bargained down to a $5000 fine and a misdemeanor conviction. Police who raided his Queens office at the time of his arrest did not mention finding a complaint department.

Ripoffs Rule the Roost, Exhibit B: The Source, a sports-adviser service in Farmingdale, NY, owned by Stu Feiner, who also owns a few 900 call-in lines. Exhibit C is Feiner's brother-in-law, the aforementioned Kevin Duffy, perhaps the nation's most prominent adviser, who became famous for running ads that said, "I will go 7-0 for you today, absolutely free." Too bad "absolutely free" meant you first had to sign up for a month's service at $350. Then, if Duffy didn't go 7-0 in the first week, you got the next month free. Duffy, who operates out of Massapequa, Long Island, also claimed to be no worse than 75% right, ever. Yet when his picks were audited by the Sports Monitor of Oklahoma City, one of the rare legitimate monitors (among the dozens of such outfits that purport to keep tabs on the performance of tout services), he never fared better than 58.8% in any regular football season between 1985 and '88, and he sank as low as 39.7% for his college picks in '87. Eventually the Sports Monitor refused to monitor Duffy because of his "deceptive ad practices."

Feiner agreed to be monitored by SI for four weeks in September. To his credit, he unfailingly gave us his choices. To his discredit, Feiner went 19-32, a 37% win rate, and lost us an imaginary $6,210 based on $100 per unit. During that same period, we were anonymously calling Feiner's 800 number, where, curiously, he claimed to be cleaning up. On Sept. 23, for instance, after Feiner had gone 3-11 for the week on his picks for SI, bringing his record for us to 11-25, one of his shills, Kenny Leeds, said in response to our anonymous call, "This week I [meaning the company] went 3-0, the week before, I was 3-1." On Oct. 3, after Feiner had gone 7-7 for the weekend, we again called anonymously and got another Feiner salesman, Larry Marco. "This past weekend, we swept the board," Marco said. Then Leeds called back. "This kid Feiner is making betting history," he said. Yeah, so did Art Schlichter.

Feiner was fined $13,000 in February 1990 by the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs for false and misleading advertising, yet he sent out a promotional brochure last month that reported a "1991 documented record college and pro: 9-3." Knowing Feiner's record as we did, we asked him how he could say this. "That's what I had the first week." he said, before you started documenting me." Fine. That would've been the weekend of Aug. 31-Sept. 2. The booklet, however, was dated Sept. 19-Oct. 7, 1991. During one of our anonymous calls, Leeds told us he had "strong information" on a game he wanted us to buy, so strong it was a dead mortal lock, so strong that he was putting $2000 of his own money on the game. We were dubious.

Leeds: You don't believe me? I'll fly you out here [from Colorado].

SI: Fly me out there?

Leeds: I'll fly you to __ Long Island, and I'll have you take a ride with me!

SI: Why?

Leeds" To see how I pick it [his winnings] up and where I pick it up from.

SI: Can you fly me out this week?

Leeds: What I'm saying isÉI'm using-that's a little bit of a mild exaggeration. Don't get me wrong, but I've met a lot of my clients. I've met Dan Marino.

SI: You know Dan Marino? Leeds: Well, I stood next to him at the Super Bowl, and my friend took my picture with him.

Other than suffering the repercussions of having your home telephone number sold to dozens of other advisers, other than sitting through the constant pitches to pay for "special information games" or "steam plays of the year," other than getting con calls from the very same service claiming to be another service that heard you were looking for somebody new, you'll find dealing with 800 phone services is a real treat. true, Mike Warren, a nationally marketed Baltimore handicapper (whose real name is Mike Lasky), went 12-4 over the four weeks we purchased his picks, but before he would give us even one game, his salesmen bugged us to buy into bigger packages. One day is was the "once in a lifetime pick-six extravaganza."

SI: You mean none of our games is in your top six?

Warren salesman: No, you're getting about the eighth-best pick.

SI: How fair is that?

Salesman: You get what you pay for.

Feiner says that if somebody calls his 800 number and doesn't sign up, "We'll call him every day for a couple months, because eventually they'll change their minds.

At least with a 900 number you don't have to leave your home number and be subjected to callbacks from hard-selling touts. But since setting up a 900 service takes only a couple of thousand dollars, tops, and requires almost no overhead, and since no license or education is required, and since almost nobody's cracking down on misleading ads, just about anybody can get into the business. "I look at the papers and tout sheets," says Jimmy (the Greek) Snyder. "Every son of a bitch and his brother is in there. I don't want to be one of them." Of course, the Greek was one until last year, when Warren, who paid Snyder to use his name and picks, chose not to pick up his option. Snyder is now threatening to sue Warren over the terms of termination of the contract. Warren calls Snyder "the most unprofessional guy I even worked with."

That's funny. Some people say the same thing about Warren. Two former Warren employees told SI that during their tenure with him they received "hundreds" of letters from customers complaining of unauthorized charges of $50 and $75 made by Warren's company on their credit cards in late 1987 and early '88. Such phony charges can be challenged by a simple phone call to the credit-card company, but gamblers are reluctant to draw attention to their gambling activities. Besides, said one of the ex-employees, "Warren probably figured that gamblers wouldn't notice an extra charge." Both sources say they confronted Warren about the charges and were threatened by him. Both then quit. Warren wholly denies their claims. "There's never been a complaint about that by a customer," Warren says.

"Mike Warren is a pathetic handicapper and a tremendous con artist," says Feiner. Says Warren, "Stu Feiner? He's got a big mouth, always talking big. He knows this hoodlum and that hoodlum-gonna break my legs. You know what? He can't break an egg. I gave him my address. He's so short, the only thing he can reach is my legs."

If you think guys like Feiner and Warren will make you wish you have never installed your phone, Atlanta's John L. Edens, alias ****** DeMarco, the Babe Ruth of 900 sales pitchers, will make you wish Alexander Graham Bell had never been born. According to published ads and taped phone calls, Edens:


Got on his 800 line and told listeners to call his 900 line for $25, "and if the game loses, there'll be no charge." That, of course, is a lie. Once a call is made on a 900 line, the charge is automatic.
Told customers of one of his phone services that his special guest-selector that day was "a former six-time NBA basketball All-Star who wishes to remain anonymous due to security matters." The anonymous "All-Star" then got on the line and offered his inside information on "three big plays, tonight."
Told his customers on another occasion, "Sporting Illustrated magazine calls the Handicapping Hotline the Number One value in sports." Remarkably, there is no Sporting Illustrated.
Wrote in a print ad, which appeared in the schedule of games he sent out to customers in early 1991, that his service was rated "the very best available by the Interstate Sports Commission, the nation's only legitimate monitoring service." The ad failed to mention that the ISC is owned by a company with which, DeMarco acknowledges, he is "affiliated."
Got on his 800 line in March 1989 and said he had spoken with then N.C. State coach Jim Valvano and had "key" information on the Final Four. Valvano says he has never spoken to DeMarco.

Luckily for all of us, DeMarco/Edens has good intentions. "OK," he says, "so you go berserk on your ads-and some of the those are a little ridiculous-but if you can get people under your belt, you can help them more than you hurt them. Most gamblers are losers. You slow the guy down so he's only betting a couple of games, not the whole board." Hey, if this guy made a hole in one, he'd probably write down a zero.

[savage1]

Spark-thanks for posting what you just did-it isvery humorous but at the same time sadly true.
That article is dated for sure, but the same principles apply today in the internet era; thankfully because of forums like this, the good, bad and the ugly can be told to enlighten those who are just starting out or forever reason don't realize how many scammers there are out there who will do anything no matter how devious to get your money.

[wayne1218]

[savage1]

The same people who about Meet the Press.