Chapter One pages 10-13/150

Claude built an impressive sports gambling empire that covered over 200,000 square feet of office space and facilities to cater to gamblers throughout the world. He used the media and media professionals like me to induce gamblers to log onto his site BetOnSports and many other sites that he was partnered with and held ownership. The majority of people that gambled through BetOnSports were treated fairly but along the way enough people were robbed of time, services, and money by BetOnSports and ultimately the owner is responsible which turns out to be Claude. Claude might have gone too far when greed got the best of him and he allegedly stole from investors after selling his company in a public offering on the European Stock Exchange. The sale apparently wasn’t a clean sell with excessive fudging of numbers by his CEO and puppet Mr. Jay Gaynor a scrawny man that seemed more appropriate in an accountant’s office as opposed to running a multi-million dollar corporation. Claude’s luck ran-out when he was nabbed by international law enforcement officials while vacationing off the coast of Venezuela for numerous violations ranging from tax evasion to money laundering. Now he sits in that steamy hot Dallas jail cell waiting to do battle with federal prosecutors in the battle of his life. The man has plenty of money; some say more than a hundred million and will be able to get the best in legal counsel. Rumor has it his attorneys have influential contacts in allied governments that can influence the case.

I know I will never be selected for jury duty because I was one of many theft victims by Mr. Ripner’s company. I was robbed for over $300,000 worth of services. I provided professional consulting and media for Claude on a regular basis in Costa Rica and as a representative in the US. Ironically all of Claude’s troubles could have been avoided had he listened to me about building relationships and paying taxes to the US government but Claude wanted it all, no amount of money was enough for him, he had a sickness for greed. Rather than establish good relations with the US which produced most of his customers he preferred to establish relations with European investors and then promptly took his investors for an Enron joy ride.
Some people thought Claude was a marketing genius but working with him over the course of two years and watching him from afar a few more years, I know that not to be true. As an amateur marketer he was no different than a big time car dealer that is good and needs to feed his ego by winning the battles of negotiation. Claude could negotiate but run a top notch advertising campaign; He could not. He depended on others. He was human and being a great business owner takes considerable dedication and hours. Prior to my presence I thought Claude was brilliant also. I read numerous magazines and saw the illusion of brilliance with massive amounts of advertising in regular magazines. This would overshadow my skepticism about periodicals that were mailed for free to my address because they all ranked the same 5 sports books in their top 5. I also questioned the internet advertising. There were self-proclaimed watchdog organizations which I had never heard of before. Companies like the International Gaming Association and the Offshore Gaming Council. Who were these organizations? What gave them credibility? All I could see was a logo.

I believe Claude stole more ideas then he actually produced. He would promise to pay someone for their consultation but then neglect payment hiding behind international borderlines for protection. Once Claude neglected a payment the chances of contacting him via telephone or internet were less than a junior college football team winning the Rose Bowl. If the opportunity was there to neglect payment he chose not to pay. I could safely presume that Claude’s single goal was to win at all cost and amass a fortune in the process with no regard for who he stepped on. He amassed his fortune and in his wake lie a lot of people holding onto bills that were unpaid by Mr. Ripner and his company. Fact is Claude was BetOnSports. He was a major hands on owner. No money was sent out without his approval. No decisions were made without his approval. If you made a decision and Claude wasn't part of it or if he didn't choose to remember being part of it he would stick you with the bill or use the decision of an employee or contracted professional to default on a payment. He seemed immune to responsibility. When it came to getting freebies Claude was right between the Pope and the US President. Problem is most people and companies never realized they were giving Claude a complimentary service until after the fact.

I first found out about BetOnSports and Claude Ripner, the iron fisted owner while working as a partner with Doug Patton, my great mentor and teacher along with gambling buddy at the Patton Marketing Firm just outside of Detroit, MI. BOS an abbreviation for BetOnSports was a new client that was referred to us through one of Doug's buddies, Mr. Mark Wolf, a land developer that had recently taken on a large project in Costa Rica where he met up with Claude Ripner, the owner of BOS. I wagered through Mark who was a questionable character himself known to fill the pockets of prominent athletes at the local University. Mark let me use his log in name and password to gamble at BetOnSports. Mark had a substantial amount of money in the account which I would later find out was just a $100,000 line of credit, which is a violation of US law.

While not gambling Doug and me placed media for cable television in various Midwestern markets for BOS. During that fall we proposed numerous other opportunities including advertising with Sports Illustrated and Time Warner. After a long hard negotiation on behalf of BOS with Sports Illustrated we finally had a deal that Claude had pre-approved. We were to run a full page ad in Sports Illustrated during the fall of 1999. Doug faxed the contract to Claude and we got no response. Finally after making numerous phone calls to Costa Rica, Claude’s assistant Caroline informed us that Claude had no idea Sports Illustrated was a weekly magazine and the minimal shelf life was his reason to back out of the deal. She also told us that Sports Illustrated was too expensive at $85,000 an issue and Mr. Ripner thought that would be too much to spend for a week. The Account Executive at Time Warner/Sports Illustrated was pissed! He made considerable concessions to get BOS into the magazine even going to the highest offices of Time Warner to get approval which included legal time spent to analyze the business.

This waste of time by Claude was extremely unprofessional and Doug wanted nothing more to do with BOS or online gaming saying they were just shopping for deals which was a sign the client would undercut an agency given the chance. Doug proved to be very prophetic. Time Warner was equally annoyed and would ban the industry for nearly 7 years before a relatively unknown company in 1999 would break down the Sports Illustrated barrier with their intelligent use of marketing strategies.
This move by Ripner who was now nicknamed “The Ripper” by Doug and I was hideous considering he was such a supporter of print advertising and to back out of arguably the best publication in sports where he could reach the greatest masses of his target market made zero sense. The idea that a one week shelf life made any difference showed his lack of understanding advertising because Sports Illustrated readers tend to spend the same amount of time on each magazine as other monthly magazines due to its superior quality. This decision was an early clue for me that Claude needed help. I would later find out that Sports Illustrated was less than double of what he was paying in Maxim Magazine at the time with almost 3x the audience, not to mention Sports Illustrated subscribers are sports maniacs, sports gamblers, and sports fans compared to the guys that are looking for a nice trendy shirt or “what's going on at the Frat House” crowd that subscribes to Maxim. This was Claude; I don’t believe he was a marketing genius. He was more like an arm chair quarterback when it came to advertising that liked to take credit for other's ideas. He wasn’t too different in marketing than many business owners who have egos. Everything had to be Claude’s idea. If he liked something he would never tell you on the spot but would bring it up in a meeting soon after it had been presented, as his idea. As opposed to a marketing genius, I would describe him more as a thief of other people’s ideas because he didn’t pay for those ideas despite promises. Had he paid for the ideas than he would be a brilliant business owner in my eyes. Simple truth the more I got to know Claude the less he understood about advertising. Ironically as a sports book owner he really didn’t know squat when it came to sports either. I doubt if he could name 5 starting quarterbacks in the National Football league without doing his research. Fortunately to run a sports book you don’t need to know about sports. Just be good a good businessman and that was Claude up until the day he got caught for legal violations.

While at the Patton Marketing Firm I put together a plan to go after the offshore gaming companies. It was a young industry, they had plenty of money, I figure they were bound to grow and were dependent upon good advertising for their growth. The problem with most of the offshore sports books were they didn't have big enough budgets to really brand their industry to the masses. I wrote up a plan to start consolidating dollars of competitors to get more bang for their buck. Fact is the industry was probably getting less than 5% of the sports bettors in the US and if the industry consolidated some ad dollars to raise industry awareness and focus on the entire market; in simple math terms 20% of 5% is less than 10% of 50%. Unfortunately my partner, Doug wasn't sold on going after the industry as he preferred to have local accounts due to the non-payment of a Dominican sports book we were dealing with and the waste of time by BOS that appeared to have embarrassed the seasoned advertising executive.