You could say I was born into this business; being the son of a legendary New York bookmaker it's not like the apple fell far from the tree. I had no use for flash cards as a child; parlay cards were my calling at an early age.

By the age of 16 I was already taking bets from classmates, their parents, and my teachers. After graduation I went to work for Caesar's Palace running high-roller gambling excursions to Vegas and Atlantic City, plying whales and the filthy rich with the best hookers and drugs money could buy, all the while watching casinos make small fortunes on their losses.

In 1994, I had a vision that changed, re-shaped and created the sports gambling industry as we know it today. It was then I moved to Panama and opened the world's first international offshore sportsbook, SDB Global, which I eventually relocated to Costa Rica. 

Yes, it was me who had the vision to give bettors a choice of dealing with a legitimate corporation taking their wagers via telephone rather than dealing with Joe Blow on the local corner. Call me the father of the modern offshore sports gambling industry. And for changing the way 99% of you reading this now place your bets, I had to deal with corrupt foreign government officials and shady so-called businessmen.

I became a self-made millionaire by the age of 30, but my reign as the offshore gambling world czar was ended courtesy of the United States government, who arrested me and forever changed the status of the entire offshore Industry from Grey to Black and White.

Why me? Because the U.S. wanted to take out the biggest fish in the industry. But like prohibition efforts in the 30's, their efforts were in vain because all they did was send 30,000 active bettors looking for other offshore sportsbooks. In fact, the week I was busted and forced to close, 25 new companies opened up offshore. How ironic, right?

Was I down? Certainly. Was I out? Never. Remember, I grew up in the gambling world. The Internet was just coming of age. I decided to hop to the other side of the fence and in partnership with Al DeMarco create and build SportsInfo.com, the Internet's largest pay-per-view sports handicapping conglomerate.