12-year term sought for betting expert

Wealthy businessman lost $45 million to fraud, extortion

South Florida betting expert Adam Meyer used bizarre methods to rip off more than $45 million from one of his wealthy clients — money he used to gamble, buy fancy homes, luxury cars and expensive jewelry.

And for much of the time that he was secretly committing a variety of crimes, his defense lawyers say he was simultaneously providing information to federal agents and the Broward Sheriff’s Office to

help them prosecute other people.

Meyer, 44, of Southwest Ranches, pleaded guilty to five federal charges linked to extortion, fraud and racketeering in September. When he is sentenced March 3 in federal court in Milwaukee, Wis., federal prosecutors say he should face 12 years in prison for his crimes.

Meyer pretended to be other people, faked a Chinese accent and made up an elaborate ruse claiming that his life was in danger to extort and defraud the victim during a four-year period, records show.

Meyer, who called himself the “sports consultant to the stars,” claimed he had “the highest documented win percentage in the history of [his] business” and that he had never had a losing season, prosecutors said. He charged as much as $250,000 for his advice and claimed he had an “unheardof win percentage” of more than 63 percent, they said.

He focused his efforts on particularly wealthy victims, pressuring them to bet as much as $500,000 on a single game, authorities said. He victimized one man to an astounding degree, court records show.

The victim, Gary Sadoff, 66, of Fond du Lac, Wis., is a wealthy businessman who owns a liquor distribution business and was a member of the Board of Directors of National Exchange Bank & Trust.

Sadoff who started buying betting “picks” from Meyer in 2007, was victimized after reducing his gambling activity in 2009, authorities said.

Meyer, who was arrested in Broward County in 2014 and has been locked up in Wisconsin since April 2015, admitted he made up an elaborate series of lies and told the victim that Meyer’s life was being threatened by a bookie who was holding Meyer and the victim equally responsible for a large gambling debt.

Meyer frequently called the victim and posed as “Kent Wong,” using what Meyer thought was a Chinese accent to pressure the victim to pay the debt, prosecutors wrote.

At one point, Meyer told the victim that Wong and his associates had cut off one of Meyer’s fingers because of a gambling debt. In a later call with Meyer, who was posing as Wong, the victim asked if that had really happened and Wong replied that he would send the victim a video of the made-up incident, investigators said.

After Sadoff started sending Meyer money in 2009, Meyer used it to buy real estate, including his Southwest Ranches home, jewelry, and nine expensive cars, including two Bentleys, an Aston Martin Rapide and a Porsche, records show.

When the victim tried to stop the flow of cash in early 2012, Meyer arranged a meeting and claimed he was going to return some of the cash.

Instead, Meyer recruited a Broward County man, Ray Batista, and they flew on a private jet from Florida to Wisconsin to meet with the victim in his car in a parking lot, according to court records.

Last month, Batista, 35, was sentenced to four years in federal prison for his role in the crime. He pleaded guilty to extortion and racketeering and told prosecutors Meyer paid him $200,000 for helping him.

During the April 2012 meeting, Meyer got into the front passenger seat of the car, handed Sadoff a Rolex watch and thanked him for all the money he had sent, according to court records. He told the victim not to turn around when Batista got into the back seat.

Meyer cried and told the victim he needed $9.8 million, while Batista took out his gun and “chambered a round of ammunition,” according to the plea agreement.

The victim was so scared that he sent $9.8 million, in a number of transfers spread out over eight days, investigators said.

“I acted, as best I could, to protect those closest to me … I am grateful that no one was injured and that, ultimately, the entire scheme was uncovered by law enforcement,” Sadoff wrote in a letter to the judge this week. He asked the judge to bar Meyer from ever contacting him again.

Meyer’s defense lawyers are recommending that Meyer should serve five years in federal prison.

They asked the judge to consider that Meyer has been diagnosed with several mental health conditions, which they said influenced his behavior. His ability to control himself was affected by his abuse of drugs and his lifelong gambling addiction, which he failed to overcome despite treatment, they said.

“The most significant factor has been the role Meyer portrayed while acting as a deep cover informant and valuable source for numerous federal and state law enforcement officers and agencies,” lawyers Joel Hirschhorn and Dennis Coffey wrote in court records.

He helped law enforcement arrest and convict “many individuals” and helped the government seize “hundreds of millions of dollars from offshore bookmaking operations as well as significant sums of money in domestic operations,” his lawyers wrote.

Since around 2000 or 2001, Meyer was a “proactive informant and source for law enforcement” and an “extremely valuable asset” for the FBI, they wrote. He also provided information to the Secret Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the IRS, and he often worked as an informant in “dangerous situations,” they said.

Meyer also provided information to the NCAA, NBA, MLB and NFL about players, coaches, referees and umpires who he said were involved in gambling activities, the defense wrote.

But many of his law enforcement handlers in turn “handed him off ” because he was very difficult to control and the FBI eventually “deactivated” him as an informant, they wrote.

After federal agencies distanced themselves from Meyer, he became an informant for the Broward Sheriff’s Office and helped that agency obtain state arrests and convictions, according to the defense memo.

The defense argued that Meyer at times “actually believed he had some sort of lawful ‘authority’ to violate the law with respect to gambling and bookmaking” because of the role he played as a snitch for law enforcement.

Prosecutors acknowledged in court records filed this week that Meyer, who has prior convictions for fraud and making threatening phone calls, had been “assisting law enforcement in a number of investigations” for several years.

Prosecutors gave Meyer mixed reviews for his “cooperation” and pointed out that he was supposedly helping law enforcement at the same time that he was committing the $45 million fraud and extortion.

Meyer