PAiN
01-12-2017, 12:19 AM
Ex-USC football player pleads guilty to drug trafficking, gambling scheme
January 11, 2017 1:00pm
An ex-USC football player has pleaded guilty to running an international criminal empire from Southern California that included an offshore gambling operation and a drug ring that sold performance enhancing drugs to professional athletes, in addition to trafficking hundreds of kilograms of cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and ecstasy.
Owen Hanson, 34, faces at least 20 years in prison when sentenced on the two charges: racketeering conspiracy and drug-trafficking conspiracy. He has agreed to forfeit $5 million and all other property — likely worth millions of dollars — paid for with illegal profits.
Hanson entered his plea Tuesday. However, the plea may be short-lived.
Hanson, who has been corresponding from jail with a VICE Sports deputy editor, wrote an email (https://brotherhoodofpain.com) Wednesday saying he had been a victim of a “bait-and-switch” and that he wanted to withdraw the plea.
“The new plea they made me sign in court yesterday will not stand, they added a mandatory minimum I never agreed to—and was pressured to sign it without reviewing with my family,” Hanson wrote, according to VICE Sports. “It was a travesty of justice, protocol and trust.”
Hanson was arrested at Carlsbad’s Park Hyatt Aviara Golf Club in September 2015 on a charge of coordinating a delivery of cocaine and meth. The San Diego prosecution by the U.S. Attorney’s Office ballooned soon after with charges against 22 people accused of participating in Hanson’s global gambling and drug operations.
Hanson, who grew up in Redondo Beach, played football for USC as a walk-on tight end in 2004 and became a real estate developer.
He later leveraged his relationships with athletes and turned his business acumen toward illegal markets.
In the guilty plea, Hanson admitted to founding and overseeing ODOG Enterprises, a gambling operation based in Peru and Central America, with clients throughout the U.S. Hanson hired bookies, runners and enforcers to place bets, collect losses and, if necessary, use violence against those who wouldn’t pay up.
That included sending one of his enforcers, Jack “Animal” Rissell, to Minnesota to assault a client who owed gambling debts, according to Hanson’s and Rissell’s plea agreements.
He also admitted to building a drug-trafficking network that imported, exported and distributed drugs at wholesale and retail value throughout the U.S. and Australia — where narcotics command a higher price.
At a court hearing in November, prosecutors had accused Hanson of trafficking more than a ton of cocaine. Prosecutors have also alluded to Hanson’s many connections in Mexico, including a home he was building in Cabo San Lucas, a fake Mexican ID and Mexican in-laws said to have family ties to drug-traffickers.
In the plea agreement, Hanson admitted to directing a co-conspirator to send 5 grams of cocaine from California to an unnamed football player in Nashville, Tenn., on Nov. 17, 2014, and to directing others to package and ship more than 250 kilograms of cocaine from Los Angeles to various locations in September 2015.
The plea did not provide further details about Hanson’s distribution of anabolic steroids (http://brotherhoodofpain.com)and human growth hormone (http://brotherhoodofpain.com)to “numerous” professional athletes.
Hanson’s plea provides a glimpse at the kind of cash his drug business was earning — profits that needed to be laundered.
He admitted having a co-conspirator transfer $50,000 in drug proceeds to a person in New Jersey so the cash could go to California. Hanson also used people in Australia to try to get drug profits — $200,000 in U.S. currency and $250,000 in Australian currency — to the U.S. in July 2015.
http://www.trbimg.com/img-58769980/turbine/sd-krdavis-1484167606-snap-photo/400/400x225 (http://brotherhoodofpain.com) RJ Cipriani
Hanson also admitted to his involvement with professional gambler Robert “R.J.” Cipriani — also known as “Robin Hood 702” for his alter ego who gives his casino winnings to the needy.
In 2011, Hanson gave Cipriani $1.5 million in drug-trafficking proceeds to gamble with in a Sydney casino, and had Cipriani — who said he didn’t realize the money was dirty — take the winnings to Las Vegas in the form of a casino check.
When Hanson tried to get him to do it again with $2.5 million, Cipriani said he became suspicious and decided to purposefully lose the money at the tables.
Before Cipriani left Australia the second time, he called in a tip that someone had a gun in a Sydney hotel room linked to Hanson. Police didn’t find a gun but found Hanson’s associates with $702,000 in a suitcase. The money was said to belong to Hanson, with various stories as to how it was being used — from payment for a ZZ Top tour to an investment in a weight-loss business. Australian authorities began investigating, ultimately leading to eight arrests there.
http://www.trbimg.com/img-587699c2/turbine/sd-krdavis-1484167671-snap-photo/700/700x394 (http://brotherhoodofpain.com) Owen Hanson is accused of hiring a private investigator to splash red paint on the grave of RJ Cipriani's mother in a threat to repay $2.5 million.
Back in California, Hanson embarked on a campaign to threaten Cipriani and his wife — including sending a DVD of beheadings and having a private investigator splash red paint on the gambler’s mother’s gravestone — in order to recover the losses, prosecutors said.
The FBI in San Diego began investigating Hanson as an associate of another Peru-based gambling operation called Macho Sports. Hanson was not among those indicted in that investigation, but he was on the FBI’s radar. Around the same time, Cipriani approached the San Diego FBI and shared his experiences with Hanson, and the investigation grew into a much larger case involving confidential sources and an undercover agent.
On Tuesday, Cipriani said he was ecstatic to hear of Hanson’s plea.
“He deserves to spend 2 decades in jail,” Cipriani said in an email.
Of the 22 people charged in San Diego, 18 have pleaded guilty, including three others on Tuesday.
Giovanni Brandolino, aka “Tank,” considered Hanson’s second-in-command, admitted to helping Hanson traffic hundreds of kilograms of cocaine and heroin and setting up a distribution network in New Jersey and New York. He also admitted to a money-laundering conspiracy, as did Marlyn Villarreal and Jeff Bellandi.
Four defendants are headed to trial on Feb. 14, including former NFL player Derek Loville, accused of selling drugs for Hanson in Arizona, and Old Town accountant Luke Fairfield, accused of helping Hanson launder the illegal proceeds.
January 11, 2017 1:00pm
An ex-USC football player has pleaded guilty to running an international criminal empire from Southern California that included an offshore gambling operation and a drug ring that sold performance enhancing drugs to professional athletes, in addition to trafficking hundreds of kilograms of cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and ecstasy.
Owen Hanson, 34, faces at least 20 years in prison when sentenced on the two charges: racketeering conspiracy and drug-trafficking conspiracy. He has agreed to forfeit $5 million and all other property — likely worth millions of dollars — paid for with illegal profits.
Hanson entered his plea Tuesday. However, the plea may be short-lived.
Hanson, who has been corresponding from jail with a VICE Sports deputy editor, wrote an email (https://brotherhoodofpain.com) Wednesday saying he had been a victim of a “bait-and-switch” and that he wanted to withdraw the plea.
“The new plea they made me sign in court yesterday will not stand, they added a mandatory minimum I never agreed to—and was pressured to sign it without reviewing with my family,” Hanson wrote, according to VICE Sports. “It was a travesty of justice, protocol and trust.”
Hanson was arrested at Carlsbad’s Park Hyatt Aviara Golf Club in September 2015 on a charge of coordinating a delivery of cocaine and meth. The San Diego prosecution by the U.S. Attorney’s Office ballooned soon after with charges against 22 people accused of participating in Hanson’s global gambling and drug operations.
Hanson, who grew up in Redondo Beach, played football for USC as a walk-on tight end in 2004 and became a real estate developer.
He later leveraged his relationships with athletes and turned his business acumen toward illegal markets.
In the guilty plea, Hanson admitted to founding and overseeing ODOG Enterprises, a gambling operation based in Peru and Central America, with clients throughout the U.S. Hanson hired bookies, runners and enforcers to place bets, collect losses and, if necessary, use violence against those who wouldn’t pay up.
That included sending one of his enforcers, Jack “Animal” Rissell, to Minnesota to assault a client who owed gambling debts, according to Hanson’s and Rissell’s plea agreements.
He also admitted to building a drug-trafficking network that imported, exported and distributed drugs at wholesale and retail value throughout the U.S. and Australia — where narcotics command a higher price.
At a court hearing in November, prosecutors had accused Hanson of trafficking more than a ton of cocaine. Prosecutors have also alluded to Hanson’s many connections in Mexico, including a home he was building in Cabo San Lucas, a fake Mexican ID and Mexican in-laws said to have family ties to drug-traffickers.
In the plea agreement, Hanson admitted to directing a co-conspirator to send 5 grams of cocaine from California to an unnamed football player in Nashville, Tenn., on Nov. 17, 2014, and to directing others to package and ship more than 250 kilograms of cocaine from Los Angeles to various locations in September 2015.
The plea did not provide further details about Hanson’s distribution of anabolic steroids (http://brotherhoodofpain.com)and human growth hormone (http://brotherhoodofpain.com)to “numerous” professional athletes.
Hanson’s plea provides a glimpse at the kind of cash his drug business was earning — profits that needed to be laundered.
He admitted having a co-conspirator transfer $50,000 in drug proceeds to a person in New Jersey so the cash could go to California. Hanson also used people in Australia to try to get drug profits — $200,000 in U.S. currency and $250,000 in Australian currency — to the U.S. in July 2015.
http://www.trbimg.com/img-58769980/turbine/sd-krdavis-1484167606-snap-photo/400/400x225 (http://brotherhoodofpain.com) RJ Cipriani
Hanson also admitted to his involvement with professional gambler Robert “R.J.” Cipriani — also known as “Robin Hood 702” for his alter ego who gives his casino winnings to the needy.
In 2011, Hanson gave Cipriani $1.5 million in drug-trafficking proceeds to gamble with in a Sydney casino, and had Cipriani — who said he didn’t realize the money was dirty — take the winnings to Las Vegas in the form of a casino check.
When Hanson tried to get him to do it again with $2.5 million, Cipriani said he became suspicious and decided to purposefully lose the money at the tables.
Before Cipriani left Australia the second time, he called in a tip that someone had a gun in a Sydney hotel room linked to Hanson. Police didn’t find a gun but found Hanson’s associates with $702,000 in a suitcase. The money was said to belong to Hanson, with various stories as to how it was being used — from payment for a ZZ Top tour to an investment in a weight-loss business. Australian authorities began investigating, ultimately leading to eight arrests there.
http://www.trbimg.com/img-587699c2/turbine/sd-krdavis-1484167671-snap-photo/700/700x394 (http://brotherhoodofpain.com) Owen Hanson is accused of hiring a private investigator to splash red paint on the grave of RJ Cipriani's mother in a threat to repay $2.5 million.
Back in California, Hanson embarked on a campaign to threaten Cipriani and his wife — including sending a DVD of beheadings and having a private investigator splash red paint on the gambler’s mother’s gravestone — in order to recover the losses, prosecutors said.
The FBI in San Diego began investigating Hanson as an associate of another Peru-based gambling operation called Macho Sports. Hanson was not among those indicted in that investigation, but he was on the FBI’s radar. Around the same time, Cipriani approached the San Diego FBI and shared his experiences with Hanson, and the investigation grew into a much larger case involving confidential sources and an undercover agent.
On Tuesday, Cipriani said he was ecstatic to hear of Hanson’s plea.
“He deserves to spend 2 decades in jail,” Cipriani said in an email.
Of the 22 people charged in San Diego, 18 have pleaded guilty, including three others on Tuesday.
Giovanni Brandolino, aka “Tank,” considered Hanson’s second-in-command, admitted to helping Hanson traffic hundreds of kilograms of cocaine and heroin and setting up a distribution network in New Jersey and New York. He also admitted to a money-laundering conspiracy, as did Marlyn Villarreal and Jeff Bellandi.
Four defendants are headed to trial on Feb. 14, including former NFL player Derek Loville, accused of selling drugs for Hanson in Arizona, and Old Town accountant Luke Fairfield, accused of helping Hanson launder the illegal proceeds.