Dean Foods, publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange, was a means used by Walters to add to his huge fortune, which he mainly made by lawfully beating the house in Las Vegas. However, federal officials said the well-known Las Vegas sports bettor wasn’t gambling when he made many insider trades based on non-public information on Dean Foods between 2008 and 2014.
The biggest dairy company in the Unites States, Dean Foods, filed for bankruptcy this week. It attributed its financial distress to a decades-long fall in milk consumption.
The Casino.org website says, a federal court convicted Walters in 2017 on all 10 counts of insider trading on Dean Foods which he faced. He was punished with five years imprisonment. He’s being detained at the comfortable, minimum-security Pensacola Federal Prison Camp in the Florida panhandle. The 73-year-old bettor is scheduled for release in 2022.
Sports Pro, Sports Bettor, and Billionaire
Billy Walters is considered one of the most successful sports bettors in Las Vegas history. Of course, he was famous around town, but his insider trading charges caught attention round the world for his association with pro golfer Phil Mickelson and billionaire Carl Icahn.
Though neither Mickelson or Icahn were charged with any wrongdoing in the Dean Foods insider trading case, Mickelson forfeited more than $1 million he made on the dairy company stock in order to settle a 2016 US Securities and Exchange Commission civil case.
Authorities claimed Mickelson was indebted to his friend, Walters due to sports betting, and accepted a tip on Dean Foods. Lefty, as he’s widely known in the golf world made a huge investment in Dean Foods in 2010. Mickelson’s stock position increased in value by $931,000 a week later, after a strong financial public filing.
That’s a small amount when you compared with the money Walters made on Dean Foods. The company’s former chairman, Tom Davis, confessed having a gambling issue and disclosing inside information to Walters.
For his cooperation, Davis was punished with two years imprisonment. According to investigators, Walters gained by around $45 million in profits gained and losses avoided.
At the time, acting US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Joon Kim said, “Armed with his illegal edge, Walters made huge, perfectly timed trades, at times accounting for over a third of the trading volume in Dean Foods stock.”
Kim concluded, “Today, Billy Walters lost his bet that he could cheat the securities markets on a massive scale and get away with it scot free.”
Appeal Denied
The US Supreme Court rejected Billy Walters’ appeal request last month. His attorneys claimed the case was tarnished due to an FBI agent’s revealing of grand jury details to the media.
His defense said, the FBI associated with Susan Pulliam, Wall Street Journal reporter, in trading information regarding the case. Apparently, the Supreme Court didn’t think the claims needed a review.
Walters has remained firm on his innocence. “I just did lose the biggest bet of my life,” he said following his conviction.
