Mike Fish, ESPN
THE WORLD’S MOST feared sports gambler is out of the game.
William “Billy” T. Walters, 71, who in his prime had the financial muscle and acumen to move betting lines worldwide and scared Las Vegas sportsbooks and offshore gambling operators to the degree that they refused to take his bets, is laying low inside the Pensacola Federal Prison Camp, a minimum-security facility housed on a naval air station in the Florida Panhandle.
Walters is up at dawn and goes about his day in a Christmas green, prison-issued uniform. The sugar-white beaches gather waves just 15 miles away, but they’re out of sight and mind. So, too, is Walters’ pampered life of private jets, designer homes in places such as Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, and rounds of golf at plush courses. His business life outside of sports gambling — playing the stock market and managing his car dealerships and commercial real estate ventures — also has been neutered.
So Billy Walters waits. Waits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in Manhattan to hear an appeal this spring of his conviction in the insider trading case that sent him to federal prison for five years. Waits to see whether good behavior in prison will cut his sentence. And waits to learn whether the U.S. Supreme Court will do — possibly as soon as next week — what seemed unthinkable during his gambling career that stretched over four decades: decide whether to legalize sports gambling and thereby divvy up a market that could be worth as much as $5.8 billion in annual revenue.
“My whole passion, my whole life is about nothing but gambling,” Walters said in an October interview at his Las Vegas golf club, just ahead of his reporting to prison. “That is what I wanted to do. … I probably came in as a gambler, and I am going to go out as a gambler.”
The morning of that interview, Walters sat behind his desk at the Bali Hai Golf Club he owns, oblivious to the NFL games that were soon to kick off. Even in prison and unable to gamble, he still might be able to make some money on the league: The soon-to-be Las Vegas Raiders had opened negotiations with his business representatives to convert the 7,000-yard Bali Hai course into stadium parking.
Before he entered federal prison, Walters spoke at length with Outside the Lines, eager to discuss the insider trading conviction and his life-changing trial. He lamented not testifying in his own defense. He groused about how his one-time friend and gambling partner, golfer Phil Mickelson, left him high and dry and might be most responsible for him being in prison. And he spoke about finding perspective in recent years and how he had prepared to contend with the loss of luxury, freedom and adrenalin-inducing challenges that defined him for decades. Once inside the prison, though, Walters and his team have become far more careful in recent months, not wanting to anger a court system that could set him free early, unwilling to draw publicity to himself or even risk affecting prison privileges such as leisure and library time. He corresponded briefly, though, about the pending Supreme Court decision, saying legalizing his livelihood would create revenue for states and create jobs.
THE MINIMUM-SECURITY camp Walters lives in is deemed one of the easiest places to serve a federal sentence. Most inmates are white-collar criminals in for less than 10 years. It is confinement, though: visitors only on weekends; lights out by 9:30 p.m.; lunch as simple as two hot dogs, coleslaw and a bag of chips.
Former NBA referee Tim Donaghy spent 11 months inside the Pensacola facility a decade ago after pleading guilty to participating in a gambling scandal conspiracy. He remembers the prison attire, the dozen inmates crammed into a room with six sets of bunk beds, afternoons in the weight room and evenings in the library, damp winter days and nights without heat, filling up on cans of tuna purchased from the commissary.
“Once you get into a routine, it’s very relaxed,” Donaghy said. “As long as you keep to yourself, you should not have too many problems.”
Neither Walters, his attorney nor his wife would comment about how Walters has adjusted to prison life. They essentially refuse to tolerate questions about it.
Donaghy figured Walters hasn’t had to worry about much; inmates are unlikely to be a concern: “They are going to worship him, because they are going to know he has money. They are going to do what they can to do favors for him.”
Walters does indeed have money, having made hundreds of millions of dollars from the stock market, his auto dealerships, his real estate and his true wheelhouse, sports gambling.
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